TLOTW #5

TLOTW #5

South from Golden Gate Heights Park, Sutro Tower from Twin Peaks, south from Golden Gate Heights again with more clouds and west from Grand View Park. Photo is a panorama of Golden Gate Park from Grand View.

I'm switching from the more ambitious specific weeks to a timelapse of the week (TLOTW) when I have one.

(Previously: Timelapse, Week of Jan 31 2022)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: TLOTW #5 #timelapse #video #tlotw #sanfrancisco #grandview #goldengateheights #sutrotower #twinpeaks Time lapse of the week #5 featuring views from Golden Gate Heights Park and Grand View Park in San Francisco. )

Timelapse, Week of Jan 31 2022

Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022

Timelapse, Week of Jan 31 2022

Sun halo over Lake Merced, a container ship entering the bay, the SkyStar ferris wheel in the Golden Gate Park, Farallon Islands, and some nice clouds over the Pacific. Photo is from Lake Merced.

(Previously: Timelapse, Week of Jan 24 2022)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Timelapse, Week of Jan 31 2022 #timelapse #sanfrancisco #goldengateheights #grandview #farallon #merced #ggp #video Timelapse of the week of Jan 31, 2022 including Lake Merced, Farallon Islands and the SkyStar ferris wheel. )

Timelapse, Week of Jan 24 2022

Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022

Jan 24-30

The Golden Gate from Grand View Park, and then the Outer Sunset from Golden Gate Heights Park.

(Previously: Timelapse, Week of Jan 17 2022)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Timelapse, Week of Jan 24 2022 #timelapse #sanfrancisco #goldengateheights #grandview #video Timelapse of San Francisco from Golden Gate Heights Park and Grand View Park. )

Timelapse, Week of Jan 17 2022

Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022

Jan 17-23

Three different perspectives of downtown San Francisco. Shot from Twin Peaks (with a great view all the way down Market Street), Mount Davidson (the highest point in the city) and of course Grand View Park.

(Previously: Timelapse, Week of Jan 10)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Timelapse, Week of Jan 17 2022 #timelapse #sanfrancisco #davidson #twinpeaks #grandview #video Timelapse from the week of January 17, 2022 - downtown San Francisco from Twin Peaks, Mount Davidson and Grand View Park. )

Mount Davidson

Updated on Friday, July 7, 2023

Mount Davidson

Mount Davidson

Mount Davidson

Continuing my series of local coronavirus hikes, Mount Davidson is the highest peak in San Francisco and this three mile hike takes you there from West Portal. Take Ulloa to Kensington and then cross Portola on the footbridge. Juanita takes you to one of the Mount Davidson trails and up to the top. You can come back the same way, or follow Kensington all the way over to Taraval.

The cross at the top is a memorial to the Armenian Genocide and while most of Mount Davidson is a San Francisco park the area at the top is owned by the Council of Armenian-American Organizations of Northern California (due to a church/state separation lawsuit). It's a great spot to look (slightly) down on the Twin Peaks set who just think they've reached the top of San Francisco.

(Previously: Mount Davidson 360 4K)

Hike starts at: 37.741614, -122.471306. View in Google Earth.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Mount Davidson #hike #sanfrancisco #davidson #coronavirus #map #video Three mile hike from West Portal to the summit of Mount Davidson, the highest peak in San Francisco. )

What is the San Francisco Rent Board Fee?

Updated on Sunday, March 13, 2022

SFRB

I got a Rent Board Fee Annual Notice for the first time this year which says:

"The owner of each residential unit in San Francisco, as specified in Administrative Code Chapter 37A, shall pay annually to the City and County of San Francisco a Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board fee."

Which sounds like they really want you to pay. They go on to say that from the 2021-2022 tax year the Rent Board has to collect directly from the property owner rather than being bundled on the property tax bill.

This seems crazy. Not that I'm advocating kicking off another recall election but it must be a monumental waste of resources. Suddenly you're sending me letters and wasting my time as well as paying extra credit card / check processing fees all for $59 which is a pretty trivial fraction of my property tax.

It turns out that I don't even need to pay - owner occupied units are exempt. This made me wonder if I have been inadvertently subsidizing the Rent Board for years but as far as I can tell this has never been included with my property taxes. It certainly isn't broken out like other special fees (and San Francisco feels like it needs to let me know that 0.05% of my tax is going toward restoring the bay). You can opt out of the tax on a sumptuous new Rent Board portal, which can't have been cheap to build.

