Author: Todd_Lappin

All Are Invited to the Elsie Street Block Party on Saturday

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Neighbor Michael invites all Citizens of Bernalwood to attend the fashionable Elsie Street Block Party that will take place tomorrow afternoon:

Bernal Neighbors – You are cordially invited to the 6th Annual Elsie Street Block Party, between Cortland & Eugenia, this Saturday, Sept. 29 from Noon to 3pm.

Bhangra Dancers at 1pm. Ten of them! Be a judge in the Bake-Off Contest, Jump in the Bouncy House, Swat a Pinata (if you’re young enough), enjoy food, drink and great company. Be carefree and carfree on the Best Block of Bernal.

Colossal 20-Family Benefit Garage Sale, Saturday

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Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Ye Hunters of Bargains!

Neighbor Noah brings news of a group garage sale happening in North bernal on Saturday to benefit the Rocky Mountain Co-Op Preschool:

HUGE 20-FAMILY GARAGE SALE & BAKE SALE

All profits go to benefit our school: Rocky Mountain co-op preschool.

We are cleaning our our closets/homes and selling loads of stuff that we have outgrown or no longer need. Come and be a part of the recycle & reuse! Grab something “new” for you while also helping our our preschool.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
in front of Grace Korean Presbyterian Church
30 Norwich Street between Harrison St. and Alabama St.
A block away from PRECITA PLAYGROUND.

– Furniture
– Clothes
– Baby stuff
– Toys
– Books
– Electronics

Over twenty families are donating for our BIG Garage Sale. If that weren’t enough, we are also having a bake sale at the same location!

Lots of homemade bake goods for sale too!
– cookies
– cupcakes
– breads

Your Bernal Heights Crime Report for September 2012: Robbery Busts, iPhone Thefts, and Beware the Blue Tape

/ Todd_Lappin

Neighbor Edie heroically attended the last community meeting at the SFPD’s Ingleside Station, and even more heroically… she typed up these notes just for you. Please read them carefully to learn about current crime trends, and how to avoid becoming a statistic:

Captain’s Report by Captain Tim Falvey (timothy.falvey@sfgov.org)

Our new captain, Captain Timothy Falvey, has been in the SFPD 17+ years, last two at the airport. As an officer, he worked in Northern Hayes Valley, and as a Sgt worked swing watch in the Mission. As a Lieutenant, he worked in the Southern district, then went to the Police Academy for three years, then was the Police Commission Secretary. Promoted to Captain, and assigned here.

Falvey highly enjoys his job, especially in San Francisco. Almost his entire family was in the department, and he joined because he noticed they were the only people he knew who enjoyed going to work every day. Falvey was an accountant for seven years first, but he didn’t like to sit doing paperwork every day, now that he’s a Captain, he sits behind a desk doing paperwork…

The Captain’s had a busy first few days since he started here. The first day he was on the job, a big cluster of thieves were going around robbing people of their cell phones. Three precincts detained numerous people involved, and there was an officer-involved shooting. The second day, there was a pipe burst and major flooding in the Sunnydale, and the house on the corner was redlined, and the police spent time evacuating the children at the school there.

Welcome to the Ingleside!

Crime Stats are tracked every 4 weeks, and compare the crime for 4-week period for 3 months.

Part 1 crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, violent assault) are down 21%. There was a spike in July, but now getting back to the norm.

Part 2 crimes (arson, burglary, auto theft, theft from vehicles) are down 25%.

Shootings: Total 19 victims in our district, compared to 23 last year at same time.

Reports of shots fired: down 43% (from 7 to 4). Again consistent with June.

Increased traffic enforcement helps to curtail violent crimes, because people often come from other areas (in cars) to commit those crimes.

So when crimes increase, police do more traffic checks to find people who shouldn’t be there and slow it down.

Arrests: This month there was a 200% increase in the number of robbery arrests (3 arrests instead of 1).

Recently there was a takeover robbery in the Ingleside: two robbers put people in the freezer and took their wallets & phones. Report went out and police spotted them on 7th & Market, a known place for fencing stolen goods. Police stopped them, asked Ingleside police to call the victims’ cell phone numbers, and phones rang from the robbers’ pockets. Police have charged them with ELEVEN robberies! Great job!

