2011-12-26 "Foragers Mia Andler, Kevin Feinstein, now authors" by Jonah Raskin from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/26/DD5G1M78UD.DTL]
Even the most gentle-looking plant can reach out to bite an unsuspecting forager. In their new book, Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein offer stern warnings about poisonous plants that can cause death or severe illness.
"The Bay Area Forager: Your Guide to Edible Wild Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area" (Foraging Society Press, 320 pages, $24.95) is filled with descriptions of oleander, camas and poison hemlock that can "paralyze the whole body." For those not deterred by such advisories, the lavishly illustrated guidebook about identifying, cooking and eating plants in the wild is essential to the pursuit.
 Andler and Feinstein are bound by a fierce attachment to the outdoors and have all the necessary credentials to write about it. Andler, 31, comes from Helsinki, where she foraged with her parents when she was a child. She returns home about once a year to forage in the forests not far from the center of her native city.
 "It's normal for Finnish families to forage together," she says. "The countryside is blissful in summer."

To the forest -
When she first moved to the United States, she was stunned to discover that people didn't go into the forests to find food.
Feinstein, 34, grew up in Tennessee playing video games and feasting on TV dinners. He says he "didn't eat fresh fruit from a real live tree" until he was in his 20s. When he moved to Florida to go to college, he embarked on a self-taught crash course in botany. "Almost everything I know is self-taught," he says. "That's how I learn."
He and Andler met in 2008 at an event at TrackersBay - an organization that provides outdoors education, walks and camps in the Bay Area - and discovered they shared a passion for plants and a desire to teach others about the cycles of nature. A year ago, they began to collaborate on their book.
"It's rare to find someone as excited about this stuff as I am," Andler says. "Kevin and I live at opposite ends of the Bay Area - he's in Walnut Creek and I'm in Fairfax. We used to have really long conversations on the phone in which we shared what we knew about plants."
Feinstein says his curiosity about foraged foods was sparked by "My Side of the Mountain," Jean Craighead George's 1959 novel about a New York City kid who learns to live off the land when he runs away from home and hunkers down on his great-grandfather's farm in the Catskill Mountains.
"I was crazy about that book," he says. "But my main teacher has been and still is the woods. I'm ecstatically happy to be out there in the hills, foraging for supper or just eating what I find in the open air."
Like Feinstein, Andler loves to graze - walk, pick and snack on leaves and berries. She says she occasionally harvests "a huge pile of prickly pears" and then figures out "what to do with them."
Both have translated their love of plants and open spaces into paying jobs. Andler takes adults on weekend wild food walks. During the week, she teaches kids in Bay Area schools about birds, herbs, seeds and flowers.
"Kids get really excited about the wild," she says. "It's tangible and immediate and, without prompting from me, they think they were always meant to be in the woods."

ForageSF -
Feinstein, a prominent member of ForageSF, the Bay Area's leading foraging organization, also teaches foraging classes. He started in 2007. Back then, only a handful of people showed up for his classes. By 2009, his classes were full and teaching out in the wild became his full-time business. His blog and videos are well known to Bay Area foragers (feralkevin.com).
After dispensing warnings about the poisons of the natural world, "The Bay Area Forager" provides descriptions of plants that are nutritious and tasty: the abundant acorn that was once an essential source of protein for Northern California Indians, the powder from cattail heads that can be used to make crepes and pancakes, and clover that provides vitamins similar to C and E. The book lingers over wild onions, wild plums and wild radishes that Feinstein pickles and ends with a section on Yerba Buena, the native plant that means "good herb" in Spanish and was the original name of San Francisco. The mint-like herb can be used medicinally or in teas or cooking.
The color photos make identification of the plants simple. There are also concise descriptions of the physical aspects of each plant; when, where and how to harvest; and how to use. The authors remind readers that foraging is illegal in parks and on private property, and while they don't condone trespassing, they do suggest ingenuity. Rule 1 of the "respectful harvesting ethic": Harvest only if the plant is clearly growing in abundance.
The 50-plus recipes are aimed at gourmet chefs as well as common cooks who want to branch out from store-bought ingredients and experiment with the likes of hawthorn, toyon and western black walnut that Feinstein uses to make vin de noix.
Once a vegetarian turned vegan, Feinstein now eats meat. "My goal is to go on a hunt for wild boar," he says. "I really love how it tastes."

