— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
RUMOR HAS IT THAT COLD BEER COLD WATER WILL BE THERE SELLING THREE DOLLAR PEEBURRS
If you've been reading the San Francisco shitternets over the past few days, you might have heard there is going to be a community meeting tonight at 6pm at the Mission High School cafeteria (I'll be sitting by myself at the back of the cafe, eating the PB&J and yogurt my mommy packed me). In spite of the fact I'm almost certain this will be a pointless shitshow in which geezer neighbors outnumber the majority demographic of park users, Bevan Dufty utterly fails at running a meeting, ignorant stereotypes of “hipsters” are tossed around and facts are reinvented so the blame for the trash in the park can be put solely on 20-somethings, I do honestly believe it is important for the readers of this blog to go. Why? To fight against exactly what I fear will happen. Last fall when similar meetings popped up, the under-35 crowd was outnumbered by anti-fun warriors 15:1 and it led to another summer of crackdowns. If you truly care about your right to enjoy an afternoon in the park with a squad of out-of-touch cops rolling through your park on dirt bikes, make the effort to tell Captain Corrales to get with the times.
Comments (11)
This just might be my favorite blog of yours to date. See you there. It’s a beautiful day. You might be able to do some recruiting at the park before the meeting.
I think that we all agree that your comment “blame for the trash in the park can be put solely on 20-somethings,” is mostly true. Honestly, lets just all agree that “Tallboy Terrace” is the most trashed part of the park every weekend then we can move on and figure out how to fix it.
Maybe Kevin Montgomery can post something on here about taking care of the park and cleaning it up? Would that be a big deal Kevin? You seem to use the park as much as anyone so why not put your blog to better use and advocate for people to clean up when they are done doing whatever it is they do there? That way people can continue to do whatever they want and the NIMBY crowd cant really say much about it…
Just a thought…
Spreading the word to people who do give a shit?
self entitled might as well be anyone looking out for their own best interests. However if you want to say something productive, try not trashing kevin and offering suggestions that the community might use to better the park, or is your ability to stay anonymous clouding your judgement and being a hypocrite just too appealing?
hmmm, i don’t think self-entitled means what you think it means. or what you want it to mean, as the case may be.
my ability to stay anonymous? oh, alright jeff d. how is that any less anonymous than Douchebag? this is the internet. anonymity comes with the territory.
and how exactly am i being a hypocrite? this isn’t my blog, and i don’t use it on a regular basis to point fingers. instead of offering suggestions, which is what a local blogger might do (hint, hint), i’m criticizing the way in which the situation is being approached. criticism and hypocrisy - there’s a difference.
Kevin took the time to show up tonight;
Unfortunately, I think his comments were perceived more as an attack on the cops and their policies and less on the issue at hand, whereas my comment got truncated and made it sound like the only reason I was upset with the 11:30pm crackdown was that I was personally disturbed by it, so I don’t know if the ‘fun side of the house’ really got an airing - but I don’t know if it would have mattered. At the core, I think that an education campaign sounds like a strange measure, but it may be the only palatable solution - if people don’t clean up and instead keep doing visible things that offend neighbors, then I imagine that the calls and emails will still get to the police station, and Captain Corrales will still get pressure to act. I don’t think he really enjoys cracking down on Dolores Park - but I do think that he knows that he needs to be responsive to constituents with local addresses and affiliations and will prioritize that over turning a blind eye to law infringement. Making alcohol legal in the park would be a good step, and should be explored further - and I think this whole thing will calm down when *the supervisor for the District isn’t running for Mayor* - but those are longer term than this and next year.
Someone in the audience commented (to the side) that the tenor set now will have an influence on the post-construction park - I’m not sure if that will be the case, but it may - in any case, I’ll bet this is a fresh issue once that’s all said and done.
Incidentally - Bevan - *please*, please don’t take more time than the other panel members and all neighborhood voices when you really don’t have anything substantial enough to warrant the time. Now I know why I can’t stand local politics - between the introductions, the chest-puffing and the off-topic forays, there was probably 20 minutes of meaningful conversation in the meeting. I do think that attendance at the Tuesday Mission Station gatherings may be wise…
Choice note from the 19th street stop-sign portion: SF is allowed to install 5 to 6 traffic lights per year for the entire city, each one costs $350,000, and takes 2-3 years to implement (at minimum). That seems like as much of a systemic way to forestall change as… well… as having a neighborhood discussion where some panelists specifically drag their feet to reduce the amount of actual content that hits the floor.
- Mike
Perhaps I missed it but why is it they can’t put in the imbedded flashing street lights set off my motion sensors like they have on Page in Upper Haight at that elementary school or whatever? They could also consider speed humps or rumble strips (s-curve Bay Bridge).
Clearly there are some issues at the park however my hoa has to clean, pressure wash, shit off our sidewalks at 18th and mission too. I go out and paint over graffiti regularly. I feel like the neighbors on the park have a speaking box the rest of the property owners in the district don’t really have. So I see these pictures of 4 or more moto cops busting young people drinking in the park when there are crimes elsewhere in the hood. They’ve got undercover cops busting pot brownie dude when for months they were selling muni transfers at 18th and Mission obvious to all.
IIRC the top cop dude didn’t mention a single citation for littering or peeing in public just smoking and alcohol. They seemed to say there was some kind of additional paper work for those infractions??? They should allow alcohol and have police patrol the park for the occasional creeps that come in and prevent other anti-social behavior the nimby’s mentioned.
I get a kick out of the use of the “self-entitlement” phrase. Yes I feel self-entitled to have some of the police presence where I live too and not just in Dolores busting drinkers and smokers. I also feel self-entitled to drink beer and smoke pot usually where ever it seems reasonable to me.
I understand the one dudes point about “perceptions” iirc - young minority in his neighborhood gets busted for drinking in public but not the generally white crowd at the park. Why doesn’t the kid just go to the park? As a white person i’m just as likely to get sited if I drink in front of my home rather than the park too. So I’m not entirely sure his comments were relevant or the perception of unequal application of the law is justified.
I think young people, “self-entitled 20 somethings,” are critical to this city in a variety of ways. We should make the city as appealing as possible to attract more young adults to travel here.
You got it wrong on the minority thing. When the white gays and lesbians have an event in the park, the next mayor makes sure then can drink as much as they want, and there are a 1000 porta-poties. When a Latino themed event is at the park, they start enforcing the drinking laws. Your willfully blind if you don’t see that treatment.
Obviously that’s not fair and creates a bad perception but it’s not what the nice gentleman said at the meeting. Again, anyone can go to the park with a beer and drink it unmolested unless the moto cops are sweeping through. That’s my experience but I’m not there everyday. Somewhat blind I guess.
I was so disgusted that I walked out when they started wanking about “The War on Drugs”. 1) That is blatantly Classist and Racist, 2) I walked into that meeting with 2 black eyes for stopping and giving someone a few cigarettes at 3 in the morning, so they obviously haven’t done fuck all about class/race issues except for perpetuate them, because they are too lazy to do much except for harass bros who have no other choice but for chillin’ on the sidewalk.
@SlobDog, no “Self Entitled 20 Something” worth their salt cares whether or not anything is clean or appealing. We may not be so very political, because people already took the time and care to fuck everything into the ground for us, but we are punk as fuck, littering is the #1 measure against yuppie jerks moving into the neighborhood, shit ends up in a landfill anyway, and I’ve never seen a bottle or can of any type sit in the park for more than 10 seconds. Recyclers are a HUGE part of the economy here or in any city. Sorry if i mistook your notion of “appealing”.