#sfgate

The Clash and Joe Ely (Before Joe Strummer's fall, falling down and when he was on the ground) - Tribal Stomp II Festival, Monterey, California, September 8, 1979

In 1863, the world’s first underground railway opened in London. On its first day, nearly 40,000 thrilled Brits made the short, speedy journey between Paddington and Farringdon. The future of transportation had arrived.

One hundred and sixty-three years later, I was at my desk in San Francisco, clicking around the Vegas Loop map, trying to figure out where the world’s dumbest form of transportation could take me.  In 2016, billionaire Elon Musk decided he was sick of traffic. Because Musk believes every thought he’s ever had is the first of its kind, he decided to revolutionize transportation. His mission was to build underground highways, creating a tunnel system below surface streets that would zip people around in a way that congested, outdated freeways could not. Las Vegas, which has never seen a gimmick it didn’t love, signed on to become the first American city with a Loop.  

The scale is ambitious to the point of stupidity. Once its 104 stations and 68 miles of tunnels are complete, the Vegas Loop site says it “will serve up to 90,000 passengers per hour.” About 642,000 people live in Las Vegas, plus an additional 110,000 tourists on any given day. That means every single resident and tourist need to ride the Loop multiple times per day to average 90,000 passengers an hour. For reference, the Tokyo Metro moves 6.5 million people a day around an area with 33 million residents. You do the math. 

To supplement this sad little system, the Loop added $12.50 rides to the airport. But because there’s no tunnel there yet, it’s just a regular route on regular surface streets. Oh sorry, were you imagining a train? Autonomous cars? Nope. The Loop is operated by human drivers in Teslas. Elon Musk is creating a race of mole people driving endless circles below Las Vegas. 

and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,

whose sages are silenced.

and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice,

except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero

and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own

and no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money

and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their

rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

 -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

DOVESSO + UPDATED SOCIALS

This writer apparently sacrificed the comfort of his behind,went and saw BOTH the Barbie and Oppenheimer movie.

Thank you,Drew 💋

Saturday

07.22.2023

Update:

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“I would speculate that he saw it as a city that symbolized the kind of tensions and optimistic future that he wanted to depict in ‘Star Trek,’” Bernardi says. “... Different people — different aliens, in other words — coming together, struggling together, on a ship, i.e., San Francisco.”

Over the decades, “Star Trek” has returned to and expanded upon its version of San Francisco. Helmsman Hikaru Sulu, played by George Takei, was born in the city. The original starship Enterprise was canonically built at the Mare Island shipyard. In 2161, the Charter of the United Federation of Planets was signed in San Francisco, just as the Charter of the United Nations was signed here in 1945, another San Francisco fact that may have endeared Roddenberry to the city.