I'm a lasagna boy!

In which MUNI goes all retro

Struggling to keep up with the retro BART station in Duboce Park, MUNI puts service cuts in effect today. Truly, service cuts in addition to the second 25¢ increase in three years. Some buses are now scheduled every 30 minutes, rather than 20, in an attempt to bring actual service capacity in line with posted schedules.

Activists who have been protesting an increase to $1.50 in the Muni's general fare that began Sept. 1 strongly disagree. They argue that cutting back on service now is simply adding insult to injury.

"You will find that riders are pissed off," said Riva Enteen, who helped organize a protest in the Mission District on Thursday. "They will not pay more for less."

Muni rider Tonie Brock was at the protest to argue against changes to the 52-Excelsior line, which she said would eliminate a bus stop while creating a new one at a dangerous intersection.

"MTA," she said, referring to the Muni's parent organization, the Municipal Transportation Agency. "Misery, trauma and anguish."

everything i ate

Nico sent me a copy of TUCKER SHAW's "a year in the life of my mouth", or "everything i ate", a lavishly-photographed chronicle of last year from the menu of a Manhattan hipster. Plenty good-looking snaps of meals (well, take-out) at John's, Sammy's, the 2nd Ave Deli, and pushcart after pushcart.

Save Twilight

A volume of selected poems by Julio Cortázar, with a beautiful sepia-toned photograph as the cover illustration. One imagines the setting to be a Parisian garret.

... somewhere I have an unfortunate, never-completely-read, worn and dog-eared copy of Hopscotch, the daring English translation of Cortázar's Rayuela.

In which no-one is surprised

No-one, perhaps, except for the pot dealers. Matier and Ross go on about the new Octavia Boulevard's baffling traffic flow:

It's your typical "only in San Francisco" story, one that pits cars against bicyclists, politicians against planners -- and right-turn bans against reality.

The issue: a $26 million Central Freeway on-ramp, at the foot of the newly built Octavia Boulevard, that you can't turn onto from the city's main drag, Market Street.

It took 14 years of debate, three ballot measures and a dozen designs before Caltrans crews set to work demolishing the earthquake-damaged Central Freeway and turning Octavia into a $62 million, tree-lined boulevard.

Once work got started, bicyclists -- a potent force in city politics -- took aim at what they saw as a menace to the two-wheel crowd. That menace was the plan to let cars make a right turn off Market, across the most heavily used bike lane in the city, onto the new on-ramp.

City traffic officials didn't buy into their demand for a right-turn ban. So the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and others took their case to the Board of Supervisors, where then-board President Matt Gonzalez carried legislation in August 2004 to ban the right turn -- at least on a trial basis.

Upshot: The only way to get onto the shortened Central Freeway from Market is to shoot past the ramp, make a series of turns around the block and hit the ramp directly from Octavia Boulevard.

Well, that's the only legal way. The reality is that motorists are saying "to heck with this,'' and are making the turn anyway.

At least one bicyclist has been hit by a right-turning car since the ramp opened two weeks ago, and there have been scores of close calls.

"Stand there five minutes, and you will see 15-plus cars ignore the no right turn and make one,'' Peter Surlly wrote this week on a Craigslist post. "Where in hell would someone who doesn't know the city try to find (another) on-ramp?''

Our own inspection of the intersection this week found good reason to be concerned. No sooner did we arrive than a Yellow Cab ignored the "no turn" sign and whipped right onto the freeway without stopping.

Even Derek Martin, the bicyclist who was clipped by a Jeep Wrangler last week (he's OK), said the city should allow right turns. "The original design for the intersection would have been safer," he said.

Representatives of the Bicycle Coalition agree that the intersection is unsafe and say a redesign is needed, only they have an entirely different plan in mind from what car drivers might prefer: a crackdown on motorists.

Andrew Thornley, the coalition's program director, says the city should make it even "harder to turn onto the freeway.''

Plus, he says, there should be "video cameras to catch people and strict enforcement with pretty harsh fines.''

Stuart Sunshine, the acting head of the Municipal Transportation Authority traffic agency, says the no-turn law was meant only as a six-month experiment and that his department could propose eliminating it down the line.

But San Francisco Transportation Authority boss Jose Luis Moscovich, whose office administers most of the city's transit funds, said, "I thought it was a permanent thing."

It sure looks like it's permanent. San Francisco and Caltrans just put the finishing touches on an elegant new, palm tree-lined plaza at the intersection.

And while Moscovich said permitting right turns would be as simple as taking the sign out, the Department of Public Works figures it would mean reconfiguring that plaza -- to the tune of about $140,000.

Whatever they decide, we did find at least one bicyclist who likes the new freeway ramps landing at Market Street.

Sistar Aquadivina, who works at the ACT UP SF pot club on upper Market, says, "It's great for business.''

Meanwhile, a massive campaign in the Republic of Ireland aims to reduce drink-driving, increase seatbelt use, and get people to look where they are driving. The ads are gruesome, grim, and passionate. And pull no punches.
Have I complained about Octavia Boulevard lately?

In which drunken sailors are blockin up the main road

Although I have listened to precisely zero tunes on the old iPod in the past few weeks, this page describing a shuffle for Pere Ubu tunes captivated me.
Pere Ubu are another band I found through a brief record review in Rolling Stone magazine, probably for Story of My Life. Hotcha.
David Thomas claims:

Pere Ubu is not now nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture. We won't sleep on floors, we won't tour endlessly and we're embarrassed by self-promotion. Add to that a laissez-faire attitude to the mechanics of career advancement and a demanding artistic agenda and you've got a recipe for real failure. That has been our one significant success to this date: we are the longest-lasting, most disastrous commercial outfit to ever appear in rock 'n' roll. No one can come close to matching our loss to longevity ratio."

I bet The Fallcould give Pere Ubu a run for the money!

In which we have 23 minutes

At Spitalfields Market in the up-and-coming area off Liverpool Street, I saw a small coffee-coloured cart with the legend "He's so frothy" gaily painted on the side. A smiling young man was pulling espresso and frothing milk from a machine neatly installed in the back of the van. He made the best cappucino I have tasted in months: delicious, creamy milk-turned-into-foam, and just a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of chocolate. He laughed and chatted with customers as they came up, and when Anar and I had made the rounds of the market (including the purchase of a volume of obituaries from Wisden, and the tasting of some delicious olives), we returned to the coffee-cart. He laughed and chatted some more, told us that he was, alas!, out of pastries -- his regular customers claim them early every morning! -- and he made us another coffee. His compact setup, regular clientele, and bustling cheer reminded me of the coffee-shops that ring the Grand Marché in Casablanca, quite possibly the tastiest and most sublime coffee-drinking I have enjoyed. The men who run those stalls are delightfully personable, genuinely nice, and very, very good at making coffee. And although I vowed to limit my coffee intake to one, at most two cups each day, I yielded to temptation. I had already enjoyed an espresso at the Caffe Nero outside the Liverpool St Station, and then had a ristretto from the cart -- but after smelling Anar's cappucino, I had to have one for myself.

In which ninety-five thousands stoop

Analygis have a very cool demo application that collates U.S. demographic information with online maps (using Google Maps, natch). Within one mile of where I live now: 95,000 people; within 5 miles, 797,000. This is twice the density of where I went to college and where I grew up.

The Mysterious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

I picked up a 60p paperback at half-price from a stall at Spitalfields Market and read it on the flight back. Spine-tingling, from the inhumane horror of the decaying morals of the title character and from its effect on his lifelong friend, Dr Lanyon.