Is someone filming a “Lassie” remake on Bernal Hill? And if not, someone should. Mvagustaago shared this photo with Bernalwood, and it instantly reminded us of this:
I mean, the script practically writes itself…
LASSIE: Woof! Woof! Woof!
CONCERNED NEIGHBOR: Hi Lassie!
LASSIE: Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!
CONCERNED NEIGHBOR: What is it Lassie? Timmy’s in trouble!? He locked himself in the potty at Liberty Cafe!? Let’s go, Boy!”
Photos: by mvagustaago
This is an unfortunate story about a neighborhood landmark, the NIMBY menace, City bureaucracy, and a call to action for Bernal Heights history geeks. More or less in that order. Follow along…
Decades ago, the building at 601 Tompkins Avenue, at the corner of Banks in Bernal Heights, may have once been a corner store. It’s now a private home, but a vintage Coca-Cola advertising sign from the earlier days has remained on the building regardless. Bernalwood’s irate tipster explains the situation:
Is this perhaps a little bureaucracy run amok in Bernal; the inevitable fallout from our Supervisors trying to outlaw sugary drinks?
The antique Coca-Cola ad has been part of the corner of Banks and Tomkins probably since the 1940’s at least. In my 30 years in Bernal, the homeowners have lovingly preserved this little bit of old Bernal—probably the last remnant of a grocery on that corner.
Now the City is apparently citing them for an unauthorized billboard. Note that the Planning Department documents say the homeowners must pay $3400 just to appeal the decision.
This is madness. A way-cool vintage Coke sign, preserved by neighborhood old-timers, is targeted for citation and removal by clueless City sign inspectors? Really? Why? And why does the San Francisco Planning Department hate America so much?
Bernalwood attempted to contact the property owner, but so far our efforts have been unsuccessful. We also called the City Planning Department, to ask WTF. This proved fruitful.
The City action against the vintage Coke sign came as the result of a complaint about the sign that was submitted by a nameless NIMBY whiner on January 14, 2011. With impressive alacrity, the Planning Department investigated the matter, and on January 25, 2011 a City notice was posted to indicate that the old sign must be either permitted or removed.
Bernalwood spoke to Mr. Dan Sider from the Planning Department’s General Advertising Sign Program . Mr. Sider had photos of the sign at 601 Tompkins at his disposal during our talk, and he was quite friendly. Yet when told that the Coke sign has been there since the 1940s, he seemed skeptical. It looks new, he said, and in fairness, he’s right — it does look new. “That’s because it’s been lovingly repainted and maintained by the neighbors,” Bernalwood explained sweetly.
Mr. Sider seemed surprised. “As a San Franciscan, I think that’s very neat,” he said. “But it is very clearly an illegal sign, and we don’t have much discretion.”
“But… but… surely there must be some way to save this historic piece of commercial art!” Bernalwood pleaded.
Indeed, Mr. Sider explained, there is. If some evidence can be produced that the sign was in place prior to 1965 (when the City’s operative sign ordinances went into effect), the matter may be resolved pleasantly. “But the clock is ticking,” he said. Said evidence must be received by February 24, 2011 — within 30 days of the issuance of the initial citation — or else fines may begin to kick in.
UPDATE 23 February, 2011: Evidence of the vintage mural’s provenance has now been obtained, confirming that it is genuinely way old — probably a relic from the 1940s. But the struggle with the San Francisco Planning Department continues. Read all about it.
So, concerned Bernalwood citizen, there are two things you can now do:
2) Help track down evidence — preferably a photograph or other document — that demonstrates the old Coke sign on the side of 601 Tompkins has indeed been there since the Kennedy Administration, if not before. Activate your geektastic history researcher kung-fu powers, and keep your fingers crossed. If you find anything, Bernalwood will gladly pass it along to our friends at the Planning Department. But remember, the DEADLINE IS FEBRUARY 24.
2) Call our Supervisor, Mr. David Campos to advise him of your interest in this matter. Admittedly, the preservation of vintage commercial art is hardly a core plank in his Progressive agenda. Yet this is also the kind of stuff that gives a neighborhood a tangible connection to its own history — and that matters a lot. Besides, if they do nothing else, our Supervisors exist precisely to represent us when dealing with City Hall silliness. Perhaps Supervisor Campos could put in a call to Mr. Sider? Perhaps you’d like to call Supervisor Campos to suggest that idea? Supervisor Campos can be reached at (415) 554-5144.
