The San Francisco Civil Grand Jury recently completed an investigation of the nightclub permitting process, and recommended that control of permits be taken away from the SFPD. The report is pretty interesting reading, and seems pretty realistic to me.

We met with our architect today, and finally saw the structural engineer's plans of where the duct work will go, and what reinforcement we need to do to the balcony supports in order to attach the new dj booth. No big surprises. I'm still a little concerned about how much space these ducts take up, and whether they will make the ceiling feel a lot lower in some rooms.

He says that the plans will be in a final state by friday evening, and will be FedExed to a bunch of contractors for bids on monday. And there was much rejoicing.

We also met with a "permit expediter." A permit expediter is a consultant who ensures that your permit application makes its way through the City's bureaucracy as efficiently as possible. Like they say about the process of making sausage, I think this is one of those things where you really don't want to know what the details are. But as far as I can tell, use of expediters is common: you get to pick between spending a bunch of money, or waiting forever for processing of your applications to begin.

Our architect keeps using the euphemism "value engineering" for "cutting things out of the plan." I assume this is his code for "when you see the bid price that the contractors come back with, you're going to shit yourself."

The enormous pile of garbage taking up the right side of the downstairs is gone now. The dump guys had to make three trips to get it all.