News
screen_shot_2012-11-07_at_6.58.07_pm.png

How a Sandy-Type Storm Could Short-Circuit Silicon Valley

11.07.2012
|
By

By Laird Harrison, KQED News Fix
First the good news: The Bay Area has plans in place for a storm as big and bad as Sandy. Now the bad news: Planning is about as far as it goes. We haven’t built new levees or seawalls, moved electrical equipment higher up, or relocated much of anything out of the flood plain. So if you’d like to know how a storm like Sandy would affect the Bay Area, just look at New York, New Jersey and the other mid-Atlantic states that may be struggling to rebuild for years to come. Not only could tens of thousands lose their homes, businesses could close, said Jeffrey Mount, a geology professor and founding director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, speaking on KQED’s Forum Wednesday. “Think Oracle, Cisco, Intuit, Lockheed Martin, Google, Facebook – suddenly they find themselves out of business.”

News
treasure_island_4.jpg

Treasure Island Sites Called Safe From Radiation

10.25.2012
|
By

By Katharine  Mieszkowski and Matt Smith, Bay Citizen
State health officials have declared day care and youth centers, ballfields, some residential backyards and other sites on Treasure Island safe from radiation in response to fears about the area’s nuclear past. The surveys taken from 24 publically accessible locations were not part of the Navy’s scheduled cleanup program, but were prompted by public concern about exposure to radioactivity on the former Treasure Island Naval Station. Health department technicians found negligible levels of radiation posing no health threat at those locations, according to California Department of Public Health reports produced in response to a Bay Citizen public records request. But that doesn’t mean the former base is ready for a proposed 20,000-resident community approved this year by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. At cordoned off areas around the island, the cleanup of contamination continues in and around areas slated for future construction.

News
clippercard03_james_web.jpg

Clipper Cards Reveal Travelers’ Whereabouts to Cops, Lawyers, Apps

10.17.2012
|
By

By Zusha Elinson,  Bay Citizen
San Francisco police arrested Marcel Largaespada on April 30 after a gunpoint robbery at a Lombard Street business, but they couldn’t catch his alleged accomplice, Alan McCahill. McCahill gave officers the slip, investigators believed, by hopping on a Muni bus. He was caught days later. To try to place McCahill at the scene, prosecutors subpoenaed the information from his Clipper card, which they believed he’d used to pay his bus fare. The request for McCahill’s travel record was one of the rare occasions that police or lawyers have sought to use the Clipper card database to track the whereabouts of a cardholder.

News
6919615105_2e1f289065_b.jpg

Juvenile Detainees Can Get Time Outdoors But Most Like Staying Inside

10.04.2012
|
By

By Trey Bundy, Bay Citizen
Boys and girls confined in San Francisco’s juvenile hall might rather be elsewhere, but most aren’t in a hurry to go outside. That is according to an anonymous survey of detainees at the city’s Juvenile Justice Center, where almost two-thirds of the young offenders said they don’t like outdoor recreation. Of the survey’s 53 respondents, only 10 said they participated in outdoor exercise every day. When they did participate, nearly a third reported spending less than an hour outside. Read the complete story at Bay Citizen.

News
bicyclists16_adi_web.jpg

S.F.’s Most Dangerous Intersection Was Paved With Good Intentions

10.03.2012
|
By

By Zusha Elinson, Bay Citizen
Hayes Valley was best known for the hooker haven beneath the Central Freeway when Greg Foss moved to the San Francisco neighborhood in 1982. The area was transformed when the city tore down the 1.2-mile double-deck structure and replaced it with Octavia Boulevard, a ground-level thoroughfare with tree-lined medians, a park and quiet side streets. Designed by noted UC Berkeley urban planning professor Allan Jacobs, it opened in 2005 to wide acclaim. But the leafy boulevard has brought its own problems. Clogged with cars rushing to get on and off Highway 101, the corner of Octavia Boulevard and Market Street has become the city’s most dangerous intersection. Read the complete story at Bay Citizen.

News

Rising Sea Levels Bring Hard Choices to California Coastal Communities

10.01.2012
|
By

While we must stop adding greenhouse gases to the global atmosphere, conservation and green technologies can no longer completely halt the impact of climate change on people, wildlife, and the lands and waters we depend on. Adapting to climate change is also necessary. This story is about creative solutions to deal with sea level rise for cities at the waters’ edge. This story is part of a media series called RISE: Climate Change and Coastal Communities by Claire Schoen Media. To see videos of all the stories in the RISE series, please visit: www.searise.org/webstories. 

News
3843960604_4c86ec5d1f_z.jpg

S.F. Police Listed Arrested Asians as ‘Chinese’

09.26.2012
|
By

By Shoshana Walter, Bay Citizen
The San Francisco Police Department, relying on antiquated computer technology, routinely recorded nearly all Asians who were arrested in the city as “Chinese” until this month, department officials said. Arrest data that included the “Chinese” numbers was released to the public and sent to law enforcement agencies for at least 10 years, contributing to a skewed understanding of who was being arrested by S.F. police. The Chinese classifications baffled Asian community leaders, who said the lack of statistics about Asian arrests has made it difficult to know where to focus scarce resources and has contributed to a stereotype of most Asian groups as “model minorities” who never commit crimes. Read the compete story at Bay Citizen.

News
2879598_300.jpeg

Leapin’ lizards — it’s Leap Year again

01.23.2012
|
By

Storifying has come to SF Public Press. From time to time, we will be gleaning the best from social media to  amplify our coverage. This is our first storification: our take on 2012, a Leap Year. We hear from the academics, the artists, the cognescenti on the Mayan apocalypse — as well as many people in the universe of social media who have expressed an opinion on this unique component of the Gregorian calendar.