So what gives? I haven't seen any press on this. Please let me know if I missed something. My best guess is that whatever records were used to add the tax to the property bill were thought to be incomplete and so the Rent Board is trying to expand its tax base to all of the undeclared in-law units and casually rented rooms in the city. Less charitably they might be hoping that a lot of property owners pay the new bill without checking the details. Regardless, if we need a Rent Board can it not just be paid for out of city funds instead of wasting trees and time and money on an elaborate separate payment system?

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(Published to the Fediverse as: What is the San Francisco Rent Board Fee? #politics #sanfrancisco The San Francisco Rent Board has sent fee collection notices to all San Francisco households, which you don't need to pay if you are owner occupied. )

Timelapse, Week of Jan 10

Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022

Jan 10-16

An experiment in creating a timelapse from a week of walking around San Francisco. Not sure how long I'll keep this up for and only managed four sequences this week: three different views from Grand View park (I go there a lot) and one of the penguin sculpture at Lake Merced.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Timelapse, Week of Jan 10 #timelapse #grandview #merced #sanfrancisco #video Timelapse of the week of January 10 to 16, 2022. )

San Francisco Shoreline Timelapse

Updated on Saturday, February 12, 2022

San Francisco Shoreline Timelapse

Timelapse around the shoreline of San Francisco:

This could be arbitrarily long of course, but I only had a day to shoot and picked six spots: the lookout at Fort Funston, the Camera Obscura next to the Cliff House, Eagles Point on the Lands End trail, the Marina Yacht Harbor, Pier 7 and the Giants Promenade Pier.

Shot on a Sony A7C with the 20mm 1.8 G and a Ronin SC. This is the first time I've used the Ronin SC for timelapse and it sucks. Works great for video, can't pan 180 degrees in timelapse mode without introducing shake though. Processed using LTTimelapse, Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve (with a lot of stabilization to fix the Ronin issues) and Filmstro Pro. The finished product is 4K, 60fps. Filmed December 30, 2021 (I usually do something on New Year's Eve but the clouds looked more promising the day before this year).

(Previously: San Francisco New Year's Eve Timelapse 2020)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: San Francisco Shoreline Timelapse #timelapse #sanfrancisco #4k #video 4k 60fps timelapse around the San Francisco shoreline including Fort Funston, Camera Obscura, Lands End, Marina Yacht Harbor, Pier 7 and the Giants Promenade Pier. )

Lake Merced Timelapse

Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022

Merced

A timelapse of Lake Merced in San Francisco, California on a stormy December day.

(Previously: Merced)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Lake Merced Timelapse #timelapse #lakemerced #sanfrancisco #video Lake Merced (San Francisco, California) time lapse on a stormy day in December. )

San Francisco Crime 2003 to 2021

Updated on Saturday, February 12, 2022

San Francisco Crime 2003 to 2021

San Francisco is apparently going to hell with criminals free to do as they please with no fear of consequences. I decided to take a look at the data.

The video above shows a timelapse of SFPD incidents from 2003 through yesterday. Each frame is a day and shows incidents from the previous seven days. The top left corner of the video shows the date and the seven day count of incidents.

I grouped the reported categories into a few colors. Red is used for murder and rape. Orange for arson and kidnapping. Yellow for thefts and assaults. Purple for sex and drugs. Grey for anything else. I excluded some categories from the data (recovered vehicle, traffic collision, case closure and non-criminal).

SFPD reports the location of incidents as the closest intersection. To keep everything visible I move the location randomly within a tenth of a mile where there is a specific location reported. For crimes without a location I use a random spot within half a mile of the center of the police district (or the center of San Francisco if the district is missing - this is unusual).

The volume of incidents changes a bit during the ~18 years shown in the video, but the only real outlier is the dip following the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2000. Crime picks back up after this but so far hasn't returned to the level it was at before the pandemic.

Police incidents come from two datasets: Police Department Incident Reports: 2018 to Present and Police Department Incident Reports: Historical 2003 to May 2018. San Francisco is plotted using Elevation Contours. The pre and post 2018 data sets use different categories but I coded both to the set of colors outlined above. There is a drop in incidents right at the end of the video which I expect is caused by incomplete data rather than any change in crime rate.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: San Francisco Crime 2003 to 2021 #timelapse #sanfrancisco #crime #datalapse #coronavirus #video Timelapse video animation showing crimes in San Francisco color coded by category from 2003 to 2021 using SFPD incident reports from SFData.gov. )