Friday Open Threads: What Is Your Favorite Neighborhood Destination?

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, March 2, 2012, by Sally Kuchar

It's Friday and it's time to hear from the crowd. Have something you want discussed among the fine Curbed readers? Send it this way.[Macondray Lane, Russian Hill via Sally Kuchar]

It seems like every time we write about a home for sale someone chimes in in the comments about what makes that neighborhood special. Maybe it's a sandwich shop that's been owned and operated by the same family for 40 years. Or perhaps a small park that only locals know about. Whatever it is, we want to know about it. Readers, what are your favorite neighborhood destinations? We'll create a nifty map on Monday if we get enough comments!

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Billboard Woes: "They degrade the neighborhood," Milo Hanke,...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, March 6, 2012, by Sally Kuchar

"They degrade the neighborhood," Milo Hanke, past president of the neighborhood group San Francisco Beautiful, said. "They are visual blight." When San Francisco bought the building at 1650 Mission Street in 2007, it came with a legal billboard facing highway 101. It's the only billboard the city owns, and could generate at least $324,000 in five years. Critics, however, would like the billboard permanently removed. Recently, the Board of Supervisors financial committee approved a five-year contact that will bring in $324,000 to help cover the building's operation costs. The board is expected to vote today on the billboard contact. [SF Examiner]

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Turf Wars: Newly-Formed Neighborhood Group Wants To "Preserve and Protect" Coit Tower

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, December 8, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

[Photo via Esther Reyes]

"Clearly, Coit Tower is being looked at as a marketing opportunity, not as an opportunity for stewardship," said Jon Golinger, president of the ridiculously powerful Telegraph Hill Dwellers and frontman for the newly-formed Protect Coit Tower Committee. "The city's role for Coit Tower is stewarding an incredibly valuable historic and iconic resource — not an opportunity to generate revenue for unknown programs." The group wants to place a measure on the June ballot that would "preserve and protect" the landmark. From the ballot initiative text:

It shall be the policy of the City and County of San Francisco to protect Coit Tower and preserve the historic murals inside Coit Tower by strictly limiting commercial activities and private events at Coit Tower by prioritizing the funds received by the City form any concession operations at Coit Tower for preserving Coit Tower murals, protecting and maintaining the Coit Tower building, and beautifying Pioneer Park around Coit Tower.

Currently, the Rec and Park Department is seeking out a vendor to manage the tower's elevators, food and beverage sales and gift shop for its annual 150,000 visitors. Interested parties must first submit a plan on how it would avoid harming the tower's interior murals. The department will contribute up to $250,000 to restoring the murals, a plan that is being established by the Arts Commission. Additionally, 1 percent of the annual rent from the new vendor would go towards mural maintenance.

The Protect Coit Tower Committee (which currently has 7 "Likes" on its Facebook page) says these efforts are not good enough, and are concerned about the new vendor hosting private events. Or perhaps the Protect Coit Tower Committee, which is essentially run by a small but powerful neighborhood group that historically opposes any development, is trying to privatize a public landmark. Because there's a small threat that the surrounding very fancy and very expensive homes could be bothered with shuttle buses bringing eager tourists to and from a San Francisco landmark for an occasional private event.

The committee has to gather an estimated 9,000 signatures to move forward.
· Neighbors want ballot measure to protect Coit Tower [SFGate]
· Protect Coit Tower [website]
· Protect Coit Tower page [Facebook]
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Rental Week 2011: Eye Rolls Ahead: Made-Up Neighborhood Names Aren't Just for Buying and Selling Real Estate

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, November 9, 2011, by Abby Pontzer

If you start to dry heave when you see "NOPA" instead of Western Addition, you may want to stop reading now. Made up neighborhoods, and their euphemistic brethren micro-hoods, aren't just for real estate listings anymore: you'll find them in the rental market as well. Here are a few we've seen recently, and where they purport to be.

We'll start with one that we came across just last night: "The Gastro." Presumably due to its proximity to gourmet heavy-hitters like Bi-Rite Market, Tartine Bakery, and Defina, this stretch of 16th and Guerrero got an un-Mission-ified name. What's so wrong with labelling an apartment in the Mission or Mission Dolores? Did we miss the memo that even the Mission isn't hip enough for the upwardly-mobile set?

Speaking of the Mission, we also found an area near 20th and Shotwell renamed the "Shotwell Corridor." As much as names like Valencia Corridor or Divis Corridor make us cringe, at least they are linked to major commercial streets with lots of stuff going on! Other than Shotwell's (which is technically on 20th) this is a pretty quiet, residential street. A street we very much like, in fact!

And closer to home (for us, anyway) we stumbled upon a apartment around Oak and Webster. The neighborhood is somewhere between the Lower Haight and Hayes Valley, but you can imagine our surprise when one intrepid landlord renamed it "Zen Valley." Yes, around the block where a dead body was burned in a car earlier this year. Zen indeed. Though, to be fair, Samovar Tea Lounge seems to be into the name, so maybe it will become a thing. We hope not.

We're sure there are other examples of creative license out there. While the city is an ever-changing place, one thing will stay the same: curmudgeons who will want the neighborhood maps to stay the same as 1906 and those who insist on calling each block by a different name. What do you think, dear readers? Does a microhood by any other name smell as sweet? Which nabes are you into renaming these days?
· Renters Week 2011 [Curbed]
· SoMissPo Lands on Google Maps [Curbed SF]

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PM Linkage: SF Neighborhood Animal Mascots in Print; Dolores Park Turf Wars; Historic Bell Gets Stolen; More!

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Under 500K Club: Grab a Slice of Oakland's Temescal Neighborhood

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, August 2, 2011, by Sally Kuchar We thought we'd torture ourselves and see what was available for under 500K in a highly desirable location over in Oakland. 327 42nd Street in the Temescal is a 3-bed, 2-bath, 1,500-square-foot bungalow that just landed on the market. Asking price? $499,000. Since it's common practice for many couples to up and leave the city in search of backyards and decent school districts once they've had a kid or two, we should point out that this home is located two blocks from Oakland Tech. Although this house has undergone a serious remodel to bring it up to today's modern standards, we're pleased that it still maintains some of its original architectural detailing, like a ton of built-in storage and a gorgeous decorative fireplace. What do you think, dear readers? Enough pizazz to make you want to call 510 home? Let us know in the comments.
· 327 42nd Street [Redfin]

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Paradise Palms: The neighborhood of Paradise Palms, in...

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