Counting to Ten Also Helps

(Cartoon from Lauber and Will Insurance)

Road rage, fortunately for most people, doesn't manifest itself in actions that injure people or damage property, Your humble blogger admits, however, that he does give in, once or twice a year, to yelling at another driver with the windows up or pressing on the horn. Most of the time I use mental tricks to defuse my anger:

[CHP Lt. Daniel] Hill recommends a familiar mindfulness practice to counter rising road rage: pausing a moment, then telling yourself, “OK, this person did something rude to me. What is happening in their mind? The reason they made an unsafe lane change or cut me off isn’t because they’re trying to ruin my day; maybe their day was already ruined by someone else, so they can’t focus.” Maybe they’re rushing home to a sick child, Hill added, or are terrified of being late for a job interview.

When concocting an imaginary narrative to excuse another driver doesn't work, contemplating the cost of an auto repair that can easily amount to thousands of dollars sobers one quickly.

I also envision the other driver getting an expensive ticket or an even more expensive repair if he continues driving in the same manner. It's not kind, I know, but it gets me home safely.

Memorial Day Tragedy

It's possible to smile at the headline. However, once the scope of the tragedy is made known, humor evaporates.

 

Gelson's Market parking lot in center

California dad dies during driving lesson with his daughter

A California father died in a crash on Memorial Day while he was teaching his 15-year-old how to drive in Orange County, police said.

The father, identified as 64-year-old James Politoski, was being driven by his daughter, who has a driver’s permit, Lt. Jesse Schmidt with the Laguna Beach Police Department told SFGATE.

In a social media post, Laguna Beach police said the driver crashed through a fence from the parking lot of Gelson’s Market in Dana Point. The car then plummeted down an embankment on Coast Highway between Wesley Drive and Montage Resort Drive. The preliminary cause of the crash appears to be confusion between the brake pedal and gas pedal, Schmidt said.

Laguna Beach police arrived at the crash at around 2:45 p.m., and the father was pronounced dead at the scene. The daughter was transported to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo with significant injuries, police said.

As of Wednesday morning, the teenager was in stable condition at the hospital and expected to survive, Schmidt said.

Learning from my dad and uncles, I got my Hawaiian driver's license when I was 15. I also taught a couple of people from my generation back in the '60's and '70's.

When it came time for my son to get his license, I realized that I didn't have the requisite knowledge, nor could I handle the aggravation. We enrolled him in lessons, and he passed the driver's test on his first try. I encourage any person trying to get his license to sign up for personal instruction; it is money well spent.

Stanford Medicine

Charging stations can be found in every building

Since the beginning of 2024 family members have often used the medical facilities at Stanford. We have availed ourselves of the services in neurology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, dermatology, oncology, radiology, and early drug development, as well as the laboratories and emergency rooms.

The personnel, equipment, and buildings are uniformly excellent. If we must be critical, we have experienced an occasional slip-up in scheduling, probably due to growing pains from Stanford Health's multi-billion-dollar expansion program.

But the greatest drawback, IMHO, is something that Stanford can't do much about, namely the difficulty getting to its facilities quickly. The tony Peninsula towns Palo Alto and Menlo Park have blocked traffic improvements, so cars must traverse the same local streets as they have since World War II. Getting from the freeways to Stanford can be heavy going, especially when one considers the growth in the Silicon Valley economy.

Nevertheless, we'll live with the inconveniences. Both Stanford and UCSF have world-class medical facilities, and we know people who fly here for treatment. The quality of medical care is one benefit of living in the Bay Area that we don't often hear mentioned.

More Accidents, but Safer

(Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

It's big, complicated, and causes more accidents, but traffic experts call it a success. [bold added]

When a turbo roundabout rolled into the southernmost corner of the Bay Area early last year, it became the first-in-the-state adoption of a successful Dutch traffic innovation — a multi-lane roundabout shaped like a cartoon hurricane.

And while the roundabout in San Benito County, far south of San Jose, was meant to improve safety, it brought with it a wave of confusion and a spike in accidents that saw drivers colliding at rates many times higher than before it was installed...