Robberies down 21%. Crime trend: robberies on the bus, especially iPhones. Perps wait outside the bus, spot someone using iPhone and, just as the bus doors are about to close, reach in and grab it. Passengers – pay attention. Don’t stand next to the open door with a $300 iPhone and wait for it to be stolen. Sit near the cameras, near the driver, far from the door.

Education, enforcement, environment… all are very important when preventing crime. When buying an iPhone, take it out of the bag and put it in your pocket, so the thieves will steal the bag, not the phone.

INCIDENTS AND RESIDENTS’ CONCERNS

Increase in burglaries in Miraloma Park. Common for perps to force open doors in broad daylight.

Alemany and Laura: Man spotted a month ago swinging a large chain and damaging property was arrested and is in jail on aggravated assault.

Blue Tape on doors: Bernal residents around Elsie St. have found blue painter’s tape at the bottoms of front doors, a strategy burglars apparently use to see when people are away from home. Now there have been several burglaries in the same area, and Taraval’s Captain reports finding tape near St. Brendon’s. Apparently, gangs will focus on a neighborhood for a while until moving to the next.

If you see tape on your door, DON’T touch it; instead, call the police non-emergency number (415) 553-0123 or email SFPDInglesideStation@sfgov.org and ask them to check for fingerprints.

Let’s keep our doors locked and our eyes and ears open: report any suspicious vehicles or persons via the non-emergency number (415) 553-0123. Get a license number and kind of vehicle, description of the people you see, pictures if you can, but don’t put yourself in danger. In one neighborhood where they’ve been taking license plate numbers, police have gotten two guns and four thieves off the street.

Traffic Control: Captain has asked his officers to concentrate on writing tickets for things that cause accidents, which create damage, and increase workload and paperwork. Also focusing on major transit corridors so that buses can move effectively.

New skatepark in Balboa Park, at the corner of Ocean and San Jose Ave. Kids have been sneaking in to skate even before the equipment was finished, but it should be open now.

The Ingleside station website has a new page on for local community-based organizations to post info on upcoming local events.

An SF ordinance prevents people from parking cars for sale in places they don’t live, so you can call on those cars with for sale signs that take up parking spaces in your neighborhood.

Beware of fraudulent calls using your personal information, such as children’s names, your address, etc.: A caller from Jamaica told someone they’d earned a large amount of money, but must pay in order to receive it. The caller knew the names of three of the victim’s children. Others identify themselves as children or grandchildren who are in another country and sick or in desperate need of cash. Callers often focus on seniors, and much of this fraud is international in origin, so it’s hard to catch the thieves.

NOTE: spookeo.com is a known source for personal information, and it’s linked to Ancestry.com. You might want to see just how much of your personal information is out there and available to anyone who pays for an account.

Suggestions to avoid being defrauded: If you don’t recognize the caller, don’t answer. They may also be able to piggyback on your line to make other long-distance calls on your bill. Talk to your family members (of all generations) about this kind of fraud, and set a way of identifying true family from fraudulent callers. For instance – establish a key word or phrase that doesn’t have anything to do with your known personal information. Tell everyone they should listen for that from callers, and always have others check with the supposed caller and other family members before they send money anywhere.

UPCOMING COMMUNITY MEETING

Ingleside Community Meetings are held on 3rd Tuesday of the month from 7 – 8 pm in the Community Room of the Ingleside station, 1 Sgt. John V. Young Lane at San Jose Ave. All are welcome to hear about issues affecting the district and ask questions. Next meeting will be Oct 16th.

PHOTO: Telstar Logistics

Eji’s Ethiopian Joining the 331 Cortland Marketplace

/ Todd_Lappin / 11 Comments

That available space in the glamorous 331 Cortland marketplace is no longer available. Eji’s Ethiopan will be moving in soon:

We are proud to announce a new vendor at 331 Cortland who will be joining the marketplace in early October, just a few short weeks away. Her food is vegan, full of spicy goodness and totally yummy. Eji has been working with La Cocina to make her business a reality and we are happy she chose 331 as her next step. Please stop by, try her food and welcome her to the neighborhood!