Top picks -
Foraging is illegal in public parks. Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein urge novices to begin the search for edible plants in their backyards, parking lots or community gardens. It helps to know someone with a farm, orchard or vineyard who will grant free foraging rights.
-- The best acorns are found inland, east of the Caldecott Tunnel or in the dry hills of Marin from September through November.
-- Miner's lettuce and chickweed usually grow together and are abundant during the rainy season in wilderness tracts and along the sides of country roads.
-- Mushrooms grow best in coastal forests after fall and winter rains. They will grow back each season if only the tops are harvested.
-- Nettles like wet areas along the coast, near streams, and can be foraged in winter and spring. Wear gloves to avoid stings from picking the plant.
-- Yerba Buena, which means "good herb" in Spanish, grows abundantly in most Bay Area hills, often under the shade of oak and bay trees, and it's available most of the year.

Kevin Feinstein, who barely ate produce at all growing up in Tennessee, demonstrates his expertise in finding and cultivating thistles during an outing with Mia Andler in the East Bay hills.
Photo: Lance Iversen / The Chronicle

2011-12-25 "California's young farmers break traditional mold" by Stacy Finz from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-12-25/news/30556010_1_farmers-age-young-farmers-farms-and-ranches]
The average age of a farmer in California is creeping toward 60, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture is trying to attract newcomers to work the land.
The need is especially acute, given that experts are forecasting that the world will have to double its food supply to keep up with a booming population - growing from 7 billion people to 9 billion by 2050. California is a significant player in feeding the globe, providing 12 percent of the nation's agriculture exports.
Farming also is a $37.5 billion business in California, employing 800,000 people. With the average age of the primary farm operator now 58 - nearly 20 percent are 70 or older - it's crucial that the state's farms and ranches get fresh blood, said Karen Ross, California's agriculture secretary.
"We are leaders," she said. "Being one of only five Mediterranean climates in the world, we produce the food - fruits, vegetables and nuts - that have the greatest health benefits."
But how do you convince people that back-breaking work, risky conditions and low profit yields are a good career move?

Bucking the norm -
Oddly enough, Ross said, there's a whole crop of greenhorns willing to take the reins. But they're decidedly different from the face of the traditional farmer or rancher. And their methods - everything from urban rooftop gardening to the latest in conservation and sustainability practices - buck the old norm.
"We're seeing an interest from young people who don't come from farming families," Ross said, adding that last year a record-breaking 70,000 students enrolled in their high school Future Farmers of America program.
Craig McNamara, an organic walnut and olive grower and president of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, knows the difficulties of farming and is concerned.
"Our nation needs 100,000 new farmers in a short amount of time," he said.
The 61-year-old doesn't know if his own three children will take over his farm, Sierra Orchards in Winters (Yolo County), when he retires. So he and his wife founded the Center for Land-Based Learning. The nonprofit is an incubator in which young people study the rudiments of agriculture and the importance of watershed conservation. McNamara hopes the program inspires others to start their own farms or take over existing ones.

California's advantages -
Poppy Davis, the USDA's national program leader for small farms and beginning farmers and ranchers, said California might hold more advantages for the new farmer than any other state. It's not just the temperate climate. Unlike other states, where future generations are expected to take over the land and outsiders aren't always welcome, the agriculture community here has more tolerance for change and few preconceived notions, she said. Almost anything goes.
"The next generation doesn't have to be lineal descendants," she said. "While it might be good public policy to say this land needs to stay in farming or ranching, who are we to say, 'This land needs to stay in the same family.' "
While California is looking for fresh young faces to till the ground and drive the cattle, Davis said youth is in the eye of the beholder.
"There are lots of people starting whole different lives in their 50s," she said. "And for a lot of the new farmers in California, this is a second career. Some of these people can be very successful. While they may not know much about farming, they are seasoned in life and make really good business people."
There are other changes, too. It used to be that farming and ranching required large swaths of land and expensive equipment. Not anymore.
"A young man came to me four years ago and said he wanted to farm," McNamara said. "He was a graduate from UC Santa Cruz. To this day, he's farming without owning land or a tractor." McNamara leases the young farmer some of his Winters land. As for the tractor, McNamara pitches in with his.

