Tag: world

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World Series: The Aftermath

I called it twice. I said the Giants would win and I said to stay away from downtown last night. Well the second part was slightly off, but I was pretty close. This time it was the Mission that was hit. I never understood when the the celebration party after a big win turned into a celebration riot, but it usually does. Cars were turned over, trash cans set on fire and even a Muni bus was set on fire.

It’s the grumpy old man talking once again, but I don’t understand why SF has a big win so let mess our city up. They were lighting fires in the middle of the streets on Mission backing up traffic and destroying everything they could. Everyone had a smile on their face from the pictures and to me this is not how you celebrate. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Back in the 80’s the 49’ers won a Superbowl and a friend of mine invited me out with her friends and family to celebrate. It was complete chaos. I still remember to this day the line of Police marching up Columbus with batons in their hands and shield pushing back and beating down anyone in their way to break things up. It didn’t work too well and the people celebrating [who weren’t breaking anything] got incensed and started fighting back.

Now if you want to know how you should have celebrated the victory I’ll have to hand that over to my blogger friend Greg of njudahchronicles.com. He has been spending the evenings at the Blackthorn Tavern and it was much different. After the win the people in the bar ran out and were dancing in the streets. Nothing was broken, no cars were trashed and I’m probably sure there were a few people drunker than those tossing stuff in the Mission.

I did read an article today on some people who were interviewed in the Mission and everyone was listed as John Doe [city other than San Francisco], so it looks like it was mostly out of towers [the bridge and tunnel crowd] who basically came into our city to get drunk and break shit. Yes, I didn’t edit that because it makes me mad. This is a part of the reason I like being at home.we’re boring out here to people in the Mission and I like that. I worked with a girl once who said I could never live in the Sunset, it’s too boring. I like the activity of the upper Haight. I really should have punched her in the face and told her that’s what you’ll get if you come into the Sunset.

Now the usual custom after an event like this is that the two Mayors exchange gifts of their local products. I suspect that Mayor Ed Lee will send Mayor Bing some crab and our other locally farmed shellfish and Bing I guess will send Lee a car. Not sure who is better off in that deal.

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Gigantes 2012

This is the first time I’ve been able to get a TV on the weekends before 8pm now that I have a device that let’s me watch over the air channels in HD on my computer and I decided I had to watch the World Series. The last baseball game I attended was in the 80’s and it was Giants vs. Dodgers at Candlestink Park. As a kid, I used to go to Giants and A’s games all the time so I have to compare the World Series today to what I saw as a kid.

Well, it’s a completely different game now and it just kind of seems like a boxing match where you get in close enough and knee the other guy in the groin hoping no one notices. Last game I was at when Mark McGuire would come up to bat all buffed out on steroids you wanted to see him knock one into the left field stands. Just hearing the entire crowd go silent with the crack of the bat against the ball until the fans were scrambling for the ball and then hearing a collective HOLY SH*T from the fans made it all the more reason to go. I haven’t seen that in the three games I’ve watched so far. The outfielders could pretty much be sitting on lawn chairs for most of the game only have to get up once or twice during the inning.

The secret today is with the pitchers. They have a small window to throw through and they always aim high, low, left or right just to be at the edge of the safe zone. Occasionally they’ll offer a free ball, but they usually seem to try and get them to 3 balls 2 strikes tiring them out before they move for a strike out. There’s very little action left in the game today and now I know why Mixed Martial Arts has gotten so popular — at least people kick some ass there. I remember being at an A’s game as a kid and I can’t remember who it was, but he smacked the ball right into the pitcher’s gut. Everyone in the stadium yelled OH! That’s the way baseball used to be.

The price has gone up exponentially on tickets and food at the stadiums. My Mom’s best friend used to go to baseball games all the time and I’d get invited and my Mom would give her $5 to cover my getting in and food. We’d get a hot dog [get your red hot’s here!] and a coke and then later we’d get peanuts and cracker jack. If you had a $10 bill you could get in, get fed and have change in your pocket. Granted that was a long time ago, but now that you have all these artisanal, gourmet food companies supplying the food and drink at the game it just raises the price even more for going out to the game. So I watched it all on TV and ate a hot dog with a coke and finished it off with some peanuts and cracker jack. Maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old man, but I miss the old days. The song Take me out to the ball game just doesn’t seem to fit anymore, so I rewrote it for modern baseball:

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
buy me some sushi and chardonnay
look at the kiss cam that couple is gay
so it’s root, root, root for the home team
if they don’t win it’s a fight
cause it’s $20, $30, $40 for food
at the old ball game 

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Electric Charging Stations In San Francisco

I went to my local Walgreen’s today and got a surprise. They had a charging station for electric cars. This was a first for me as I didn’t know that we had any set up yet, but had heard of talk about them being installed. All of these are owned by a company called Chargepoint.net and they charge $3 per hour to charge your electric car. While this is a cool idea, I think that when you charge your car at home and have to pay somewhere around 25¢ per KWh the price is a bit steep.

I’m not sure how many KWh hours a typical car needs to be fully charged, but I’m sure it’s less than the $65 I currently pay to fill my car up every month [we rarely need to drive outside the Sunset District, so most of our trips are short.] I also can’t exactly see why if I’m mostly driving in the Sunset District that I would need to fill up my battery on a trip to Walgreen’s less than a mile from my house when on average electric cars get about 100 miles on a charge [quoting the Nissan Leaf].

I could see if you were driving from SF to someplace outside the city that was at least a 50 mile drive and needed to be there for a couple of hours that a system like this would work well. Say we take the family out in our electric car for a drive down to San Jose for a couple of hours then it would make sense to charge up the car before we drove home, but the way we drive we would be able to do it much cheaper at home.

As you can see from the photo the charging station doesn’t have a solar panel which would make it even more green. The electric car brigade is still in its infancy and needs some fine tuning still. They’ll need to work the bugs out over the next few years, but at least it’s a good start. While people who live in the Sunset know that sun and this part of the city do not go hand in hand solar panels would still be a good addition.

I like the idea that there is a push in this city towards being more green since after watching a show last night on Hong Kong that the breathing the air there is similar to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day that I like our air quality here and if there’s people trying to make it better I’m all for that.

We still have the problem that not all electric cars have the same hook up so just because there’s a charging station there doesn’t mean you can hook your car up to it. Nissan has teamed up with chargepoint.net so that’s great if you buy a Leaf, but not so good if you’ve bought a car that hasn’t teamed up with them.  There are still some kinks to be worked out, but I think this is a good start.

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