Possibly Bernal’s Best Passive-Aggressive Parking Note, Ever

April 26, 2012April 26, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 7 Comments

During a recent visit to the secret workshop of the Bernal Dads Racing Team, I spotted this note tacked to the wall. It had been left under the windshield wiper of one of the Dads’s cars, perhaps in jest — or at least half-jest.

Regardless, it made me laugh out loud, and it is definitely a candidate for nomination as the Best Passive-Aggressive Bernal Heights Parking Note, Ever.

The note says:

Please do not park your dilapidated crapwagon in front of my house. It scares my children and makes the house look better than it actually is.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is perfection — or at least near-perfection.

PHOTO: Telstar Logistics

Chaos on Precita as Speeding Car Flips Over on Saturday

April 23, 2012April 23, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 6 Comments

Some of you may have noticed all the commotion in North Bernal late Saturday afternoon. There were a lot of sirens, and the thump-thump-thump of the Bernalwood ShadowTraffic helicopter hovering overhead. Most unhappy of all were those motorists who tried to drive along Precita from Shotwell toward Mission street… and ended up getting stuck in a full-stop traffic jam.

The cause of the chaos was a vehicle that somehow managed to flip over near the intersection of Precita and Coso. Neighbor Christel was live on the scene, and she filed this report:

Accident on Precita. Road blocked. Cops everywhere. Look at that car!

Cop told me car was speeding and hit one of those trucks that collect junk, then rolled over. No one was hurt.

After the beflipped vehicle was finally berighted, here’s how it looked. Ouch!

PHOTOS: Top, Neighbor Christel. Below, Telstar Logistics

The Lost History of the Oldsmobile Dealership on Army Street

April 20, 2012April 20, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 13 Comments

An interesting bit of Bernal Heights history recently surfaced on the blog of Hemmings Motor News, a national website for serious automobile collectors.

As part of a regular feature on defunct car dealerships, Hemmings profiled the former Lesher-Muirhead Oldsmobile in San Francisco. Truth be told, I didn’t recognize the site when I first saw the photograph, but Lesher-Muirhead was the original developer of the property on the corner of South Van Ness and Army (Cesar Chavez) that’s now home to McMillan Electrical Contractors and our new, artisinal AutoZone auto parts store.

Hemmings says:

As is the case with most old dealership images we’ve run across lately, this mid-1960s postcard of Lesher-Muirhead Oldsmobile in San Francisco comes to us from Alden Jewell. And like many other dealerships we’ve researched for the Lost Dealership Project, Lesher-Muirhead’s history isn’t as straightforward as one photo would lead us to believe.

At the time the photo was taken, we’re rather certain that Lesher-Muirhead was owned at least in part by Edgar J. Fleck, a German who fled his native land for the United States before World War II. We’ve yet to find out when he bought into the dealership, but according to his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, by 1974 he held enough control over the dealership to move it away from its location at 1515 South Van Ness Boulevard and into a new facility at 780 Serramonte Boulevard in Colma, south of San Francisco. It was there that the Oldsmobile dealership remained (at some point prior to 1980 renamed Serramonte Oldsmobile) until it was dissolved in 1993 by its then-owner, Tom Price, who appears to still own the Oldsmobile dealership’s successor, Stewart Chevrolet Cadillac. […]

Interestingly, property valuation references for 1515 South Van Ness, the location in the photo, show that the building was erected in 1948. That building still stands today.

Fun! Judging from the vintage of the cars in the (obviously heavily retouched) postcard, it would appear that the photo was taken roughly around 1965. And obviously, the building that now houses the AutoZone was erected in the former used car display lot on the corner sometime after the dealership closed in 1974.

Here’s a (somewhat dated) Google StreetView image of the site, for your then-and-now edification:

And here’s a closeup of the former dealership building:

Unmoved Vehicle Generates New Life on Folsom

March 28, 2012March 28, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments

Neighbor Regina lives on a section of Folsom Street that does not have weekly street-cleaning parking requirements. Sometimes vehicles park on her street for a long time… so long, in fact, that enough time elapses for new forms of life to enter the world. Regina captions:

A “tree” grows in Bernalwood, in the back of truck that hasn’t moved for a month. With a life preserver.