A Mercury News analysis of crash data shows that crashes skyrocketed at the intersection in the year after the turbo roundabout was completed. But even as accidents have soared, serious injuries and deaths have disappeared, leaving many to assert that the roundabout is safer...

While a Mercury News analysis showed a spike of crashes around the roundabout when it was first completed, experts promised that crash rates would decrease over time.

So far, though, that hasn’t been the case.

When we wrote about the roundabout last year, we hoped that South Bay drivers would climb the learning curve quickly. Alas, their proximity to Silicon Valley appears not to have rubbed off.

Smishing

We ordered a FasTrak "toll tag" (a plastic transponder that charges us for bridge tolls and express-lane fees when passing under a scanner) eight years ago.

As largely housebound retirees who live on the Peninsula, we rarely need the device, as we avoid highway traffic jams during rush hours and go over toll bridges once every 2-3 months,

On our drive to and from Yosemite last weekend we did use the toll tag and I received the text message (shown right) on the same day we left.

It was the first time I had received a text message that asked me to make a FasTrak payment. It had caught me off guard because it coincided with the first FasTrak use of 2025. My travel companion said that the message was a scam that had been going around.

Road toll scams that besieged the Bay Area and and other parts of the country last year have ramped up again, with insistent text messages that demand payment — and sometimes threaten penalties.

A Chronicle reporter received three such missives since December, purportedly for not paying fees to use toll lanes. Other Bay Area drivers have shared screenshots of similar messages on social media, asking about their validity. Some say they are getting hammered multiple times a month, and note the language in these texts has evolved: fewer spelling errors, increasingly detailed instructions, and a more intimidating tone.

“In order to avoid excessive late fees and potential legal action on statements, please pay the fee in time,” one message sent on Jan. 12 said. It provided a website to resolve violations, imitating the real web address for Southern California’s toll authority but stringing a sequence of numbers and letters at the end...

Law enforcement officials have a name for the tactic: “smishing.” The term is a portmanteau of phishing perpetrated through SMS text messages, and describes an aggressive and sophisticated form of social engineering. Bridge and road toll scammers use smishing to cast a wide net, tricking people to pay bogus fines for crossings they didn’t make.

Smishing---a crime that could only exist in a world with SMS text messages and toll tags, which in turn exist because the State government eliminated human toll takers. It's progress, I suppose, but we have to be on our guard more than ever.

Crossing a Red Line That You Can't See

Beginning January 1st, California has banned parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. The purpose of the "daylighting" law is to make pedestrians more visible to drivers who may not see them crossing because of parked vehicles.

(Illustration from Trumbull/Chronicle)

San Francisco had begun ticketing such closely parked cars although there were no warning signs or curbs painted red. [bold added]

After confronting a stiff outcry from residents and elected leaders, San Francisco’s transportation agency has scrapped plans to ticket motorists who park in unmarked “daylighting” zones near crosswalks, the agency’s director said Monday.

Previously, officials at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency intended to cite any driver who parks within 20 feet of a crosswalk — the safety buffer mandated by California’s new daylighting law — regardless of whether or not the curb is painted red...

While citations for parking in red zones carry a $108 fine, SFMTA had proposed lowering the penalty to $40 if the 20 foot buffer was not marked. Strained by limited resources, transportation staff said it would take years to paint curbs throughout the city, so the reduced fine represented a compromise.

But San Franciscans balked. Kirschbaum said that when she met with members of the public, they brought up the daylighting enforcement plan over and over again. City supervisors echoed their misgivings, saying the $40 tickets were unfair. When Kirschbaum relayed their feedback to new Mayor Daniel Lurie, she said he supported her idea to quash the $40 fines...

SFMTA announced a retreat. Drivers who park at red curbs will still be ticketed; those who park at unmarked gray curbs will not, even if they are within 20 feet of a crosswalk.

Besides nixing the $40 tickets, the agency will also accelerate its process for striping curbs to comply with the daylighting law. Transportation planners are now giving themselves 18 months to coat all the daylight zones in red paint, a far more compressed schedule than the initial projection of four to five years.

