San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

News Item: Floating Island Destroys San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. City Faces Worst Disaster Since The Great Earthquake And Fire! Just kidding. I thought maybe I would occasionally start my Diary with a picture of some landmark other than our iconic Golden Gate Bridge. Of course now that means I need to give you a little background on this bridge.

Completed in 1936, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge never got the respect that her sister the Golden Gate garners. The Golden Gate was built to link two extremely scenic contrasts--the City of San Francisco on the south, and the beautiful Marin headlands to the north. In the process, it spanned one of the most spectacular harbor entrances in the world, with two towers and a roadway reaching dizzying heights. Its more practical purpose was to close the gap on U.S. Highway 101 for automobiles without the necessity of a ferry trip across entrance to the Bay, know itself as "the Golden Gate."

The Bay Bridge (as most San Franciscans call it) was actually started and finished before the Golden Gate, but took longer to build because it covered the longest stretch of water in an urban setting in bridge-building history. The bridge is actually two bridges, anchored near the center on Yerba Buena Island (the "floating island" in my picture). The western span (San Francisco side) is structurally similar to the Golden Gate, with two towers sunk deep into the Bay and one soaring suspension span. It's even a rare San Franciscan who knows that the bridge is legally named and registered as the "James 'Sunny Jim' Rolph" Bridge, after San Francisco's version of New York's Jimmy Walker, both known for their flamboyant mayoral style and questionable politics.

The eastern span (to Oakland) is a mishmash of double cantilever spans, short traditional cantilever bridges, and a raised causeway. Very utilitarian, but it was never as beautiful as the western span, and is fortunately aimed southeast from The City so that we really don't have to look at it much. The eastern section is the one that partially collapsed during the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, and is currently being replaced in large part by a much more attractive section of cable-stayed towers. It is the major artery between San Francisco and Oakland and about a quarter million vehicles pass over it each business day. The two segments of the bridge are connected by the tallest transit tunnel in the world (because it's a double-decker bridge), bored through the rock of Yerba Buena Island. And now you know.

Note: San Francisco has always fancied itself the Paris of the West, so it now has a new regular event--setting cars on fire. Automobile arsons are springing up all over town, just like in gay Paree. There wasn't much of a fuss so long as the vehicles were delivery trucks and clunkers in the seedy parts of the Mission District and the urban nightmare of the Bayview District. But now the vandals have moved up to tourist spots near The Wharf and the more sedate areas of the Outer Richmond District. The final blow was the burning of a Porsche at Powell Street near Pier 39 (also a tourist area).

The underlying cause has yet to be determined (like the fact that arsonists enjoy burning things). Police and Fire Department arson officials are not yet ready to link the latest series of fires to an earlier spate of burnings The City went through a short while back. That might be because they're hoping nobody outside San Francisco will notice we had an epidemic of portable toilet arsons. Not nearly as glamorous as automobiles. But one officer did note that the toilet fires were started by setting fire to a newspaper to ignite the blazes (the San Francisco Chronicle is finally good for something other than lining birdcages). A burning newspaper was found recently under an automobile, but nobody is sure if there is any connection. Investigators say that their best guess is that the fires are being set by "those who are on the youthful side, in their late teens or early twenties." Now if The City wants to be even more like Paris, it can import a few of those "disaffected Asian [middle eastern] youths [of a certain religious persuasion]" who set cars on fire in the Parisian banlieues.

NOTE: The Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) strike deadline is looming over The City and the entire Bay Area. It's been looming now for about 119 days. Most riders are reaching the point of saying "Get it over with, already. Either go on strike or accept the contract, but quit threatening." It boils down to the biggest holdout being the train drivers, who insist on a raise and extra benefits as the state and The City sink into bankruptcy. The drivers are already the highest-paid transit employees in the nation outside the boardrooms and executive offices. And here's the beauty part--the trains are actually designed to run electronically from a central control station, with no need for drivers at all. But BART decided at the time of its original opening that it might scare riders off when they saw a train with no visible person driving. So they set it up with a driver (who is essentially unnecessary) with operating controls which can be overriden from the central operating station.

NOTE: SF Gate contributor Rich "Big Vinny" Lieberman may find himself in trouble with his fellow "progressives" at the Gate and on the street. While taking a potshot at conservative pundits, he accidentally took a stand on free speech which required him to defend Michael Savage of Savage Nation radio fame. Even many of us conservatives find Savage a bit strong for our tastes (his appeal is to an audience which likes its political discourse angry and contentious, which is not a bad thing unless like many of us you already agree with much of what he says, and don't need to have it shouted at you). Conservative television and radio personalities simply seem to ignore him (Hannity, Limbaugh), and TV's Bill O'Reilly has made only casual favorable mention of him.

