By Tom Temprano
With a Seahawks victory last Sunday, the inevitable came to bear and the 49ers call Candlestick home no more. Despite being a lifelong Niners fan I have to admit that I’ve spent all season cheering for them with a grain of salt knowing that they had spurned their namesake city and were Silicon Valley bound.
I can’t wait for the 2014-2015 season, where, instead of showing breathtaking San Francisco views of icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower during broadcasts, we get to take in sigh-making glimpses of the Santa Clara Convention Center Quality Inn and the parking lot of the Old Navy in the Westfield Valley Mall.
Speaking of soon-to-be-demolished Candlestick, the likely-to-be-hometown Warriors may need to keep the Stick in their back pocket if opposition to their proposed Statue of Liberty/Sydney Opera House on the waterfront continues to grow.
With a new ballot initiative in the works for June that would require all projects that exceed waterfront height limits and a demonstrated lack of public support for the sort of luxury highrise housing that the Warriors intend to build as part of their project, it seems as if the palace on the piers is less and less likely.
Fortunately for the Warriors, San Francisco voters have twice affirmed their desire for pro-sports in and around Candlestick in the past two decades, and a proposed arena and entertainment center on the site would likely be a much easier sell. If Candlestick was deemed good enough for Jay Z to grace in 2013, perhaps keeping our fingers crossed for his wife/empress of the universe, Beyonce, to inaugurate a Warriors arena on the spot several years from now isn’t too far-fetched.
New Year’s Eve was deservedly unkind to the folks at Uber. The transport company’s New Year’s Eve surge pricing (gouging) ruffled many a partygoer’s feathers and emptied many wallets. Far worse than hundred-dollar fares, however, was the tragedy that occurred when a driver who works for Uber struck and killed a 7-year-old girl who was with her family crossing Polk street — in a crosswalk.
Uber is unsurprisingly attempting to distance itself from the driver, who apparently did not have an fare in the car at the time, which somehow makes this not Uber’s problem, but the situation leaves a deservedly disgusted taste in the mouth of those who were already skeptical of the car service.
The hazard to public safety of having amateur drivers acting as taxis has been long held by taxi drivers as a reason to curb-ride sharing services, and after this tragic incident on New Year’s Eve you can be certain that the public safety debate will be continue on in 2014.
While we’re on the topic of safety on Polk Street, can we all cross our fingers that this coming year brings an end to merchants, thus-far successful efforts to propagate a car culture on this corridor to the detriment of the safety of both pedestrians and bike riders? As someone who has been struck on my bike by a car on Polk Street, I applaud the efforts of the Bicycle Coalition to try and get a divided bike lane on the street and hope that merchants will finally realize that people on two wheels buy their crap too.
In 2014 election news, it seems as if a serious race is brewing between familiar faces in District 10 as Tony Kelly, who finished a close second to current Supervisor Malia Cohen in 2010, has been making the rounds typical of someone who is about to go all in for an election. Given Cohen’s lack of legislative activity (can anybody name four pieces of legislation that she’s authored?) and the significance of adding a progressive vote on the board, this could be the board race to watch in this coming year.
MOVIE TIME: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. See that? I just used the word “fuck” 500 times fewer than Martin Scorsese used it in the Wolf of Wall Street. The world’s most versatile word appeared 506 times in this amazing as fuck movie whose fucking awesome cast had better get some fucking Oscars for fuck’s sake.
Tom’s Top Two Things To Do This Weekend
1) SOME THING – Beyonce. Friday, January 3rd, at the Stud, 9pm to too-many-shots-of tequila o’clock. If I have to work hard to convince you to go see San Francisco’s premier art-drag party host a night in which the likes of Juanita More, Dulce De Leche, and Honey Mahogany perform the entire new Beyonce album then you’re too fun-loathing to go anyway.
2) Eat a pizza at the new Pizza Hacker restaurant. All weekend at his new spot at 3299 Mission (at 29th). The Pizza Hacker, known for his on the sly oven-fired pop ups has found a permanent home in the Mission and, in typically fanfare-free Pizza Hacker fashion, the word still hasn’t gotten out. I recommend you pop in for a pie before the line starts stretching down the block. Also, melted cheese is the perfect cure for your SOME THING Beyonce hangover.