Photos: Anonymous Tipster
Patrick Boury took this stellar photo from atop Bernal Hill just a little more than a year ago. It still looks fresh today.
While rebuilding the new sewer line on Bocana today, our friends at the City Department of Public Works unleashed a spurting dirt-fountain on the neighborhood. At least, we sure hope it’s dirt…
Even better, the effluent from said dirt-fountain flowed down to Eugenia and Cortland, creating pools of muddy water that made Bernalwood look like a bayou. Good times!
Thanks to Arno for the photos and the tip!
You read about it here first, but now others are talking about “Bernal Heights,” a way-new tune by Jhameel that’s named after our favorite neighborhood.
The Burning Ear, a music blog, had this to say about it:
Hopefully you all remember Jhameel from his solid debut I covered last year. An intriguing character with some unique musical stylings, he’s dropped another free album, The Human Condition, on us and I’m quite pleasantly impressed. His musicianship is tighter, his hooks catchier, and lyrics even sharper. “Bernal Heights” is an instant ear turner, with that swinging rhythm weaving between the creeping, stomping beat, while Jhameel’s perfectly punctuated vocals ground it all. Even though the song has an ominous vibe I still get the sense that Jhameel is having a lot a fun with his music.
In case you missed it last time, give “Bernal Heights” a listen right here:
The key lyrics for locals:
The night is everything and nothing in the city of fog
I feel the cool of the breeze I feel the coming of dawn
But there is comfort in the silence of the Heights of Bernal
It isn’t ever enough to cure the loneliest hearts
Or download all of Jhameel’s “Human Condition.”
This is what happens when San Francisco history geekdom is harnessed in the service of urban accessorizing. Put another way, it marks the spot where steampunk meets street punk. And the results look pretty awesome.
Jon Voss of the geeky-fab Lookback Maps time-machine has created a mass-kustomized skateboard deck adorned with vintage typography and graphics from an 1899 Sanborn Map of San Francisco:
History buffs will recognize the famous maker of fire insurance maps that give us some of our best information about what our city streets looked like 100 years ago. Skaters will look great shredding those same streets in the present.
So true. Has ever there been a design objet so historically accurate, so dope, and so fly — all at the same time? The question practically answers itself.
Check it. Ride it. Live it.
Want more geekage on the fantastic typography of Sanborn Maps? Burrito Justice is all over that.
See that? That’s what it looks like when a bunch of volunteers spend a few hours on a gorgeous Saturday making your daily life a little bit more beautiful.
In the case of the photo above, that means helping to build Vista Pointe Garden, the new mini-park at the eastern entrance to Bernal Heights Boulevard.
Meanwhile, as you can see below, elsewhere on the hill, a few generous volunteers stepped up to do some planting on the traffic island at Precita and Alabama:
Photos: Telstar Logistics
Last weekend I attended a very pleasant meeting of the Precita Valley Neighbors, a community group on Bernal’s opulent north slope. During the meeting, Sgt. Rachel Karp of the SFPD’s Ingelside Station dropped by to provide a neighborhood crime report.
Sgt. Karp noted a growing incidence of robberies and muggings near BART stations, transit stops, and popular pedestrian arteries. She said goons often target people who own iPhones, Blackberries, and Android devices. And how do they know who has one of those fancy gadgets? It’s easy! Goons just look for the person who’s walking down the street with their eyes on the screen and their head up their ass.
Now, Sgt. Karp didn’t put it quite that way. But that’s pretty much the message she wanted to convey. (For the record, her exact words were, “Get your head out of your device!”)
Anecdotally, Sgt. Karp says, starting at your iPhone to text or tweet while you walk down the street may increase your chances of becoming a crime victim tenfold. Here’s why:
Lesson learned?
Photos: Telstar Logistics
It’s true! We really do love you more than we are afraid! Enjoy the day.
Photo by Bernalwood’s own Troy Holden
Uh oh?
Last week, the California Geological Survey released its latest set of fault zoning maps. These divide the state into a rectangular grid, with the parts of the grid containing active faults marked in red. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of red throughout the state, particularly around the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles. Bernalwood happens to fall along the edge of one of those squares.
So, what does that mean for us? Is the ground beneath Bernal more stable now, or less?
Luckily, the new maps mean very little for us everyday residents. Living within a red square of the grid doesn’t mean the entire square is riddled with active faults that nobody knew about until very recently. It just means that, somewhere within that square, there’s at least one active fault that can cause some mayhem. In the case of the square that contains Bernal Heights, that fault is the San Andreas. The shortest distance from the top of Bernal Hill itself to any part of the San Andreas is still a good 6.25 miles.
