Being Green

The SF Street Food Festival Comes Up Short

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Were you at the San Francisco Street Food Festival on Saturday?  Of course you were!  I was there, your neighbors were there, hundreds of pairs of heels clumsily clunking against the pavement were there.  In fact, according to unsubstantiated estimates, a grand total of 80,000 people were sucked into the inescapable force—enough to make Dolores Park seem like a relative hot spot of cell signal strength.

With the festival, the Mission was afforded easy access to elusive street food vendors, such as Osha Thai, Blue Bottle Coffee, Whole Foods Market, and The Samsung Galaxy III Experience.  We feasted upon cured meats, tacos from seemingly every continent, mac n' cheese on a stick, ice cream sandwiches from Three Twins, and discounted cell plans from T-Mobile.

In some cases, vendors even provided make-shift photobooths to educate the world about being a “total FOODIE,” with some backdrop about eating local.  Or less traveled.  Yes, something like that.

Whoa now, slow down on the snark, Kevin.  Let's get to the grass-fed meat and potatoes of the fest.

My food was entirely open to interpretation.  To the vendors, a gourmet fry-bread taco with yam-infused refried black beans, topped with locally-sourced lettuce and cabbage.  To me, a well-garnished cracker.  But one thing was damn sure: my $8 Picasso taco was no where near as delicious as the $2 offering from Farolito down the street.

And therein lies the real problem with the Street Food Festival.  It's not really a place for people who know anything about the landscape of San Francisco's food offerings, but for people coming in from out of town.  Its placement in the heart of the Mission is charming, but ultimately inappropriate.  The majority of the vendors have nothing really to do with the neighborhood, and for the most part, the festival would carry the same caliber of authenticity in the Cow Palace parking lot.

It's too bad, too.  It was just a few years ago that food carts were lining up along dead-end Linda Street seemingly every Friday night, dishing out equally-tasty food at reasonable prices.

Those food cart nights had an unmatched energy to them, inspiring dozens of cooks, armed with family recipes, to risk their careers and jump into one of the riskiest industries in our country.  It legitimately created a sense of lasting community, bringing the neighborhood to the same table and providing a fresh venue for strangers of varying backgrounds to meet.

The Street Food Festival is hollow in comparison.  It bastardizes the entire Do It Yourself ethos of street food, while enforcing the notion that our food industry is increasingly dominated by well-funded players.  Small, local establishments were there, but have been losing ground to deeper pockets with every passing year.

I mean, do nationwide chain stores really need another opportunity to beat us over the head with how 'green' they are by rolling out sod for 8 hours?

The Great Mission Trash Island

Why Isn't Anything Being Done About the Trash Problem in Dolores Park?

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Okay, we get it: trash is a major problem in Dolores Park.  The Fourth of July’s “mountain of garbage” was inexcusable and the Earth Day mess was cruelly ironic. But given all the press the stray garbage in Dolores Park receives, it’s clear that public shaming is not deterring litterers and their ilk.  So instead of complaining about the shit situation, why isn’t anyone proposing credible solutions to the problem?

Let’s take the photo below into consideration:

Photo from Earth Day 2012/DPW

My first reaction is HOLY FUCK THAT’S NASTY.  My second is that people are clearly trying to dispose of their garbage, but the city has, quite obviously, failed to provide adequate receptacles to handle the situation.

Back in 2010, the city nearly quadrupled the number of trash cans along the park on Dolores Street, but that did little to improve the situation.  So in 2011, the city announced that Recology, our city’s garbage company, would increase the frequency of trash pick-ups on weekends and holidays for the park, but that program only ran during the summer months (causing the Earth Day situation pictured above) and still didn’t fully address the problem.

One “solution” to this issue commonly suggested in internet comments would have us encouraging people to carry their trash out of the park.  However in 2007, the brilliant minds of the Gavin Newsom/Ed Lee dynasty had almost all the sidewalk trash cans removed from the city, foolishly thinking that removing the garbage cans would decrease litter (it didn’t).  The result of such a move is now Dolores Park patrons cannot even carry their garbage further away from their park, assuming they would even entertain doing such a thing in the first place.  (And, of course, some suggest people carry the garbage home, but that wouldn’t be in the best interests of all the bars, restaurants, and venues that earn money from patrons leaving the park.)

