San Francisco has become notorious for having poor cellphone coverage. People usually blame their wireless carrier for this, but a big part of the problem is that, like many communities across the country, local NIMBYs have opposed efforts to install new antennas that would significantly improve wireless reception.

Some of the opposition stems from scientifically dubious anxiety about the health effects of wireless antennas. Some stems from aesthetic concerns. But the bottom line is that coverage in San Francisco sucks in no small part because local elected officials have sided with anti-antenna zealots to block the installation of new antennas.

Over at Bernalwood, a new blog I created for San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, I just published a post-mortem on the Great Bernal Hill Antenna War of 2010. The bottom line here is that if you want better mobile service, you may have to become politically involved — because chances are the NIMBY activists and antennaphobe zealots who oppose new antenna installations already have the ear of your local politicians.

[via Mission Loc@al]

image via San Francisco Planning Department

If Prop 19 passes and marijuana becomes legal(ish) in California, what might that mean for pot’s future as a consumer product?

This being California, some will inevitably be positioned as an artisanal item — like locally produced wine or gourmet food. That, in turn, means some weed will probably be offered in designer packaging that seeks to accentuate the product’s higher-value appeal.

The photos above show a prototype created by a Bay Area packaging manufacturer. This stylish glass jar is a far cry from a dime bag, so it provides an intriguing window on what the future of normalized pot sales might look like — right down to the UPC bar code.

The frustrated and signal-challenged owners of True Sake have posted this sign prominently in the window of their excellent Hayes Valley, San Francisco sake shop.

This sets up a whole series of “If AT&T Made Sake” jokes, along the lines of the classic “If Microsoft Made Cars” series. For example:

If AT&T Made Sake…

… Your bottle would always look full, but your cup would always be empty.

… You’d get cut off four times before last call.

… You could drink it on the street, but not in your home.

… They’d blame the bottle manufacturer if it tasted bad.

… They’d sell you a “bottomless cup,” but make you drink from a thimble.

… You’d have a keen interest in rumors that Verizon plans to begin making sake soon.

… You’d use it for everything but drinking.

Got more? Tweet them to #attsake.

photo by Todd Lappin / Telstar Logistics

Scott and I have been having a private little jam-sesh listening to the theme music from the 1970s sci-fi series Space 1999.

For the uninitiated: Space 1999 was a show about a group of humans trying to survive on a lunar outpost after the moon was blasted from the Earth’s orbit following a catastrophic accident. The show was the last series produced by Gerry Anderson, who also created The Thunderbirds (which in turn inspired Trey Parker’s Team America, World Police).

The unforgettable opening credits from the show are above. You can also find MP3s of the show’s theme, as well as cover versions of the music, at Space1999.net.

Boeing just released a lovely and elegant video of the forward fuselage of the first 747-8 Intercontinental passenger aircraft as it was moved around on a crane inside the company’s Everett, Washington manufacturing facility.

Not to reveal too much about the depths of my own geekdom, but this immediately reminded me of the Moonbase Alpha Hangar Bay from Space 1999. Watch this video at the 1:28 mark to see the resemblance.

Over at Flickr, the US Library of Congress just posted some amazing, copyright-free photos of jazz musicians taken by William P. Gottlieb that document the “Golden Age of Jazz” in New York City and Washington, D.C. from 1938 to 1948.

This is a tale of The Beatles, a house, a mural, an artsy kid, domestic terrorists, classic punk rock, and a lost moment of San Francisco subculture…

For almost two decades, the former “Beatles House,” on the 100 block of Precita Avenue in San Francisco, was covered by a colorful mural of the Fab Four. The mural became a local landmark and tourist attraction; so much so that the Beatles House was used to represent a rehearsal studio in the film “Living on Tokyo Time,” while also garnering mentions on local TV, CNN, and in local newspapers.

Today, the mural is gone… vanished without a trace.

I live down the street from the former Beatles House, however, so neighborhood lore piqued my curiosity about it. Eventually, I found an old black-and-white picture of the house from 1978 and posted it to Flickr:

The posting triggered a lively discussion in the photo comments that attracted both past and present residents of the property, and soon the woman who actually created the mural chimed in to tell her tale.

The Beatles mural was first painted in 1974 by Jane Weems, a young woman who lived in the house during the 1970s and 1980s.

In high school, Jane was the drummer/songwriter for a punk band called The Maggots. The band had a local underground hit with their song “Let’s Get Tammy Wynette.” Stereo Sanctity explains:

Formed around the nucleus of drummer Jane Weems and bassist Robert Mostert in ’78, it seems The Maggots proceeded to get through a veritable bus-load of additional members in their short existence, all arriving and departing from within SF’s high school-age punk milieu, raising merry hell in some parental basement and swiftly developing into the kind of band just as concerned with pasting together fake biographies and press releases for themselves and developing their own brand of icky goofball humour as they were with finding shows to play or recording songs.