La Cocina provides a little more background:

Growing up in the bustling, Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Eji Atlaw spent much of her childhood in the kitchen with her four sisters and mother, learning to make homemade Ethiopian dishes. Food has always been a passion for Eji, and one that stuck with her as she built a new life in the United States. Eji decided to pursue what she loves, and join La Cocina to begin working on plans to start her own vegan Ethiopian business. Eji’s launched at the 2011 San Francisco Street Food Festival, and since then Eji has been working as a caterer and developing a line of sauces that showcase Ethiopian flavors, spices and local ingredients.

PHOTO: Ejigayehu Atlaw, via Eji’s Ethiopian

Sadness: Four Star Video Announces Immediate Closure

/ Todd_Lappin / 36 Comments

This should not come as a surprise, but it is very sad nevertheless: The much-loved Four Star Video on Cortland has announced plans to close-up shop. In an email today headlined “The end of the movie,” owners Ken and Amy Shelf write:

Dear Neighbors,

It is with heavy hearts that we announce that Four Star Video is closed, effective September 26, 2012.  We are no longer renting movies.

Succulence continues to operate, and will be moving into the whole store over the next bunch of weeks.  See the bottom of this letter for more details.

When we bought Four Star, in March of 2007, we projected that the business probably had 3-5 years of life left in it.  We also optimistically committed ourselves to keeping it open for as long as we could.  Dashing our hopes but exceeding our expectations, we made it 5 ½ years.  But now, we must move on.

For quite a while Four Star has existed to pay its employees and serve the neighborhood, but it has not been a profitable enterprise.  We’ve hit other dips in the road and have made (sometimes difficult) adjustments that have kept Four Star open.  We shortened our hours, we changed our staffing schedules, we offered a membership plan for customers, and we stopped paying for health insurance for our employees.  That one really felt terrible.  Of course, we also opened Succulence.  That has added growth and new dimensions to the store and to our lives.  The two businesses together have worked in amazing cooperation.  But it does take a lot to run them both – one is growing while the other is shrinking, and the combination has often made us feel as though we are simultaneously running our hardest and staying in place.  That has been exhausting and discouraging.

It recently became clear that a change at Four Star was required, and we just don’t feel as though hiking the prices or reducing our ordering of new films or any other approach to keep Four Star afloat is likely to serve any long term goal, and maybe not any short term goal either.  There is a quality of experience that we’ve offered at Four Star that we don’t want to compromise, and we can’t maintain that quality and continue to reduce expenses.

We love Four Star Video and we know many, many of you do, too – you tell us all the time!  That makes us so proud, and makes this decision so scary.

Like so many others, we have been thinking about technology, the economy, our changing society and what it all means.  The opportunity to put on your shoes and jacket, walk to Cortland, and rent a DVD was a rare privilege and a wonderful feature to our neighborhood.  We are saddened and disappointed to see that go, but we are not surprised.  Certain ways we live our lives are changed forever, making some wonderful things obsolete.  That is not happening but has already happened.  It is indeed full of a lot of loss.

Change is a must, that much is clear.  The goodness or badness of change is sometimes just not the point.  The inevitability of change, however, carries the lessons to us: we cannot hold onto what is simply because we know it and love it; we cannot remain bitter about the inevitable, because then we are just left with bitterness; we cannot know what good will come!

Let us also heed this reminder not to take the things we love and value for granted.  Enjoy them while you can!  Take responsibility for their survival!  We do have some ability to decide what we will support, where we will compromise, and how we spend our money.  More here than most places – that is a privilege we haven’t yet lost.  Each of us plays a part in determining where value lies in our world.

Thank you, thank you, wonderful Bernal Heights, for supporting Four Star for so long.  Thank you to all of the previous owners of Four Star Video, who gave us such a gem.  Thank you to the probably hundreds of people who have worked at the store over the years.  And continuing thanks to you, dear customers, for coming in, hanging out, talking film, talking life, and changing and growing with us and the times.