PHOTO: Neighbor Regina

Bernal Dads Fight Foul Weather During Absurdist Car Race

March 27, 2012April 3, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments

For the Bernal Dads Racing Team, all those years of experience gained while making harried grocery runs on Cortland finally came in handy. The Bernal Dads had a big endurance race in Sonoma last weekend, but it rained and rained and rained on Saturday, so the Dads donned their snorkels and took to the track despite the difficult driving conditions.

The star performer turned out to be “The Whale,” No. 245, the Dads’s battle-scarred 1984 Volvo station wagon. Like its marine mammal namesake, The Whale was extremely comfortable in the water. It was impressively stable, the brakes worked brilliantly, and the car was even kind of, sort of fast:

Meanwhile, the Dad’s other car, The Molvochero, No. 243, revealed the results of its radical weight loss program. With the rear part of the roof hastily sawed off last week, the former “Molvo” — a Mazda Miata with a Volvo station wagon shell awkwardly welded to its exterior — now resembles one of those old Ford Ranchero cars with a pick-up truck grafted on to the rear end. Hence the new name that’s almost as cumbersome and inelegant as the vehicle itself: “The Molvochero.”

Day Two was more promising, as the rain stopped and the sun attempted to make an appearance.

This video shows the Bernal Dads Molvo vs. a crappy Ford Rustang. Molvo wins!

By the end of the weekend, the Bernal Dads had put in a valiant showing: The Molvochero had fallen out of contention, but The Whale took the checkered flag in fourth place in class, and 19th overall — a pretty solid performance for a race that began with 171 cars competing. Pumped up with adrenaline and too many huffed hydrocarbons, the Bernal Dads posed for this calendar-ready team portrait at the end of the race.

The Bernal Dads brought the sexxxy, but another Bernal dad turned in an even more glamorous performance last weekend. Neighbor Alex von Wolff lives in Bernal Heights and captains The Hasselhoffs, a separate race team that divides its loyalties between Bernal and the Mission District. Driving a 1992 Toyota Paseo that’s covered from bumper-to-bumper with rave-surplus prismatic sparkly tape, the Hasselhoffs earned a victory trophy after coming in first in their competition class.

Afterward, Team Hasselhoff posed for a victory portrait, with a proud Neighbor Alex presiding atop the Paseo’s tired roof. Congratulations!

Lots and lots and lots more photos from the Bernal Dads’s weekend of motorsport madness, right here.

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

Bernal Dads Make Their Bizarre Race Car Even More Strange

March 22, 2012March 22, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 8 Comments

If you happened to look out your window at just the right moment last Saturday, you might have seen a bizarre spectacle streaking through Bernal Heights. It was a red(ish) automobile adorned with an ill-fitting Volvo body, “Bernalwood” emblazoned on the hood, and no license plates. It was moving swiftly, so if you blinked, you might have missed it entirely.

Actually, that was part of the plan. The vehicle was The Molvo, the mutant Mazda Miata-Volvo 240 hybrid fabricated by those diabolical dads from the Bernal Dads Racing Team. Saturday’s dash across Bernal Heights was a ferry run to move the Molvo from it’s top secret storage space to the Dads’s top secret garage workshop. You see, there’s a big car race at Infinion Raceway in Sonoma this weekend, and the Bernal Dads needed to make sure the Molvo was ready for competition.

But in the case of The Molvo, “ready for competition” doesn’t mean tuning the engine or tweaking the suspension. All that stuff is great, because within the Molvo’s mangled Volvo body shell lies a fully intact Mazda Miata, and the Miata is a fine race car even without any significant modification.

No, the problem with The Molvo is that it carries around about 800 pounds of unwieldy extra weight — in the form of all that goofy Volvo station wagon bodywork. So a plan was hatched to put The Molvo on a revolutionary weight-loss program:

So what does it look like now? Suffice to say, after all the sparks stopped flying, the Dads surveyed their handiwork and began calling their mutated mutant race car “The Molvochero.”

Tomorrow morning, The Bernal Dads will load The Molvochero and the team’s other race car, The Whale, onto trailers for an ad hoc parade down Cortland. From there they will head north, to Infineon Raceway, to set up camp in preparation for this weekend’s 24 Hours of LeMons “Sears Pointless 2012” race on Saturday and Sunday. I’ll tweet updates from the Bernalwood Twitter account, and Car and Driver magazine will provide coverage on their special LeMons website.