You can listen to some vintage Maggots here. (Good stuff!) Jane still looked the part in 1982, and apparently she had a favorite Beatle:

And here’s Jane, hard at work repainting the Beatles House, also in 1982:

So what inspired the Beatles House? In an email to me, Jane wrote:

“I painted the house in 1974, when I was still in junior high school…. I had painted the walls of my bedroom inside the house, first with yellow submarine, then, I did the Elton John “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” album cover really big on one wall, and other paintings of the Beatles & Elton John on my walls… they were pretty much covered… so, I asked if I could paint a mural on the house, and my parents said yes… so, I started to draw out what I wanted to paint, with a pencil, all freehand, in the low parts that I could reach… after painting that, my mom rented a scaffold, so I could go up higher to get the whole front done… in the middle of this, I had to go to school every day, so progress was slow.

The S.L.A. ‘s Emily Harris [of Patty Hearst kidnapping fame] lived secretly in a safe house down the street, and used to come by to “watch me paint” and talk to me about the Beatles.

It was fun, both times I painted it… lots of people would stop & watch, or talk to me when I was up there… when I was finished, for years folks would come by, take pix, ring the bell and see what kind of folks lived inside… : ) the SF Bay Guardian gave me a blue ribbon award once for being voted “The best SF remnant of the psychdelic 60′s” even though it was painted in ’74…

Basically, I was just an artistic kid who ran out of room inside, and started on the outside.

And finally, the Where Are They Now? Today, Jane lives in the Midwest, and Beatles House looks like this:

Vintage photos courtesy of Jane Weems

“Star Wars Uncut”, the charming remake of “Star Wars: A New Hope” created entirely from 15-second, user-created clips of the film, just won an Emmy Award.

See Previously: Star Wars Uncut, 472 People Are Recreating Star Wars 15 Seconds At A Time

Emmy image: Matthew Imaging/New York Times

He may be puffy, but he’s definitely not lazy. The person inside this inflatable cellphone suit posseses an incredible amount of energy, because he’s been observed dancing vigorously for hours on end in front of a MetroPCS cellphone shop on Mission Street in San Francisco. Work it, dude!

Barry Goldwater: Arizona Senator, Mr. Conservative, and (who knew?) talented photographer of the American West. These 51 photographs from the Barry Goldwater Collection are definitely worth a look.

Market Street Railway, the nonprofit group that supports San Francisco’s vintage streetcar fleet, is selling a new t-shirt that carries an odd message:

“Information Gladly Given, But Safety Requires Avoiding Unnecessary Conversation”

MSR provides the backstory:

Tens of thousands of San Francisco commuters have probably taken a few moments to ponder this simple statement, which has been posted near the operator’s station of every Muni bus and streetcar since the early 1960s. The message is simultaneously friendly and forbidding, inviting yet indifferent, personable yet coldly professional.

MSR adds that the shirt, “sets clear expectations on the street, in the workplace, or during uncomfortable visits with estranged relatives.” Plus, proceeds from all sales help keep SF’s wonderful vintage streetcars on the rails.

Where can you get one? I’m glad to be of assistance: The shirts are sold in downtown SF at the San Francisco Railway Museum, or you can order one online.

Now, having said that, safety requires that you please leave me alone.

My iPhone-savvy 2.5 year-old daughter held an iPad for the very first time last night, and it turned out to be an interesting user-interface experiment.

As you can see, after geeking out on my Sutro Tower homescreen, she took right to it — including figuring out how to enlarge some of her favorite iPhone-legacy apps to 2x to display full-size on the iPad screen. If you’re good at understanding kid-speak, you’ll also notice that she immediately saw its potential as a video-display device. She lamented the lack of a camera, and wondered about its potential for playing games.

On the downside, she had the same frustration as many adults, where touching the screen-edge with your thumb while holding the iPad blocks input to all home screen icons. Notice also that she was confused by the splash page for FirstWords Animals, her favorite spelling game: Because the start button looked like a graphic, rather than a conventional button, she couldn’t figure out how to start the game.

Most of all, though, it’s cool to consider that as one of the new Children of Cyberspace, her expectations about computing will be shaped by the fact that she’s growing up in a touchscreen world.

It’s no secret that San Francisco’s South of Market district has changed a lot in the last 20 years, but it’s easy to forget just how dramatic those changes have been.

