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441 – Sense of POPOS: Secret Spaces of San Francisco

441 – Sense of POPOS: Secret Spaces of San Francisco

via Strange Maps by strangemaps on 1/27/10

Scattered across the centre of San Francisco are almost seventy semi-secret spaces, privately owned but open to the public. Subject to the fine print of a little-known pact between City and Commerce, these so-called POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Spaces) allow alluring vistas of San Francisco and access to its intimate interiors. However, they are often poorly indicated – perhaps a deliberate tactic by the private companies who own the spaces to prevent the pesky public from using them.

Accessing POPOS not rarely requires walking past security guards through unmarked doors. No wonder many are underfrequented. A concerted effort of concerned citizens – and this map produced by them – is aimed at raising awareness of the existence of these fascinating spaces, 68 in all, both north and south of Market, many in existence for decades.

This map is part of a guide produced by SPUR (San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association); the 45 round indicators are POPOS set up between 1959 and 1985, the squares mark the 23 inaugurated after the 1985 Downtown Plan, which stipulated the zoning regulations requiring commercial urban development to be counterbalanced by POPOS.

POPOS come in many guises. They can be either indoor or outdoor – and indeed even on rooftops. They might be the size of a small park, or merely a ’snippet’. There are single-area POPOS, and ones composed of several different spaces. Some are open at all times, others accessible only during office hours. POPOS operated under the Downtown Plan need to provide access to restrooms and other amenities.

SPUR lists all 68 POPOS in downtown San Francisco and rates them from poor over good to fair and excellent. For a complete overview, download SPUR’s guide (see below). Or take one of the architectural tours leading you through the network of POPOS in San Francisco’s downtown. Below is a brief legend to the map above.

Redwood Park: An urban park at the foot of San Francisco’s most striking skyscraper with redwoods, sculptures and a fountain.

505 Sansome Street: A greenhouse in the lobby of an office building, connecting to Redwood Park.

Empire Park: An urban garden on the site of a demolished building.

Embarcadero Center West: Three separate open spaces.

456 Montgomery Street: An urban garden cascading into the middle recess of a building.

343 Sansome Street: Two open spaces, one a sun terrace on the 15th floor (with an obelisk), the other a lunchtime mall.

650 California Street:Two “largely barren” plazas.

600 California Street: A ’snippet’ without amenities or seating, but with lots of art pieces.

555 California Street: A “grand, almost forbidding” plaza, with a sculpture, a garden and teak benches.

345 California Street: A “shady snippet” with granite benches and some planters.

200 California Street: A public sitting area in a pedestrian walkway, featuring a bronze sculpture called The Hawaiian.

150 California Street: A sun terrace with tables, chairs, plants an public art – but you have to get past a security guard.

50 California Street: A snippet enlivened by a small café.

One California Street: Snippets around the building feature trees and benches, and is partly occupied by the indoor café’s tables and chairs.

101 California: An urban garden within a large plaza, dominated by three stepped pyramids.

100 Pine Street: An urban garden squeezed in between a few skyscrapers, a “gem” but without direct sunlight.

444 Market Street: A plaza leading to the entrance of the Market Street building.

One Bush Street: A “beautifully designed and maintained” urban garden surrounding “the first postwar high-rise” in San Francisco.

Citygroup Center: A greenhouse in a former bank building.

Trinity Alley: A pedestrian walkway with a narrow plaza.

Crocker Galleria: Two rooftop sun terraces, one on an historic bank building, the other “accessed from an obscure staircase in the northwest corner of the Galleria”.

One Post Street: Snippets with stand-up tables and square concrete blocks at sitting height next to food services.

595 Market Street: Two triangular entryway plazas. One “could become a pleasant public sitting area”.

555/575 Market Street: A “beautifully landscaped” urban garden between two highrises.

525 Market Street: An urban garden with a double granite fountain.

425 Market Street: An urban garden surrounded by highrises that is “shady but nonetheless a jewel”.

14 Fremont Street: A wide sitting area in a pedestrian walkway, furnished with tables and chairs.

333 Market Street: A small plaza with planters.

45 Fremont Street: A narrow plaza with a hedge of Japanese maples and a row of metal benches.

50 Beale Street: A “rather large” urban park full of trees and bushes, and including a railroad car housing a Bechtel Corp. museum.

