New S.F. company Shuddle offers Uber-style service for kids

Yesterday morning my 11-year-old daughter was sitting at our kitchen table finishing a bowl of soggy cereal while reading the last pages of a Percy Jackson book when her cell phone let out a gentle buzz. She looked at the screen, hollered “My ride’s here!,” grabbed her backpack, and raced out the front door.





With a toddler gnawing on an apple chunk hanging over my hip, I ran after my speedy tween to meet a woman named Sally Brien who was driving her to school. The San Francisco mom of four recently started working for Shuddle, a new Uber-style service for kids, and we were trying out the service for the first time.

Even though I’d never met Sally before I knew a lot about her.

Shortly after I scheduled my daughter’s morning ride with the easy-to-use Shuddle app, I received a text message indicating the ride was confirmed and directing me to the app for details on the driver. I found a photo of a warm, friendly-faced woman who looked like someone you’d want teaching your child’s second grade class. Her bio let me know that she works for a nonprofit and coaches high school tennis.

Sally got out of her car to help my daughter into the backseat of her spotless pale green Toyota Sienna minivan. I shook Sally’s hand, gave my daughter a hug — and they were off.

Fifteen minutes later I received a text alerting me that my daughter had arrived to school safely.

Shuddle is the brainchild of Nick Allen, who got his start in the ride-sharing business when he founded Sidecar, a company connecting car owners to passengers heading in the same direction. Allen noticed that parents were occasionally using Sidecar to shuttle their kids around the city, and then a light bulb appeared over his head in September 2013 when The New York Times published an article on the busy Manhattan parents who were depending on Uber to cart their kids from school to after-school tutoring, dance classes, soccer practice, and the myriad activities today’s kids juggle.

“Parents were using these services but to have a child riding alone in an Uber is against the company’s terms and conditions,” Allen told SFGate. “It’s confusing for drivers. They don’t have the right insurance. It’s not designed for that.”

“I thought, let’s go out and create the right service that’s designed for families and safe for kids.”

Allen did just that.

Shuddle was in beta all fall and officially launched in San Francisco, the East Bay and the Peninsula in October. Marin service will arrive in a couple weeks. Allen and his team are plotting where to launch next. “Our goal is to be a nationally recognized company that families can count on,” he shared with SFGate.

The slick Shuddle app allows parents to schedule rides up to a week in advance and no less than 24 hours before the pick-up time. This time frame doesn’t allow parents to summon a driver at the last-minute, and Allen says the company isn’t set up like a taxi cab-style service because he wants parents and children to have time to look at the driver’s profile and make arrangements with the school. Parents can schedule any child who can legally ride without a booster seat (generally age 8 and above).

Shuddle requires that all passengers have a phone and for some parents who aren’t ready to let their 8- or 9-year-old loose with a cell phone this is a downside because it disqualifies them from using the service.

“‘I’m really excited about this new service but I’m not ready to hand over a cell phone to my 9-year-old,” says San Francisco mom Elizabeth Leu. “It is the one thing that deters me, but I understand its importance to be able to track her.”

Allen says the phone requirement is crucial to ensure a safe experience.

Another safety precaution: Parents choose a password that the driver must repeat to the child at pick up to verify that she’s a Shuddle driver.

The cost of the ride is charged to the parent’s credit card so you don’t have to send your kids to school with a stash of cash and Shuddle is currently running a promotion where any ride costs $10. In a few weeks when the regular fares kick in, the service will cost about 20 percent more than UberX.

“Our drivers are taking on more responsibility,” Allen explains. “They often have to check a child in or out of school. We’re not trying to be the cheapest option. We want to be the safest option.”






The heart of the company is the team of 100-plus drivers. All of them are female (this isn’t a requirement), and all have experience with kids (this is a requirement). These women are nurses, teachers, nannies and coaches who enjoy children and want to make a little money on the side, or maybe they’re just looking for something to do.

“A lot of our drivers are empty nesters,” Allen says. “Their children have gone off to college. They want to stay involved with kids and give back to other families.”

My daughter tested the service a second time after school and her driver Erica Culp-Garcia is a mom of one who studied child development in college. When Culp-Garcia dropped my daughter home after school, she had fun, upbeat music playing in the car. She uses an app called Songs to make sure the tunes are kid-approrpriate.