Inspired by Costa Rica -
Marisa Alcorta, 34, of Davis has wanted to farm for the past 10 years. She did her undergraduate studies at Cornell and spent three months in Costa Rica examining the farming methods of a small mountain village.
"I came back completely inspired," she said.
Getting the capital to start a farm was overwhelming, but when she met three women with a similar goal, they joined forces. The owner of Bridgeway Farms in Winters leased them 16 open acres and 4 acres of peach, nectarine and apricot trees at a very low price, Alcorta said. The women plan to pitch in about $5,000 each to start a community-supported agriculture business. They will sell 20 to 30 public shares in Cloverleaf Farm at Bridgeway in the form of weekly or monthly produce boxes.
"It's the first farming opportunity that I've come across that feels doable," she said.
There are even smaller operations taking root across the state, including public vegetable gardens in city vacant lots, rooftop gardens and urban farms, said Ross, the agriculture secretary.
"Eighteen to 20 percent of California is food insecure," she said. "So farmers of the future won't necessarily be just in the (rural areas). We need big and large to sustain the world's need for food."

Cooper Funk (left), Molly Nakahara and Paul Glowaski are among California's crop of young farmers. Photo: Anne Chadwick Williams / Special To The Chronicle


Dinner Bell Farmer farmer Molly Nakahara rolls up a row cover that was protecting kale, bok choy, and flowers from cold weather and deer as they got started in Grass Valley on Wednesday, December 21. Photo: Anne Chadwick Williams / Special To The Chronicle


Young farmers l-r Cooper Funk, Molly Nakahara, Paul Glowaski met in 2006 at a UC Santa Cruz farm apprenticeship program and started Dinner Bell Farm in Grass Valley two seasons ago. Photographed on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011. Photo: Anne Chadwick Williams / Special To The Chronicle

2011-12-21 "THE HIGH COST OF FREE FOOD: HEALTH DEPARTMENT STUMBLES IN CRACKDOWN ON FORAGED DINNERS" by Peter Jamison
[http://digitalissue.sfweekly.com/article/Sucka+Free+City/925950/93945/article.html]
 Iso Rabins has always done a delicate tango around environmental and food regulations. Rabins pioneered the Bay Area’s burgeoning wild-foods movement when he founded ForageSF in 2009, but city health inspectors, noting the potential hazards of eating products gathered in the wild — the best-known of which come in the form of poisonous mushrooms — were never thrilled with his organization or its various commercial offshoots.
 Earlier this year, one of Rabins’ signature ventures — the Underground Market, a wildly successful event at which various sub-professional food producers peddled their wares — was shut down by the Department of Public Health, which had previously given the market its tacit blessing. Rabins has since been working to bring the Underground Market into compliance with city law.
 But this fall, during that process, he suddenly faced persecution on another front. In October, city officials sent a letter informing him that another series of foraging get-togethers, his so-called Wild Kitchen dinners, could subject him to thousands of dollars in fines. The dinners typically served dozens of patrons, each paying $40 or more for a prix fixe menu of hunted and foraged local foods such as squid, mushrooms, and nettle soup. (Disclosure: SF Weekly profiled Rabins for a cover story in 2009. I attended two Wild Kitchen dinners in the course of reporting for that article, and have since attended one more. They were tasty, and I never got sick.)
 In a letter dated Oct. 26, Richard Lee, director of Environmental Health Regulatory Programs for DPH, told Rabins that the dinner series “constitutes an existing and ongoing violation of state and local law.” Each two-day Wild Kitchen event, Lee said, could bring a fine of $1,063. Lee noted that at least six such events had been recorded by health inspectors this year alone.
 Rabins took his case before DPH Environmental Health Director Rajiv Bhatia at a hearing last week, arguing that he had not been properly notified of potential legal violations before being hit with the fines. “I was never informed I had to get a permit until Oct. 26, after which I did get permits,” Rabins said.
 Turns out he had a point. “When is the first time he was notified, verbally or in writing?” Bhatia asked health inspector Alicia Saam, who testified against Rabins at the hearing. “That’s a good question,” Saam replied. Bhatia, not impressed, let Rabins off the hook. “I’m going to go ahead and waive the fee, because he wasn’t told he had to get a permit,” he said.
 Rabins’ Wild Kitchen dinners are now officially on the right side of the law, with all food prepared in commercial kitchens under strict safety guidelines. (He maintains that the dinners were always “very safe” before the Health Department showed up.) But the new veneer of regulatory compliance has changed the dinners’ spontaneous atmosphere, Rabins says.
 “Unfortunately, it really takes away from the life of the dinners, but I guess that’s what [health officials] need,” he says.