We love bringing you art and plants and things that add to your quality of life, and we are grateful for the opportunity to keep doing it.  We will be selling movies in the store for a least two – and probably more like four – more weeks.  Our transition plan is a work in progress, but we have a lot of movies and need to get them to loving homes.  Maybe you want to own a piece of Bernal History or want to get some stocking-stuffers in advance.  Stock up on some TV series you haven’t watched yet?   Prepare for the collapse of the internet and global infrastructure by making sure you have entertainment stashed away in your survival bunker?

Kids’ movies are $4, library DVDs are $5, Library BluRays are $8, Criterion, foreign and documentary films are $10.  New Releases are $12 and Series are sold by the season for $10 – $15.  10% discount if you buy 10 or more movies, and a 20% discount if you buy 20 or more movies.  If you want more, let’s talk.  If you want VHS tapes you are a super hero.  Also, effective immediately, store hours are 10am to 8pm.  We’d love to give you store credit (at Succulence or to purchase films) for any unused blocks or KenFlix days if you are interested in that.  Your continued support means a lot to us.

We are sorry we couldn’t keep Four Star Video open forever.

With love, Amy and Ken Shelf

PHOTO: Telstar Logistics

Neighbor David Talbot Laments the Tech-Fueled Gentrification of Bernal Heights

/ Todd_Lappin / 31 Comments

Yesterday’s post about the impact the Silicon Valley commuter shuttle network is having on Bernal Heights pairs neatly with the article by Bernal neighbor David Talbot that appears on the cover of the current issue of San Francisco magazine.

Under the headline “How Much Tech Can One City Take?” Neighbor David considers how the growth of the tech industry is changing the texture of San Francisco, and in one part of the article, he looks at this through the prism of our own Precita Park:

I’m sitting at a table outside the new Precita Park café in Bernal Heights, a gourmet sandwich shop that’s one sign of the changing times. When I moved to this neighborhood in 1993, just before the first dot-com boom, I avoided taking my two toddlers to the playground across the street from the café, because local gangs sometimes stashed their guns in the sand. And yet, despite gunfire from the old Army Street projects that often shattered the neighborhood’s sleep, Bernal Heights in those years was a glorious urban mix of deeply rooted blue-collar families, underground artists, radical activists, and lesbian settlers. The neighborhood had a funky character as well as a history. The famed cartoonist R. Crumb once hung his hat there, and his old Zap Comics sidekick, the brilliant Spain Rodriguez, still does.

But at some point the new tech boom began to make its presence felt in Bernal Heights, whose sunny hills are close to not only SoMa startups but also the Highway 101 shuttle line to Silicon Valley. Nowadays, you see Lexus SUVs parked in the driveways on Precita Avenue. Young masters of the universe in Ivy League sweatshirts buy yogurt and organic peaches at the corner stores where Cuervo flasks and cans of Colt 45 were once the most popular items.

“We cleaned up this neighborhood—stopped the violence in the projects—but now we can’t afford to live here anymore,” says Buck Bagot who has been a Bernal Heights community organizer and housing activist since 1976. “When I moved here, every house on my block had a different ethnicity. There were Latinos, blacks, American Indians, Samoans, Filipinos. They had good union jobs, and they could raise their families here. Now they’re all gone.” These days Bagot fights to block home foreclosures as the cofounder of Occupy Bernal, engaged in a battle to preserve the neighborhood’s diverse character that he admits often feels futile.

Sitting outside the café, I’m joined by another longtime Bernal resident, a 47-year-old San Francisco public school librarian. She moved to the neighborhood in 1994 with her partner, a public school teacher, when many of their lesbian friends were settling here, attracted by the relatively cheap rents. “There were a lot of us—we were young, politically active, and underpaid, but we could afford to live here in those days,” she says. “But now that we have kids, we’re being priced out.” The librarian—who asks that her name not be used because she’s concerned that any notoriety will hurt her chances of entering the tight housing market—says that she and her partner have bid on five houses this year. But they lost each time to buyers who could afford to put up tens of thousands of dollars over the sellers’ asking price—and all in cash. “Who are these people, with that kind of money?” she asks.

