I am somewhat offended that SFist didn't mention us in "Bars To Avoid Like The Plague During Santacon On Saturday Because It's The Actual Plague" -- we're not even on the map, even though we have hosted the absolute shitshow of the Bootie Santacon After-Party every year since 2008! Apparently the food truck park down the street deserved a drunken-santa icon, but we didn't.

That's just not right.

Hey, remember when we used to have a parklet? On November 16, Barry wrote them again:

It has been since Sept 9 (8 weeks) since I have gotten any response.

It has been 19 weeks since we removed our parklet.

When can I put it back in?

When will construction actually start on our side of the street?

We had one of the construction workers ask us to sign a waiver that allows them to continue during the "Holiday Moratorium". We, of course, are happy to have that happen so we can get this over with.

Please get me some info.

They replied:

Thank you for your email. As you know, we've encountered some slight delays on the project. We appreciate you supporting the project moving forward during the holidays. The City typically doesn't allow work to occur between Thanksgiving Day and New Years Day on any block in which 50% or more of ground floor frontage is dedicated to retail unless business owners are in support of the work moving forward. At present, the contractor is contacting additional business owners on your block to ensure they're also in support of the work moving forward during the holidays. If the contractor has the necessary support to allow work between November 24 - January 1, crews may begin working on your block as early as November 28th. We'll be in contact in a few days to let you know if the contractor has been issued a waiver to the holiday moratorium or if work will be postponed until January.

Let's just let that sink in for a minute. The City does not allow any work to happen during "the holidays", which are defined to run from November 24th through January 1st. (And I guarantee you that when they say January 1st they really mean January 9th.)

"Slight delays" means "the construction you told us was starting on July 1 has not yet begun as of December 9, more than 5 months later".

"We'll be in contact in a few days" means "three weeks go by with no response". Then today, after getting "out of office autoreply" from nearly every person on the interminable CC list, we finally got:

The contractor is scheduled to commence demo work at your corner next week barring any weather delays. Please feel free to call me if you have additional questions/concerns. Thank you for your continued patience.

So "As early as November 29th" means "maybe by December 12th, unless there is Weather."

(Spoiler alert, there is Weather.)

That "thank you" is completely unwarranted, because if I have mistakenly given the impression that we are experiencing "patience" of any kind with this process, I must not have been clear.

Sigh.

Here, have some photos!

Ruby was awesome, but sparsely attended. The Bay Bridged has a review.

As has become traditional, we set up a full sized wrestling rink at the Bootie after Thanksgiving, since that is usually our slowest Bootie of the year by far. In that regard, it did not disappoint by failing to disappoint.

One Response:

1. Catonic says:

   6 years ago at 8:33am

   And somewhere, there's a construction worker and construction company that really want to work and get paid, but the city has gotten between the workers and the project and doesn't want the contractor to proceed unless all the businesses are OK with the outrageous possibility of trouble that construction can cause....

   Sounds like a bunch of liability adverse parties swapping paper around ONLY IF people engage the city and contractor, etc.

   In other words, an absolute lack of leadership or ownership of the project.