Wish the Bernal Dads luck (because they’ll need it).

PHOTOS: Top two, Telstar Logistics. Bottom, David Spector

1959 Cadillac Emerges from Bernal Garage; Smart Cars Rejoice

March 13, 2012March 13, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 13 Comments

Neighbor Mason was on hand to witness the opening of an ad-hoc time capsule on Bocana last week:

Last Friday at 305 Bocana, a garage was opened to reveal a collection of cars (and parts) owned by the late Edward Cicero, longtime Bernal butcher and possibly the founder of what is now Avedanos. (Factcheck please!) His son, Edward Jr, and grandson Steve just sold this stunning yellow ’59 Cadillac and were moving it outward and onward to its new owner.

To my surprise, there were two late 30’s Packards stashed in the other garage bay, and even a transaxle for Ford Model A. We remain excited to see what will take the Cadillac’s place, as apparently Mr. Cicero was an avid collector of metal, and there are several other examples of his curatorial prowess in other undisclosed locations.

Some interesting facts divined by yours truly:

This 1959 Caddy’s wheelbase (130″) can accommodate the length of an entire Smart car (98″) with an electric bike on a rear bike rack (18″) and still have 18″ left over for a clean parking job.

This 1959 Caddy’s engine 390 cubic inches is over ten times that of a Smart car (36cui).

The Smart Car boasts a passenger area of 45.4 cubic feet. While certainly impressive, this is only slightly larger than the capacity of the Caddy’s fuel tank (42.29 cu ft).

PHOTOS: Mason Kirby

Stylish DPT Parking Daleks Arrive on Cortland

March 12, 2012March 13, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 20 Comments

I’m not quite sure if this is a symbol of Bernal’s ascendant world-class stature or a sign of the Big Brother apocalypse, but the City’s Department of Parking and Traffic installed two automated multi-space parking meters on the 400 block of Cortland recently — one on the north side, and one on the south.

Oddly, the two machines are different makes and models. And even though the machine on the south side of Cortland (shown at top) is so stylish that it would look right at home in any major Scandanavian design capital, I’m inclined to take its arrival as a sign that the end is nigh.

Parking Woes Make Man Abandon Move to San Francisco

February 17, 2012February 16, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 60 Comments

Neighbor John introduces us to an outraged young man who tried using Bernal Heights as a long term parking lot. That didn’t go so well, so he will not be moving here anytime soon. John explains:

Had to laugh when someone forwarded your posting about the contretemps between two actual Bernal residents over long-term parking.

Over here on Eugenia, we also have no street cleaning (thank goodness), and we’ve historically attracted outsiders using our street for al fresco auto repair and airport parking. No lie, you’ll sometimes see a cab pull up to a long-parked car and drop off someone with a rollie bag…

Several months ago, we had a car filled with stuff that didn’t move for a week or two. We thought it was abandoned (which happens every now and then), someone called it in, DPT started posting warnings. The warnings elapsed and the car was towed away.

Next thing, the street — cars, mailboxes — was plastered with the attached communication from the outraged non-resident parker….

So many things to like about this guy’s letter — not the least of which is the threat of social media PR suicide (“you have… forever marked San Franciscans as snobby, me-first people in the eyes of my thousands of blog and internet followers…”) We thought about warning the chamber of commerce and tourism board that this was coming.

But after reading the note a couple of times, I had to scratch my head over “Peter” and his decision to forever cross SF off his list of potential new homes. Entitlement; indiginant, unapologetic disregard for the rules; self-righteous sense of victimization? I kinda think Pete might fit right in…

So with that as our introduction, let us now savor and appreciate Peter’s cri de coeur:

PHOTO: Top, Telstar Logistics

Passive-Aggressive Scenes from the Folsom Parking Wars

February 6, 2012February 6, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 49 Comments

It seems that tempers are flaring on Folsom Street near Ripley, just below the entrance to Bernal Heights Park. Handbills have been slipped under doormats, and posted on telephone poles. There is much grumbling afoot.

A neighbor’s original handwritten note, shown on the left above, complained about a car which had not been moved for some unspecified period of time. The recipient’s response, neatly typed on the left, gave no ground in the quarrel, while mocking the original writer for having nothing better to do. Meow!

