There’s quite a bit going on this sunny Friday, so I’m rolling several posts into one so I can get outside for some exercise and get back to work!
First off, this weekend marks the 4th anniversary of this site. We had a small event last night at the Blackthorn, which went well. However, I only found out at the last minute that a good portion of my E-vites were marked as spam, and many people never saw the invite, which was infinitely frustrating. I couldn’t afford to open it up as a big wide event for tons of people as I don’t make a fortune off of the site’s T shirt and ad revenues just yet.
So if you missed this event, trust me when I say a) we weren’t trying to be lame, and b) we’ll be doing more events this summer and fall, formal and informal, that will be wide open to the public so you can hang out and meet your fellow MUNI riders and so on.
This weekend we have a lot going on. Today, of course is Critical Mass Day, which will have added fun as the preparations for the SF Pride Parade are already up around Civic Center. Obviously, this weekend will see a large influx of folks from around the world and on Parade Day itself, you can expect delays getting around town. So, plan accordingly for or around both.
Next up, a shout out to the SF Appeal, for their actual reporting of news regarding the bizarro case of Routesy, caught in a bureaucratic snare. SF Weekly also did some digging and deserve a shout out as well. This is the kind of thing I wanted to research myself, but didn’t have the time to do, so I handed it off to the Appeal to do it right. It’s nice to see more than one journalistic entity take on a difficult issue with larger concerns for the public and print up something worth reading, esp. since there was no way I could take a few days off work to do it myself!
Finally, some fun. I’ve already posted those wonderfully campy Paul Lynde videos “Transit, Who Needs It?” and now here’s a double shot of transit fun. First, we have this video called “Citizen Tram” made about 40 years ago in Melbourne, Australia. Take a look:
And to follow up, here’s a great film about Melbourne today, from Streetsfilms, which is part of the Streetsblog empire of awesome. (they don’t have custom sized embeds, so it doesn’t fit particularly well here, go to the original site if you like).
Finally, the weather is spectucular (I think) and you should get outside and do whatever it is you like doing on a sunny June weekend. And why not stop by Park Chow for this Verbena Royale they’re now serving up after a day at the park? (thanks to twitteratti @aperte and @sfoodie for the tip!)
That’s a bummer about the invites… I was glad to get mine and see you receive the praise you deserve for this great blog.
I doubt I’ll bump into you at the parade, but who knows? Enjoy your weekend!
@tangobaby: to be honest I don’t know what i’m doing on Sunday….I’ve had to work at enough of these things either at booths or in the parade with candidates to me it’s more like a work day than a fun day. But I’m not in that part of the biz anymore so I might head to Civic Center and see what’s going on.
I know what I’m doing on Saturday though!
Haven’t heard or read much about Critical Mass lately. As I recall they were the amorphous group that roused Willie Brown’s wrath when he was mayor. Someone here in Southern Calif. commented that if anyone tried a similar “happening” in LA, one of the “homies” might “rack a gauge” (point and cock a shotgun) at the leader of the pack. Another possibility is the cyclists getting clobbered by a soccer mom who’s running late in her minivan. Also, LA is more spread out, and the locals know many alternate routes, so it’s harder to do a deliberate “clog up the works” operation, and besides, we have enough stupid and inattentive drivers who can clog things up without help from the velocipedic crowd.
Hey! Nice mention of you/N Judah Chronicles in today’s SFGate by columnist Carl Nolte (sorry forgot the column name :()