Comments:

1) the daylighting law has a lot to commend it. Some pedestrians dash into crosswalks where views are blocked by parked trucks or SUVs.

2) people draw the line at protecting the public if it means taking away their parking space!

3) "Ignorance of the law is no excuse": no one seems to believe that any more with the many thousands of rules and regulations that the average person has to deal with.

Promises, Promises

Our Bay Bridge toll was 75 cents in the 70's (KQED)

A one-party State that has no fear of political opposition and is responsible only to itself for obeying rules will inevitably be corrupt. Case in point: bridge tolls have been diverted, and more toll increases have been requested. [bold added]

Part of a $3 Bay Area toll increase that voters approved in 2018 for public transit and freeway improvements is effectively being used as a slush fund for bridge maintenance.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s legally questionable diversion betrays promises made to voters. It affects the funding source for $4.5 billion of capital projects required by the nine-county ballot measure, known as Regional Measure 3...

RM3 provides $2 of the current $7 auto toll and, starting Jan. 1, $3 of the new $8 toll. The remaining portions are from separate authorizations for other purposes.

MTC’s comingling of these different portions affects both cash revenue from bridge tolls, expected to be more than $800 million this year, and liability for the $11 billion of borrowing through bonds the agency has issued since 2001, for which it still owes nearly $10 billion.

The comingling also makes it impossible to determine whether the diversion is limited to the RM3 portion of bridge toll revenues, or if other portions are also being misdirected or leveraged for excessive borrowing.

Despite the opaque finances, the commission on Wednesday will consider raising tolls another $2.50 by 2030, bringing the total to $10.50. The proposed increase, which would involve 50-cent annual increases starting in 2026, is supposed to be for bridge maintenance and rehabilitation.

But without transparent bookkeeping, agency commissioners and the public cannot intelligently evaluate whether the additional $2.50 toll is needed...

The melding of revenues from and debt liability attributable to the different portions of bridge toll revenue make it nearly impossible to ascertain whether other parts of the toll revenue are also not being spent as intended.

The problem is exacerbated because each component of the toll is permanent — there are no expiration dates — but the expenditures in many of the cases are for finite projects. That eventually leaves extra money.

Which raises the question: If MTC staff is correct that it can use any toll funds for bridge maintenance and rehabilitation expenditures, then does it really need to again permanently increase tolls, this time by another $2.50? Alternatively, if it raises tolls for bridge work, should it start phasing out other toll components for projects that have been completed?

Despite representations made to the voters that higher tolls will be used for non-bridge purposes (e.g., BART, Caltrain, freeway widening), MTC staff now claims that they can be diverted to bridge repair.

The lesson that sadly must be learned every few years: California governments promise the voters anything to increase revenues---whether they be taxes, bond issuances, or fee/toll hikes--then break those promises because no one will be penalized.

Another Reason the Chicken Crossed the Road

Police Lt. Jonathan Ozol in a SF crosswalk

San Francisco police have a new crime-fighting initiative. They're tagging drivers who don't stop for officers who are dressed as inflatable chickens.

On Monday morning [Sept. 16], San Francisco police Lt. Jonathan Ozol wore a flamboyant, inflatable chicken costume as he attempted to navigate a crosswalk on Alemany Boulevard near the intersection of Rousseau Street. The purpose of the exercise was to issue tickets to drivers who flouted state law by not yielding to a pedestrian like Ozol as he attempted to cross. Quite a few drivers failed that test.

The ostentatious costume, according to police Capt. Amy Hurwitz, serves two purposes. “I don’t want them to get run over,” she told me. “But the costume is so bright, it’s like, how can you miss it?”

...State law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians who are entering a crosswalk. Ozol said that failing to do so can result in a citation that could cost the driver a hefty fine of as much as $400.

...Ozol would attempt to enter the crosswalk, and if a driver didn’t yield and allow him to cross, he would wave at two other officers parked nearby. From there, one of the two officers — one on a motorcycle, and the other in a standard squad car — would follow the flagged driver and pull them over.