To understand the issue, Bernalwood reached out to our Embedded Correspondent in the area, and we received this neighborly perspective:

This is a big problem. I know who wrote the handwritten note. He’s a wonderful neighbor and would never intentionally harm or threaten another neighbor. He’s just frustrated. The problem is bigger than it seems.

This section of Folsom is not street cleaned, and people can park here for days legally, sometimes weeks illegally, without having to move their cars. There are a handful of work trucks, second cars for folks, that live on this block.

The hostility would go away of those of us on this block were not charged with maintaining the street out front. Trash and tree debris is allowed to collect between perma-parkers and if I don’t want to see it I have to do something about it (it’s easy to argue that tree debris is not trash, but tell that to the folks who think leaf piles are rubbish heaps). Unfortunately 311 can take weeks to react to trash left near the park because of jurisdiction issues. Sweeping this block has become hobby (along with the man who wrote the handwritten note), and neighbors share their compost and trashcan space for maintenance. Apparently one neighbor is unaware of his or her neighbors’ contributions and care and has decided to make matters worse with another note.

I think this “parking war” is a misunderstanding and a waste of time. We need signage, street sweeping and no dumping to make this problem go away. Not sarcastic notes.

Equally valuable is the perspective provided by new neighbor RallyP, who moved to Bernal Heights from Boston about a year ago. Observing the controversy, Rally writes:

Alas, but what can you expect? Mired in the depths of a brutal San Francisco winter, bludgeoned by a never-ending barrage of 60+ degree sunny days, with only a rare chilly rainy evening to break the drudgery, it was only a matter time before our neighborly bonds would begin to strain.

PHOTOS: Top, RallyP.

Bernal Dads’ Mutant Molvo Gets Moment in Media Spotlight

January 4, 2012January 4, 2012 / Todd_Lappin

Here’s a fun little media moment: The bizarre, mutant Molvo, that unholy Miata-Volvo crossbreed built by those handy gents from the Bernal Dads Racing Team, had a nice little cameo yesterday on the Jalopnik blog — which, in automotive terms, is kind of like appearing on the pages of InStyle magazine.

Rakish derriere, non?

New Precita Eyes Mural Looks Great, Hauls Freight

January 4, 2012January 3, 2012 / Todd_Lappin / 2 Comments

True Confession: I haven’t been thrilled with some of the more recent pieces created by the muralists from Precita Eyes. Kind of tired. Kind of formulaic. But the organization got a new(er) van recently, and the graphics they painted on it look really great. Plus, whenever it’s parallel parked, it becomes a mobile mural installation. Genius.

PHOTO: The new Precita Eyes van at Precita Park. By Telstar Logistics

Whale Fail: Video Shows Bernal Dads Spinout at Sears Point

November 2, 2011November 1, 2011 / Todd_Lappin

Recognize the red-and-white car in the photo above? That’s right, it’s “The Whale,” the battle-scarred Volvo 240 wagon driven by the Bernal Dads Racing Team during the recent 24 Hours of LeMons race at Sears Point.

Notice something funny about The Whale? That’s right, it’s tracking perpendicular to the flow of traffic, with tiny whisps of smoke emerging from beneath the tires. Those whisps of smoke indicate the car is sliding out of control. Oops.

The image is screen grab from a nicely edited in-car video created by Team Tinyvette, a friendly-rival race team that also competed at LeMons. Here’s the backstory:

At Sears Pointless we had a great battle with [the Bernal Dads] car, lasting for 7 hours, both cars on either the same lap or just one lap apart, vying for the class win in a race that ran for 16 hours. So when Zep caught up with the car on Saturday at the Skankaway race he was 1. surprised, because they are usually faster than us, and 2. determined to win this one. It was a good chase, lasting 3-4 laps, while passing and being passed by other cars in the 150+ car field. This one ended in our favor, but the Bernal Dads got lucky on this one too because their spin did not get them black flagged.

The video gives a great sense of what it was like for those brave Bernal Dads out on the racetrack during LeMons, but jump ahead to about 10:44 if you want to see the part where The Whale car runs off the track and goes into the spin.

It’s not necessarily the Dads’ finest moment, but there were two good things to say about the incident: 1) Both driver and car emerged unscathed, and 2) I wasn’t driving at the time.