Urban Outwitters?

I just noticed that Sprint is opening up a location in the long abandoned spot where Noah's Bagels once was. At least Noah's had food. This continues the yuppiefaction of the Castro.

To effectively address this issue, I, with a planning background, suggest the following for City residents that don’t want to see this conditional use permit (CUP) granted.

1) Send a letter to the planning commission and the staff person in the planning department who is working on the project. This gets your opinion into their project info packets before the meeting starts and before the opinion of the commissioner is fully formed.
2) Address specific items relevant to the project in your letter. Find out if granting the permit is in line with the neighborhood area plan and city’ss general plan. If it varies slightly, you will have to make clear why you think this use and project will bring a unwanted change to near-by businesses and residents. If the variance is great, you job showing detriment to the area is easier, but still needs to clearly show detriment based on the City’s planning documents.
3) Find out the approach the local commerce organization is taking in opposition of this project and use that as a guide, and support their position if you do believe in what they say.
4) Be clear and concise. Omit rambling conspiracy and personal agenda bits. Focus on the stated planning goals of the city and the quality of life issues you see as important to the neighborhood and the city as far as this project is concerned.
5) Go to the public meeting and give your comments. Prepare a simple one-minute statement saying who you are, that you sent a letter in opposition to the granting of a conditional use permit, and simply recap the major reason you came to your position. You don’t need a long time to lay out your position’ your advance letter will have done that You just need to sum it up, and show you feel it is important enough to take time out of the schedule to attend the meeting and give the comments. Write this out beforehand, time yourself, and practice it out loud. It will make the public comment easy for you and the others that have to sit through all the comments.
6) Stay involved in planning issues. It is a fascinating aspect of how cities work and there is a lot of influence citizens can have in the long run. You input on projects and the process influences what we see on the group in the form of different uses and structures that can have an impact for over a hundred years. Find out what is going on, how it works and how you can lend your voice. The places we live in will be better for it.

Honey, the Castro has been dead for years. I lived there from 1973 when it started, untiil 1999 when it was long over. It's too bad that people won't seriously look at how sad the neighborhood has become. Compared to the past, when the neighborhood throbbed with activity all day and night, today it is just over. Panhandlers, druggies, mostly straight, litter the streets, along with the chain stores and the gay tourist ripoffs. The closest thing to a comparison might be the area around the Moulin Rouge in Paris - a great history, but faded, tired, and over.

The real scene was on Polk St. In terms of numbers, Castro was a sideshow, hardly bigger than than the scene on Folsom. On Polk street on a Saturday nite, the sidewalks overflowed. On weeknites, they were merely full.

I remember Polk St before the Castro was a big deal. It's hard to believe that there used to be several gay areas of SF; Polk St, Castro St, the Haight, South of Market....hell there were even downtown bars. Each one was different. Sweater queens on Polk, lumberjacks on Castro, leather on Folsom It was fun to drift around from one to the other. I lived in the Haight where there were 4 or 5 places like Gus's pub, Bones, Deluxe, Question Mark. Castro had Toad Hall, Nothing Special, Badlands, Detour, Pendulum, Midnight Sun ( the old one that used to redecorate every 6 months), Folsom had Roundup, Ramrod, Eagle, Phoebes, No Name, Black and Blue, the Trench, Boot Camp (yaaaay), Folsom Prison, The Barracks, Red Star Saloon. Those were the days my friend, but they did end. Now I live in the East Bay, where I see more community that I have seen in SF for years. Many of us over here simply got tired of all the political pretension in SF, and the ever more strident types. AIDS killed a huge part of my generation, and it shows primarily in the lack of mature leadership in the gay community. We were the founders and now so many are dead.