Mission Local reports:
Once vilified with the stamp of gentrification and viewed as a service for out-of-town visitors, valet parking has increasingly become accepted in the Mission, as a dozen or so restaurants and parking lots now offer the service. With new restaurants moving in, the likelihood is that even more will be needed.
If approved, a 50-space lot at Builders Exchange of San Francisco, on South Van Ness Avenue near 20th Street, will be the latest to adopt valet parking.
“What we can see in the immediate future is that the demand for parking, especially in the evening, is going to rise quite noticeably,” said Phillip Lesser of the Mission Merchants Association, who is spearheading the proposal for valet parking at the Exchange. “The supply of parking is going to diminish quite considerably.”
No shit,
1. the people who live in that neighborhood can’t afford to eat at those places, and people who can, sure as hell aren’t gonna take muni to the mission.
1. The people who live near Valencia need places like Bar Tartine to WORK at, so they don’t have to get up early ever and go to a “real” job.
3. Eventually the mission will no longer be a novelty to out-of-neighborhood yuppies and these places will close. The wine-bar, “Heart” just went out of business, the tide is turning back already.
One place closes. 10 open.
The mission’s gentrification is in no jeopardy of reversing course.
The space that Heart is under renovation and will become a full-serve restaurant (Heart served food, but only room-temp snacks and items prepared elsewhere).
The tide (whatever that means) is not turning; it continues, deliciously. Boop!
The space that was* Heart.
BART at 16th & 24th, J on Church, 49 & 14 on Mission… transpo to the restaurants seems comprehensive enough to me. Don’t these people like to drink cocktails and wine with their dinners? They shouldn’t be driving drunk!
+1. One of the best transit served areas in the Mission.
errr “… in the City”.
Maybe you don’t remember Willie Brown’s review of Locanda from last year; “I can best describe it as one of the few restaurants in the Mission you can actually get into, because they have valet parking.”
Well all that public transit is wonderful if you are going to and from the financial district. But you are are coming from Pac Heights, the Marina, the Richomond or out of town, they are fairly useless.
The idea that the Mission is “transit rich” is just a joke.
So true. The Mission is NOT well connected to the rest of the city, besides to Soma , FiDi and Polk St (although the 49 is so god damn slow crossing market that you almost may as well walk).
The Mission is absolutely well connected! Aside from BART there are scads of busses. It might not be so easy to get to the Mission from, say, the Outer Sunset or Richmond, but that’s more because THEY’RE underserviced by Muni than because the mission is.
How many peole with money ride public transit for a night out on the town? I am thinking less then 5%.
Y’think? I dunno, I ride MUNI when I’m going out in the evening and the buses always seem pretty fully of other people doing so also. I mean, there could be 20 times as many people driving, but it doesn’t seem like it?
You and will take a bus but the average whitey fromthe city burbs wants nothing to do with public transit. I have many friends in the service industry that rufuse to ever ride on transit.
Sorry — it is just not well connected. I happily use public transport but the MUNI is generally worthless. The fact that the main lines that run along Mission are generally unsafe does not help.
Pfff. “Generally unsafe” is one hell of an overstatement. They are almost always completely safe. Obviously the fact that they are *EVER* unsafe is a problem, but to claim that they are usually unsafe is nothing but pure hyperbole and exaggeration.
The Mission is extremely well served by public transportation. Claiming that it is poorly served except for MUNI is like claiming that San Francisco is poorly served by airports except for SFO, Oakland and San Jose.
33 from the Richmond, 24 from Pac Heights/West Add to Precita, 24 to 33 at 18th; 5, 21, 31, 6, 71 to the 22 or BART, or just walk 20-25 minutes. It isn’t completely off the grid.
right, it’s not like there are busses that come straight into the mission from pac heights, the marina, and the richmond. oh wait, there are . . . (22 and 33)
33 stops at 12:45 which is a bummer, but 24 run all night from 30th and mission up Divis, MEOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
You’re assuming that the people live near transit as well.
Will El Farolito be valeting?
+1
+1
Once, and STILL vilified.
Let’s turn our complaining into positive action!
Contact our supervisor, David Campos:
http://www.sfbos.org/index.aspx?page=2129
“Farina? More like MARINA!” <–My s.o. said this the other night.
And of course, we shouldn’t want anyone from any other part of the City coming to the Mission. Nor should we every leave the Mission.
I think you don’t understand that people live in the City in order to enjoy the City — not just their own neighborhood.
I think you’re over-reading. Farina stands out a lot, even across from the be-muraled Women’s Building.
So what’s your point?
it means you are a fart bag with ugly farts
I think mission folks and marina folks should swap neighborhoods for a little while. Just to mix things up, different scenery. Hey, Mission Mission would be Marina Marina!
Yeah, Farina is a pretentious crap factory of a hellhole.
make it $20 and consider it a stupid tax
people will start getting bummed out that they can’t find any parking here and they will start considering carpooling/public transit/other forms of getting here. people who live in the neighborhood and rely on street parking are probably the ones in the biggest crunch from this, but i don’t buy into the philosophy that anyone is automatically entitled a free public parking space.
Well carpooling hardly solves the parking issue.
I don’t think anyone claims that everyone is entitled to free parking. But oddly the City limits parking spaces in new buildings and does not allow pay parking garages to be built in the Mission. Plus it limits cab medallions and can’t get Muni to operate safely and efficiently. The only option that City supports is bikes — which are fine for a small number of people.
A more intelligent system would be to charge people to park, use some of that money to subsidize public tranist and allow more cabs to operate. That would give people options.
Ban cabs. For real. The magnitude of implications is astounding.
How about SF slapping a tax on valet parking that could be earmarked for public transit funds? Everybody wins.
BTW, for some thought-provoking long-form reading, I thought this article on L.A.’s opposite (from S.F.) policies (*requiring* new construction to make room for a certain number of parking spaces) was quite interesting: http://www.lamag.com/features/Story.aspx?ID=1568281
The problem with valet parking is that it can cause HUGE traffic problems – cars backed up, honking, people getting in/out, cabs not able to get through. There’s a restaurant on my block in North Beach that’s always guilty of this.
Anyone know how to report to the city when restaurants don’t manage their valet parking properly?