Guardian videographers Rhyen Coombs and Eric Zassenhaus reported from the Bicycle Music Fest on June 21.

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Posted by Marke B. at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

By Kat Renz

Rounding the peaks. All photos by Frank Chan. View more here.

"When gas is five bucks a gallon, I'm joining you!" An excellent sentiment shouted by a supportive driver on the afternoon of Saturday, June 21, from her idling car. And it was something I'd been thinking all day, that the three dozen other velophiles with whom I was riding the city's most vertical inclines, officially dubbed "The Seven Hells of SF Bike Tour" were the badasses who'd easily contend with the realities – at least the personal transportation ones -- of the fast approaching shitstorm called peak oil. Yet would the driver have expressed the same enthusiasm had she witnessed our collective past five hours – including the four blocks of Divisadero we had triumphantly climbed to the finish line at Sacramento five minutes before?

You'll recall from high school lit class that Dante's version of hell had nine circles, and they were cold. This unique tour's organizers', Dan Reider and Frank Chan, rendition had seven hills, all scorchers, exacerbated by the fact we rode midday on the tail end of the very un-San Francisco summer heat wave.

"Maybe I'm the only idiot who's done this three times." Chan remarked once we were relaxing back at our starting point, the daisy-dotted grass at the east end of the Panhandle (Chan was also the only one with a gigantic camera dangling from his neck, and he still roasted most of us on the hills in order to document our agonizing glory). There's a reason why the tour's only offered about once every two years, as that seems to be the average recovery time. Regardless of our recently burning lungs and wobbly legs, at least three-fourths of our group of 42 finished, and all were stoked. One rider said it was the most fun (Fun?! Yep, fun.) he'd had in a long time, and another dared to suggest the tour should be offered more regularly.

The torturous route

In case you can’t wait another couple years and want to try the hell ride yourself, here’s a lowdown of the route’s most prominent peaks.

Continue reading "Seven Hells of SF: The road to hell is paved with potholes" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Deep Thoughts by Justin Juul, in honor of Cannabis Awareness Day, Sat/3

The University of Santa Cruz has a long history of embracing pot-heads, communist philosophers, vegans, musicians, artists, and white Rastafarian dudes. That’s why it came as no surprise that The Grateful Dead recently chose the school as the new home for its entire catalogue of music, articles, photos, films, etc. But it was no small feat. UCSC actually beat out bids by Stanford and Berkeley, which, to some, suggests that maybe the world really is changing for the better. Maybe hippies actually are kind of smart. After all, UCSC, a school founded by a roving band of love children back in the early 1960’s, a school that was once featured in Rolling Stone Magazine as “The Best School for Stoners,” a school that David Horowitz singled out on Fox News as “The Most Un-American School in the Country” has become one of the harder schools in the UC system to get admitted to.

The Grateful Dead deal is just another big step in the right direction for all of hippy-kind. But wait. Is the school really that dedicated to its roots or is it just cashing in on them for publicity, hoping that accepting the Dead catalogue will convince the world that hippies are still running the show at UCSC? The truth is they’re not.

Continue reading "Blazin' up for UCSC" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Ariel Soto

The EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday, April 22, in San Francisco's Bayview/Hunters Point. The EcoCenter will be the first LEED-certified building in the southern part of the city and first building to run completely off the grid. Heron's Head Park was opened in 1999 to provide an open and natural space for the communities nearby, and since then more than 1,200 volunteers have helped restore the area by removing invasive plants and trash and replacing them with native plants. With the continuous support and effort of the Port of San Francisco and Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ), the EcoCenter will finally open, giving students the opportunity to learn in hands-on programs about issues such as clean air and water, renewable energy, healthy foods and open space restoration. (To get involved in the Heron's Head Park project, contact Laurie Schoeman at: lcprojectmanager@lejyouth.org) Here's some pics from the event.

The entrance to Heron's Head Park with the old PG&E plant in the background that's in the process of being demolished.

Goats are used in Heron's Head Park as a natural method of weed control.

Volunteers gather at Heron's Head Park before the beginning of the groundbreaking ceremony.

A Scrophularia californica, or Bee Plant, is just one example of the many native California plants that will be re-introduced into Heron's Head Park.

Beautiful Heron's Head Park.

Milton Reynolds, a member of Literacy for Environmental Justice, started the day's events at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park.

Continue reading "Pics: Goats and green at Heron's Head Park" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Global warming is just one of many, many emergency environmental issues -- like, the world is just plain looking trashy lately -- but, hey, warming gets all the press these days. Whether or not the uptick in earthly sweatiness is caused by man ("anthropogenic") or cosmos (solar flares?) is kind of a moot point: everyone pretty much agrees there's some warming going on, and, to me, anything that panics consumers into using less and actually thinking about how products are made and where they come from is a good thing. Consumer consciousness needs a swift kick in the pants -- let the panic continue!

Yet it's been awfully confusing to follow the warming debates -- especially since it's so easy in these days of selective media to just read things you agree with. Luckily, Interneteurs Douglas Campbell and Dennis Dutton (who maintains the mighty fine Arts & Letters Daily Web site) have started Climate Debate Daily, which collates recently Web-published "Calls to Action" and "Dissenting Voices" on either side of the debate (perhaps a bit simplistically). Informative!

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Posted by Marke B. at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)