Not all that long ago, SoMa synonymous with seediness and squalor — so much so that the area was used as the backdrop for a movie scene that defined mainstream anxieties about out-of-control crime during the early 1980s.

Remember Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day” bit from the 1983 Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact? It was the standout scene in the movie, and the line became one of the decade’s pop-culture touchstones — so much so that it was embraced by then-President Ronald Reagan:

“I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers. Go ahead–make my day.”
–Ronald Reagan, to the American Business Conference (1985)

As it happens, the building used to film the famous “make my day” scene still exists, although the neighborhood around it has changed almost beyond recognition. The scene itself was shot at 701 Third Street, at the corner Townsend, in a building that was originally constructed to be a Doggie Diner. By 1983 it had become a one-off burger joint called Tiger’s. (In the film it’s called the Acorn Cafe.) Later it became Burger Island, and today it’s a utterly forgettable McDonald’s franchise.

More interesting, however, are the scenes outside the windows of the building. In Sudden Impact, the lot across the street is dusty and vacant, heightening the sense of post-urban blight.

But there’s a reason that lot was empty, of course. Originally it was home to a magnificent Southern Pacific train station that was torn down in the mid-1970s, just a few years before the film was shot:

And now, in a perfect metaphor for SoMa’s transformation, that empty lot is now home to a Border’s Bookstore and coffee bar:

So there you have it. The location that was once a perfect embodiment of lawlessness and urban decay is now a perfectly civilized place to take the family or browse the books while you sip coffee.

Here’s the original Sudden Impact scene it’s entirety. Enjoy the spectacle, then say it to yourself: “Go ahead… make my latte!”

photos: S&P depot via San Francisco Public Library

UPDATE: Tom Purcell took a photo of the screencap superimposed over the current location.

photo by Tom Purcell

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art yesterday, I came across a series of clever artist-themed desserts offered at the SFMOMA’s Rooftop Coffee Bar. There were many on offer, but these three were my favorites: Mondrian Cake, Richard Serra Cookies, and Jeff Koons White Hot Chocolate. Delicious and brilliant!

photos by Telstar Logistics

While playing around with Google Earth’s new historical views feature earlier this week, I spent some time looking at the former Seals Stadium, one of my favorite San Francisco Buildings That No Longer Exists.

Home to the San Francisco Seals from the Pacific Coast League, Seals Stadium was a baseball field located at the corner of 16th and Bryant Streets in the Mission/Potrero neighborhood. For two years, after the Giants defected from New York, Seal Stadium was home to the majors. Ballparks.com offers a thumbnail history:

Seals Stadium was built in 1931 for the Seals and Missions of the Pacific Coast League. The Seals became the stadium’s sole tenant in 1938, when the Missons moved to Hollywood and became the Stars. The Seals continued to play here until the Giants relocated to San Francisco from the Polo Grounds in New York in 1958. The Giants played in Seals Stadium for two seasons until they moved into Candlestick Park in 1960.

The Seals won the Pacific Coast League pennant at Seal Stadium in 1931 and 1935. Lefty O’ Doul coached there. Joe DiMaggio honed his hitting there before signing with the Yankees:

Willie Mays played there when the Giants relocated. Seal Stadium had history, but just a few weeks after the Giants finished the 1959 season, the stadium was quickly demolished. A photographer was on hand that sad day when home plate was removed:

This is what the site of the former ballpark looked like in 1964, after it was gone, with an arrow pointing to where home plate used to be:

Today, of course, the parcel is home to the Potrero Safeway shopping complex. Yet as I tinkered with Google Earth this week, I started to wonder: In the context of the current building, where did home plate at Seals Stadium once sit? Fortunately, modern technology makes it relatively easy to mark where home had been (after making adjustments for some Google image misalignment):

So where exactly is that sacred spot now?

I headed to the Safeway plaza to find out. GPS doesn’t work indoors, so I had to improvise, using the bands of brown pavement in front of the store to get alignment, and then pacing out the steps inside the building to pinpoint the location — give-or-take a few feet.

And so, some 40 years after Seals Stadium was torn down, let us mark the hallowed spot where home plate once sat:

Yup, that’s right. Home plate was situated right by Aisle 6, the PC department in the Office Depot store. Here’s the view looking south, toward the former first base:

With home plate found, the rest of the old Seals Stadium diamond was straightforward to identify: First base is now the entryway just inside the door of Office Depot. Second base is now by the first table in the seating area next to the Starbucks kiosk at Safeway. Third base is a food aisle — right between the refrigerated tortillas and the frozen pizzas — deeper in the supermarket.

