Who gets to decide?

The Great Highway is a not that great highway that runs parallel to the beach in San Francisco for about 3 miles.

During the pandemic, the city closed GH between Lincoln and Sloat to cars and made it a bike/pedestrian path. Currently, it’s closed to cars on weekends. This being San Francisco, the change has made certain people VERY VERY MAD. These certain people are people who (1) like to drive everywhere and (2) regard any curtailment of driving or, tbh, any change of any kind, as the equivalent of hydrogen bombing the city. On Nextdoor, our favorite site for cranks and weirdos, it’s being treated like End Times.

So now we have to vote on whether to keep it closed permanently via a ballot measure this November. There will undoubtedly be a reasoned and measured debate among the well-informed citizenry on this topic. HAHAHA JUST KIDDING, people are gonna flip the fuck out between now and then.

Into this morass wades Susan Dyer Reynolds, fellow Substack person, Editor Emeritus of the Marina Times, and chronic X/Twitter user. On Elon’s sinkhole of human despair, where Susan is a prodigious contributor, she took aim at the Ocean Beach for Everybody Committee, a political action committee that supports the ballot measure and hosts events to mobilize voters in favor of the prop:

There’s a lot to unpack here and it’s not particularly pleasant! First off, the screenshots she posted are from a Mission Local article called “Tech-backed PAC is biggest spender in DCCC race.” There’s nothing in the article linking anyone named therein to the Ocean Beach for Everybody Committee, and certainly nothing about anyone sending their kids to private schools in cars driven by nannies. Maybe there is a secret and nefarious link, but it’s not in the cited source.

(On the Ocean Beach for Everybody Committee website, the major funders are listed as the wondrously-named Ian Storm Taylor and Lucas Lux. I am unable to verify the school choices of their children or their mode of transport.)

But Susan makes two implications, one annoying and one upsetting. The first is that you have no right to be concerned about this issue unless you live near Ocean Beach. Which, if that principle stands, means someone who lives in, say, the Marina should have no voice about, say, for example, what happens at Ocean Beach. Fair is fair, right?

The more upsetting implication is that transplants to San Francisco somehow have less say in the way the city functions. SF is famously a city of transplants; while I couldn’t find a reliable source for the percentage of SF-born residents, only 37% of the population was born in California, suggesting the native population is very low.

(Quick aside - my 11-year-old daughter is the only native San Franciscan in our family, and she already lords it over us. One time I told her it was 75 degrees or whatever and she goes “That’s hot… for someone FROM San Francisco” and gave me a look. How do they learn that?)

I’m a transplant, my wife’s a transplant, almost everyone I know is a transplant. Other than my kid’s classmates, I think I know one native San Franciscan and he lives in Marin now. Point being, transplants have just as much stake in the city as others. I’ve lived here for 34 years, making me more native than someone born here 33 years ago. So I’m gonna have to disagree on that one, Susan.

(Incidentally, Susan’s Twitter bio says “Bay Area Native, SF 30+ years,” so it sounds like she’s a transplant too. Or is everyone born in the Bay Area a San Francisco native now?)

Which brings us to the proposed park itself. I actually don’t really have a strong opinion one way or another; the southern part of GH is closing permanently anyway due to erosion, so I guess why not close the section proposed for the park. The main objection seems to be that it will funnel traffic onto local roads, but according to the Ocean Beach for Everybody Committee website, the “SFMTA has studied the pilot park’s impact and reported that traffic on the Great Highway and all nearby streets remains significantly below pre-pandemic levels. The most impacted trip would be from the Outer Richmond to south of San Francisco, which may take three more minutes during rush hour.” So big deal?

Also, any time merchants oppose something because it will allegedly “hurt business,” that’s a sign there’s some bullshit coming. Like here, “Merchants Oppose Ballot Measure to Turn Great Highway Into Park,” in which the Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco says the “closure would hurt businesses on the west side of the city.” Now, if you’re familiar with GH, you know it is a HIGHWAY and there are no business on it and the only way you can get to any nearby business is by using streets that will be unaffected.

BTW, I found Susan’s tweet when I went over to Twitter to lock down my account and delete the app. I don’t follow her, but somehow Twitter had shoved this tweet into my mentions. I recommend you stop using Twitter or X or Internet Cybertruck too, because the owner is using your impressions to fund hs horrible, hateful ideas.