The librarian and her partner dread the idea of moving out of the city. San Francisco is in their souls: They fell in love here, they took to the streets here as young dyke activists, and they have a combination of 22 years seniority in the public school system. They can’t imagine moving their family to some remote suburb, where their kids would likely be the only ones with two moms. But it’s getting harder each day to hold on. To make ends meet, they have begun to moonlight as dog trainers “I don’t want to blame young tech workers,” says the librarian. “I’d hate to sound like some grumpy ‘get off my lawn’ type. I mean, I love technology. I’m an early adopter. But if people like us, who helped make San Francisco what it is, get pushed out of the city, who’s going to teach the next generation of kids? Who’s going to take care of them in the hospital?”

OK, so… This kind of “Woe Unto Bernal” essay is fast becoming a local sub-genre; Neighbor Peter Orner recently penned a similar lament, also about Precita Park, for The New York Times.

The issues both describe are very real: Gentrification, change, displacement, uncertainty, and the pain of watching longtime neighbors forced to move because of the inexorable economics of local real estate. Nevertherless, I had a much more sympathetic reaction to Neighbor’s Peter’s piece in the NYT than to Neighbor David’s piece in San Francisco.

Why? I’m not exactly sure, except perhaps because Peter’s piece felt more like an open-ended question to me, while David’s article was infused with an unfortunate kind of Baby Boomer myopia, as if all meaningful culture ended sometime around the time when Fleetwood Mac released the “Rumours” album.

More importantly, though, while the underlying issues of gentrification are real and challenging, it’s unfortunate that Neighbor David neglects to recognize that Bernal Heights is now a home to a glorious urban mix of deeply rooted families, underground artists, technology innovators, cutting-edge musicians, groundbreaking journalists, stalwart activists, assorted oddballs, and lesbian gentry. Plus: The Bikini Jogger.

Yes, the mix is changing. But it remains deeply funky, and passionately connected to this place we all love to call home. Of course we mourn the loss of friends and neighbors who, for whatever reason, cannot stay. The problems of gentrification defy easy solutions. Yet many of us also see meaningful continuity amid the tumult and change, because we know that Bernal Heights has never been a better or stronger neighborhood than it is today.

IMAGE: Original photo illustration by Peter Belanger for San Francisco, photo illustrated by Bernalwood

Barflies Wanted for Film Shoot at the Lucky Horseshoe

/ Todd_Lappin

Neighbor Eric, co-owner of the fashionable Lucky Horseshoe bar on Cortland, invites wannabe barflies to perform as extras in a movie that’s being filmed on location at the bar today, tomorrow, and Friday:

A local film production company is shooting a movie in the Lucky Horseshoe called “Bar America,” and the producers need extras as barflies in the movie.  Want to be a star?!?

I thought you’d like to be in the know, and if you feel like posting about the opportunity for neighborhood folks to be extras in this film, please let them know to email patrick@gorockbridge.com or text Patrick on 925-719-4648 about the interest. They’ll be looking for roughly 20 people on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

The movie stars John Candy’s son,  Chris in his first motion picture role and some other great talent as well.  They’ll be filming all week and wrapping at the bar on Saturday afternoon.

Tech Shuttle Transit Map Reveals Hidden Logic of the Bernal Heights Real Estate Market

/ Todd_Lappin / 19 Comments

As Bernalwood has previously noted, there are some hidden dynamics at work in the North Bernal real estate market along the Cesar Chavez corridor, where home-price inflation has been fueled in part by the neighborhood’s proximity to the private shuttle-bus routes that carry tech workers from San Francisco to Silicon Valley:

[Bernalwood has] heard from realtor sources that this corridor is already attracting interest from [tech-employed] buyers, precisely because it offers convenient access to freeways, public transit, and the arterial routes for those Wi-Fi-equipped, private commuter busses operated by the likes of Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc.

Thanks to the data-visualization wizards at San Francisco’s Stamen Design, we now have a way to actually see this, by way of a fascinating subway-style map that indicates the location of common shuttle bus routes, the companies they represent, and the approximate volume of people they carry:

Several Stamen staff live on Google shuttle routes, so we see those shuttles every day. They’re ubiquitous in San Francisco, but the scale and shape of the network is invisible.