77 Beale Street: An entry plaza featuring a water wall, granite planters, Gingko trees and sitting ledges.

201 Mission Street: An urban garden in the setbacks on Beale Street.

123 Mission Street: An urban garden in three successive parts, with plenty of vegetation.

One Market Street: A plaza oriented to the sunny side of the building.

135 Main Street: An enclosed front courtyard turned into an indoor park with a metal wall water feature.

160 Spear Street: An entrance walkway widening into an urban garden with water feature and aluminium sculpture.

180 Howard Street: A public sitting area in a walkway that is a continuation of (36).

201 Spear Street: A walkway widening into an urban garden, centered on the sculpture of a photographing man.

211 Main Street: A front entry plaza with sunny exposure and the potential to be a “very pleasant space”.

221 Main Street: “Four benches in a sea of paving”.

301 Howard Street: A small urban garden featuring a food truck in an Art Deco building, thus “destroy[ing] the charm of the little pavilion”.

199 Fremont Street: An urban garden that is the result of the collaboration of a sculptor, a poet and an architect.

100 First Street: A popular sun terrace with water spouting from a black granite wall.

25 Jessie Street: A “small but lovely” urban garden with a water wall but without seating.

Golden Gate University: A bridge turned into a ’snippet’.

An exhaustive treatment of POPOS history and regulations here at SPUR, which also produced an 8-page guide to San Francisco’s POPOS, which includes this map, called Secrets of San Francisco. The guide elaborates on the accessibility and overall quality of all POPOS (or rather it would, if it didn’t stop abruptly at page 8, and #45). Even more information on POPOS here at sf.streetsblog.org.

I think maybe part of the reason you're so angry is you keep demanding that ...

I think maybe part of the reason you're so angry is you keep demanding that you get screwed and then, not surprisingly, you keep getting screwed

