I'm a lasagna boy!

In which bad news for BART means good news for downtown hotels

If you cannot stand the commute without BART, the agency helpfully suggests spending the night in a downtown hotel.
... I imagined that they would publicise Casual Carpool a little more. At least the agency mentions it, and will provide space at its parking lots for carpools to meet. They also suggest taking a vacation.

In which we work on our manners

After visiting the same café more or less every morning for the past nine years (wow! that is how long I have been in San Francisco -- !), I expect that the person behind the counter knows, if not my name, what I drink. So far so good: I walk in, and the nice Italian woman, the always-sleepy-but-very-cheerful German woman, the pleasantly-tweaked tattoed man, and the indie-rock chick all know that I put back a double espresso with hot water, and the mug I prefer to drink from. And they always say "Good morning" and "How are you" or even, simply, "Hello". But this morning I say "Thank you" to the woman with the weird mouth, and she says, briefly, "Yeah." A response that is unexpected and jarring, if not rude. Compounded with her blank stare when I said "Good morning", I felt more intensely disrespected than when I hear "No problem" in response to a polite, straightforward "Thank you". After I greeted her I paused, so that she could say something in return -- she had been bantering with the previous customer -- but she simply stood and stared expectantly. Perhaps I smelled bad? But no: a moment later the man who had been sleeping in the doorway across the street walked in, after emptying out his piss-bottle onto the kerb, and she handed him a cup of coffee. I must smell bad and have another offensive trait. From now on when I see this woman, I will experiment: no cursory dollar bill stuffed into the solicitous cup on the counter, no expectation that she knows my drink, no idle chit-chat. Or I might turn around and walk to the shop down the street. Or I might learn to make coffee for myself at home.

The calculus of manners often breaks down in this spectacularly complex and rushed world. I sat down at the airport lounge, and the man next to me leaned over and said, "Hey, are you a football fan?", to which I answered, "No" and wondered "Is it football season?" because all I have on my mind right now is the end of Wimbledon and the beginning of the Tour de France. The man continued: "Well, one of the greatest players in the NFL is over there right now. Curtis Martin."
And I started: I attended high school with Curt, and we sat through electonics shop (three periods! every day!) together, often watching his tapes from the previou day's game in the A/V lab (Yes, I was an A/V geek. Big surprise.) He set rushing records throughout high school, then at University, and has become an icon in American football: an elegant, talented football player. I went up to him, nervous for interrupting his privacy but very excited, because -- well, because he is a great guy. And he is: when I said my name, his face lit up and he said, "Yes, from Mr Karsin's class!".

In which we are on track for safety

Despite the appeal for common sense on the Houston Metro web site, the light rail in Houston has acquired the unwelcome nickname "Wham-bam tram!" (and accompanying Dashboard widget). Didn't Barcelona suffer through something similar on the recent expansion of their surface-tram system into the suburbs?

In which the whole is less than the sum of its parts

An interesting counterpoint to the "If you build it, they will come" school of mass-transit development is the BART to SFO extension. Much anticipated, this BART extension has yielded disappointing ridership

Its impact has been more than low ridership or lower-than-expected revenue for San Mateo County: commuters who relied on SamTrans, which cut bus service from the Peninsula to San Francisco International Airport, now find that they pay higher prices for less-frequent service. One cannot obtain a weekly or monthly pass for BART, either, unlike with SamTrans. Thus concession and airline employees commuting to the airport to work found themselves paying more for services not necessarily convenient for them.

Also, who is number one?

Ironically, one reason the SFO/Millbrae extension is struggling could be competition from Caltrain, which SamTrans also helps to finance. A year ago, Caltrain began running Baby Bullet trains between San Jose and San Francisco, making far fewer stops along the way. Since then, Caltrain weekday ridership is up more than 12 percent.

But that's a healthy trend for the two rail systems rather than a discouraging one, said Mark Simon, special assistant to SamTrans CEO Michael Scanlon.

"They complement one another," he said. "They give people more options to get out of their car."

