When you think of nice sections of San Francisco, the one thing that they usually have in common is an abundance of trees lining the street. Whether it’s Upper Hyde, Upper Fillmore, Pacific Heights, etc., it’s a no-brainer. Have some trees and people like. Tear out all the trees and people don’t like. Such is the case with the vast majority of the Tenderloin. There are no trees which in addition to removing nature’s air purifiers, it makes all the streets look like crap. Every piece of trash stands out more and the street’s ass is exposed. I don’t care who you are, but an exposed ass in never a good thing.

Naturally, whenever I see a sign that they want to rip out trees in a specific place, I am annoyed. Sure, people are allowed their due course as an owner, but those sidewalks in front of their buildings are not theirs. They are ours and it’s more than a little frustrating that simply the threat of possible legal action by some ambulance chasing lawyer some day in the future due to some unknown future person walking by who might hit their head on a branch that doesn’t exist yet, will make people want to tear out the trees in front of their buildings.

It seems I am not alone in this and some concerned citizen put up notices that a couple of trees on Polk street between Bush and Pine (the ones pictured above) are set to be cut down. Here is the notice on the Polk Street trees:

There was a bit of information in these notices, but since seeing the one that I did on Post Street and going back the next day to take a picture, they have since all been removed. If anyone has any information on this campaign, please leave it in the comments section. I’ve seen far, far too many trees removed in the Loin to sit by idly and let more get taken out just in the name of whatever lame excuse people have to remove them. Oh yeah, bug David Chiu. It’s about time he did a bit more on the ground for his district in this area.

The marquee updates at Kahn & Keville have taken on something of an inward view lately and this one is no exception alluding to the fact that they opened in the middle of the Great Depression and prospered. I’m not sure if this is to encourage others to do the same right now or to thumb their noses at everyone driving up Turk that they’re just that good.

I have to admit that my allegiance to the perfect hot dog pretty much begins and ends with Top Dog in the East Bay. Yeah, I know, I’m a defector, but you can’t beat them for a 3AM snack after doing hardcore geek drinking at Cal. Despite the price, I am willing to check out Show Dogs though. I was tipped off to them by SFoodie and I have to say that I’m intrigued, but annoyed. Why it’s the that case that everything new in SF has to be a “gourmet” version of something typically seen as mundane gets old at times. Still a good dog, is a good dog and if that’s what they’ve got, I’m there. Although I’m curious what “two long soup kitchen lines” they passed when going to Market and Golden Gate?

In case the giant camera assembly sticking out of the top of this car wasn’t enough, they put a little Google sign on the side of it just to let you know who is watching you. I can’t wait to see how this intersection of Polk and Sutter turns out and if me, shooting their car with the camera on my Blackberry makes the cut or not.

I was greeted by this tome telling all AoA students just when and where their classes would be for the coming academic year. Some would call this a class schedule. I call it a tremendous waste of trees. It’s something like 500 pages long, weighs a ton, packaged in thick, non-recyclable plastic sleeve, and was sent via UPS for some damned reason (tuition money to blow by the AoA I assume.) I guess putting it online would be like soooo 1998 or something.

Of course, if you have to include information with the classes such as which side of the jeans to wear your safety pins and your required Angst Level to attend a session, I suppose I can understand the length. Also, along with the empty princess limos they drive around the same path as the SF Muni lines, the poorly paid staff, the highly paid owner of the school, the illegal conversions of hotels in to student dorms, and their general “Fuck you and your little dog too” manner of doing business, it’s not a surprise that the AoA would take a dump on our forests as well. It wouldn’t be a shock if these schedules were also printed in child sweatshops just to, you know, round out the overall evil. All hail the red plague!

There’s another San Franciscan profile that we absolutely loved at I live here: SF: Coleen who works as an Advocacy Coordinator at the St. Anthony Foundation. She’s going to disarm you from the first paragraph:

I want to tell you about The Tenderloin. My version of the Tenderloin. The Tenderloin can be a rough place, but I see a lot of little miracles here every day. I certainly do not want to romanticize the difficult things that the people of the Tenderloin have to deal with. But, I have seen a lot of beauty here, a lot of kindness, I have seen heartbreak and I have seen joy.

