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Potrero View 2018: July

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INSIDE

Parking restrictions around 17th Street SFMTA Pg. 3

JULY 2018

#10 Townsend rerouted temporarily Pg. 3

Islais Creek Crane Cove Park: Bus Facility: construction Community may begin Amenities Shrunk next month Pg. 4 Pg. 5

Seniors cling to S.F. Pg. 5

Serving the Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Mission Bay and SOMA Neighborhoods Since 1970

Underground History Pg. 9

FREE

Wildlife Found Throughout Sonic Disrupts Potrero Hill Southside San Francisco BY JACOB BOURNE

BY JEREMIAH WALL

It’s just past noon on a Tuesday in April, and I’m bottle-feeding a seven-day-old black-tailed deer fawn on top of Potrero Hill. Energetic young squirrels perform gymnastics in a cage; a 60-year-old tortoise slowly makes his way through the backyard of a small house on 25th Street, where animal babies are kept until they can be released back into the wild. My search for wildlife in the area has led me to Yggdrasil, a wildlife rescue organization started in 2001 and directed by Lila Travis, a squirrel behaviorist, wildlife rehabilitation specialist, and overall friend to animals. “Back in our youth, when my husband and I founded this organization, we were fascinated by this Norse myth,” said Travis. “The universe is supported in the branches of a tree. The tree’s name is Yggdrasil. Up and down travels Ratatosk the squirrel, and Ratatosk delivers messages between the snake coiled at the roots, and the eagle at the top, and the deer in the branches. It’s a beautiful story”, she laughed, “and for some reason we decided to name our organization Yggdrasil, so

nobody can pronounce it.” The squirrels typically found in the Bay Area are Eastern grays, introduced a century ago by California Fish and Wildlife to provide sport for hunters. The Western gray squirrel tends to stay in forested areas. According to Travis, squirrels spend a long time with their mothers. “They have to completely take care of these helpless creatures for months in an environment that’s not easy to live in. Because of this, mom nature has activated in their brains a serious emotional complexity,” she explained. “Our job is to raise orphan wildlife with the express purpose of releasing them back into the wild, to give them a second chance, and to mitigate the human impact on the environment,” Travis said. Yggdrasil regularly receives calls from San Franciscans concerned about squirrels damaging gardens and fruit. “People call and say ‘this squirrel is taking one bite out all my apples and dropping them on the ground’. Well, they’re supposed to do that, because mom nature programmed them to trigWILDLIFE continues on page 12

Last spring, Sonic, a Santa Rosa-based internet service provider, launched service in several San Francisco neighborhoods, including Potrero Hill, advancing an internet access alternative for residents and businesses. The growing company offers Gigabit Fiber Internet, which transmits data at a rate of 1,000 megabits a second, with download speeds 50 times the national average. Unlimited net access plus home phone service costs $40 monthly, low compared to major competitors. AT&T has a $40 per month internet access plan, with 50 megabits per second speed. “Across San Francisco, we’ve seen huge market demand for not only high-speed Gigabit Fiber internet but for an alternative competitive carrier that won’t throttle speeds and that will treat customers fairly,” offered Stephen Bradley, Sonic’s director of consumer sales and marketing. “Sonic has long believed that access to fast, affordable internet is a basic right, and our continued expansion in the Bay Area shows our commitment to making this a reality.”

SONIC continues on page 12

Families Continue to Struggle to Stay in the City BY MICHAEL IACUESSA

San Francisco artist, Elaine Badgley Arnoux, had a vision after coming across a pile of toilets in her apartment building’s basement; she saw our 45th president sitting on top. Fourteen artists have transformed toilets into pieces reflecting on the state of democracy as part of FLUSH: a Protest Project, exhibiting at the Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market Street, Friday and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through July 28. Herein are images by 18th Street resident Peter Linenthal, Trump Tower with Russian rubles in the bowl. Photograph: Peter Linenthal

Sonic’s Gigabit Fiber Internet is a fiber-to-the-premise internet connection; the company provides fiber all the way to the house, thereby endowing it with faster download and upload speeds. When installers arrive at a residence they access the nearest utility pole holding the terminal that distributes fiber, from which they pull fiber using an aerial drop. They hook that up to the home’s optical network terminal and use existing ethernet infrastructure to attach the ONT to the residential gateway to begin providing internet and WiFi service. Once that’s complete, the installation crew goes to the local convergence point to connect the home to the backbone fiber network. Sonic operates its internet service in more than 125 California cities and continues to grow. The company markets itself as a more honest and transparent alternative to Comcast and AT&T. Chief Executive Officer Dane Jasper supports net neutrality, a controversial regulation that mandates that the internet operate at equal speeds for content providers regardless

Growing up in San Francisco can provide wider opportunities and exposure to culture, but it’s not without challenges to parents, particularly when it comes to navigating housing, child care and schools. The trend over the past 40 years has been for families to leave San Francisco when children reach school age. A mere 18 percent of households consist of families, almost half the proportion than average for America’s dozen largest cities, a figure that hasn’t changed much in generations. According to a 2017 San Francisco Planning Department brief, Housing for Families with Children, East Bay counties have double the percentage of households with children relative to the City. Among Bay Area counties, Marin has the next fewest after San Francisco, with 11 percent more than the City. Whether Millennials keep with past trends is yet to be determined. According to Lisa Nowell, director of the

play space, Recess, on Carolina Street, about one-quarter of her 200 members have moved out of San Francisco in the past six months, a typical turnover rate during the business’ 10-year history. Whether parents should stay or leave the City is a top subject on the San Francisco Mom’s Blog, according to Managing Editor Rebecca Lang. “It’s an expensive city for housing. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen personally. A lot of my friends get pushed out because they couldn’t afford a big enough place to raise a family,” she said. “The second challenge is probably schooling. The school lottery system just scares everyone and throws everyone for a loop and if you are not doing public school, private school gets expensive.” Allison Poon grew up in San Francisco schools; her husband is a public school teacher in Oakland. They want public schools as an option for their three children. Before entering San Francisco’s school lottery she looked FAMILIES continues on page 13


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