He said the only reason people are disappointed with BART ridership is those old projections, which were made at the height of the economic boom. Ridership at the stations from Colma south is up 8.4 percent from the first quarter of 2004.

"Any other system, if it was sustaining annual growth of more than 8 percent, that would be hugely successful," Simon said.

Still, because of the Baby Bullets and because all Millbrae BART trains go through SFO, Caltrain riders now can get to many areas of downtown San Francisco slightly faster and for less money by staying on the train instead of switching to BART in Millbrae. Many BART projections have assumed that lots of Caltrain riders would switch in Millbrae, but it isn't happening.

BART's spokesman is named Linton Johnson.

Notes from Undergound / The Double

I began reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella "The Double", and, like many of the secondary characters, I find myself bewildered. The edition I have (one of the Penguin Classics series) feels a little heavy in the rendering, but frankly Dostoevsky's prose obscures his tale of a man possessed by madness (if that is, in fact, what transpires). I'm going to go back to Tolstoy's "Master and Man" for my next Russian novella, and then to Mikhail Lermontov's "A Hero For Our Time" or Nikolai Gogol's short stories.

In which number one takes a break

BART workers are threatening a strike next week, which would throw Bay Area transit into utter disarray -- trebling commute times and creating incapacitating gridlock -- according to a BART-commissioned UC Berkeley study (original in PDF format). One of the assumptions: that the 155,000 riders who take the the Transbay Tube each rush hour would instead create instant gridlock by hopping into their cars and slugging it out over surface streets at 9 mph.

Lest I forget: BART is still proud to be the "number-one transit system" in this country (between the horus of 0600 and 0000, 0800 and 1100 Sundays and holidays).

In which I am a pain in the arse, Or, piffle

Think about everything I eat, and consider its origin.

1. eat nothing from a plastic bag
2. eat nothing containing corn syrup, high [-] fructose corn syrup
3. eat nothing from GMO fruit, grain, or meat
4. eat no meat that is not organic
5. eat greens every day
6. eat no fish caught by a net

In which we creatively interpret the use of land

The houses of David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens have been demolished to create the Institute for Creative Land Use Interpretation.

... I was working on something witty, but Aram (and probably others) have beat me to it.

In which I get no forrarder

After a few recent trips by 'plane, I have re-(re-)read much of Dorothy Sayers' oeuvre featuring the monocled 'tec Lord Peter Wimsey. Much to my chagrin, I found myself feeling much like this rabbity protagonist when I found my carefully-arranged bottles of port all upended and cleaned, just as in the scene from her stage-play Busman's Honeymoon in which the provincial charwoman Mrs Rundle does ditto damage to His Lordship's carefully-swaddled bottles. My case was perhaps less severe, but also hilarious.

"Never you mind that, Mr. Bunter. I'll soon 'ave them bottles clean." "Bottles?" said Bunter. "What bottles?" A frightful suspicion shot through his brain. "What have you got there?" "Why," said Mrs. Ruddle, "one o' them dirty old bottles you brought along with you." She displayed her booty in triumph. "Sech a state they're in. All over whitewash." Bunter's world reeled about him and he clutched at the corner of the settle. "My God!" "You couldn't put a thing like that on the table, could you now?" "Woman!" cried Bunter, and snatched the bottle from her, "that's the Cockburn '96!" "Ow, is it?" said Mrs. Ruddle, mystified. "There now! I thought it was summink to drink." ... "You have not, I trust, handled any of the other bottles?" "Only to unpack 'em and set 'em right side up," Mrs. Ruddle assured him cheerfully. "Them cases'll come in 'andy for kindling."

Dorothy Sayers novels make excellent, and riveting, reading. Interspersed with quotations from the classics, endless piffle, and quaint, feudal Old England ('though they take place Between The Wars), the mysteries rise far beyond the stereotypes of the genre while maintaining the classic whodunit form. Almost all are murder mysteries, excepting perhaps "The Nine Tailors", which is a stupendously beautiful book. And people do die, perhaps outside the scope of the narrative, but the novel is more of a study in character than a murder-mystery.