2011-12-02 "Introducing Megapolitanism"
[http://www.thinkurban.org/category/regionalism/]
A recent article from John King at the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the concept of using the Megalopolitan scale for planning purposes [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/25/BA271M30IG.DTL].  The article references the new book by Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang entitled ‘Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography‘ (APA, 2011) [http://www.amazon.com/Megapolitan-America-Understanding-Metropolitan-Geography/dp/1932364978].
As an example, King mentions the Sierra Pacific Megapolitan Area, seen below as a large geographical area that extends from the San Francisco Bay area all the way into Western Nevada, around Reno.   The region includes 27 counties and includes over 12.4 million people, and its expected to grow substantially in the next 30 years.

As mentioned in the article, the significance of the concept of megapolitan areas is to look more broadly at a larger scale, King, quoting Nelson, mentions that “regions can be more proactive in everything from transportation planning to economic strategies…  to have people look at things a little differently, the whole rather than the parts.” 
While explicitly not a model for mega-regional government, there are some possibilities of what this might mean for regions by looking at larger areas.  As mentioned by King, “It’s too early to say whether the concept of megapolitan areas will catch on as a framework for government policy, much less in terms of how regular people define where they live.”
The significant of megapolitan areas, thus is undetermined.  The overall ambiguity of the defining characteristics of a ‘city’ has led to a lot of questions related to city centers, sprawl, and other hybrid urban agglomerations like edge cities, exurbs, and the shift from urban area to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).  This leads to a lot of diversity in definition (outlined in the SF Gate article) -  including the largest megapolitan area (NY-Phil 33.9 million people) to the smallest, fastest growing (Las Vegas 2.4 million).  While Vegas booms, the Steel Corridor of wester PA is creeping along slowly.  In terms of diversity, not surprisingly, the Southern California region has the largest percentage of minorities (62.7%) and the Twin-Cities are the least diverse with 15.5% of minorities.
The terms megaregion, megalopolis, megapolitan area, while similar in nature, are somewhat different historically, spatially, and statistically, so it is worth a look at some of the designations.  A map of megaregions shows the eleven areas in the United States as determined by the Regional Plan Association.

This differs somewhat from a more recent version of Megapolitan areas from a recent essay by Lang and Nelson on Places from Design Observer [http://places.designobserver.com/feature/megapolitan-america/30648/])  They identify 10 megapolitan clusters that exist in 23 megapolitan areas that are similar but slightly different from those above.

The different terms, definitions, and geographical extents makes the concepts a bit difficult to parse, but in general terms, the areas are defined by a population of more than 10 million people that exist within a ‘clustered network of cities’ typically delineated through transportation corridors.
The new interpretation of Megapolitan area builds on earlier concepts to describe a more general ‘transmetropolitan geography’ which is typically thought of more commonly in larger, global areas such as China, Japan, Brazil – which include megaregions of 120 million (Hong Kong, Shenzen-Guangzhou), 60 million (Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe) and 43 million (Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo).  While the concepts are similar, the scale of these new global areas are immense in comparison to the US.
Interestingly enough, the term has been used since the 1820s, and the conceptual usage of the concept of Megalopolis as a grouping of urban areas within a region dates back almost 100 years.  This includes references by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1918) and Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities (1938).  The most popularized recent usage was from 1950s and 60s, in the book on the Northeast United States by Jean Gottmann entitled ‘Megalopolis’ (1961).

