Sunday, April 23, 2017

No Power in Downtown San Francisco

It is hard enough to navigate downtown San Francisco, but add the loss of electrical power and it becomes like walking through a third-world country. I was painting in my studio on Chestnut Ave. when mid-brush-stroke the lights went out.

It happens often I'm told. Maybe not often, but no one was surprised but me. I grabbed my flashlight and stumbled to the front glass doors. I noticed the traffic lights were out.  Obviously it was a wide spread problem. Muni buses were running the lights, or the lack of lights, and cars were darting in and out of the intersections as if they had been transported to Mexico City. Scary stuff.
Starbucks, Bush and Grant, San Francisco

I made it across town to my Friday class located near Chinatown. No power there, either. What the hell is going on? A terrorist attack? One way to bring a city to her knees is knock out the power grid.

Many of the local retails stores placed "Closed Due to Power Failure" signs on their doors. The Starbucks at the corner of Bush and Grant stayed open but couldn't serve anyone. People were hanging outside the entrance and sitting on the sidewalk waiting for something to happen. Starbucks employees began passing out free iced coffee and taking pictures for their Instagram page. I guess they have been trained for such occasions, "Okay, if we ever lose our electricity, make friends and pass out free coffee."

We May Be in for a Perfect Storm of Home "Unaffordability".

I recently read about celebrity real estate agent Mauricio Umansky, who raised concerns about the "perfect storm of total unaffordabili...