Dear Editor:
Residents of the Inner Sunset must be left scratching their heads. SF Department of Public Works (DPW) and SF Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) have teamed up to dispense $21 million of bond money (which means we have to pay it back with interest!) to make the N-Judah service worse by removing stops, make parking worse by removing stops and visually malign the neighborhood with rusting steel planters, hideous trees and a gigantic bullet-punctuated sign reading “Inner Sunset,” as though they did not know which neighborhood they reside in.
When voters approved this bond, they were told it was for paving streets; yet most of our streets remain as pothole-ridden as those found in “developing” countries. This vanity project was developed and perpetrated by deliberately excluding the average person from input and it is hard to argue that it makes the N-Judah faster, the neighborhood more beautiful or transport safer. Yet, the current appointed supervisor and her predecessor, now serving as mayor, argue just that.
MaryAnne’s Hairstyling not only lost customers; they lost weeks of hot water thanks to DPW negligence. The City has declaimed all responsibility, with Herrera’s office telling Mary Anne “We’ll see you in court.” Not a dime in compensation has been paid to those businesses affected by years of delays and mismanagement.
Up next is the further gentrification of Ninth Avenue from Irving Street to Lincoln Way. Greenery will be removed and a huge platform will be built so that commercial events can be held near the destroyed and concreted Demonstration Gardens. A large rock will identify Golden Gate Park. Again, appointed supervisor Valerie Brown has said not a word in criticism. What’s next? We can only shudder to think!
Harry S. Pariser
Categories: Letters to the Editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
I’ve always thought, since I was an activist in Long Beach and attended many city council meetings, that at least one supervisor on any council has got a brother-in-law who owns a concrete business.
Why? Because projects that call for massive amounts of concrete, often involving removal of signs of the natural world-i.e. trees, flowers, greenery-will always win.
Irving Street is already congested. Drivers double park with impunity and leave their cars while they shop. Thanks to those enormous “bubbles” at many corners, Irving Street is now a two-lane street much of the way.
The hideous bus stop structures so touted when they were built, are cheap looking and non-functional–leaves and mud collect in those pointless wavy red roofs, the seats are, for some inexplicable reason, so low to the ground they’re suited for 4 y/o children, and the electronic signs are non-functional more often than not.
As for the state of the roads, they are indeed ss rough, potholed, patched and murder on cars as in any so-called Third
World country. Why is this?
And our sidewalks? They are a conglomeration of uneven, filthy squares. Not a smooth evenly colored block to be found.
Again, why has our city been allowed to deteriorate this way?
Maybe it doesn’t matter–what with the majority of drivers running red lights–4 per dignal on 7th & Irving–and speeding through crosswalks while people are in them, the chance of living long enough to see real beautification of San Francisco is much diminished anyway.
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