These new maps were created primarily for the sake of real estate developers. They’re part of the Alquist-Priolo Zoning Act, which was enacted in 1972 in the wake of the 1971 M6.6 San Fernando earthquake. Aside from some strong shaking that knocked down buildings and freeway overpasses, one of the major problems with that earthquake was that strands of surface faulting popped up in people’s houses unexpectedly.
The initial Alquist-Priolo criterion was that commercial structures or large-tract housing developments may not be built within 50 feet of an active fault, to avoid the possibility that half of a house may become offset from the other half by 20 feet or so. It’s difficult to avoid strong ground motions in a fault-ridden place as California, and a 50 foot distance from the fault isn’t really going to help much in terms of shaking, but avoiding structural surface ruptures is basically as simple as knowing where the faults are.
So, what these new maps (and the older ones) mean for developers? Anyone who wants to build within one of the red squares on the grid must now consult a more specific fault map to determine where they can actually build.
And that brings us back to the question of what all this means for those of us in Bernal Heights, the rest of San Francisco, and California in general. It means — as we already knew — we live in earthquake country. The map doesn’t say anything about shaking hazard, given that closer proximity to the fault generally means higher ground motion. For that there are separate maps for potential ground motion, and they all put San Francisco in a bad place.
But within that, Bernal’s solid foundation of chert means we’ll shake less than the unconsolidated fill in places like the Marina or SoMa — even though we’re in a red box and they are not. So we’ve got that going for us
Bernal Heights has changed a lot during the last 30 years, and mostly for the better. But some knuckle-draggers haven’t gotten the memo. They still think it’s 1972.
This photo was posted recently by Bernal Journal. Some unscrupulous contractor decided to use the parking area at the foot of Bernal Heights Park as a garbage dump. So sickening.
J. Thoresen recently uploaded a photo of this not-so-little fella hard at work outside her home in Bernal Heights. Miss Thoresen generously called the critter a “dreamcatcher orb-weaver.” I call it one damn big bug.
Here at Bernalwood, we see it as part of our civic duty to pass along information about worthy neighborhood institutions that could use a little help. Most of the time, that means lending a hand to volunteer nonprofits or mom-and-pop businesses. But today we bring news of a struggling local institution that’s an unlikely candidate to pass around the hat: the Mission San Francisco Credit Union.
It seems the credit union, which is headquartered on our stretch of Mission Street near 29th, made some real estate loans that went bad. So now it needs donations — NOT deposits — to continue operation.
A financially troubled San Francisco credit union is trying to stay afloat by doing something very unusual — unheard of really. Mission S.F. has started a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $200,000 and many in the community believe it is essential that this credit union survive.
Mission San Francisco Credit Union opened its doors in 1971. Roberto Hernandez is a board member who says the credit union approved small loans the big banks would never consider. […]
However, the nation’s economic downturn has hurt them and capital reserves are low.
“What we really need is donations, it’s not deposits, but donations that we could put straight into capital that would enable the credit union to continue as an independent financial institution,” said Margaret Libby from Mission S.F.
There’s a video segment about the credit union’s plight right here.
UPDATE 12 Feb, 2011: My former sensei, Lydia Chavez from Mission Loc@l, has additional insight on the situation, including the possibility that the credit union may be forced into a merger:
The federal TARP program stepped in to help failing banks, but has done nothing to assist the smaller credit unions that traditionally serve lower-income clients. Recently, they said, regulators had made it even more difficult for the credit union to overcome its current problems.
“Right now that’s what change is — we’re under a much tighter regulatory structure,” said [board treasurer Dave] De Graff. “In the past we were given more time.”
Mission SF’s total outstanding loans grew substantially over the last 10 years, while its membership numbers have fallen. In 2000 it had 2,782 members and outstanding loans of $3.8 million. By June of 2010 outstanding loans had risen to $5.7 million, but they peaked in September 2008 at $7.9. Membership had declined to 2,426 as of September 2010.
Although 10 percent of Mission SF’s second mortgages and 10 percent of its first mortgages could be considered troubled, De Graff said the bank’s portfolio of 129 car loans was doing well.
It’s unclear what will happen over the next few weeks. There were three assisted credit union mergers in 2008, 10 in 2009 and 10 in 2010, according to federal regulators.
Bernalwood 