Frisco Vista

I used to work at the foot of the Filbert Steps, at Filbert and Sansome. It’s not a an area that’s famous for controversy. Should we feed the parrots was the biggest issue I remember. But now, a little farther up the hill, the mural shown above apparently is ruffling some feathers.
At least, according [...]

Frisco Vista received the following e-mail from Ken Knabb of the Bureau of Public Secrets.
The 13th annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair is happening this coming weekend at the San Francisco County Fair Building (Golden Gate Park near Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way).
Due to popular demand and continually increasing turnout (last year there were over 5000 [...]

I generally resist taking tests at OkCupid, but I figured as the webmaster of Frisco Vista I was obliged to take the SF Bay Area Native Test. It requires you to know some local advertising jingles and the like.
I knew to score well I would have to lie on the questions about Frisco and Los [...]

Several days ago I posted some information about Peter Laufer’s dismissal as replacement host of Larry Bensky’s Sunday morning show on KPFA. The comments to that post reflect a range of views. Following are highlights; for the full comments, see the original post. (Disclosure: As editor-in-chief of Mercury House I published some books by Peter [...]

Dr. John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, is the author of a study that attempts to rank the nation’s most literate cities. According to the study, San Francisco ranks no. 9, between Denver and Portland.
You might ask how could a study could produce results indicating San Francisco is less literate than Denver. [...]

Frisco Vista received the following e-mail, reproduced here verbatim:
LEGENDARY BERKELEY RADIO STATION FIRES LEGENDARY TALK SHOW HOST
BACK STORY: Berkeley, California’s KPFA/Pacifica radio station, the only radio station in America to have 10,000 of its listeners demonstrate against it, finds itself in another controversy.
After receiving what its program director said were hundreds of complaints from [...]

Today beaches near the Golden Gate are closed as a noxious oil spill is washing up against the shore. A large South Korean-based Hanjin container ship struck one of the supports of the Bay Bridge and released oil into the bay from a damaged tank. According to Caltrans engineers the bridge got the better of [...]

The Noe Valley Voice, in publication since 1977, seems to be a good example of a neighborhood publication. I would do some things differently from a design point of view, but the content seems on the whole to be earnest and real.
Noe Valley, which is named after one of the Spanish alcaldes around the [...]

Laughing Squid — devoted to “art, culture and technology from San Francisco and beyond” — is one of the best regional sites, because they have got blogging down: posts are colorfully illustrated, just the right length, and written with an engaging conversational tone. In general I’m not too fond of sites with black backgrounds. Yes, [...]

The Wikimedia foundation — all six employees — is packing up its bags and moving from St. Petersburg to San Francisco, supposedly to “create a larger brand.” But Wikipedia is already one of the top three Google results for just about anything you search for. How can you improve on that?
San Francisco “is really the [...]

Litquake is starting to roll out details of this year’s festival.
“Authors appearing this year include Dave Eggers, Ishmael Reed, Vikram Chandra, Gail Tsukiyama, Noah Levine, Ann Patchett, George Smoot,” according to the Litquake website, “and about 300 others.”
I’m one of the 300 others. I’ll be reading at Encantada Galley and shop on Valencia at 20t, [...]

What has become of P. Joseph Potocki, I wonder. He produced a most peculiar Frisco (Phrisco?) blog called San Francisco Phax & Phikshun. The last post on the blog is dated October 2, 2006. I doubt that he is Joseph P. Potocki. Where has the fellow gone?
Here’s is his summary of the sixteenth century in [...]

Early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco referred to northern California as “Gold Mountain.” The name, an echo of the 49ers gold rush, expressed the promise of a land of riches. Many of those immigrants were doomed to disappointment, but the land of riches, has, apparently, come to pass. According to CNN Money, San Francisco is [...]

Edward Champion blasts Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius as “a hack who defames journalism” and “a heartless and complacent yuppie writing very much in the thoughtless and vacant manner I used to find in that reactionary cad of a columnist, Ken Garcia.”
The city is getting worked up over one of its periodic and so far futile [...]

Josh Kornbluth’s show on KQED television is up for a possible renewal for a third year. A show of community support could tip the balance in the show’s favor. If you would like to see it continue, consider writing to one of these addresses:

Office of the President: pres [AT] kqed [dot] org
Viewer Services: tv [AT] [...]

This photo is from a set posted to Flickr entitled “San Francisco Bay Debris - KQED QUEST.” The photos document voluntary Bay cleanup by a group of San Francisco sailors, who were moved to action when a seaplane crashed into a telephone poll that was floating in the bay — sixty-five years ago. According to [...]

I just discovered this on-line resource.

Boinkology weighs in with an opinion.

My software shows, or tries to show, incoming blog links. I did a doubletake when I saw this one. (I’m linked as “quadrant 8″ in Golden Gate Park.)

Bethel Baptist Church in my home town of El Sobrante in the East Bay tells parents that failing to spank their children amounts to “opposing God’s will.” The church hands out pamphlets to parents that recommend “using a ‘rod’ or flexible stick to swat children until their will is broken.” (The church does, however, explictly [...]

Thanks to Eruthros for pointing out these two Bay Area-related videos. They may at first seem unrelated, but both are calls for respect. First, a music video for Zion I’s “The Bay.” In the video the hip hop group drives around the Bay Area, through many of the locations referenced in the song.

The second video [...]

A youtuber named Ryan Erickson, whose handle is AlwaysThrowROCK, has posted an interesting video of San Francisco graffiti and street art. The video is “dedicated to those who make San Francisco a city of unbridled love compassion and beauty.” As a local I would have liked to have known the locations of the images; still, [...]