via slacktivist by Fred Clark on 1/24/10

Hey you. You there in the Glenn Beck T-shirt headed off to the Tea Party Patriot rally.
Stop shouting for a moment, please, I want to explain to you why you're so very angry.
You should be angry. You're getting screwed.
I think you know that. But you don't seem to know that it doesn't have to be that way. You can stop it. You can stop it easily because the system that's screwing you over can only keep screwing you over if you keep demanding that it do so.
So stop demanding that. Stop helping the system screw you over.
Look, you can go back to yelling at me in a minute, but just read this first.
1. Get out your pay stub.
Or, if you have direct deposit -- you really should get direct deposit, it saves a lot of time and money (I point this out because, honestly, I'm trying to help you here, even though you don't make that easy Mr. Angry Screamy Guy) -- then take out that little paper receipt they give you when your pay gets directly deposited.
2. Notice that your net pay is lower than your gross pay. This is because some of your wages are withheld every pay period.
3. Notice that only some of this money that was withheld went to pay taxes. (I know, I know -- yeearrrgh! me hates taxes! -- but just try to stick with me for just a second here.)
4. Notice that some of the money that was withheld didn't go to taxes, but to your health insurance company.
5. Now go get a pay stub from last year around this time, from January of 2009.
6. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld for taxes in your current paycheck is less than the amount that was withheld a year ago.
That's because of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, which included more than $200 billion in tax cuts, including the one you're holding right there in your hand, the tax cut that's now staring you in the face. Republicans all voted against that tax cut. And then they told you to get angry about the stimulus plan. They didn't explain, however, why you were supposed to get angry about getting a tax cut. Why would you be? Wouldn't it make more sense to get angry at the people who voted against that Obama tax cut?
But taxes aren't the really important thing here. The really important thing starts with the next point.
7. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is more than it was last year.
8. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is a lot more than it was last year.
I won't ask you to dig up old paychecks from 2008 and 2007, but this has been going on for a long time. Every year, the amount of your paycheck withheld to pay for your health insurance goes up. A lot.
9. Notice the one figure there on your two pay stubs that hasn't changed: Your wage. The raise you didn't get this year went to pay for that big increase in the cost of your health insurance.
10. Here's where I need you to start doing a better job of putting two and two together. If you didn't get a raise last year because the cost of your health insurance went up by a lot, and the cost of your health insurance is going to go up by a lot again this year, what do you think that means for any chance you might have of getting a raise this year?
11. Did you figure it out? That's right. The increasing cost of health insurance means you won't get a raise this year. Or next year. Or the year after that. The increasing cost of health insurance means you will never get a raise again.
That's what I meant when I said you really should be angry. That's what I meant when I said you're getting screwed.
OK, we're almost done. Just a few more points, I promise.
12. The only hope you have of ever seeing another pay raise is if Congress passes health care reform. Without health care reform, the increasing cost of your health insurance will swallow this year's raise. And next year's raise. And pretty soon it won't stop with just your raise. Without health care reform, the increasing cost of your health insurance will start making your pay go down.
13. I wish I could tell you that this was just a worst-case scenario, that this was only something that might, maybe happen, but that wouldn't be true. Without health care reform, this is what will happen. We know this because this is what is happening now. It has been happening for the past 10 years. In 2008, employers spent on average 25 percent more per employee than they did in 2001, but wages on average did not increase during those years. The price of milk went up. The price of gas went up. But wages did not. All of the money that would have gone to higher wages went to pay the higher and higher and higher cost of health insurance. And unless Congress passes health care reform, that will not change.
Well, it will change in the sense that it will keep getting worse, but it won't get better. Unless the problem gets fixed, the problem won't be fixed. That's kind of what "problem" and "fixed" mean.
14. Sadly for any chance you have of ever seeing a raise again, it looks like Congress may not pass health care reform. It looks like they won't do that because they're scared of angry voters who are demanding that they oppose health care reform, angry voters who demand that Congress not do anything that would keep the cost of health insurance from going up and up and up. Angry voters like you.
15. Do you see the point here? You are angrily, loudly demanding that Congress make sure that you never, ever get another pay raise as long as you live. Because of you and because of your angry demands, you and your family and your kids are going to have to get by with less this year than last year. And next year you're going to have to get by with even less. And if you keep angrily demanding that no one must ever fix this problem, then you're going to have to figure out how to get by on less and less every year for the rest of your life.
16. So please, for your own sake, for your family's sake and the sake of your children, stop. Stop demanding that problems not get fixed. Stop demanding that you keep getting screwed. Stay angry -- you should be angry -- but start directing that anger toward the system that's screwing you over and taking money out of your pocket. Start directing that anger toward fixing problems instead of toward making sure they never get fixed. Instead of demanding that Congress oppose health care reform so that you never, ever, get another pay raise, start demanding that they pass health care reform, as soon as possible. Because until they do, you're just going to keep on getting screwed.
And it's going to be that much worse knowing that you brought this on yourself -- that you demanded it.
Thanks for your time.
P.S. -- I didn't mention this because I'm trying here to be as patient with you as I can, but you might also want to keep in mind that in addition to screwing over yourself and screwing over your family and screwing over your own children by demanding that Congress oppose health care reform so that you will never, ever see another pay raise, by doing that you're also demanding that I never, ever see another pay raise, which means that you're also screwing over me, and my family, and my children. Not to mention the millions of poor and uninsured and uninsureable people I didn't even mention above because they don't seem to matter at all to you. And for that, let me just say the only appropriate thing that can be said to someone so determined to do direct, tangible harm to the welfare of my family: Fuck you, you fucking moron.

Thought experiment

via James Fallows on 1/23/10

What states might look like if, as with Congressional districts, their borders were periodically redrawn to reflect population changes. Click for larger version.

This map is by Neil Freeman from FakeIsTheNewReal.org. It's based on a division of the country into 50 state units with more-or-less equal population -- 5 to 6 million apiece -- and preserving existing boundaries where possible. (As with the new state of "Missouri.") I love many of the other state names -- Lincoln, Joaquin, Tombigbee. My childhood home would have been along the border of Coronado and Mojave. In a reapportioned Senate each of these units would have two votes.
In the same spirit of "zero-based governance," also consider H. Res. 1018, introduced this week in the House of Representatives, calling on the Senate -- please! -- to drop the recent aberrational practice of applying the filibuster to all legislation, and instead to reserve it for rare, emergency use. Or, as its authors put it, "Requesting the Senate to adjust its rules to reflect the intent of the framers of the Constitution by amending the Senate's filibuster rule, Rule 22, to facilitate the consideration of bills and amendments." Worth a shot!

Teabaggers

While I find this to be a really funny term, there's nothing like listening to the Economist's Audio Edition and hearing, in a proper British accent

For Democrats to deride such people as 'teabaggers', a term referring to a sexual practice involving testicles is political stupidity of a high order...

I know there's nothing too funny about that sentence, but to say 'sexual practice involving testicles' is just funny.

Steven Pearlstein - Abandoning health care after the Brown election, and other Washington nonsense

Honestly, in a city that thrives on nonsense, we've heard more of it in the past few days than you normally do in a year.

