Uptown Almanac

Parking in San Francisco is notoriously difficult, as the 900-or-so miles of publicly available on-street parking often just don’t cut it for those in search of convenient places to leave an automobile. This dearth of free storage is particularly noticeable on Sunday mornings, when those San Franciscans who don’t worship a pagan goat god in the privacy of their own homes drive to one of the city’s many houses of worship to attend a service. As most of the churches in the city don’t have adequate parking, the congregants have landed on the neat “solution” of illegally double parking wherever they please. But now, it seems, another group has gotten wise to the double-parking game: parkgoers.

This pattern of illegal double parking is particularly bad in the Mission, and has been driving neighbors crazy for years. This is perhaps best exemplified on Dolores Street, where every Sunday morning parked cars line both sides of the street creating a narrow chute for cyclists and drivers to share. And while the neighbors complain about this illegal practice constantly, the city looks the other way to the benefit of the churchgoers.

Things have recently begun to take a turn for the interesting, as what few illegal spots there are appear to be getting snatched up by people heading to Dolores Park. And the church crowd is not having it.

As reported by CBS Bay Area:

[The dubious legality of double parking] been an ongoing argument with some who think it violates church and state separation, turning a blind eye to hundreds of $110 violations each week in deference to the religious community.

And, it gets more complicated with some churchgoers saying they can’t find a place to park along those medians because of all the sunbathers at Dolores Park who have realized they can get away with double parking too.

It seems that the godless parkgoers have gotten hip to the ways of the god-fearing churchgoers, just perhaps not in the way anyone expected. Maybe a shared communion of park truffles is in order.

[Photo: SF Citizen]

A former supervisor in the Mission Station’s plainclothes unit has been accused of exchanging racist and homophobic text messages with four other police officers. The officer, Ian Furminger, was convicted last December of conspiracy and wire fraud and is currently appealing his conviction. Federal prosecutors, in responding to this appeal, included the text messages in a court filing made public this past Friday.

According to KQED News:

The texts show Furminger and other San Francisco police officers repeatedly swapping slurs about black people and gay people, including other police officers. In one exchange on Nov. 9, 2011, Furminger writes about his son’s school:

“We got two blacks at my boys school and they are brother and sister! There cause dad works for the school district and I am watching them like hawks.”

The response, from an unnamed civilian: “Do you celebrate qaunza [sic] at your school?”

Furminger: “Yeah we burn the cross on the field! Then celebrate Whitemas … Its worth every penny to live here [Walnut Creek] away from the savages.”

Through an attorney, Furminger attempted to distance himself from his own messages:

“Ian Furminger is not a racist or homophobe,” Goldrosen wrote in an email. “His closest friends, both at work and in his social life, include many people of different races and sexual orientations.”

The four officers Furminger exchanged messages with are Michael Robison, Michael Celis, Rain Daugherty, and Noel Schwab. Despite the messages’ offensive nature—and the apparent racist hatred these officers showed for many in the community they swore to protect—none of the officers have been removed from active duty. They have been reassigned, pending the results of an internal investigation.

This played out “but some of my closest friends are black” from Furminger dove-tails nicely with the equally tired “he didn’t mean any of those awful racist things he said” line we hear from Alison Wilkinson, an attorney representing Rain Daugherty. Again, KQED News:

“Officer Daugherty is appropriately ashamed by his impulsive and insensitive banter,” Wilkinson wrote, “and accepts full responsibility for the content of those text messages that he sent, which are by no means a reflection of his true character or his style of policing.”

The text messages, obtained by KQED News, can be read in their entirety below beginning on page 10.

[Photo: Margie Shafer]

At approximately 4:30am this morning a fire broke out above the corner store located at 24th and Treat Avenue. According to various sources, a family of five was seriously injured in the blaze—two of them critically.

In addition to the family rescued above the store, it is being reported that two men who had been sleeping inside the store had to be freed by the firefighters. Apparently a gate, padlocked from the outside, prevented their escape until firefighters cut it open. 

The cause of the fire is unknown at this point.

[Photo: Lindsay Hoshaw]

As we predicted back in November, Grub, the forgettable mac-n-cheese and whatever restaurant, is officially out of business and its Valencia Street space is undergoing a complete renovation. Details are light, but signage assures the doubtful public that there will be new owners—the folks behind the city’s trio of Toast Eateries—managing the restaurant. Strangely, those new owners declined to change its questionable name.

Keeping in line with Toast’s business, The New Grub promises to become “your local diner”—a tall claim for an upstart in a neighborhood brimming with choice local diners. No word on the diner’s menu and how greasy it will be, but Toast has already gutted much of the formerly mod-ish space, and work permits filed with the city say they’re readying to install hardwood floors and new lighting.