CCSF Outreach

A picture may be worth 1000 words, but here you get only the words until I have a little more time.

In my CCSF Outreach, I have photos going all the way back to Sunday Streets on Valencia, August 5, 2012 and covering yesterday's Carnaval booth for CCSF AssociatedStudents.  Here's a list of the dates I've included so far in the 187 photos:

August 5, 2012  Valencia Sunday Streets
May 9, 2013
Dec. 20, 2013
Dec. 23, 2013
Jan. 3, 2014
Jan. 20, 2014
Feb. 8, 2014
Feb. 12, 2014
April 22, 2014
May 24, 2014
July 31, 2014
August 1, 2014
August 7, 2014
August 7, 2014
Jan. 21, 2015
March 11, 2015
March 19, 2015
April 11, 2015
April 12, 2015 (Bayview Sunday Streets)
April 15 (Clement)
April 16, 2015  (Montgomery Street Station with the CCSF Language Dept.>)
April 18, 2015
April 20, 2015
April 23, 2015
May 10, 2015  (Valencia Sunday Streets)
May 24, 2015  Carnaval

An Outsider Going Into the Tenderloin before Dave Egger's 826 Valencia

As an outsider dipping into the Tenderloin for years,  I read  "Writing a new chapter for dicey Tenderloin site."about the extension of the 826 Valencia at 172 Golden Gate,  with great interest. 

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Author-Dave-Eggers-nonprofit-heading-to-6250170.php

 At one time I went into the Tenderloin just to go to McDonald's--not the Fast Food Nation one but the "Dirty, Poorly-Lit Place for Books" that had Photoplay and Modern Screen Magazines not just from my childhood (my incentive to learn to read) but from my mother's.  I went to the Golden Gate Theatre, too, and occasionally to the Exit, but quickly--stepping over or around bodies that made me feel I didn't belong.  Between 1982 and 1994 I took substitute teaching assignments in the Tenderloin and even once shared a night class there, at 750 Eddy and even at John Adams, where I taught, I had to teach "peep show" to students drawing maps of their Tenderloin neighborhood.  Much more recently, when I took a course in comparative religions, I went to a mosque at 118 Jones near Golden Gate.  But I never connected the dots, never saw the blocks that connected one of these places with another.  

After  the accreditation of City College of San Francisco was threatened in 2012, I started going around the city as part of the enrollment campaign, to let people know the college was still open and accredited, and I started seeing the whole city in a new way.  I saw that the European Bookstore I used to go to had closed a couple of years earlier.  I also saw sings like "Living in the Ten/409 Historic Buildings in 33 Blocks.  Yeah.  We're PROUD."    

What were those 409 Historic Buildings?  I wrote to Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle.  He had never noticed the sign and didn't know.  

Most recently I saw the golden brick road indicating safe paths for families and met the people who are trying to assure "safe passage" to the children who live in the Tenderloin.  

I've read Gary Kamiy'a  San Francisco, Cool Gray City of Love:  49 Views of San Francisco, which has 14 pages on the Tenderloin, and the recent California Sunday Magazine inserted in the SF Chronicle, which featured "In the Tenderloin" with several first-person accounts--all good reads.  But I've nver seen a better write-up on the Civic Center Campus of City College than that written by Denise Selleck, a teacher at CCSF, before the doors at 750 Eddy were closed.

https://www.ccsf.edu/dam/Organizational_Assets/Our_Campuses/CivicCenter/images4cvc/civiccenterhistory.pdf

I hope that while  826 Valencia is "writing a new chapter " in the Tenderloin, City College will be written back in.  

tst

testing

Help Me De-Clutter

On a San Francisco Vistas blog, I should really be posting pictures of yesterday's excursion, taking Javier and me on the #28 Fort Mason bus to Fulton and Park Presidio to look for statuary represented in the paintings by Robert Minervini at bus shelters on Market.  This is what we found--one easily and accidentally, the other with some effort because no one we talked to knew about Lloyd lake, and there's no map at the deYoung that shows where all statues are.  (I've sent for a book, recommended by Lesley Stahls, a friend who knows the park very well and gives tours of the Botanical Garden:  San Francisco's Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories.)

But I need help dealing with the clutter on my desk and am once again asking for your support.  (You are the world that never writes to me.  I see that after four years I have zero followers.)  

I'll keep Walgreen's free Diabetes Magazine not just for its catchy name but for its recipe for Smoky Mediterranean Beet Burgers.  That will go in a little pile to be taken to the kitchen along with Whole Foods Catering pamphlet, and both will go on my recipe books bookshelves or in my recipe bottom drawer.  

The Tours of the Strand with Friday, May 15 circled, will go up on the refrigerator, so same pile.

The ACT 4x7" postcard for A Little Night Music should go in my to-do pile.  

Should I keep the op-ed piece by Matt Haber "S.F. Works Its Magic on a New Yorker" to put in Jonathan's Christmas stocking or just send him the link?  I think I'll put it in a file that I have, for some reason, labeled "Jonathan's Typing."   (I've put it in, but I did catch a glimpse of a note card I made of an early cassette recording on which Jonathan was chanting "The people united will never be defeated," singing "Chazu Bao" and reciting "Gung Hay Fat Choi." )

Earthweek:  a diary of the planet" was especially interesting the week ending April 24, so I kept that.  It has the usual record heat persisting and eruptions (Chile's Calbuco volcano), the primitive diversity of bacteria in indigenous people in Venezuela's Amazon who were isolated for a long time,  Especially interesting was the worm rain in Norway and New Zealand's program to eradicate rates, possums and stoats (?) by placing poison traps.  

I have something on a 1936 Buick from April 17, 2015!  I tore it out of the newspaper to share with a former boyfriend who used to take me out in his family's Buick of about that vintage, which was already special in 1962 and 1963!

The handouts on "CCSF Pacific Islanders Club"  "Critical Pacific Islands Studies" brochure that were given out the day I met a friend on campus for another reason (Project Survive) and notices the big San Francisco Day at the Wellness Center.  I'll put these in my CCSF collection along with "Build Your Future/Study English" from the ESL Department and VIDA's "Undocumented & Educated."  Also a page-long flyer on "Super Student Club"  

A Fidelity statement giving my ending balance as $0.00.    Oh, but I had made dividends & interest of $50.23.  Should I have reported that?  

The United Cerebral Palsy has a pickup for Clothing & Household Items + e-waste on Thursday, May 7.  

Some old hour-by-hour accounts I use to show how I use time.  Recycling bin. 

A mailing for Coral Zanin, my tenant back in the days when I upped the rent from $500 to $550.

Hurwitt's review of Beautiful Chaos:  A Life in the Theatre  Since I'm reading that now, I think I'll put the clipping in the book itself.  

A Senior Citizen Exemption Application Form from the Quality Teacher & Education Act.  Gee!  I'm eligible.  But this is the 2008 act that provides money to the SF School District.  

A solicitation from Habitat for Humanity.  When did I last donate to that?

Nevius' report on his sewer plant field trip "Go with the flow:  a smelly sojourn" & a report on the closing of Heald College--like the closing of 750 Eddy, with no prior warning.  

VIDA's invitation to their "Third Annual Dream Graduation"  I should probably send them the photos I took.  

Various solicitations and a CREDO bill of only $4.64. 

At the Library for May 2015

A notice from Pacific Gas and Electric that work on a natural gas pipeline is beginning in my neighborhood.  14-18 Avenues between Ulloa and Vicente.  

To be continued.