So what's the beef? Well, unlike the others, Savage has been banned in the UK. A secret set of memos coming out of the government offices in London (they have leaks just like us) described Savage as a Jew who changed his last name (born Michael Weiner). His virulent attacks on radical Muslim terrorists weren't enough to get him banned by themselves. But since Savage is Jewish, it would "upset the balance of Jews and Muslims reporting on British Radio (shades of the "fairness doctrine"). This gave Lieberman the opportunity to attack conservatives for failure to rally to Savage's support. He lets us know that O'Reilly did make a couple of grudging remarks about the ban, but overall, the "conservatives are silent about this intrusion on free speech." Do I need to point out that the UK has no First Amendment, and we've all been down this road before?

So how could Lieberman be in trouble with his fellows? Simple, in order to attack conservatives and appear to be a champion of free speech, he had to say something favorable about Savage. So Lieberman wrote: "He is the third most listened-to radio host in the country. And yes, I enjoy listening to his monologues quite a bit even though most of the time we disagree." Having gotten the obligatory homage-to-the-enemy out of the way, Lieberman goes on to say: "But [as] I listen I find it puzzling that, with the exception of a few, his conservative contemporaries have decided to go down the silence road. Until it happens to one of them, Hypocrites, plain and simple." Lieberman could find absolutely no motivation for the conservative silence other than professional jealousy and right-wing hypocrisy.

Now Lieberman can explain it to his friends who seem to believe that Savage should be banned here, First Amendment or not. Thanks, Mr. Lieberman, but most of us conservatives are busy here in America where we are actually watching a constitutionally guaranteed right being put in jeopardy. We're just not too concerned right now with what they're hearing on the BBC.

NOTE: As is nearly unavoidable these days, I close today's Diary with another article from the noisome Mark Morford. His headline today: "Obama birthers ate my love child! The president is an alien! The Republican nutball fringe wants you! Apply now!" I assume that this was directed at Bay Area residents who are not already busy writing screeds for the 9/11 Truthers.

I can never resist including at least one sentence from Morford's stream-of-consciousness babbling. Most people would consider them paragraphs, if they considered them at all. So, here's today's: "These are the kinds of things that ooze into your mind and infect your consciousness like some sort of unwelcome but fascinating worm, a cute little parasite you didn't notice for the longest time because you were busy doing something far more interesting and engaging--like, say, reading a book, sipping a glass of wine, having sex, breathing, clipping your toenails, picking lint off your couch, or, well, pretty much anything at all because really, who wants to think about oozing, unwelcome worms."

Apparently, Republicans are all worm-infested, ignorant, beer-swilling, sexless, non-breathing, clawed beasts with lint-bedecked couches. But lest you think that all Republicans are simply that loathsome, consider that some are even worse. "Do you know about 'The birthers'? Have you been reading about this adorable little screamin rantin kookaburra ultra-right wing mini-movement that is right now hell-bent and heck-happy on hijacking the entire GOP agenda by questioning the veracity of President Obama's birth certificate?" Well yes, Mr. Morford, we have heard, even if your readers haven't.

The vast majority of Republicans are very concerned with Obama's tendency to lie, obfuscate, dodge and weave, manipulate, manufacture facts, and generally look like the sneakiest President since Richard Nixon, but we don't start frothing at the mouth about the birth certificate issue. Most of us believe that if there really were anything to the allegation about Obama's foreign birth, even this Chicago con artist would not be able to hide it this long. It's just part of his pattern of hiding the truth solely for the sake of seeing if he can get away with it.

In fact, Republicans really do have better things to do. That's the answer to your question "Who knew? Who knew, in the wake of all those madcap Christian fundamentalists who ruled like drunken virgins over the Dark Days of Bush, the right still had such a cavalcade of intellectual toddlers waiting in the wings to come out and play in the fields of Infantile Fantasyland, and further guarantee the party's merciful irrelevance for years to come?"

We have our "birthers" and you have your "troofers," but at least our fringe can point to a complete lack of any genuine documentation which could easily be provided by the President, while your fringe has nothing but Rosie O'Donnell, a large group of leftists, and a complete lack of logic, evidence and scientific proof. Our fringe points out a lack of easy production of proof to spin their theory. Yours ignores facts entirely and denies what millions of Americans saw with their own eyes. Frankly, I'll take my fringe over yours any day.