Culp-Garcia also works for Lyft, “but I wish I could work for Shuddle full-time,” she told me. “I love kids. Shuddle offers a great break from driving drunk people around from bar to bar.”

Allen understands that safety is the top priority for parents and all Shuddle drivers have undergone criminal background and DMV records checks, provided two employee references, passed an in-person interview, and undergone training that urges them to be friendly with passengers yet respect children’s boundaries. Drivers use their own vehicles and these must be newer than 10 years, have four doors, and pass a 19-point inspection.

What’s more, Shuddle pays for special insurance that allows their drivers to transport kids and this means the insurance agency is regularly conducting inspections of the company’s safety procedures.

While their kids get carted around town, parents can track their driver’s movement. Text messages provide alerts of when kids have been picked up and delivered, and concerned parents can pick up the phone at any time and expect to speak with a live person.

“Unlike other services where you couldn’t get someone on the phone, we’re not just an app,” Allen told SFGate. “We want to offer peace of mind where you can reach someone any time you need to.”

In additiona to managing the phone line, employees at the S.F.-based Shuddle headquarters are also tracking each and every ride. When President Obama was in town and a driver and a child got stuck in traffic that came to a dead stop, the driver and Shuddle HQ worked to alert the parents and keep them updated on their child’s arrival time.

San Francisco mom Rana DiOrio, who wrote a book titled What Does It mean to Be Safe? to help kids learn how to protect themselves, uses Shuddle for her three children with confidence.

“I love the fact that these drivers are all people who know how to interact with children,” DiOrio says. “They have to go through training and their cars must meet safety specifications. They require that your child has a phone and their drivers use a password.”

DiOrio says before she started using Shuddle, she was putting her two oldest kids in Ubers to get across town to school, as she has to drive her youngest to school in Marin. She faced the situation that challenges many parents: You simply can’t be in two places at once.

“My oldest is a bit of a worrier and she was concerned about taking Uber,” DiOrio told SFGate, “but she feels safe taking Shuddle. She loves the password thing and it makes her comfortable and confident.”

DiOrio is now using Shuddle twice a week and sometimes for after-school on early dismissal days. “It really has changed my life,” she says.

Arriving to school in a hired car might sound like a luxury for the rich and famous. Brad and Angelina’s kids and Suri Cruise probably roll up to their schools in sparkling cars driven by chauffeurz. But when you consider what it costs to hire a nanny to drive your kids before and after school, a service like Shuddle is a bargain. Most childcare workers don’t want a 30-minute job. They typically have a two-hour minimum. At $25 an hour for a reliable nanny who you can trust behind the wheel, you’re talking $50. Even without the $10 promotion, the 15-minute ride from my house to my daughter’s school would cost about $10.

I can’t afford to use the service every day nor do I want to because I enjoy taking my daughter to school and she also has fun taking Muni with friends several days a week, but on that day when she has to get to school early and I also have a 7:30 a.m. conference call and my husband left the house at 5 a.m. to be in the field, you know who I’m calling — Shuddle. And actually, those sorts of days come up more often than not.

Article and Photos Sourced From:  http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2014/11/07/uber-style-service-for-kids-launches-in-san-francisco/

Compromise reached on San Francisco’s chain store limits

San Francisco has long debated its rules governing chain stores, but residents shouldn’t expect any big changes soon: A yearlong effort to to rewrite the city’s formula retail controls has culminated in more of a modest tweak than a radical makeover. 

The compromise legislation approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday — a melding of two separate proposals by progressive Supervisor Eric Mar and Mayor Ed Lee — leaves most of the city’s current rules in place. Those rules require large stores with more than 11 locations to get a special permit from the city before moving into any of San Francisco’s neighborhood commercial districts. 

Cap on outlets 
In a win for small businesses and left-leaning politicians worried that the influx of big stores will ruin the character of neighborhoods and drive out mom-and-pop businesses, the city will not raise that cap from 11 to 19, as Lee had wanted, and will now count businesses’ total worldwide locations, not just their U.S. stores. “This is a change that strengthens, updates and modernizes our city’s formula retail ordinance,” Mar said Tuesday. “Our formula retail controls are working in San Francisco, and we did not need a radical overhaul but rather some thoughtful tinkering. One thing that was very important to me was to ... ensure stronger neighborhood voices in the process, and I think we have accomplished that.” Mar said he hopes the legislation will make neighborhood commercial districts less attractive to large multinational corporations and help push down rents for smaller businesses. Under the current rules and the legislation approved Tuesday, once a retailer breaks the 11-location cap, it must receive a conditional use permit, which routinely takes four to six months to obtain and cost tens of thousands of dollars. But Mar said the city doesn’t want to punish homegrown businesses with multiple locations that are looking to expand their footprint, and said he will be working with the Planning Department on follow-up legislation that would allow medium-size retailers to grow without facing an expensive, drawn-out permitting process. 

