San Francisco has Summer Streets too.

Looks like the West Coast is also getting into the closed streets idea, much like our Summer Streets here in NYC.

I got this off Streetsblog

From, New Yorker Jen Petersen.


San Francisco held its inaugural car-free "Sunday Streets" event last weekend. New Yorker Jen Petersen was there and files this report.

Whatever the weather, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf doesn’t suffer from a shortage of dollar-shelling, strolling tourists on weekends, and so clearing street space for more people-powered mobility on a sunny morning had instant takers. As was the case at New York’s Summer Streets, more than a few participants simply stumbled upon the event. And since Civic Center and Fort Mason was hosting the U.S.’s first Slow Food Nation, a foodie-drawing tribute to regional, small-scale food producers, there was an even greater influx of slow and deliberate pilgrims on this particular weekend. There wasn’t a chance that the northern part of the route would go un-used, though I wondered how many San Franciscans actually ventured that way. But save for the artisan street vendors set up as usual at Market Street and Embarcadero, the weekend-shuttered financial district was still a tourist no-go zone.

South of the Ferry Terminal Building (itself a regional foods marketplace), however, cyclists, walkers, rollerbladers, and runners transitioned to the physical activity-promoting leg of the route. And so rounding the bay’s curve to South Beach, where the SF Giants’ AT&T Park was open for base running, and the China Basin inlet, where Cheryl Burke Dance Studio offered Tribal Belly, Afro-Colombian, Salsa, and East Coast swing dance classes all morning, the re-appropriative potential of the street came to life. I maintain: there is no higher social use of street space than dancing!

read the rest Here.

Speaking of San Francisco. Chris Carlsson, one of the original riders of Critical Mass, author and world traveler will be the keynote speaker at this years Conflux festival. Sept 11th-thru the 14th. in NYC.

Conflux Festival is the art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space.