We decided to try some dedicated observation. We sat 18th & Dolores one morning, and counted shuttles. We counted a new shuttle every five minutes or so; several different companies, high frequency. We also researched online sources like Foursquare to look for shuttle movements, and a 2011 San Francisco city report helped fill in gaps and establish basic routes. […]

We enlisted people to go to stops, measure traffic and count people getting off and on and we hired bike messengers to see where the buses went. The cyclists used Field Papers to transcribe the various routes and what they found out, which we recompiled back into a database of trips, stops, companies and frequency. At a rough estimate, these shuttles transport about 35% of the amount of passengers Caltrain moves each day. Google alone runs about 150 trips daily, all over the city.

The result is the map you see above, which I annotated slightly to help the Citizens of Bernalwood orient the routes to our neighborhood. What the map reveals is that — no surprise — Cesar Chavez Blvd. is a major artery for tech shuttles carrying residents of San Francisco’s southern neighborhoods to and from Silicon Valley.

Another handy-dandy map (again, annotated by Bernalwood) reveals the actual location of the shuttle stops on the perimeters of Bernal Heights:

This is fascinating stuff, because while the shuttle buses themselves are highly conspicuous, their representation and scope has, until now, been largely hidden from view. Meanwhile, the impact of all this on Bernal Heights is also quite tangible.

IMAGES: Base maps from Stamen Design and Dotspotter

Bernal-Based Startup Offers Digital Alternative to Passive-Aggressive Parking Notes

/ Todd_Lappin / 29 Comments

Neighbor Regina wrote up this tasty little article about CurbTxt, a new service based in Bernal Heights that provides a high-tech — and vastly more neighborly — alternative to leaving passive-aggressive notes on parked cars:

Blaring car alarms, forgotten headlights, and neighbor-owned cars blocking your driveway can now be remedied with a text, thanks to a new Bernalwood startup called CurbTxt.

“This is our neighborhood passion project,” says CurbTxt co-founder Alex, as he speaks via phone from CurbTxt HQ, conveniently located directly above Precita Park Cafe.

You’ve probably seen CurbTxt postcards in Bernal’s cafes. The service, which is free, offers a civil solution to neighborhood parking problems (without the need for passive aggressive notes).

Start by texting your license plate number to 415-529-5775 from *your* cell phone (it has to be your phone). Then stick a CurbTxt logo sticker next to your rear license plate. That lets neighbors know they can alert you as well. The texts are instant and anonymous.

“We follow the parking madness on the Bernalwood blog and that served as an inspiration,” says founder Alex, who was also partially inspired by the fact he owns a vintage school bus. He says his ride is “non-standard” when it comes to parking, so he wants to be sensitive to his neighbors’ parking needs.

“This is a close-knit community, and it can be damaging when tickets or tow trucks get involved,” he says. “We can act more like neighbors by reaching out directly to each other.”

Alex believs towing is a “nuclear option” and he hopes CurbTxt will serve as a solution to “the big towing industry” of San Francisco. Our City’s aggressive towing and ticketing even shocks people moving here from other large cities. CurbTxt co-founder Ian just moved here from NYC and racked-up three parking tickets in his first three weeks here.

“The parking issues weren’t in the brochure when I moved to the city,” he says.

The three founders are using a very basic, SMS-based server to automate the process, allowing them to remain at their day jobs. But they think this project has the potential to become a fulltime gig. Our neighborhood, the only one CurbTxt currently supports, is certainly interested.

“I’ve already signed up, and I’m picking up more stickers for my TIC partners,” says neighborhood homeowner Emily. “I think it’s a fabulous idea. Two days ago I saw a car on our street with its lights on. I live on Treat up from the park and I asked around at Precita Park, but it didn’t belong to anyone. I would have loved to have just been able to text them. I love the idea of neighbors supporting neighbors. I hope it catches on.”

I signed up as well during my chat with Alex. Before we said good-bye, he made a fantastic final comment:

“We’re renters, and it’s hard for us to get involved like the more established homeowners. Sometimes we feel like we’re in the dark about issues. Maybe CurbTxt can help bring us into the fold.”

