Monthly Archives: November 2011

News

The scoop on the poop on S.F. streets

By Heather Smith, Mission Local
How did San Francisco go from being in the technological vanguard of dog poop innovation to falling somewhere behind Boston and Phoenix? It’s a long story. Welcome, reader, to the second part of Mission Local’s series on that which people pretend not to see but also look for carefully, so as to avoid stepping in it. After the first part of the series, which touched on the delicate subject of humans pooping in the street (only illegal since 2002!), we got several letters from readers saying that humans were getting a bad rap. Look, they said, to the dogs.

News

Foreclosed homeowners re-occupy their homes

By Zaineb Mohammed, New America Media

Carolyn Gage was evicted from her foreclosed home in January. In November, she moved back in. “I’ve been in here for 50 years. I know no other place but here. I left, and it was just time for me to come back home,” said Gage, who is in her mid-50s.

News

Got trash? City educating San Franciscans to sort through it all

By Jamie Goldberg, Mission Local
When Rami Husary finishes a meal, he collects the trash and scrapes food from the table. Then, opening the trash bin at his parents’ home, he dumps all the waste in together. “We don’t do compost,” said Husary. “It stinks.”
Well, he’s breaking the law. Championed by Gavin Newsom and implemented in October 2009, the Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance requires San Francisco residents and commercial businesses to sort their waste into recyclables, compostables and trash.

News

High-tech robots signal new era in ocean exploration

By Alison Hawkes, Bay Nature
Four surfboard-size vehicles set sail off the coast of the San Francisco Bay earlier this month in an attempt to break world records in ocean exploration and robotics. The wave gliders will, if successful, traverse the longest distance of any unmanned ocean craft as they cross the Pacific Ocean. Driven entirely off wave power and solar panels, the gliders will remotely study the ocean and send data back to on-shore computers via satellite. Sensors on board are collecting data on everything from chlorophyll and dissolved oxygen levels to meteorological conditions. Read the complete story at Bay Nature.

News

San Francisco’s homeless black youth invisible

By Peter Schurmann, New America Media
At 18, Valerie Klinker was kicked out of her grandmother’s house in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. Despite being without a roof, alternating from parks to cars to SROs, Klinker says she never identified as homeless, a fact that, in the eyes of the city, made her all but invisible. Indeed, advocates for homeless people here say there is a growing number of young African Americans who, like Klinker, are becoming homeless as the ongoing recession and nationwide trend of urban black flight erodes access to traditional safety nets. It’s a trend, they add, that’s happening largely under the city’s radar. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, the recession has inordinately affected blacks and Latinos.

News

Keeping up with S.F.’s champion birder

By Richard Karevoll Bay Nature
Dominik Mosur calmly scans the tree line of Buena Vista Park through his binoculars from the sidewalk below. In a large Carhart jacket and loose jeans, and his long hair poking messily from his baseball cap, he easily identifies birds among the trees by their calls, flight styles, colors and sizes. But they’re not the species he’s after. His phone rings. “This could be the call,” he says.