Grown in S.F. 
Philz Coffee, a homegrown business, currently has 14 locations, for example, and would need a conditional use permit to add any more locations in San Francisco, which can mean paying rent for months on a yet-to-open location while waiting for approvals. “We are looking at specific ways to expedite the process for companies like the San Francisco Soup Co. and Philz Coffee, which many people feel are different than larger chains,” Mar said. The compromise bill also removed professional services — banks, insurance companies, real estate offices — from the law, a change the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce had pushed for. The law exempts grocery stores as well. And the two sides split the difference on a provision that calls for some proposed formula retail stores to first conduct an analysis gauging the impact on the city’s economy, including employment, wages and commercial rents. Mar proposed that any proposed store above 3,000 square feet undertake such a study — the Planning Department had suggested 50,000 square feet. The legislation calls for any formula retail businesses 20,000 square feet or greater to conduct the study. In a letter to supervisors in advance of Tuesday’s vote, Chamber Vice President of Public Policy Dee Dee Workman called the 20,000-square-foot threshold a “reasonable compromise that should not burden small businesses trying to get a foothold in a neighborhood retail district.” She also praised another provision that would allow chain stores taking over a space that was previously used for formula retail to avoid the full conditional-use-permit process and instead undergo an administrative review that could move more quickly. But not everyone in the businesses community was pleased. Ken Cleaveland, vice president of public policy at the Building Owners and Managers Association, which represents commercial property owners, told a supervisors committee last week that changes were unnecessary. “The current restrictions are working,” Cleaveland said. “Why do we need to make them even more restrictive?” Supporters of the changes, such as affordable-housing advocates, agree that the current law is working — and say the changes will further strengthen protections for small businesses. Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, called the city’s restrictions “incredibly successful” and pointed out that chains represent just 12 percent of the city’s retail — a number that is even lower in many neighborhoods. Nationally, chain stores represent 32 percent of all retailers.
  
Seeking chain stores 
Supervisor London Breed, who has helped bring some chain stores to her district — at the request of residents — said she believes there is a “time and place” for formula retail and that the tweaks approved Tuesday strike a fair balance. “I think this is a good, solid piece of legislation. A lot of work has gone into it, and in the future, if we determine some things in the legislation create barriers to getting services that some in the community want, we should revisit the legislation,” she said.



Article and Photos Sourced From:  http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Compromise-reached-on-San-Francisco-s-chain-5870444.php#photo-2906449

Flower Mart tenants seek assurances about future

San Francisco's development wars are migrating from the waterfront to a sentimental property in the heart of SoMa: the San Francisco Flower Mart. 

Working with former Mayor Art Agnos and former Supervisor Aaron Peskin - who led the battle against waterfront projects like the 8 Washington condominium project and the Warriors arena on Piers 30-32 - a group of flower market tenants are staking out turf for what could be a long fight over the development of a tech office campus that will likely top a million square feet. 

"To me this is the new chapter in the struggle for the heart and soul of San Francisco," Agnos said. 

On Sept. 11 the board of the San Francisco Flower Growers Association is scheduled to vote on the $26.6 million sale of its shares to Kilroy Realty Corp., one of San Francisco's biggest developers and commercial landlords. If the board votes in favor of the deal, the 1.9-acre property would be transferred to Kilroy.

'All lip service'

Tenants say that they have had no direct communication with their future landlord, Kilroy, or their current landlord, the San Francisco Flower Growers Association. The tenants' lease expires at the end of the year, and they want longer leases and guarantees that their businesses will be part of any new plan.
"There has not been one phone call, no information. It's all been through the grapevine," said Patrick McCann, who owns Greenworks, a flower wholesaler and retailer. "Will we be out of business come Dec. 31? Do we all need to find new places to work? It's been all lip service."