The numerous tickets and the irresistible publicity have had the desired effect: drivers are slowing down.

Your humble blogger laughed, too, but I think that those who mock the chicken/Big-Bird costumes as a "stunt" have an anti-SF or anti-police agenda.

Kudos to SFPD for their creativity, and coming up with a strategy that appears to be working.

One Implication of Hybrid Work

Long commutes are more tolerable if workers don't have to go into the office frequently--that statement is obvious, but it seems that everyone hasn't fully grasped the implications.

(Image from Forbes)

Headline: America’s Commute to Work Is Getting Longer and Longer

Big shifts in the way people live and work are making commutes of over an hour into the office more common—and even more palatable. Rising housing costs have prompted many to move farther away from city centers, while the staying power of hybrid work means they don’t have to drive into work every day.

The share of super commutes—those 75 miles or longer—have grown the most and are up by nearly a third since 2020, according to new research from Stanford University.

Cities can invest in mass transit, police, and other services, but their downtowns will never come back completely because of the adoption of hybrid work. A few, like San Francisco and Las Vegas, may make up for the losses in foot traffic by boosting their tourist and convention business, but not everyone is a destination city.

Meanwhile, investing in developable land even farther from urban centers has a greater chance of paying off.

Allocate your real estate dollars accordingly.

Caltrans: Back to its Basic Mission

The Yolo 80 Corridor Improvements Project

Traffic from the Bay Area to Sacramento has gotten worse. Thousands of households (and their cars) have relocated to the Central Valley from LA and SF because of cheaper housing, newer schools, and the friendlier regulatory environment.

Meanwhile, we who remain in the Bay Area like to go on holiday to Lake Tahoe, Reno, and points beyond, which means taking I-80.

We do our best to avoid peak congestion hours, but lately it's been impossible to circumvent the traffic. Last summer it was stop-and-go in 107°F heat throughout the 100 miles to Sacramento.

After years of deliberation Caltrans has finally approved the addition of lanes to I-80 along the "Yolo Corridor," the worst bottleneck. Of course, the coastal environmentalists who don't have to endure the traffic regularly like the hoi polloi, object: [bold added]

Environmentalists balked, viewing the Yolo 80 Corridor Improvements project as a retreat from California’s ambitious climate goals. Many predicted that by adding two lanes to the interstate, Caltrans would lure commuters out of Capitol Corridor trains and into cars. But the California Transportation Commission voted unanimously last week to secure $105 million in state funds for the first phase of the project, all but ensuring construction will break ground.

It’s a shining moment for Yolo county and the city of Sacramento, a seat of governance in a rural valley, where road projects don’t usually draw massive infrastructure grants. At the same time, the Yolo 80 Corridor has become a flash point for two competing visions of transportation in California — one focused on managing congestion, the other aiming to wean people off cars.

...Collective misery about traffic, particularly among Californians who can’t afford to live near their jobs, often dwarfs concerns about carbon emissions, [UC-Davis Prof. Susan] Handy said. Politicians and agencies have to respond and show they’re taking action.

As a result, major highway infrastructure projects are proceeding throughout California. Caltrans is doubling the width of Highway 37 in the North Bay from two to four lanes for seven miles. In Los Angeles, a plan to add lanes to Interstate 710 is inching forward.

Sustainable transportation advocates argue that increasing the capacity for traffic only encourages people to drive, perpetuating the problem that engineers hope to solve. They cite the “bold climate agenda” that Gov. Gavin Newsom invoked in a 2019 executive order, which made reduction of fuel emissions a top priority for transportation spending.

Despite the highest gas taxes in the nation, California supposedly doesn't have the funds to pay for the additional lanes and will make them toll roads. Little matter, the wonder is that the project has been approved at all.

It's too much to hope that climate alarmism has peaked, but for now it looks like the government is paying attention to the immediate needs of its Central Valley citizens rather than the worries of the coastal elites that their grandchildren will get their toes wet in a hundred years.

There Once Was a There There

What did Oakland use for traffic control before stop signs? Traffic lights!

