Ever wanted to know what it'd look like to shoot video from a model airplane zipping past Dolores Park?  I certainly have, but considering my habit of landing planes in the side of mountains in flight simulators, I figured doing so would most certainly be a bad idea.

Luckily, the menacing dorks at Noisebridge tried it for us.  Their landing wasn't much better than what I could do, but no one was killed and the resulting video is definitely a cool watch.  Action picks up about 1:30 in:

In 1956, some dead dude named Phil Foster (not to be confused with Vince Foster, also a dead dude) packed up his Brooklyn snark and nauseating accent and traveled to San Francisco, taking in the sights a breaking down our history.  He makes some choice observations, some of which may-or-may-not ring true today:

1. “San Franciscans won't be satisfied until they're a part of Brooklyn. And after seeing San Francisco, I can understand why.”
2. “[San Francisco owes] it all to the '49 Gold Rush. When they found they couldn't get rich any other way, they went and discovered gold.  While the gold lasted, everybody was busy diggin' and diggin'.  When there was no gold left, they found they were stuck with 14 hills of dirt.”
3. “Say what you will about San Francisco, but you have to admit one thing: it has everything any visitor could want, especially transportation back home.”

Between all these nuggets of wisdom, Phil marvels at people struggling to climb hills, demonstrates how San Francisco men are forced to chase after fallen groceries rolling down hills, makes some vaguely racist comments about the residents of Chinatown, and notes how Chinese women are like Brooklyn women (they eat and talk on the phone a lot).  Oh dear.

Tenderloin and SoMa Supervisor Jane Kim recently visited a SRO and educated its residents on privilege.

TRIGGER WARNING: Assault, Trauma

“There is a privilege to being white in this country. I’m not saying that if you’re white, you have a lot of power as an individual. But if you’re white, you might be more likely to find a white President, a white Senator, a white police chief. I mean, I’m just saying, right?” 

Her lesson to the privileged audience pushed me to wake up and check my own privilege.

San Francisco Local Blogger Privilege

• I can get pageviews by posting about dogs and bar food.
• My blog is a safe creative outlet for my otherkin (I'm a multiple system and some of my headmates post on this blog as well).
• I can delete triggering comments.
• I'm not oppressed by the FCC restricting my free speech.

I encourage all of you reading this on the internet, first all of to consider your literacy and technology privilege, then to share in the comments ways in which you have benefited from an unfair and oppressive system.

[via SF Citizen]

Oh here we go again: the notoriously anti-bike and generally stodgy Stanley Roberts was out again filming “People Behaving Badly.”  This time? The two-wheeled locusts bombing through the Wiggle's stop signs, displaying a general disregard for law and order as they aim to plow over dogs and other helpless pedestrians.

Stanley boasts the number of $300 tickets SFPD issues to these miscreants as the victims of a broke police force point out SFPD probably has better things to do.

As you may remember, SFPD bicycle officers have a troubled relationship with stop sign laws, often treating them as yield signs themselves.

Towards the end of the video, around the 1:20 mark, Stanley goes on to interview an 'angry' pedestrian who rails against the recklessness of cyclists while numerous automobiles run the stop sign in the background.

SFPD did not pull any of those vehicles over.