One of my favorite bits of Monday morning quarterbacking is that President Obama should have put health care and Afghanistan and climate change and everything else on the back burner for the past year and insisted that he and everyone else focus exclusively on jobs, jobs, jobs. What do you call a $787 billion stimulus package of tax cuts and increased spending, a $50 billion auto industry bailout, a $1 trillion prop to the housing sector and nearly another $1 trillion in old-fashioned monetary stimulus -- chopped liver? And how exactly do you square the idea that the president and Congress should be working 24-7 to "create" jobs with that other nugget of conventional wisdom, that Americans are demanding smaller government, less spending and lower budget deficits?

Then there is the big question of what to do about health care now that the voters have allegedly turned against the president's proposal.

One reasonable-sounding idea is that the president should reduce it down to just a few of its most popular provisions, such as the one requiring that insurance companies be barred from refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions or charging them sky-high premiums.

The problem with that, of course, is that if you don't require everyone to buy insurance, then there will be lots of people who will wait to buy their policies until they get sick and then demand coverage at the "community" rate. That's a great way to drive up premiums, which in turn will drive even more healthy people to drop coverage, which will raise premiums even further.

To prevent this kind of debilitating "insurance spiral," you could add one more feature -- a mandate requiring everyone to buy at least a basic insurance package. Unfortunately, there are lots of low-income households for which the newly mandated premiums could eat up as much as a half of after-tax income, which hardly seems fair. So you'd probably want to make sure that there's enough competition among insurers to keep premiums down, which is what those government-supervised exchanges are all about. And you'd want to have some subsidies to limit the financial hit to low-income families. To pay for the subsidies, you'd either have to raise taxes or cut spending in other areas.

And that, basically, is the outline of Obama's health plan, just as it was Clinton's health plan and the Nixon plan before that. In fact, if you want a health-care system that's universal and affordable and based on a competitive market of private insurers and health-care providers, that's pretty much where you have to start. There is no simple solution to this puzzle.

Of course, there are plenty of details that we can talk about -- how comprehensive the basic insurance plan should be, how the insurance exchanges should be structured, how big the subsidies should be and what combination of taxes and spending cuts should be used to pay for them. In fact, we've had a rather vigorous debate on those issues for more than a year now, which ought to put the lie to another piece of nonsense put forth by the Republicans -- namely that health reform has been "rushed" through Congress without any input from them or the public.

Instead of moving to take back the health-care issue, however, President Obama on Thursday seemed more interested in changing the subject, launching another broadside against the big Wall Street banks

In the populist imagination, the root of the recent financial crisis was the decision in the 1990s to allow commercial banks, which take deposits and make loans, to get into the riskier but more lucrative investment banking business, where firms underwrite and trade securities on behalf of their customers and themselves. For months, liberals have been pushing to reinstate the old rules to separate the two activities. And for months, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has pushed back, arguing that many of the banks that got in trouble did so the old-fashioned way, by making stupid loans, while many of the institutions that contributed most to the crisis -- Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG -- weren't in commercial banking at all.

However, Obama suddenly reversed course and embraced the populist critique, demanding that commercial banks give up their risky investment activities. In truth, the new rules probably would not do much to reduce the chance of another crisis, or another bailout. The president's motives seemed less substantive than they were political, allowing him to shift from defense to offense and put Republicans in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the Wall Street status quo.

This is a leadership moment for the president. It is a chance to show he can respond to setbacks not by running for cover or resorting to political gamesmanship, but by calmly and confidently reasserting his control over his party and the public debate.

via washingtonpost.com

Hey folks,
Just noticed that I have quite a few folks subscribed to my RSS feed. I'd love to know a bit more about you, so I've changed to a Feedburner Feed so I can track some analytics. If your feed doesn't update automatically, here's the link:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/EricHDosssPosterousSite

Thanks,
Eric

Cruise ships still find a Haitian berth | World news | The Guardian

via guardian.co.uk

Absolutely disgusting. One commenter made a good point though, the problem is not with the cruise line, but the disgusting passengers that are enjoying a barbecue and a beer while people die in the streets.
Last night, CNN had a woman journalist on that had just been evacuated from Haiti. Can you imagine being a disaster like that, being uninjured, and choosing to leave instead of help? How fucking selfish. I mean, come on. It's not like you couldnt get evacuated a few days later, things are improving, transport wise, so it's not like you're trapped in Fallujah and the Marines are leaving. Grow a fucking spine folks.