Subject: California Department of Transportation

• Person Struck and Killed by Caltrain Sunday

  March 24, 2008

• SF Weekly Ticket Giveaway: KPFA Crafts & Music Fair

  Attention all you artsy-crafty All Shook Downers and mid-December X-mas shoppers: We've got four pairs of tickets to the KPFA (94.1 FM) Crafts and Music Fair at the Concourse for either Dec.13 or 14 (one day, your choice). Here are some cut-and-paste details (click the above link for more): "Discover more than 200 of America's finest artisans and artists exhibiting original, handcrafted work at the largest juried holiday crafts fair in Northern California. Arrive via complimentary shuttles f

  December 12, 2008

• Penzeys Now in Bay Area

  Some of Penzeys' spices are sufficiently superior that they're worth the extra trouble.

  February 4, 2009

• Trainiquette

  A commuter's demands from Caltrain.

  March 25, 2009

• Transit Spotting

  A transportation activist points to inefficient and costly projects like the Central Subway.

  March 25, 2009

• SF Weekly Letters

  January 7, 2009

• Become a San Francisco Dog Poop Detective

  September 10, 2008

• Caltrain allows drinks - see seat stains for proof

  July 2, 2008

• Free Parking for Sale

  Many say homeless guys who help commuters find street parking provide a valuable service. But others complain that they cause trouble.

  April 2, 2008

• Chron Watch's #1 Star - Caltrans Director Bijan Sartipi

  February 20, 2008

• South Food & Wine Bar's Australian Food Overthought, Overwrought

  Mixed messages from the first outpost of contemporary Aussie cooking in S.F.

  January 9, 2008

• SF Weekly Letters

  December 5, 2007

• Bones of Discontent - Andrew Galvan carves a unique, controversial role in relocating Native American skeletons

  November 21, 2007

• Spinning Our Wheels

  The summer has brought a bevy of frustrations, delays, and smoggy afternoons to Bay Area drivers. Do you manage to look the other way?

  August 16, 2006

• Letters to the Editor

  Week of Wednesday, March 15, 2006

  March 15, 2006

• Missed Connection

  The multiuse Transbay Terminal project may have shrunk into a really expensive bus station

  March 8, 2006

• Clang, Clang, Clang Went the New Subway

  The billion-dollar Central Subway transportation plan may collapse under its own expanding weight

  February 1, 2006

• The Deep Divide

  A San Francisco pizza that's geared to the discerning hipster palate

  September 21, 2005

• A Bridge Too Far

  Is it your fault that the seismic retrofit of the Bay Bridge will be years late, billions over budget, and uglier than ever? Maybe.

  January 26, 2005

• Got MLK?

  A day to remember

  January 12, 2005

• Weekly Obsessions

  Our new column goes from H. Brown's drinking to Halo 2. And beyond.

  November 17, 2004

• A Bridge Too Weak?

  A UC Berkeley professor believes the unique new Bay Bridge design is fatally flawed

  March 17, 2004

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  January 14, 2004

• Ghost Story

  A new Christmas Carol chorus

  November 26, 2003

• Butterfat on Wheels

  A rolling ice cream social

  August 13, 2003

• Longitudes and latitudes

  Asian directions in sound; heavenly lawlessness.

  March 6, 2002

• Letters to the Editor

  Letters from April 4, 2001

  April 4, 2001

• Sweat, Steel, and Stealth

  Retrofitting the Bay Bridge will take five years, hundreds of workers, a million bolts, and 19 million pounds of iron. The hardest part? Making sure no one notices.

  March 21, 2001

• Dog Bites

  Board of Supervisors; Population Growth; Dot-com Layoffs

  January 10, 2001

• Best City Transportation Improvement

  Valencia Street Bike Lane

  May 17, 2000

• Recurring Dream

  January 13, 1999

• Letters

  October 15, 1997

• Letters

  April 30, 1997

• The Grid

  April 16, 1997

• Letters

  December 13, 1995

• Clockers

  Residents of a downtown loft tell you where to get off

  November 29, 1995

• Web Extra — Bonus Best Of

  May 20, 2009

• Again? Gunn High School Students' Moth-Like Attraction to Caltrain Tracks Has Grown Surreal

  We're living through the "interesting times" of the apocryphal malevolent Chinese proverb when folks' first reaction to hearing that Caltrain plans on raising fees while cutting services is "thank God!" The fewer trains running on the tracks, the fewer Gunn High students can end their brief lives beneath Caltrain's steel wheels. The propensity of the Palo Alto school's students to induce what the French innocuously call "accidents of person" shifted from tragic to bizarre last night when onlooke

  June 5, 2009

• SF Weekly Letters

  June 17, 2009

• Upscale Italian Deli Expected to Open in SOMA Next Month

  ​An Italian deli and food market with upscale aspirations is slated to open on Townsend near Caltrain early next month. Starting August 10, D'Urso Italian Delicatessen (236 Townsend at Fourth St.) will serve up breakfast and lunch sandwiches featuring a mix of imported and domestic meats and cheeses. There'll be soups and salads made in house, as well as organic coffee and breakfast pastries baked on site. It's a first venture for owner Joe D'Urso, who told SFoodie he grew up in an East

