Something From Nothing

I was sitting in Union Square last weekend drinking coffee, reading a copy of the Street Sheet and thinking to myself, "oooh la-la," when I got an unexpected call from my Aunt, who with my Uncle was in town for the night to see Steely Dan. They were totally lost trying to find their way to their hotel off the square. "Hey, alright," I thought to myself as I headed off toward the Barbary Coast Trail (Maiden Lane) to connect with the 'F' streetcar on Market Street and meet them at the Ferry Building.

Street Sheet is sold for $1 as an alternative to panhandling

I'd given up trying to find more folks to talk to that could give some balance to this Tonga thing, especially since I wasn't really up for scaling Nob Hill and I'm quite frankly sick of tiki and rum. I'd decided that I was going to shift and take care of this crime story, but wandering around trying to think of ideas really wasn't doing me any good.

Mayor Gavin Newsom talks to reporters about, among other things, his Market Street plan

I'm such a lucky guy, though. One weekend I come across Barack Obama's motorcade and on another I'm stumbling upon this fella on Market Street talking about this completely preposterous (and decades-old) plan to close Market Street to all traffic, including eventually the 30 or 40-something MUNI lines that use it. The way he described this plan (including tables, chairs and benches in what was once the street) made it sound like this was one of those classic 2 a.m. rays of brilliance. I started to wonder if thoughtcrime was something I could hinge my next story on.

This detour, of course, made me late to meet my Aunt and Uncle but eventually I got there. It was okay that I was late because they went from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Ferry Building by way of Noe Valley and arrived 15 minutes after me. Over dinner, we talked about this reporting class I'm in, the story about Tonga and me trying to find street crime in Russian Hill.

The median home price in this section of Russian Hill is roughly $1.5 million.

I told my Aunt and Uncle about the mayor and how I took a bunch of pictures. My Uncle thought the Market Street plan sounded a little silly too. He told me about this (also decades-old) plan to close a huge section of my home town's main drag and "reunite the square," making a really nice promenade for pedestrians but I guess they can't get that passed because the city's transit operators won't have it–I think that city has something like 14 bus lines.

It was suggested that I just strong-arm someone then write about it, but for some reason that idea still isn't sitting right with me. What did more sensibly come up though were those "no valuables inside" signs everyone has on their cars in the neighborhood, especially in Russian Hill. It seems that such a well-to-do neighborhood would have equally well-to-do cars with all sorts of valuables inside to steal so it's a hot spot for vehicle break-ins, which is definitely a starting point.

After dinner, we parked and hiked back to their hotel, yadda-yadda-yadda, I taught them how to hail a cab, and they were off to the show.

So the evening was productive and ended up being a lot of fun. I put the profile to bed, thought for a few minutes about the crime story, pictured a Market Street that looked something like Van Gogh's "Café At Night" only with more tables and protesters, had a nice dinner that I wasn't expecting and even got a new pair of jeans and another coffee.

Good times.