2011-11-21 "A Quiet Push to Grow Crops Under Cover of Trees" by Jim Robbins from "New York Times"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/quiet-push-for-agroforestry-in-us.html]
HELENA, Mont. — On a forested hill in the mountains north of Montana’s capital, beneath a canopy of pine and spruce, Marc and Gloria Flora have planted more than 300 smaller trees, from apple and pear to black walnut and chestnut.
Beneath the trees are layers of crops: shrubs like buffalo berries and raspberries, edible flowers like day lilies, vines like grapes and hops, and medicinal plants, including yarrow and arnica.
 Turkeys and chickens wander the two-acre plot, gobbling hackberries and bird cherries that have fallen from trees planted in their pen, and leaving manure to nourish the plants.
 For the Floras, the garden is more than a source of food for personal use and sale. Ms. Flora, an environmental consultant and former supervisor for the United States Forest Service, is hoping it serves as a demonstration project to spur the growth of agroforestry — the science of incorporating trees into traditional agriculture.
 The extensive tree canopy and the use of native plants, she says, make the garden more resilient in the face of a changing climate, needing less water, no chemical fertilizers and few, if any, pesticides. “It’s far more sustainable” than conventional agriculture, she said.
 The idea is to harness the ecological services that trees provide. “Agroforestry is not converting farms to forest,” said Andy Mason, director of the Forest Service’s National Agroforestry Center. “It’s the right tree in the right place for the right reason.”
 The Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency, began an initiative this year to encourage agroforestry.
 Depending on the species, trees make all sorts of contributions to agriculture, experts say. Trees in a shelter belt reduce wind and water erosion. Some trees serve as fertilizers — they take in nitrogen from the atmosphere, or pump it from deep underground and, when they drop their leaves, make it available upon decomposition.
 Trees planted along streams can take up and scrub out polluted farm runoff. They increase species diversity by providing habitat, and some of those species are friendly to farmers — bees and butterflies that help pollinate crops, for example. (One study showed that 66 species of birds benefit from windbreaks on farms.) Trees can keep a field cooler and more moist.
 Some research also shows that cattle farmers can improve their income by introducing trees, both by selling timber and by cooling cows in the shade.
 And trees in general help the environment by absorbing greenhouse gases and by cleaning up polluted water — countering some of the effects of large-scale agriculture.
 “The biggest problem with food production is environmental degradation,” said Gene Garrett, an emeritus professor of forestry and former director of the Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri.
 Properly placed belts of trees and other vegetation along streams can filter out 95 percent of the soil sediment that washes off farm fields, studies show, and up to 80 percent of phosphate and nitrogen that runs off.
 While the idea of farming with trees is being reborn in the United States, it is not new. It got its start here in the Dust Bowl era, when trees were planted in shelter belts to stop severe wind erosion, Mr. Mason said. And around the world, agroforestry goes back centuries. “Many generations have been on the land,” said Jill M. Belsky, a professor of rural and environmental sociology at the University of Montana who has studied forest farms. “They have deep ecological knowledge and many cycles of these seasons.
 “For example, they taste the soil and say, ‘We need a few more chickens in here’ ” for fertilizer.
 Elsewhere, “working” trees are being used to replenish eroded or desert landscapes. A program in Niger has greened millions of acres in the last 20 years.
 There are several approaches to agroforestry. Grazing livestock under a canopy of trees is called silvo-pasture, for instance. In alley cropping, an ancient technique that is becoming more common in the United States, rows of commercially valuable hardwood trees like oak are alternated with rows of corn, wheat or grasses for biofuel.
 Agroforestry operations are also helping raise specialty crops. Nicola MacPherson raises timber in the Ozarks, and grows shiitake and oyster mushrooms on the waste branches; she is also establishing a truffle orchard. Then there are forest gardens like the one the Floras are creating.
 Agroforestry is not just as simple as sticking trees in the ground — it can be a sophisticated form of management. “The key to a lot of systems is how they manage shade and light,” Dr. Belsky said. In one common system — teak trees over vegetable crops — as the over-story closes, limiting light, “the types of crops below change.”
 Here in Montana, the Floras say they hope that their garden will evolve as conditions change. The climate of the northern Rockies, though, is a world away from tropical forest farms, and the Floras are pioneers.
 They have had their share of learning experiences. Bees left their hives and never came back; the Floras had to pollinate their fruit trees by hand, with paintbrushes. One October, trees were killed by a snowstorm and bitter cold. And there are rodents.
 “Gophers do a lot of damage,” Ms. Flora said. “They eat tree roots, carrots and potatoes.” Her Yorkshire terrier, Rocky, has been the best remedy so far.
 The soil is nutrient-poor, but a forest garden turns marginal soil into much more fertile ground. As the needles and leaves fall and animal waste collects, nutrients increase over time.
 One major hurdle to widespread adoption of agroforestry, though, might be conventional thinking about trees.
 “Families spent generations removing trees to practice agriculture, and we’re up against that,” said Dr. Garrett, the emeritus professor here. “We have to stress that if you don’t put them in the way, you can use working trees to benefit agriculture.”