PHOTO: Courtesty of CurbTxt. From left, Alex Ian and Andrew.

Watch Eight Hours of Sutrito Tower in Just 45 Seconds

/ Todd_Lappin / 1 Comment

We’ve seen some rather fantastic time-lapse videos filmed from Bernal Heights before, but I don’t recall seeing a fantastic time-lapse video that looks at Bernal Heights. Until now.

This new time-lapse by Gregg Marks gets more and more dramatic as day fades to night. It’s silent, however, so please bring your own soundtrack. (I tested it with “Alone in Kyoto,” with pleasing results.)

Star Sighting: Shuttle Endeavour Soars Over Bernal Heights

/ Todd_Lappin / 21 Comments

Well, that was rather epic, wasn’t it?

When we told you yesterday that the pilot of the Boeing 747 carrying the Space Shuttle Endeavour would be thinking of Bernal Heights as he flew over San Francisco, we weren’t kidding. But we didn’t realize that meant he would actually fly the thing right over our neighborhood!

Yet that’s what happened (because Bernalwood is glamorous like that). A little after 10 am today, Shuttle Endeavour made a big sweeping pass over Sutrito Tower and the Dominion of Bernalwood, amid much rejoicing and clicking of camera shutters.

From atop the hill, Neighbor Charlie took this terrific shot of the shuttle floating past Sutro Tower:

Neightbors Jeanne and Taina enjoyed a Tomorrowland view from their Bernal Heights living room:

Anthony Brown, Bernal’s finest penguinologist, was on the Hill, and he captured this video of the fly-by, which may be the next best thing to having been there:

And since it was a day for star-sightings, it’s only natural that Endeavour’s arrival coincided with a cameo by another elusive celebrity: The Bikini Jogger!

But let’s back up for a moment. Your Bernalwood editor got to spend some serious quality time with Endeavour yesterday while it was at Edwards Air Force Base, courtesy of the very generous folks at NASA. So if you enjoyed the view of the Shuttle over Bernal Heights today, here’s a glimpse of what it looked like up close:

Endeavour and 747 SCA

Shuttle Endeavour

Shuttle Endeavour

Endeavour and 747 SCA

Shuttle Endeavour

Wow. Quite a day to remember. Someday, you can tell your grandkids that you not only saw the Space Shuttle fly over Bernal Heights, but you also saw the Space Shuttle fly on the last day that any Shuttle took to the skies, ever. It was just another glamorous day of history-in-the-making here in Bernalwood… and you were there.

PHOTOS: Bernal photos, from top: Erin Veneziano, DenSF, Stephen Woods, Milk Dragon, Matthew Gilreath, Xtel, Wirednerd,  Joe Thomas. Bikini Jogger by sfcitymom. Shuttle closeups by Telstar Logistics

What’s The Best Way to Prevent Illegal Dumping on Bernal Hill?

/ Todd_Lappin / 7 Comments

Untitled

Remember that illegal dumping epidemic that plagued Bernal Hill last spring? Bernalwood does, and frankly, it kind of sucked.

In the meantime, D9 Supervisor David Campos has lined up some City money to make the site less dump-friendly, and he’s holding a community meeting tomorrow night at the Bernal Heights library to discuss how best to spend it:

Help Decide How to Solve the Illegal Dumping Problem on Bernal Hill

Please join Supervisor Campos and staff from the Department of Recreation and Parks to decide how to solve the illegal dumping problem on Bernal Hill. Supervisor Campos was able to secure funds in order to make changes to the area where illegal dumping has occurred. Some ideas include installing nighttime lighting in the area or making structural changes to the parking lot area that would make dumping more difficult. Both Supervisor Campos and the Department of Recreation and Parks do not want to make any changes until the Bernal community decides what is best for the neighborhood. We want to hear from all of you!

Date: September 20, 2012
Hour: 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Location: Bernal Height Library Community Room, 500 Cortland Avenue

Questions?: Please contact Hillary Ronen, legislative aide to Supervisor Campos, (415) 554-7729 or hillary.ronen@sfgov.org

PHOTO: Bernal Hill on May 7, 2012