  July 30, 2009

• Obama's stimulus money will increase traffic, but not bridge safety

  September 16, 2009

• Iron Cactus Taqueria Plans to Open Next Week Near Caltrain

  Once it starts spinning, you should probably grab your train.​An update on Iron Cactus (683 Fourth St. at Townsend), the SOMA taqueria adjacent to The Creamery (and from the same owners): The revised opening date is next Wednesday, Oct. 21. Iron Cactus' wagonwheel logo, an interior of repurposed timber from the old Gilt Edge Creamery that once occupied the space, and salvaged hacienda doors -- all point to a taqueria thick with rustic atmo, and a straightforward menu of Missionesque dimens

  October 15, 2009

• Whatever Happened to the Safeway Food That Spilled Onto the Bay Bridge? You May Be Eating It.

  truckspills.comIt's an amusing photo, but, technically, when food falls off the back of a truck, the general public has no right to purloin it​It turns out that the can of vegetables you serve for dinner in the near future may have a more interesting story to tell than you do. You've probably read about the Safeway truck that sped through the Bay Bridge's new "S-curve," lost it, and dumped foodstuffs along the roadway. Clearing up vittles -- and the capsized truck -- closed four of the bridge'

  October 16, 2009

• Today Only: Show Your BART Ticket, and Score a Busted Bay Bridge Dog from Zog's

  M. BrodySomething tells us they'll run out long before the bridge reopens.​So maybe Caltrans rushed it a little with that Labor Day fix. Forced onto BART with the teeming hordes? Emerge from your sardine can at Montgomery station, walk over to the little yellow stand huddled near the One Post Street building, and claim your prize. Until they run out, Zog's Dogs will be giving away a free Bay Bridge Dog -- broken in half! -- to anyone who shows a BART ticket. (Print out a coupon from the We

  October 28, 2009

• Engineer: High Winds a Credible -- But Shocking -- Explanation For Bay Bridge Failure

  ​Jack Moehle -- a U.C. Berkeley engineering professor and one of the Bay Area's acknowledged experts on freeway and bridge failure -- said that Caltrans' initial claims that high winds contributed to yesterday's rupture on the Bay Bridge is "a credible explanation." Still, he's taken aback that the failure occurred just weeks after the installation of the parts in question. "Wind can result in resonance of a cable or rod, which can amplify stresses," wrote Moehle in an e-mail. "Normally, this

  October 28, 2009

• It's Your Friday Morning News Quiz!

  Happier times. Faster, too.​ Bridge! Bridge! More Bridge! Troubled bridge over water! Didja hear about the bridge? Sigh. Take a news quiz. 1. The city of San Francisco agreed to cough up $250,000 regarding a lawsuit stemming from a 2005 spill in which perhaps 54,000 gallons of what was leaked into the ground, sewers, and Bay?A. SewageB. PesticideC. ChlorineD. Gasoline2. A math professor told SF Weekly that the odds of the letters I F-U-C-K Y-O-U randomly appearing at the start of seven lines i

  October 30, 2009

• No One Has Driven Off Bay Bridge Today (Yet)

  A less problematic S-Curve​Following yesterday's terrifying plunge off the Bay Bridge by a speeding trucker, Caltrans wheeled out the surplus signage to inform drivers of what should have been all too obvious: The posted speed limit on the bridge isn't just a suggestion. Your humble narrator personally witnessed a bevy of electric signs that would have brought joy to the hearts of backers of Prop. D. Heading back to San Francisco at around 11 p.m. yesterday, at least three different flashing w

  November 10, 2009

• Drivers Still Going Too Fast On Bay Bridge? How About Putting Up Risqué Billboards?

  You can't see her if you don't survive the trip -- it's an incentive!​Over the past week it has evolved into something of a parlor game to come up with novel methods for making people drive at safe velocities on the Bay Bridge's precarious new S-Curve. We suggested stark signage noting that the penalty for speeding could be death: "Speed Limit 40 -- Or You Might Die." But why focus on death and destruction? Why not, instead, celebrate our sex-positive Bay Area culture by installing racy billbo

  November 12, 2009

• List: Bridging the safety gap

  November 18, 2009

• Could Discovery of 'Extinct' Plant Toss Monkey Wrench Into Doyle Drive Rebuild?

  © California Academy of SciencesThe Franciscan Manzanita​The other day we reported on the apparent discovery of a Franciscan Manzanita in the Presidio -- the first wild specimen of the native San Franciscan plant spotted since 1947. But, in a development that appears to be ironic -- without any mention of diabetics being flattened by insulin trucks -- the manzanita is smackdab in the middle of the planned route for the billion-dollar Doyle Drive redesign.  According to Al Donner, an assi

  November 19, 2009