So why isn’t the city installing even more trash cans and having Recology do even more pick-ups?  Presumably, the city lacks the political will, financial capacity, or both to pursue such a logical solution—never mind the considerations as to where added cans would be placed.

A potentially even more costly, but perhaps necessary proposal would be to have the city treat every weekend in the park as a special event, thus sucking it up and ponying up the cost for a dumpster to be placed at the entrance of the park every weekend.  It would be an added expense to an already strained parks budget, we know.  But if the city is already paying for Recology to make “special runs,” why not spend that money up front to improve the situation?

Now, consider the mess within the park itself:

Alex Chaffee, who took the above photo, notes, “this photo is a complete argument for more trash cans in the park (not next to it). People will move their trash, but only to the nearest receptacle, no further.”  I can’t help but agree.  A certain portion of park users are lazy shitheads—the same lazy shitheads who litter the Mission and the rest of the city—and won’t walk their trash to the streetside receptacles, regardless if they are overflowing or not.  So why not place more cans within the park itself?  The Dyke March organizers always drag a number of trash cans into the middle the park, a solution that has always helped leave the park clean (either that or march attendees are more environmentally conscious—who the fuck knows).  Plus, the park has a number of roads that are accessible to full-sized vehicles, making them easy to empty and maintain.  So why isn’t the city bringing more trash cans into the middle of the park, rather than calling up the Chronicle to yet-again shame ‘the hipsters’ for trashing the park?

We understand that some of these issues may be alleviated following the Dolores Park Renovations, however people want the city to start addressing the problem now.  So, regardless if you agree with any of these solutions or not, it’s time we have a serious discussion about the problem and stop the ceaseless bitching.

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

"Hello, I'm a Mac." "And I'm San Francisco."

— By Brian Hickey |

Hyperbolically large consumer electronics company Apple's decision not to seek EPEAT certification for it's computer products precludes the City of San Francisco from ordering new Apple products for city employees.

Wait, what?

EPEAT or the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool is a standards group funded by the EPA. Basically, they score consumer electronic devices on their impact on the environment. Municipalities all over the country have instituted rules that say that city agencies must purchase devices that are certified by EPEAT. This is easier than tasking each individual employee to research and purchase an environmentally safe product.

Apple currently has 39 EPEAT certified computers, monitors and devices. As they focus more and more on designing thinner, lighter, better, faster devices, it is less likely that the materials they need to use will fall under EPEAT's standards. As such, they've asked EPEAT to stop listing Apple products all together.

This lead to city officials with the San Francisco Department of Environment to announce that they will be sending letters to all 50 city agencies informing them that “Apple products no longer qualify for purchase with city funds.” It's not impossible for a city employee to get a non EPEAT product, it's just incredibly difficult. If someone decides they really need a Mac, they can apply for a waiver.

Now, with that said, this is sort of a non-issue because, according to a recent report, only 2% of city computers are from Apple and only affects future purchases.

Some Background on TCB Courier

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Different Workbook recently unleashed a nice profile of TCB Courier, the local bike messenger service that's about to deliver some sandos to my fucking face:

As part of a planet-spanning cycle messenger community, Chas and his friends witnessed the old paradigm for this type of business stop working. It used to be that bike courier businesses revolved around the financial district of a city. Fifteen years ago, at the height of the dot-com boom, the FiDi neighborhood in San Francisco was served by more than 500 cycle messengers. Yet between the Internet, fax machines, e-mail, and finally a seriously down economy, the traditional cycle delivery businesses began failing. “A dying system,” Chas says. Today, the downtown financial core of San Francisco is served by about 70 messengers.

So what do you do when you love to be on your bike every day and love the global messenger community you’re part of, and you’re watching the old ways of working die? These guys decided to create a company that revolved around a cultural center, not the financial center, of their city, to serve local individuals and businesses, and to provide a less expensive alternative to downtown bike messengers. As they created a service for their neighbors, TCB Courier was born. TCB stands for “takin’ care of business.” Today, they are bigger than expected. The business has expanded as other cycle messengers, living in other neighborhoods, decided they’d like to similarly serve their own neighborhoods. They called TCB and asked to join them and run their own neighborhoods.

Read on.

[Photo by John Daniel Reiss]

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

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