Talk Back: Letters to the editor

The Illinois Street bridge

I am writing to first thank you for the timely article on the Port of San Francisco's (Catellus Corporation-funded) Illinois Street intermodal bridge project ["A Bridge Too Near (If Not Too Far)," 12/26/01].

As the author pointed out, a number of constituencies – internationally recognized artists, neighborhood business associations, guerrilla gardeners – have mobilized against this fast-tracked construction frenzy.

Though there are a number of problems with the bridge project as it currently stands, it may be worth noting that most of the local community is actually quite supportive of the Port, and sees maritime industry as an important part of an economic diversity that was seriously threatened by the dot-com bubble and its concomitant myopic monoculture development jihad.

In fact, the community would likely support a rail-only bridge (notwithstanding the generally poor public process and general frustration with the Catellus-driven fast-track schedule). However, the inclusion of truck traffic (almost 2,000 vehicles per day according to the Port's own documents) is hugely problematic and seems motivated by several questionable factors including:

• short-sighted funding concerns (particularly strings attached to federal Department of Transportation moneys);

• a handful of misleading statements about diesel emissions in a seriously flawed environmental impact report;

• outdated references to an intermodal bridge in planning documents that date back to the early 1980s;

• essentially criminal disregard for several acres of parkland and local greening created and maintained over the past two decades by local volunteers (These spaces include the nationally recognized Muwekme Ohlone pocket park, which is frequently used as a natural habitat site by scientists and local school children alike.);

• truck access further conflicts with the Port's stated desire to make frequent and serious use of rail access to Port 80;

• finally, the addition of a roadway-to-the-rail bridge smacks of an awkward attempt at "urban planning by administrative fiat," which would result in the creation of a new major traffic artery that even members of the Port's own Southern Waterfront Advisory Committee agreed in a meeting this fall could create more pollution and traffic in an area of our city that has higher incidences of cancer and respiratory disease than any other San Francisco community.

Jory Bell
San Francisco

What peaceful transfer?

If you believe what we're seeing in the news, Afghanistan is undergoing its "first peaceful transfer of power" in decades. Where the h-e-double-hockey-sticks have they been while we used every weapon in our arsenal to bring the Taliban government to their knees, from "daisy cutters" to B-1 smart bombs and B-52 carpet bomb runs. There was nothing peaceful about this transfer of power whatsoever.

Richard J. Martin
Crowley, Texas

Keep buying CDs

Regarding your story on the death of Valley Media, its independent distributor DNA, and the awful effects this has on the entire music community, especially the independent sector: Much of the reporting was right on, until the point at the end of the article concerning the "political issue" ["Death Valley," 11/28/01].

In printing Berkow's suggestion that the only way to ensure the money spent on recorded music is to buy it directly from the artists, you're leading people astray. Berkow would have us avoid buying our CDs at Tower and Amoeba because they just might have come from DNA, which didn't pay their suppliers. In doing so, he's essentially advocating that we compound the distress of the retail music world by hurting all the retailers' business. There are two flaws in his reasoning: one is that these retailers are not complicit in having made DNA go out of business, nor do they benefit from it in any way; the other is that not nearly all independent labels are distributed by DNA.

To the extent people react to this article by not buying any records at retail stores, they don't help the artists, they only add to the weakness of retail, which in turn hurts the remaining independent distributors. My company is one of the remaining independent distributors, and I don't appreciate the suggestion that we deserve to be hurt because one of our competitors failed.

If there is a real "political issue" involved here it is the bankruptcy laws that allow a company to not pay its debts, and its bank creditors then take inventory it never paid for and sell it into the market, where it hurts everyone in the supply chain.

Robin Cohn
San Rafael

For the record