INSIDE
Nonprofit Aids Homeless Pg. 2
AUGUST 2019
Southside Parks Grapple with Waste Pg. 3
Food: Besharam Relaunch Pg. 4
Community Calendar Pg. 6
Have you seen The View’s NEW Ad Format? Pg. 10
Serving the Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Mission Bay and SOMA Neighborhoods Since 1970
BY STEVEN J. MOSS
The View turns 49 years old this month. It’s an astonishing accomplishment: almost 600 issues produced, perhaps 15,000 pages, by an un- or poorly paid crew dedicated to civic journalism. By all accounts the monthly is a beloved community institution, a colorful, informative, thread in the fabric of our neighborhoods. It’s a place – now pretty much the only place – where children can see their photographs and accomplishments printed on paper suitable as a keepsake; in which such essential topics as the loss of parking spaces, the unknown fame of a neighbor, and impending changes to parks and schools, among other subjects, are regularly covered. The paper wouldn’t exist today except for the willingness of its staff to volunteer much of their efforts, and the steadfast support of a double-handful of awesome advertisers, The Good Life Grocery and Compass realtor Tim Johnson, chief among them. Zephyr realtors Melinda Lee, Susan Olk, Wendy Watkins and Wes Freas, Sotheby’s realtor Mary Lace, St. Teresa of Avila Church, Rickshaw Bagworks, Kaiser Permanente, Scheffel Foundation, and Farley’s have been essential patrons. And the paper would be less robust without ads placed by Frames on 3rd, Hazel’s Kitchen, Museum of Craft and Design, Crowded Fire Theater, NOVY, Compass realtor Claudia Siegel, Primi Residential Mortgage, Inc., and Centered Body Pilates, Pilates among others. View staff are dedicated to keeping the paper alive and healthy until at least our 50th anniversary, August 2020. Whether or not we live on to celebrate our 51st birthday, or hold a funeral next year, is up to you. Over the past half-decade there’s been a steady decline in advertising revenue, forcing the View to shrink from a peak of 40 pages a month to as few as a barely viable one-dozen. The publication is far from alone in grappling with drastic reductions in its income; every newspaper in the country faces the same sour challenge, apart perhaps from such heavy hitters as The New York Times and
Kids’ Photo Contest: Four-way Tie! Pg. 11
FREE
Wall Street Journal. Like respectful civic engagement and healthy eco-systems, journalism, at least of the kind practiced throughout the 20th Century, is an endangered species. A robust View, with an average of 24-pages a month, and modestly paid writers, editors, and production personnel, costs roughly $215,000 a year, or the equivalent in volunteer labor, to maintain. Our current advertisers, subscribers, helpers and supporters contribute roughly half that amount, in cash or in-kind. We need your assistance to secure the rest and are quite open to creative ideas on how to do so. Direct donations – which are tax deductible if made th rough SF Com mu nity Power – are certainly welcome. So too are innovative collaborations – perhaps a business or nonprofit could sponsor all or part of a monthly issue – community ownership ideas – such as selling shares in the View – assistance with marketing and fundraisers, and volunteering to write, photograph, or edit. We welcome all assistance and advice as to how the paper can reestablish its financial sustainability and continue to serve our neighborhoods for a long time to come. Or at least into the next U.S. president’s first term. It’s possible that the View has achieved its purpose, fulfilled the dreams of its 1970s-era founders to contribute to community cohesiveness and offer engaging, actionable, information to an oft-neglected part of the City. Maybe social media, and the San Francisco Chronicle, assuming it continues to exist into the future, are enough now. I’m guessing, though, that if next September View readers wander to their favorite distribution spot and the paper isn’t there, never to return, it will be felt as a profound, and unnecessary, loss. Please do what you can to help, in whatever form that takes: 1459 18th Street, Number 214, San Francisco, California 94107, editor@potreroview.net, 415.643.9578.
Efforts Continue to Improve Mission Bay Mobility in the Face of New Demands BY BETTINA COHEN
More than 18,000 fans will attend each of ten concerts taking place in September at Chase Center, the gleaming new sports and entertainment complex located near the Bay’s edge. Given limited parking, City officials hope that patrons streaming in from around the San Francisco Bay Area will mostly rely on public transportation to get to their seats. The Golden State Warriors (GSW) have invested $29 million upfront in municipal transportation and infrastructure improvements to expand public transit access to the Chase Center.
Additionally, $14 million will go to transit improvements and infrastructure for the neighborhood — annually — that will include Parking Control Officers (PCOs) at key intersections to keep traffic modes flowing during game days and large events.. “Public transportation is our mantra,” said GSW spokesperson PJ Johnston. With 950 underground parking spaces onsite, and 2,000 on streets or in garages within a 10-minute walking radius, he noted, “Driving is not going to be the easiest way to travel that last mile to the Chase Center.” To better move large crowds, the San Francisco Municipal Transporta-
tion Authority (SFMTA) has upgraded the T-Third Muni Metro line platform that’s directly across Third Street from the Chase Center. A center island boarding stage now extends from 16th Street north to Warriors Way – formerly South Street, a single block that connects Third and Terry Francois Boulevard – replacing separate inand outbound platforms that’ve been demolished. The upgraded platform enables four, two-car trains to load simultaneously, and allows trains to depart inbound from both sides, carrying riders to Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, the Fourth and King Caltrain station, and, eventually, the Central
Subway. Additional streetcars will be staged on the Mission Bay Loop located at Illinois between 18th and 19th streets, once it’s completed next month. The Central Subway, which was supposed to be operational in 2018, could open at the end of this year, or even later, possibly not until the spring of 2020, according to SFMTA’s Project Monitoring Oversight Committee report. The report cited a breakdown in the relationship between SFMTA and Tutor Perini Corporation, the contractor building the subway; possible cost overruns; groundwater leaks TRANSPORTATION continues on page 8