In which Mr Bolsinga throws a 'wild party'

I love police-blotter writing, especially in very local 'papers:

Bay to Breakers Melee, 1900 block Fell Sunday, May 15, 12:29 p.m. A Bay to Breakers party got out of hand when some uninvited partygoers joined the party and started to spray the real guests with beer. A verbal argument quickly escalated into a violent melee with the host getting hit with a beer bottle on top of his head causing a severe laceration, which required sutures and hospitalization. The good quests chased away the villains who attempted to out run our very busy day watch Officers. The Officers caught the assault suspects in the panhandle and several eyewitnesses made the old positive eyeball identification. The suspects went to jail for felony assault, conspiracy, malicious mischief, and violation of their felony probation. Now that's what you call a wild party.

This refers, of course, to the misadventure of Greg after Bay to Breakers '05. The miscreants pleaded guilty, and the primary assailant received six months in pokey, while the abettor is on probation. Greg was happy, and we were all duly impressed with the workings of the great wheels of justice.

In which we preserve the environment for innovation

This afternoon I attended a talk by Wendy Seltzer of Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chilling Effects Clearinghouse fame. She spoke about endangered gizmos and other abjecta of intellectual-property law; about cease-and-desists notices, which are archived and available for analysis through Chilling Effects; about the anti-technology tendency of US law (well, she did not phrase it like that, but that is what I heard); and about brand dilution, or why I cannot, for example, sell Intel-branded chewing gum, or Levi-Strauss-branded microprocessors ... unless I move to Italy.
She did not explicitly discuss today's SCOTUS decision against Grokster.

In which I do not take our resources for granted

Thanks to a hookup from the CTA (akahttp://keepchicagolandmoving.com/), I received a neatly-rolled package of posters bearing images of an apple, a plastsic water bottle, a gas-pump, and a CTA train, with the legend "Let's not take our resources for granted." Very nice. I am sending a copy to my Supervisor, Mr Ross Mirkarimi, with the intention that he use it to better understand how to push San Francisco's transit-first agenda.

In which I pick a fight with a five-year-old

At a café this afternoon (free wireless, my arse. That's the last time I get a crappy 32-oz Turbo Coffee) I was sitting quietly minding my own bizness when a warm, wet something thwacked most unpleasantly against the back of my neck. I turned to see two five-year-olds laughing hysterically at the moist banana peel that formed a collar at my nape. Worse, I saw their parents-or-guardians holding their collective sides and laughing. I maturely resisted the impulse to upturn the remnants of the massive iced coffee onto the stupidly laughing father, and instead turned th' other cheek. Mis-guided, for I imagine that some day these children will be seated before the big red button that leads to disaster, and will moronically push it.
I cannot believe I walked away, but, really, what's the point of having an argument or a fight? Stupid parents beget stupider children, unto the seventh generation.

A Man in Full

I read Tom Wolfe's gripping and lengthy American panorama, A Man in Full, without learning any new vocabulary. (Although, through Kunstler's review of Wolfe's latest, I did learn the appropriately vivid egestive. Now why ca'n't Kunstler afford a proof-reader, or at least some software that has a spell-check function?) A Man in Full's crafty sub-plot with Epictetus itself elevates the novel to approximately the level of John Grisham, which is to say, not very high. And Grisham does courtoom and big-ego drama much more effectively than does Wolfe. In comparison with Wolfe, Grisham wins, hands-down. Whom would you rather take on a plane trip? Oh, Grisham, I reckon. Both writers have a horrible way with plot, but Grisham at least has his characters utter believable conversations. And Grisham writes about place and character in a way that feel real. But surely you are aware of Mr Wolfe's long contributions to American culture, and his witty skewering of everything from architecture to corporate America? Yes, and I figure that Grisham does ditto without actually setting out to write his novels with such a pretentious checklist.

Wolfe is very proud of the quality of "reporting" that he brings to his work, subverting the assumption that the novelist should write what he (sic) knows. In this, Truman Capote out-does him. Wolfe just ca'n't win, except, perhaps, on the sartorial front.