I'm a lasagna boy!

In which we can't pay and we won't pay!

The organisers of a social strike against MUNI have this to say:

... over $9 million was "discovered" for Muni in late May. The SF Board of Supervisors, according to an article on BeyondChron.org, "could have stopped the 25 cent fare increase simply by restoring the parking fine and fee increased to the levels originally proposed in the MTAs budget." They didn't. And about half of the $9 million was used to reduce fees for parking and fines.

A few supervisors are friendly to the interests of working class people, but that’s not enough. It is decisive action by the riders themselves that will turn heads -- and the table.

The businesses that benefit most from Muni should pay. Downtown San Francisco, long a haven for tax evaders and enemies of people in the city, needs to pay for what it uses. Muni functions as a lifeline for those companies, bringing countless people to their service sector jobs that are generally underpaying them anyway. Corporate America's billions in revenue makes its claims of poverty ring hollow.

and Common Ground magazine says this:

... a fare hike is an attack on the jobless, carless and fixed-income poor (MUNI fares have shot up 50% in the past two years). “Studies show that raising fares and cutting services drives customers away,” notes Jeremy Nelson of Transportation for a Livable City (). A look at the scheduled cuts reveals how MUNI places corporate interests before community needs. Cutbacks have targeted cross-city routes, residential service and weekend travel while sparing the commute-hour traffic that delivers the daily workforce to the steps of the companies like Chevron, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bechtel and the Carlyle Group. “The real problem is that mass transit is a jumbo-sized free ride for the bosses and billion-dollar corporations,” Keven Keating argued in the March edition of Fault Lines, the Indymedia tabloid.

Note that the Mr Nelson quoted now works in the private sector for transit consultancy Nelson\Nygaard.

Goddammit, MUNI is raising fares again. Glad I am that I have a stash (of tokens). $1.50 from $1 in three years. This comes at a harsh time, consider the recent quarterly audit of MUNI shows that they have an appalling on-time record and no feasible plan to improve capacity or meet headway.

In which I am Salim's complete lack of surprise

A nice write-up about two ex-ess-eff messengers who started a courier service in Boise ID asks the question "What would surprise people to know about you?" Their reply? "People might find it surprising that we both ride track bikes. They are fixed-gear, one-speed bikes with no brakes."

In which I request bicycle parking at Waller and Fillmore

After seeing the bicycle rack at the south-east corner of Fillmore and Waller vandalized (probably during a theft: the bolts securing the u-rack to the concrete sidewalk were pulled completely out on one side!) and subsequently removed, I began to wonder how the city of San Francisco treats these racks.
I requested a replacement rack via the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic's Bicycle program site.
About two years ago, I placed a similar request (over the telephone: the web site had not yet appeared) when a speeding car took out the bicycle-rack outside Jack's Oak Fair Market at the corner of Oak and Scott. The replacement rack did not arrive for almost six months, but Jack was gracious enough to allow me to leave the bicycle inside while I shopped (invariably for Mexi-Snax tortilla chips, coffee ice cream, or Payday candy bars).

In which we abate mosquitoes

The San Francisco Examiner reports that the city employs six bicycle messengers as part of the mosquito-abatement efforts. The Chronicle has a simliar story, noting the name of the curiously effective pellets:

The pellets, a larvicide called Altosid, target only mosquitoes and will not disturb fish or other animals, health officials said. Cyclists will drop about 150 to 200 pellets a day and will distribute them multiple times to various catch basins throughout mosquito season, which runs through October.

In which we discover a savvy use for the ipod

William Bright put together a site where users can share transit maps designed for iPod Photo.
UPDATE:Okay, this is a little lame because it does not actually provide an interface that takes advantage of the scroll-wheel function on the iPod, but instead relies on the user to know how to manoeuvre about the city anyhow.

In praise of screenshots

change the default screenshot dump type by using a command-line:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format \
&& killall SystemUIServer

where image_format is any of png pdf jpg tiff. Pre-Tiger (10.4.x), the default was pdf; Tiger defaults to png.
You must restart the SystemUIServer to see the changes.

Screenshots are cool.