Photograph by Anne Sherwood for The New York Times: Gloria Flora's forest garden includes berries and medicinal plants.

2011-11-13 "City's little boxes, but these look pretty good" by John King from "San Francisco Chronicle"[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/12/BAIJ1LTA4J.DTL]
It's a sign of our continued economic torpor that San Francisco's most engaging new buildings are nine shipping containers slung across two parcels where the asphalt poured for parking lots remains.
And it's a sign of the disconnect in our society between ideas and implementation that the innovative development dubbed Proxy took nearly two years to reach its present form.
But while it's here, enjoy an architectural work-in-progress that uses sturdy hollow metal to convey a core truth of big cities: often, what we savor aren't individual landmarks or buildings so much as the overall sense of place.
The still-evolving compound lines a block of Octavia Boulevard framed by the shops and cafes of Hayes Street on the north and the small but lively Patricia's Green on the west. An alleyway runs through it. There's a car-sharing lot in the back.
The lots are to be filled with housing as part of the transformation of the former Central Freeway path into a landscaped boulevard. But by the time the Board of Supervisors approved a neighborhood development plan in 2008, the recession loomed.
Now's there's an alternate reality, one that merges high style with roll-the-dice spunk.
The first customized containers debuted this spring, back to back, one housing artisanal coffee and the other a maker of ice cream by the scoop. A museum shop followed in July with outdoor exhibition space. Last month saw the opening of the largest component so far, a beer garden where five containers are deployed around picnic tables and a transplanted Redbud tree.
The guiding hand in all this is Oakland architect Douglas Burnham, whose firm Envelope A+D infused the container forms - most of them roughly 20 feet long and 9 feet high - with a new purpose. The goal was "flexible urbanism," composed of simple elements easily revised or removed.
"This is an experiment in a way, to see how cities can adapt to how people today live," said Burnham, who doesn't anticipate Proxy being on Octavia past 2015. "The pace of society has really ramped up, and whether that's good or bad this is an attempt to create a physical framework that can accommodate that."
If the emphasis is on utility, neither design nor setting were neglected.
Glass ends were added to the spaces filled by Ritual Roasters and Smitten Ice Cream, allowing views to and from Patricia's Green across the way. Outside Ritual is a clearing of decomposed granite with movable tables and chairs. Smitten opens onto a concrete patio framed by low benches that also serve to corral the toddlers brought here by parents.
As for the beer garden, it makes the most of its minimal elements: the mature Redbud is a visual anchor, a counterpart to the surrounding chain-link fence. A container used to store the picnic tables walls off one end of the site.
The shame is that all this took so long.
Burnham devised his concept in 2009 and it was embraced promptly by officials at the Mayor's Office of Economic Development, who sought ways to activate the boulevard while construction lagged. But every item on the bureaucratic checklist that followed came with some obstacle to surmount.
"Interim uses don't fit the structure of the building code," Burnham explained. "Everything became a negotiation, and every negotiation takes time."
The same holds true for utility hookups: a full year passed between the application filed for the beer garden, and the lights coming on last month - barely ahead of autumn rains.

Proxy is still evolving -
The museum outpost along Octavia closes Nov. 20 and will be replaced in the spring by retail kiosks. A containerized art gallery is slated for one now-open spot, a double-height shoptainer on another. Next fall, Burnham hopes to replace the car-share lot with a tented event space.
Already, though, the promise is being fulfilled.
This isn't about architecture so much as urban place making: you're less aware of the structures than of the surroundings. The containers aren't treated as sculptural elements, as is the case recently in other international cities. They're content to add layers to the landscape, enlarging the Hayes Valley experience without making a fuss.
Skeptics can say the end result is precious, but so is the ever-more-rarefied Hayes Street scene. An interim use like this takes cues from the setting, then follows through in unpredictable ways. Every neighborhood has sites of similar potential. All we need is to find ways for them to happen.
More details on Proxy are at proxysf.net.

Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle
The Proxy project, a set of shops in repurposed shipping containers in San Francisco's still-on-the-way-up Hayes Valley, is the work of Oakland architect Douglas Burnham who made the containers serve as a flexible format for small businesses.

2011-11-05 Sonoma sustainability leadership series