Outreach planned

In a statement Kilroy, which is currently building headquarters for Salesforce and Dropbox in San Francisco, said it "remains committed to working with adjacent owners, existing tenants, and the city to preserve the Flower Mart at its current location."
"After we acquire the site from the San Francisco Flower Growers Association, we look forward to conducting an extensive outreach and planning process to create a modern facility to be enjoyed by growers, tenants, buyers and visitors for many decades to come," the statement said.

Tenants are holding a news conference Wednesday to talk about the project and their demands.

Agnos was behind Proposition B, the successful June ballot measure that prohibits development on Port of San Francisco land exceeding zoned height limits unless approved by voters. And he said he would support another ballot initiative if the flower market is not adequately protected. "It would be an easy choice for voters: Do you want another high-tech office park or do you want a flower market?"

The San Francisco Flower Mart is the second-largest market of its kind in the United States, eclipsed only by the market in Los Angeles. About 90 percent of the mart, where 88 businesses are located, is controlled by two major associations: the Italian American-dominated San Francisco Flower Growers Association on the western half of the site and the Japanese American California Flower Market on the eastern half.

In limbo

The property owned by the California Flower Market is not included in the sale agreement with Kilroy, but the group's general manager, Bob Otsuka, said his group is in talks with "an experienced real estate developer" - presumably Kilroy - on a larger project that would include the entire property.
McCann said that tenants are just starting to understand what is happening with the property. "They are out there growing, cutting and bringing flowers in," he said. "When you talk to them about this stuff, they are like deer in the headlights." 

He said the lack of a long-term leases and uncertainty about the future has left business owners in limbo.

"You are at the whim of the owners. You can't market it, you can't sell. Who is going to buy a one-year lease? What if you are sick? You can't get out. I have invested $250,000 in a business I can't sell."

Article and Photos Sourced From:  http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Flower-Mart-tenants-seek-assurances-about-future-5714320.php 

25 Bay Area Startups Making a World of Difference

Obvious bias aside, the San Francisco Bay Area is one bad ass region. We embody ingenuity and create products that people around the world love and enjoy on a daily basis. You're all very welcome. 

Though nothing more than a pen-sized dot on your average globe, a lot goes down here. Brilliant engineering minds, vibrant recruiting teams, and young CEOs are becoming a staple in the city—seriously, when else in history has running a multi-million (sometimes billion) dollar company before turning the big 3-0 been this common?

We've partnered with fellow local brand Hangar 1 Vodka, quickly establishing itself as an industry leader, to recognize other Bay Area startups making California proud. Google, Twitter, and Facebook need no introduction. Cheers to small companies doing big things that you may or may not have known are locally grown.

1 | AdRoll: Ever been online shopping for a new pair of boots and the next thing you know that same pair of boots is in every advertisement no matter what website you're on? Some call it fate, but those who know better call it AdRoll. At the ripe old age of seven, AdRoll boasts the most widely used ad-retargeting platform in the world, calling household names like Google and Facebook partners. With a 97% retention rate, this team of young people connects brands with their "most likely to succeed" customers.

2 | Afterlight: If you're an avid Instagramer (#WhoIsntTheseDays), you've noticed more and more photos with thick white borders, light beams, and filters that go above and beyond the average X-Pro II and Hefe. This Sacramento-based company of two (yes two) people is taking over the photo editing market, establishing a new style that competitors are mimicking all around the world. Simplifying professional-level photo editing tools for the average person to turn iPhone pics into decent looking works of art--making ordinary people, places, and things look extraordinary.

3 | AGOGO: Who are the all stars of the 2014 NBA season? Is the Ukraine on the brink of civil war? Do animals like music? Pretty much anything you ever wanted (and didn't want) to know about is now in one place, ready for your ears. AGOGO brings together top news, music, and entertainment platforms to produce one go-to place for people to hear their favorite things, all the time. Listen to what both Fox News and NBC have to say about the same subject matter in one click. Catch multiple ESPN interviews on a single player in one channel. Time to listen up.

4 | Airbnb: For the longest time, there was no reasonable middle ground between an expensive hotel and a dirt-cheap hostel when it came to world traveling, unless of course you knew someone who knew someone with a spare room wherever it was you were going. Now people can input their destination, budget, travel dates, and number of guests in exchange for a plethora of detailed, photographed listings of available housing options. On the flip side, people all over the world are uploading their homes, lofts, and yes, even castles, for their fellow humans to choose from and enjoy. With 600,000+ worldwide listings, Airbnb continues to change the way the human population explores the world.

