Showcase Activism Efforts

During the last week of November 2013 I had a conversation about pedestrian over-crossings (POCs) with a friend on Mission Street.  I noted that the Federal Highway 101 is the first tier of urbanization inland from the West Coast of the US and that its freeway sections often function as a barrier to mobility.  This inspired us to visit the 101 that night at the foot of Potrero Hill.  We rode our bikes to Hampshire and 18^th and took photos of the 18th Street POC.  Then a few days later I met with a few other people to draw up a research design and review maps of the area.

My notes detailed a set of potential strategies for producing content.  There are 52 weeks in a year and—at one post a week—each strategy could produce enough posts to cover the whole year.  For instance, a personal production strategy—such as this one—might simply involve the notes and emails that we compose in the course of accomplishing our lives.  Meanwhile, a bar or café strategy may involve visiting places near highway 101 to produce content.  For instance, in Humboldt County California, a small business district in Arcata sits at the foot of a POC and there are multiple places with easy access to a POC in Los Angeles.  Each of these locations can be investigated to better understand how they benefit from POCs.  I also have considered an expert strategy, where planners, geographers, photographers and/or engineers may help provide opinion pieces or consult on how to develop other strategies like competitions for college or high school students.  Finally there are myriad groupings of friends, parents and teachers which may supplement and fill out the last twenty weeks of the year.

My notes also sketched out what would be necessary to transform reportage into a website with broad appeal.  Essentially, visiting a POC, as we had in November, provides a set of steps that go into the process of data collection.  As the process is conceptualized and revisited it transforms from a short bike ride into an email/blog conversation.  Eventually, images are uploaded, ideas are proposed and posts are developed.  Diagrams and schematics may be a part of this process.  In a general way these items would be attributes in an object oriented database to which any post might link.  In this design, specific attributes would map onto a set of predetermined relationships using names, images, identifiers, keywords and posts.  This would effectively link strategies and keywords to fully identify each object.  Finally, the system may be further developed into a mobile application.

This design is really driven by the list of objects: the POCs themselves.  The blog entries would slowly be transformed into db items and while some items may currently be well documented in the db (e.g. those in SF) others would only be mooted as a potential for growth (e.g. central CA, Los Angeles or the Olympic Peninsula).  I especially like the idea that each object would effectively showcase activism efforts over public infrastructure, access and community mobility.

So about a week after sketching out these ideas I got up early one day and rode over Mt. Davidson to McLaren Park.  While I had been considering one specific crossing in Visitation Valley, I chose is Harkness Street POC instead.  This is the south most POC on Caltrans’ list of overcrossings for San Francisco.  Upon my arrival at Harkness and San Bruno I looked for and found the site.  Based upon the documentation easily available from Caltrans’ District Four website I knew before looking for this particular POC that it had been closed to public use.

I circled the crosswalks a bit and made a couple of calls to request a clean-up for the trash which had accumulated in the vicinity.  This helped me to understand who owns the lands around the location.  While San Francisco’s 311 call center was easy to contact, the call to Caltrans involved several transfers.  However, in both cases I discovered that the trash problem was a normal thing for this area.

I spent a lot of time near this overgrown and locked gate.  I found that this particular crossing was difficult to document because it is closed and covers nearly a square mile.  Moreover, the location is terribly sinister.  I went to Bayshore Boulevard’s northbound crossing to view POC from in the contexts of the on- and off-ramps in the area.  I then took looked at the Bayshore southbound underpass to follow the crossing’s eastern access.  Many of these views are also available using a street level view online.  One useful item I noticed about this experience was that there is a bee farm and a community garden that abut both sides of the freeway.

I then rode my bike to Faith Street POC.  This one is located on Bayshore Boulevard and it is giant.  After a little bit of looking on the east side of the freeway I found the entrance.  Faith Street seems to climb straight into the Freeway.  I noted a tunnel on the East side of the structure called Morris Olsen but it had been sealed.  I suppose I will never know what it was for.

I rode three blocks to Peralta then and looked down on the Cesar Chavez POC.  This set of crossings is in several parts.  One set which I could see from my perch above it crosses under the Chavez and 101 interchange.  I then went over to the construction site at 54 Peralta and caught a good view of the Hampshire Street span.  Walking through the interchange was a trip since I could tell that many of the locals (possibly homeless) didn’t seem to want me there.  The westbound bridge is a curvy snaky thing that is hard to document.  Later I rode over to the 25th Street POC but found it closed.  Finally, I rode to the 22nd Street POC to observe what it seemed were people coming home from work.

I have received several photos from other people.  For instance I recently received a couple of images recently from a friend who visited Belmont San Mateo.  There are also a couple that I took in Marin on the Mill Valley-Sausalito bike and pedestrian path.  I also have a number of photo sets I received via text message for Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt Counties.  These include the Kenilworth crossing in southern Sonoma, the Earle Street crossing, the Oak Manor crossing and finally the 17th Street crossing in Arcata.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.  I started writing this on 121813.