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SPUR Reflects on Megaregions

The San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association hasn't always been aligned with my political leaning in years past, but lately I've come to reconsider development in San Francisco. Last year, an Urbanist feature proposed a national view of megaregions beyond the notion of states and metropolitan entities alone. I re-read the article by Egon Terplan and Gabriel Metcalf with renewed interest today.

Click here for the maps analyzing the boundaries of the Northern California megaregion.

This early moment of the new century may find us redefining our American landscape, to take in its history greater than a mere 250 years, or 400, or even 1,000. It is both an older place than we think, and becoming a place that we have yet to fully articulate.

Our centrism around Washington DC has clearly warped as much as it has woven the fabric of our cultural common imagination, a clear code of who we are in toto. I am not against the idea of a strong capitol, and am an admirer of the District of Columbia in many ways -- a world center of major artworks, a radically enlightened urban plan, neither a state nor un-stated, and still a beacon of democracy despite fissures. The unfashionable idea of "Founding Fathers" leads me back to my most cherished member, Benjamin Franklin, a lover of mankind, a Philadelphian, a statesman, a philosopher, a very busy man, and a jovial partaker of the rascally side of life. He was never a president, but marks a bill, helped dreamed us into life but probably preferred France, and is yet a well of inked guides to the country's ever-present future. I stop by his statue in Washington Square whenever I'm by to pay respect.

I've moved to China...

Chinatown. Six months in the wilderness, also known as North Beach which isn't a bad sort of wilderness, really, I've come up for air in Chinatown. What a difference a mere four blocks makes in San Francisco. I signed a lease on an apartment across from the Chinese Hospital on Jackson Street. I must be the first person in the history of the city to move to this district for more room and privacy. My arrangement suits me perfectly, though, and it seems now that all roads led here -- from my time in East Asia, to groundwork laid twice in North Beach acclimating to this quarter of town, and finally the persistence to hold out for a living arrangement that is long term, settled, spacious, light and engaging. Already, as in any of San Francisco's neighborhoods, I've discovered an entirely new layer of life in an area I thought I basically knew. The difference in each district between day life and night life can be extreme. Chinatown is often considered to be streets full of tangling humanity, but wend through the alleys in the evening and find a hushed but still exotic landscape revealing the unrushed Chinatown, an easy pulse, not entirely shuttered but happy to give over the bustling night life of its next door neighbor, North Beach, and rather retire at the end of the day while the city rushes about it.

Easter Visions

A more glorious day a City couldn't wish for, as Easter temps pushed the low 70s. In The Castro, Easter still means a proper bonnet and a promenade through the District. This couple had bystanders clapping and hollering approval as they swanned up Market Street past Cafe Flore. Marvelous.

As Above So Below

Perched up here at work amid the seagulls, copters and drifting balloons my mind wanders back to St. Francis waiting patiently for me in The Cloisters of Grace Cathedral nearby.

Zona Romantica After Dark

Puerto Vallarta is pleasant in the daytime, of course, all sun splashed and operating for your enjoyment, but after dark the buzz becomes palpably more electric. Not only is the Cocktail Hour observed, but Dinner is celebrated in the high kitchens and lowly taquerias, then the parties begin to rumble. The corridors along Zona Romantica echo with club beats, sing-alongs, mariachis, and the hubbub of fueled patrons dancing, drinking, preening alongside workers cooking, poring, entreating, stripping. The streets fill again in the earliest hours as tacos are eaten and the buzz is quelled. Tomorrow we sleep in...

February's Flowers

Eureka Valley is festooned with flowers blooming in February. Quite a welcome sight for someone whose childhood memories of February in Alaska, Montana, or Germany are the shape of long icicles, a yellow white glint, and snow blindness. Here in our town the rains have subsided leaving cherry trees redolent, pink and white.

Into Mesoamerica

I’ve been spending time in
Puerto Vallarta, an easy-going resort on Mexico's Pacific Coast. It keeps drawing me back to its mellow charm. It isn't "The Heart of Mexico," if there is such a thing, but a prosperous city of a million on a great bay beautiful, bountiful and prone to ravishing sunsets.

Great food, hours on the beach, romance and lust fulfillment are the towns prime features. Physically, it has a white-washed unity, red tile roofs and palapas on the rooftops as well as the beaches. The zones I enjoy, Zona Romantica foremost, and the Old Town, are big enough to hold mysteries after much exploring, and small enough to enjoy by foot. A half dozen neighborhoods define the hills, slopes, and narrow flatland rich with accommodations, relaxing cafes, engaging visitors, and pleasant Vallartans.

Puerto Vallarta is a middle ground between San Francisco and Mexico. So many Canadians and West Coast refugees find time here among the local shop owners, club people, snowbirds and tourists.
Even within Mexico, Puerto Vallarta is a remote construction built from the kernal of a small village by Hollywood's John Huston in the middle of the twentieth century. It has grown into a cosmopolitan beach resort attracting gay travelers, commercial contemporary artists, Mexican sun seekers and even transgender folks who work the legendary cabarets that dot the southern district, Zona Romantica.

There is an imaginary circle drawn around it by the Sierra Madre Occidental, cut by the Rio Cuale as it flows into Bahia Banderas. The circle is one part water, one part inhabited land, and one part jungle bedecked mountains. A free zone exists on a crescent piece of the city south of Rio Cuale at the southern edge of town.

You can see it clearly in the photo above, there at the base of the mountains on the northerly slope. In the foreground is the Harbor and Nueva Vallarta, home of mega resorts, all-inclusive bubbles of leisure, sand. In the middle widest part of the city at the middle where a plain spreads from a river is the main town that leads to the old town. The island in the middle of Rio Cuale hosts a beautiful square presided over by a bronze Huston in his director's chair among iguanas, palms and craft sellers.

Migrating

I've left Bernal Hill and come home to The Castro, 5 blocks from my roost in 1992, further up Eureka Valley on the northerly slope looking out across 19th, 18th, 17th Streets and up to Red Rocks, Corona Heights. Sutro Tower looms and Diamond Heights hugs the district from the West. The towers The City spike my room's sunrise view; the Bay, Oakland Hills and Mount Diablo mark the East.

San Francisco, feels headed into another boom moment, as it does seemingly once each decade since 1835 -- a Mission, a gold rush, a culture rush, a beat rush, an acid rush, a popper rush, an ACT UP, an Internet, a dot-com bloom, a real estate mania. With each upheaval comes a fruition, a moment when the apple turns ripe and then rotten. The sugars break down and the headache begins.

The last tablet that cured the throb doesn't work and a new drug is sought, found, exploited.