Oakland is now replacing traffic lights with stop signs due to homeless encampments stealing from Oakland's electrical boxes: pic.twitter.com/Y2lFQ8BJsM

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 19, 2024

Don't blame Republicans. John H. Reading was Oakland's last Republican mayor from 1966-1977. Wikipedia:

In 1968 Charlie Finley moved the Athletics baseball team from Kansas City to Oakland during Mayor Reading's tenure. The Oakland Athletics won three World Series while Reading was mayor. He was instrumental in gaining funding and supporting construction of the new Oakland Coliseum and expansion of the Oakland International Airport.

Round and Round We Go

Slowing the traffic in the old neighborhood.

I encountered my first traffic roundabout in New England over 50 years ago. Navigating it was intuitive because it was a single-lane circle, and all cars had to make a right turn to enter. It wasn't obvious who had to yield to whom, but because the roundabout slowed everyone down, there were usually no accidents, and those that did occur were at low speeds.

Traffic circles have become so ubiquitous that there's even a simple one five blocks from my parents' home in Honolulu. It was installed in 2021, probably to slow the cars headed to Waiola Shave Ice.

Intersection of Hwys 156 and 25 in Gilroy (Merc)

The traffic engineers may have pushed a good thing too far with the installation of a "turbo" roundabout, whose rules are hard to learn when driving a car at highway speeds. [bold added]

When drivers first crossed this particular roadway in San Benito County last February, they encountered an intersection never before seen in California — a multi-lane “turbo roundabout” shaped like a cartoon hurricane.

And, while the turbo roundabout has a history of making intersections safer throughout Europe, here the Scandinavian rotary has led to confusion among some drivers who have been seen entering the intersection backward, hopping over lane dividers, and cutting through yield signs...

In the weeks following the opening of the roundabout, the intersection saw crashes at more than three times the rate than the year before it was built — jumping from about one accident approximately every eight days to one accident every two and a half days, on average...

But despite the spike in incidents, officials and experts said they are confident this is all part of a “learning curve” that often happens with new roundabouts, and point out that deaths and serious injuries have dropped to zero since the new intersection was completed.

Californians view themselves as smarter than people who live in the rest of the country. This is a real-world test of that hypothesis.

Giants v. Guardians: Unexpectedly Pleasant

There's no substitute for travel if one wants to get a full sense of a place. In this case I'm not talking about visiting another country or another State, but just spending time in the maligned City by the Bay.

It was a perfect day to take in our one Giants game of the season. Highway 101 North from the Peninsula was moderately busy at noon, a sign of returning commerce, but still not up to the levels of 2019.

We pulled into Oracle Park's Lot A, a quarter-mile south of the stadium. The Mission Bay district, formerly the land of railyards and industrial warehouses, has been transformed with residential highrises. The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay opened in 2015 and the $1.4 billion Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors, opened in 2019.

McCovey Cove behind right field and the O'Doul Bridge

There was nary a homeless person or drug dealer in sight as we walked with hordes of fans over the draw bridge and to the south gate, both of which were named after baseball legend Lefty O'Doul. Except for areas under construction, the sidewalks were pristine and wide. Perhaps by coincidence there were friendly patrol officers all around Oracle Park

We got to our seats at the bottom of the first inning, and the Giants were already trailing the Cleveland Guardians by a score of 4-0. The Giants looked lifeless; by the bottom of the 7th, with a score of 5-2 and taking into account the Giants' month-long lack of hitting, we talked about leaving after the 8th. But to everyone's surprise

Wednesday, the Guardians led the entire way until the eighth when their lead evaporated with one swing of J.D. Davis’ bat. His three-run homer tied it and San Francisco went on to win 6-5 in the 10th on LaMonte Wade Jr.’s late-afternoon heroics, a sacrifice fly to left with no outs.

The Giants won on a walk-off sacrifice fly, an unexpected outcome just three innings ago.

In fact the whole pleasant experience today was unexpected. Maybe next year we'll sign up for two games.

Not a Joke, Which Makes it Worse

The Honolulu Star Advertiser's lead story is about traffic fatalities, with the emphasis on speeding as the primary cause:

Over the year, the average number of traffic-related fatalities on Oahu generally ranges between 55 and 60, he said.