My co-conspirator Burrito Justice has more photos the long-gone ballpark, as well as a superb then-and-now map overlay that clearly shows where the bases once were.

Next up, in collaboation with Burrito Justice, we may try to convince the managers of the Office Depot and Safeway stores to place permanent markers for each of the bases on their respective floors. Stay tuned.

See Also: Yesterday’s Baseball Is Tomorrow’s Safeway (Burrito Justice)

Time travel is always fun, and Google Earth now makes it easy to do. The newest version includes a button that allows users to to view historical imagery to see how a place has changed through the decades.

I tried it out with San Francisco, where Google Earth offers views of the city dating back to 1946. Sometimes the changes are subtle, but at other times they are very stark.

The image at top, for example, shows SOMA and the original Bay Bridge approach on Fifth Street. Notice all the ships tied up at San Francisco’s then-active wharves.

Here’s the site of the former Seals Stadium, at 16th Street and Bryant, as it looked in 1946, before the elevated 101 freeway went in, and before it became today’s Potrero Safeway:

Here’s the Panhandle, with extensive redevelopment happening in Laurel Heights and the neighborhood just east of the University of San Francisco campus:

And here’s the former Southern Pacific rail yards, now home to AT&T Park and the emerging UCSF biomedical campus:

Have fun procrastinating.

photos by Todd Lappin

This weekend I briefly beamed into the Star Trek Convention that’s taking place at the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco. Keeping the Prime Directive firmly in mind, I did not interefere with the creatures I saw at the gathering — although I did enjoy seeing their social rituals and merchandise for sale. Nor could I stick around to have my photo taken with Sir Patrick Stewart, alas.

More photos from my away team here.

David Martin created this haunting, time-lapse video of the effort to raise US Airways Flight 1549 from the icy depths of the Hudson River, one year ago. Can someone please get that jet a cup of hot cocoa?!

Or perhaps you’d rather have the actual plane itself as a souvenir.

The salvaged hulk of the 1999 Airbus A320-214 that crash landed in the Hudson is now up for auction. The engines aren’t included in the sale, but rest assured that according to the auction listing, “the aircraft was treated with a corrosion inhibitor in the summer of 2009.”

photos by Chartis

photo by Todd Lappin

Jackie Jones has been a Saturday fixture at San Francisco’s Alemany Farmer’s Market for more than a decade, entertaining foodies — and their kids — with her charming musical act.

Her instruments include a washboard guitar, a hand saw she plays like a fiddle, and a battered boombox she uses to DJ backing beats on well-worn cassette tapes. Best of all, however, is Jackie’s feline sidekick — a dancing wooden controlled by a foot pedal.

Now more than 80 years old, Jackie was featured in a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle that described at her musical repertoire:

Since she arrived in San Francisco in March 1952 from New Orleans Jones has played music continuously in dance bands bar bands Latin bands Russian bands stage bands gay bands Hawaiian bands country bands and even with the legendary Cockettes. She’s played at county fairs and strip shows and everywhere in between.

Of course, the only way to really experience Jackie Jones is to see her in action. But if you can’t make it to the Alemany Farmer’s Market (which also happens to be San Francisco’s very best, IMHO), this short video may suffice. The best stuff starts at around 0:55, when Jackie makes her hand saw sing:

photos by Todd Lappin

Though it’s been open since mid-November, I finally made my way to San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park last weekend to see the The 2nd Annual Golden Gate Express Garden Railway, a giant model railroad that winds its way through a lush landscape of miniature gardens and famous San Francisco buildings — all of which are fabricated from recycled materials:

From Ghirardelli Square to the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower to Chinatown’s dragon gate, replicas of San Francisco’s most famous places have been creatively crafted from recycled and repurposed materials. Corks, wine boxes, cheese graters, cutlery and more come together to make San Francisco’s gourmet haven, the Ferry Building, and the towering Transamerica Pyramid is studded with over 600 computer keys. Debuting this year are eight new landmarks, including San Francisco’s City Hall, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Castro Theater and more.

It’s good, clean fun for kids of all ages — independent of the fact that the Conservatory of Flowers is so fabulous unto itself. The Golden Gate Express Garden Railway will be on display until April 18, 2010.

photo by Peter Clark

We have Chihuahuas. They need Chihuahuas. And so on Wednesday morning Virgin America will be conducting an airborne exodus of little dogs from San Francisco to New York City. According to an SFO airport press release:

Virgin America is assisting the City of San Francisco Animal Care and Control by flying Chihuahua pups from San Francisco to New York so they can be adopted into loving homes to ring in the New Year. The massive overpopulation of Chihuahuas in California is forcing animal shelters on the West Coast to look to shelters on the East Coast for help – where there is demand for the dogs. The San Francisco Animal Care & Control asked Virgin America to spare a seat during the busy holiday travel season to help fly these needy pups. Several Virgin America teammates have volunteered to escort the pups on the flights to the East Coast – and will track their journey with real-time updates via the airline’s fleetwide WiFi service.