Read the rest of the entry about Coleen here, and check out her full photo shoot here. Oh, and you can even follow her on Twitter @crivecca!

And you may ask yourself why I spell wickedly as “wikkedly” for the title? The answer is simple. Back in my senior year of high school I ended up playing bass for a butt rock band called ‘Wikked Sinder’. Those were fun days playing Sabbath and living out my dreams of understanding why it was that I needed to go to college and not work as “lead chef” for Pizza Hut. The house of the guitarist where we “practiced” (usually just sitting around listening to the guitarist bitch about how his kids found his crack pipe again) was wedged between the main town church and a diesel gas station. The scene was similar to the one you see above.

Naturally, I have flashbacks to my Wikked Sinder days every time I walk past this house at 606 Ellis Street and wonder, “What in the hell happened here…?” Well, as SF Curb noted, it’s for sale. Yes, you could be the proud owner of one of four single dwelling homes in the Loin. They’re going fast, so get your hands on one while you can.

While the neighborhood is indeed a wee bit rough, I’m sure that’s a fine house. With a bit of gardening, you could easily end up with your own urban oasis like this. Now wouldn’t that kick some serious Sinder?

• Lady of the Loin: Songwriting team Don Seaver and Sean Owens join forces with chanteuse Shannon Day for a cabaret-style one woman show at the Exit Theater. According to their website, it’s a “sizzling cabaret tribute to San Francisco’s raciest, raunchiest, most unrepentant neighborhood: the Tenderloin”. A dozen stories-in-song, about good girls gone wrong, wronged girls getting the goods, and low-lifes living the high life. Including “It’s Always A Dame”, “A Cut Above”, “So Far From Civilized”, “The Strut On The Street”, “Homicide’s A Gift”, “Out Here On The Edge”, “Save Me From Myself”, and “Eat At Joe’s”.
  Where: Exit Theater, 156 Eddy Street (between Taylor and Mason). When: Four performances only on July 25, August 1, 8, 15. At 9pm. Tickets: $15, on sale here.
• SF Poetry Festival at the Public Library: In celebration of the San Francisco International Poetry Festival, the main library is hosting an exhibition featuring art and broadsides from participating poets. The Exhibition runs from July 11 to August 2, 2009.

  Also, on July 22, there will be a screening of the documentary film Red Poet by Bay Area filmmaker, Matthew Furey. The film explores the life and times of Jack Hirschman, a great American literary and social justice figure and the unofficial mayor of North Beach. The film documents his prolific literary career – he’s published more than 100 books of poetry over the course of 56 years – and his life as an Abstract Expressionist painter. According to the event announcement, through this film “audiences will see that Jack Hirschman is more than just a hipster with a political edge”. Jack Hirschman will be present.
  Where: San Francisco Main Library – Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street at Grove. When: July 22 at 6pm Free

• Two-Dollar Tuesday at Ambassador: According to 7×7 Magazine, $2 beers, mixed drinks, and small bites will be on offer this Tuesday at the Ambassador. And it goes all night!
  Where: The Ambassador, 673 Geary Street at Leavenworth. When: Tuesday, July 21, 6 pm-12 am

From revbean’s Flickr photostream, standing on a firescape five stories above Van Ness avenue:

Although this building is technically in SOMA, those couple of blocks South of Market around 6th and 7th street are nothing but the lower Tenderloin. The SF Citizen reports that the same mural has been seen in various cities around the US, but created by Californian artist Jacob White of Los Gatos, CA. Technically it’s an ad for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and it seems it was a winner in the PBR Art Contest, in which Pabst lovers submit art in an attempt to get a year’s worth of PBR and some cash prizes.

Like SF Citizen, when we first saw this we wondered if Laughing Squid was aware of it. Well, he is now.