So far this year, HPD has issued 13,869 speeding tickets and roughly 2,300 tickets for excessive speeding, 300 for reckless speeding and 200 for racing.

Police said neither of Thursday’s H-1 collisions involved speeding, alcohol or drugs as factors, but both are still under investigation.

However, the majority of traffic related fatalities so far this year involved either speeding — which [HPD’s traffic division commander Stason] Tanaka said is definitely the case with motorcyclists — while others are due to either alcohol or drug impairment. On Friday he urged motorists to observe speed limits, particularly with students returning to school in upcoming weeks, and not to get behind the wheel impaired.

From personal observation Oahu's roads are poorly maintained and too narrow for today's trucks and SUV's. Speed bumps have been added recently and often took me by surprise at nights. Lest you think me reckless, dear reader, they appear on 40 MPH "highways" to force the traffic down to 25 MPH.

There is a paucity of practical solutions, so HPD is appealing to the goodwill of the drivers:

“Just drive with aloha,” he said. “I mean, we share the road with our friends, our family and co-workers, so a decision that you make when you drive — these are all things that affect others on the road.”

At first I thought "driving with aloha" was partially a joke headline, but they were serious. Uh-oh.

Again from personal observation: there's not as much aloha spirit around these days.

Hot Take

It wasn't my preferred way to start the unofficial July 1 - July 4 long weekend, but I had an appointment near Sacramento. Traffic on I-80 was stop-and-go most of the way, and the outside temperatures reached 110°F in the Central Valley. I turned on the car's AC to full, ignoring that it was a spare-the-air day; hey, I'm already doing my part by driving a hybrid.

Where I was going there was no air conditioning, and I won't sleep well.

Already I'm looking forward to the drive back in the cool cabin of the car and the relatively cooler environs of the mid-Peninsula.

New Traffic Lights

In March we had lamented how the neighborhood had been greatly inconvenienced by an intersection that had been torn up since the beginning of the year.

This week the work was completed, and the new traffic lights were turned on. It did take nearly six months (cue jokes about public works projects), but I must admit that the new lights are big, bright and technologically advanced.

Last year we only had a stop sign; now three stop lights face each direction, and there are two left turn lights on the main boulevard. Based on a couple days of observations, the intersection feels safer especially for pedestrians, and driving speed doesn't seem to have been sacrificed.

Traffic patterns have already changed. For some routes it's advantageous to avoid the lights, for others efficiency dictates that one should seek out the intersection.

All in all, thumbs up.

Fast Track to the Poorhouse

Southbound 101 has a toll lane 5 miles from our house..

FasTrak toll lanes have appeared on the Bay Area's busiest freeways, but the technology isn't up to speed. Penalties and interest pile up on drivers' unpaid balances, and thousands of cars have been put on "registration hold": [bold added]

Unpaid toll debts are surging since the Bay Area has eliminated cash payments on bridges and unfurled a vast web of express lanes.

Last June, the Bay Area Toll Authority, which oversees the seven state-owned bridges, said it would place over 550,000 drivers’ annual vehicle registration on hold over unsettled debts – with the bulk of registration holds starting this July. The decision ended a pandemic era of lax enforcement and started a renewed crackdown as the toll authority uses DMV holds to recoup tens of millions of dollars in tolls and even more in fines and fees.

One lady, Brenda Angulo, who is not blameless to be sure, ran up late payment penalties more than fourteen times the original charges:

The total Angulo owed to multiple express lane and bridge toll agencies was far worse, climbing to $43,590 made up mostly of late payment fees and other fines, tacked on to her original charges of about $3,000.

...Angulo’s debt underscores a complicated payment system for the growing network of Bay Area express lanes, which charge variable fees depending on the time of day and the length of a driver’s commute. Those lanes can easily whisk cars past traffic jams at a reasonable cost. But they can also lead to financial devastation for those who ignore — or don’t appreciate — how overdue toll debts can explode with late fees.