5 | CreativeLive: Technology is continuously allowing people to learn about the world and connect with one another, more so now than ever before. In a time where education is an expectation and tech degrees become outdated in a matter of years, CreativeLive presents a plausible solution. Introducing industry experts in a classroom setting to people in the comfort of their homes is quickly becoming a new reality. Now you can learn the latest version of Photoshop, get professional tips on launching an online business, and even find out how to market yourself on YouTube, all without putting on pants. (Please consider pants before your YouTube debut.) Isn't technology great?

6 | Evernote: For the sake of explanation, take a moment to imagine the last project you worked on, whether it be personal or professional, and everything that went into it's conception. Maybe you jotted a phone number down on the back of a receipt, communicated through a long stream of emails, snapped iPhone photos of inspiration during your morning jog, and bookmarked related websites to use as references. Now imagine streamlining all of that into one place that you can reach on any device at any time. Yes, it's possible thanks to another boss-ass Bay Area business. Evernote, that "personal assistant that you never could justify the cost of because you should be able to organize your own life, but it's just so hard to keep it all together" app. Take a deep breath and download. 

7 | Fitbit: A tight group of NorCal folks have developed a series of products that show the average person how their daily routine translates into health and fitness standards, from a wearable wristband to a bathroom scale. Whether you're sound asleep in your city loft or huffing and puffing up a flight of stairs, Fitbit tells you how good/bad everything you do is compared to previous tracked days and industry benchmarks--a constant reminder that you're either a monumental success or the world's laziest sack. Sync your Fitbit device to your mobile device for a visual translation into charts and graphs, all at the touch of a button. 

8 | Flipboard: There is something to be said for flipping through a magazine--that simple satisfaction that you get from turning a page as oppose to scrolling through cyberspace (at least the 7x7 mag team thinks so). But what about the ease of clickable links, creating that beloved breadcrumb trail of related info? Flipboard has seemingly addressed all of the above with their digital, flippable magazine platform. Mags are no longer limited to text and photos, but are rather entering an age of multisensory experiences, incorporating videos, music, and social media into their once one-dimensional paper pages.

9 | GoPro: Extreme sport meets extreme photography. Thanks to this Bay Area company, people are documenting their journeys in ways we've never seen before. Together the world has taken jumps out of planes, dived deep below the ocean's surface, flipped upside down on snowboards, and climbed the highest mountains, all through the lenses of tiny cameras stuck to athletes' equipment. GoPro is a simple invention that allows those of us who have a harder time channeling our inner daredevil to live vicariously through the adrenaline-inclined.

10 | Homejoy: You have to admit that a clean home makes you feel a little better about the other aspects of your life, even if ever so slightly. From folded laundry to dusted baseboards, these maids do just about anything and everything you could possibly need, just short of tucking you into your neatly made bed at night. If for whatever reason, your house isn't sparkling as brightly as you had imagined, they come back and do it again for free. Employees go through extensive background checks prior to stepping through your door, if that eases your mind at all. From SF to Boca Raton, Homejoy is cleaning this country up.

11 | IFTTT: If This Then That, pronounced "gift" without the "g." If you like a song on Soundcloud, then it downloads to Dropbox. If it's supposed to rain in the next hour, then you get a text alert. If your stock drops by 5% or more, then you get an email. Using the trigger/action recipe, you can make your apps work even harder for you. It's like all your favorite apps are best friends and working together to make your life easier. What a happy thought.

12 | Indiegogo: From spy cams to heart transplants, the amount of things that require funding in this world is endless. Indiegogo provides deserving causes with an opportunity to get the world invested in something bigger than themselves. Even James Franco turned to this Bay Area brand for film funding.

13 | Jawbone: Once known for its wearable fitness-tracking device, Jawbone has since released portable speakers controlled by users' iPhones. The Mini Jambox brings pocket-sized sound to a world full of clucky hardware. It's not often that one company takes over two entirely separate industries. But what can we say? They're from the Bay.