Virgin America will be sending the dogs off in high-style, with a red carpet send-off at the gate, complete with doggie treats and plenty of toys to play with until departure. The Chihuahuas will be received at JFK by the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) – who will place the little dogs in loving adoptive homes.

Apparently, similar efforts have been taking place in Los Angeles. And yes, you can blame Paris Hilton.

image by Market Street Railway

The nonprofit Market Street Railway recently released a preview of the paint-jobs that will adorn four vintage streetcars when they re-appear on San Francisco’s streets a few years from now. Originally built in 1948, the four double-end PCC streetcars are set to leave town soon for a full restoration.

When they return, two of the cars will carry the spiffy SF Municipal Railway “wings” livery, one will represent the red-and-white colors of the Dallas Railway & Terminal Railway Company, and one will wear the proposed “zip stripe” design of the (original, private) Market Street Railway Company. The (new, nonprofit) MSR says:

The four double-ended PCCs have not yet left Muni for their rehabilitation, but the contract with Brookville Equipment Company of Pennsylvania calls for all four of these streetcars, plus 12 others included in the contract, to be completed and returned to Muni before year-end 2011.

If all goes according to plan, these double-enders — which can be operated via controls at either end of the car — are slated to play a big part in making the new, E-Embarcadero line a reality, since there’s no turnaround loop for the cars at the King Street end of the line.

At the suggestion of my friend Automatt, I’ve spent the last few days playing around with the TrueHDR, a $1.99 HDR photography app for the iPhone 3GS. You can see some of the results in the images above.

To be clear: I’m not usually a fan of high dynamic range (HDR) imaging. As a general rule, I find that it is rampantly overused and often *cough cough* kind of gimmicky. Indeed, the incidence of HDR abuse is so high that I’ve been known to grumble that the technology should perhaps require a government-issued license to use.

But in the case of the iPhone, which offers few adjustments to the camera’s basic settings, a tool like TrueHDR offers a simple way to compensate for some of those limitations. To see what I mean, let’s try a side-by-side comparison of the same scene. The top image here was taken with the regular iPhone 3GS camera, while the bottom image used TrueHDR:

My bottom line: TrueHDR generates a relatively subtle HDR effect, it’s extremely easy to use, and (most of all) I really like some of the photos I’ve taken with it.

photos by Todd Lappin / Telstar Logistics

photos by Todd Lappin/Telstar Logistics

A few weeks back I spent a pleasant morning helping volunteers decorate two vintage streetcars for the holiday season. The volunteers were organized by Market Street Railway, the nonprofit organization that supports San Francisco’s historic streetcar fleet.

Now MSR will use one of those festive streetcars for a special holiday-themed charter exclusively for families with kids this weekend, on Saturday, December 19, between 1 and 4 pm.

The New Orleans “Desire” streetcar, No. 952, has been decorated with holiday garlands and bows, and it will be on tap to take the wee ones on a nonstop ride from the Railway Museum near the Ferry Building to Pier 39 (and back again).

Departures from the San Francisco Railway Museum will take place approximately every 45 minutes. While you wait, you and your kids can enjoy the museum’s interactive exhibits, including a full-scale mockup of a streetcar motorman’s cab and a wooden railway playset.

Come early and make a day of it by visiting the fabulous Ferry Building Farmers Market first or going ice skating at Embarcadero Center. Ride the charter to Pier 39, say hello to the sea lions, and then we’ll take you back again. We hope you will bring other families who might enjoy this special day as well.

Complete details available on the MSR Blog.

Pictory, a new online publishing project created by Laura Brunow Miner, just launched a beautiful photo essay about San Francisco.

In her introduction to the San Francisco feature, Laura writes:

San Francisco is my first in a series of themes on place. I didn’t choose this city because I live here and love it. Not entirely. I picked it because I know it.

I will need help when I feature Cuba. I will need a larger, more distributed community when I tackle beyond-the-stereotypes Detroit. Even for New York or Paris, I will need help from someone who understands the backstreets and can read between the lines.

But San Francisco I can feature now, and with any luck, I can show how a place can be relevant even if you don’t live there, haven’t been, or don’t like it.

The pictures are huge, the words are well-crafted, and there’s a nice roster of local photogs included in the mix, including William Cendak III, Naz Hamid, and Eric Nielson, and Dustin Diaz.