Shooting Shot Causes Controversy
Where's the evidence?: Peter Jamison writes, "The trickier question is whether [Alex] Welsh made the right decision — choosing to use a photograph of the gunned-down Bennett to advance his career, but not to advance police officers' efforts to solve Bennett's murder" ["Lowering the Shield," Sucka Free City, 3/3].
How exactly would a photograph of a police officer giving CPR solve a murder? If Jamison can't answer that question, then he has no business making these types of comments in a public forum. As a photographer myself, I know this digital age makes our reputations quite easily accessible, and for an issue like this, sentences like that only give the people who are ignorant about photojournalism further kindling to burn a person's name.
Mustafah Abdulaziz
Philadelphia
Peter Jamison responds: We don't know the evidentiary value of Alex Welsh's photographs and observations on the day of Bennett's murder — and neither does anybody else, besides Welsh and those in whom he has confided. San Francisco police officers sought to obtain his images, believing they would help lead to Bennett's killer, and Welsh refused. Whatever you think of that decision, his unwillingness to cooperate in the murder investigation is a plain fact.
Blood on the shield: Judith Miller of The New York Times was the last celebrated "shieldee" and, actually, I am more sympathetic to her case (although she has much more blood on her hands than the artist in this story does, if he has any).
But having sought the very publicity that [Welsh] invoked the Shield Law to avoid — can there be any justification? And what happens if the murderer strikes again? How could [Welsh] live with himself?
MarkC
Web comment
Transportation Hubbub
Ticket to deride: I know people love to deride the Central Subway ["The Subway to Nowhere," Benjamin Wachs, Sucka Free City, 3/10], but maybe that's because they personally would never ride it. But believe me, a lot of people will — I'll be riding it all the time when it's built.
I live in the eastern neighborhoods, and it's tough to get downtown and even tougher to get to North Beach and Chinatown. This is a great — albeit very expensive — project that will really enhance transit connections for people living in the eastern neighborhoods and in Chinatown/North Beach.
Last night, I sat on the N-Judah from Caltrain for 35 minutes, waiting for it to enter the underground tunnel at Folsom. And I've sat on the 10-Townsend bus as it crawled along a single block of Second Street for 15 minutes in rush-hour traffic.
There are miles of underground tunnels that take people from the southern and western parts of San Francisco to downtown. It's time it got easier to go north to south, too.
Evan Goldin
San Francisco
Are you following this?: For the love of God, for once, can we just get the transportation we need first, something actually useful to a huge number of San Franciscans?
This should be the plan: Muni underground from Van Ness Station north under Van Ness, stopping at McAllister, Geary, California, Broadway, and Chestnut. The line continues under Chestnut to serve the Marina all the way to the Presidio (with a couple of stops en route) to serve the Palace of Fine Arts and Crissy Field. A second line from the Chestnut/Van Ness station runs east under Bay Street, serving the wharf all the way to Pier 33. After this is done, run the "subway to nowhere" to connect to Bay. Then we've got something.
The Van Ness bus lane? Forget it. Leave Van Ness to cars and trucks and get the public transport underground.
Often Aghast
Web comment