If a private bill collector behaved as the government does--assess penalties of $40,000 on an original bill of $3,000 and hold hostage a person's method of getting to her job--that collector would be figuratively tarred and feathered on social media as well as in newspapers and TV.

We voted for this draconian system that created a welter of toll roads on top of having the second-highest gas taxes in the nation. If we want someone to blame, we just have to look in the mirror.

There Goes the Neighborhood

The intersection by our house has been torn up since the beginning of the year. It's inconvenienced over a thousand residents who use the street as their main exit from Foster City.

The project didn't seem to be abnormally difficult. Ours is one of four intersections where traffic lights have been scheduled to be installed since 2018. I spoke to one of the workers before work started. He said the delay was caused by a shortage of electricians.

Even when the lights start operation (at the red arrow in the diagram), traffic will be slow. The green-arrowed intersection already has lights; located at the latter's four corners are an elementary school, an apartment building, a shopping center, and a pre-school. Two lights one block apart are a most unusual configuration for a sleepy suburb.

Some drivers will choose to cut through the shopping center, where they can avoid both lights on certain commonly traveled routes. Then the shopping center will put up "patrons only" signs at the entrance points. There goes the neighborhood.

Successful Excursion

Ho Tai Printing (723 Clay) is across the
street from Portsmouth Square

Red envelopes are widely available for Chinese New Year (January 22, 2023)--Amazon has new year lai si--but a relative from Hawaii wanted some with her family surname.

Ho Tai Printing has red envelopes pre-printed with dozens of common family names, and so it was that we headed to San Francisco's Chinatown to browse its wares.

Traffic on 101 North was moderate to light in the early afternoon, not yet equal to pre-pandemic levels.

It had been three years since we had been to Chinatown. Parking at the Portsmouth Square garage, we used to find it difficult to snag a space, but today there were plenty on the lowest level.

The print shop had an ample supply of envelopes with the name we were looking for. (We didn't see any of ours--the clerk said they had run out.)

In previous years we might have done some shopping. However, with many boarded-up storefronts San Francisco had lost its appeal.

It had already been a successful excursion, and unfortunate things usually happen when we press our luck for more.

Don't go for a home run and be satisfied with a single---sounds like a good motto for 2023.

Walden by the Bay

The car-free Great Highway during summertime
when the livin' is easy (Chron photo)

San Francisco's movement to ban automobiles from certain streets was burgeoning.

When the sun's shining and the weather's warm, walking or biking along the car-free Great Highway next to Ocean Beach is a pleasurable experience. Ditto for John F. Kennedy Drive, the main East-West artery through Golden Gate Park. Families with children don't have to worry about speeding vehicles or breathing in their pollution.

Now that a cold, wet winter is upon us, some San Franciscans are having second thoughts. [bold added]

A group of merchants on San Francisco’s Valencia Street abruptly canceled this weekend’s “Shared Spaces” road closure and outdoor festivities due to rainy forecasts — and a growing contention that banning cars is bad for business.

Among them is Valencia Cyclery bike shop owner Paul Olszewski, who sent a mass email to his neighbors late Thursday. Cutting off motorists from using the street lessens the chance of making a sale in inclement weather, Olszewski said...

Such comments marked the latest point of friction for Slow Streets and Safe Spaces, programs that embraced the idea of blocking automobile traffic to lure more people outside during pandemic lockdowns. Now these efforts face an uncertain future, as San Francisco and other cities struggle to revive their economies...

Jonah Buffa, president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association and owner of the barbershop Fellow Barber, said he’s hearing concerns from a number of store owners who feel the Shared Spaces events have outlived their use, particularly in cold and inclement weather.

He harbors his own doubts about the viability of Shared Spaces. A couple of weeks ago Buffa said he stepped out of his shop on a Friday evening, after crews had shut off the three blocks to traffic.

“I saw one person wandering in the middle of the street, and a few cyclists using it,” Buffa said. “I think there would have been more business if the streets were open to traffic.”

Ambling from store to store on a sunny day in a road-cum-park is living a dream. But the dream will disappear if San Francisco Thoreauvians force the stores to go out of business.