14 | Kitchit: It's not every day that you host a dinner party in your home, or maybe it is. Think The Real Housewives of San Francisco. Whether you're planning a romantic date night or impressing a group of frenemies, Kitchit brings top culinary talent into your home for the ultimate personal chef dining experience. Choose from pre-planned menus and customize as needed to ensure everything is perfect for your guests, whoever they might be. The chef grabs the groceries, cooks, and even cleans up! A-freaking-men. This local startup of less than 20 people is making a huge impact on this niche in the market, changing the way we do dinner. Now if only there were a hot waiter app...

15 | Leap Motion: Making the average person feel like the wizard they always wished to be. Imagine sitting in front of your computer, twirling your index finger, and making things move on the screen. A world without mouses and controllers is an amazing thought, one that is slowly becoming a reality thanks to Leap Motion. Keep up the good work, guys. We're here to offer our magical hands for any sort of testing you might need! 

16 | Lookout: As inconceivable as it may seem these days, nobody used to believe it was possible for cellphones to be hacked. That is, until the Lookout founders (and in those days, just a couple of super smart dudes) built the Bluetooth Sniper and used it to break into celebrities' mobile devices at the 2005 Oscars. Glad these masterminds are on our side now. This team of hackers hacks in the name of justice these days and is constantly finding new ways to protect our privacy, two steps ahead of the bad guys.

17 | Lovely: We can't quite think of a better place for an app like this to be birthed, considering the rental nightmare that is San Francisco. Lovely takes the best listings from various sites and places them on a map for you to interact with, bird's-eye-view status. Say you want to live in North Beach or the Marina, have a max monthly budget of $4.5K (who are you and can we be friends), need two bedrooms, and have a pet cat. Just fill out the simplified template and watch the city map populate with available properties fitting that description. It's like online dating for you and your dream rental home. Everyone deserves true love. And a cat-friendly building.

18 | Luvo: If it's good enough for Derek Jeter and Jennifer Garner's stomachs, it's sure as heck good enough for ours. Even Delta Airlines is presenting these pre-made meals to their first class flyers. From kale ricotta ravioli to apple cinnamon flatbread, stuffing your face with this food is perfectly acceptable because it's super healthy. 

19 | Medivation: For anyone who has ever lost a loved one to a disease and wondered if there was anything more that could have been done, Medivation has stepped up to offer hope. Bringing promising treatments still in development to patients of Prostate Cancer specifically, the team hopes to discover new ways to cure deadly diseases. The scale on which this company is changing lives is pretty remarkable, and happening in our own backyard!

20 | Pinterest: Binders and bulletin boards are so last decade. For daydreamers and planners everywhere, there is now a digital space connecting people to inspiration, pin-spiration if you will. Whether you have a doting fiancé or you're as single as it gets, it's never too early to plan that dream wedding you may or may not have someday. "Pin" bridal photos, dress links, and cake recipes from friends and strangers alike, to a personal "board" for later use. Do this for any of your obsessions (not limited to weddings). Pinterest is a veteran in the starup world, the perfect example of new technology reinventing an age-old concept.

21 | Pocket: You've been stuffing your pockets full of everything imaginable since your days spent running around the playground, always sure you were going to need whatever it was you found later. This local company takes that concept and incorporates it into your everyday life on a digital level. And you don't even need Internet to do it. Funny videos, fitness inspiration photos, recipe links, and more can now all be stored in one place for when you finally run into that friend you wanted to show them to. Genius.

22 | Square: Making phones and tablets that much more useful, Square is essentially a portable cash register. Nothing more than a tiny, for lack of a better noun, square that you plug into your digital device and swipe a credit card through. Transactions are handled through the downloadable software and customers sign on the dotted line with their finger. Viola! 

23 | TaskRabbit: Whether you're the type of person that loves to help or the kind that needs help (you know who you are), this app is guaranteed to improve your life. Need an oil change, but never learned to do it yourself? Need help packing for a big move, but too lazy to do it yourself? Name your task, price, and when you need it done. Somebody, somewhere nearby is waiting to give you a hand. Not so helpless? Assist those in need and make a few bucks. Who says you shouldn't benefit from others' misfortunes?

24 | Uber: Along with a handful of other companies on this list, if you haven't heard of Uber by now, we're judging you. Mean glares aside, Uber is popping up everywhere, most recently in California Wine Country. This fleet of average Joes and their automobiles gets people from here to there at the tap of a phone screen. Friendly drivers, known to supply complimentary beverages, snacks, and even Valentine's Day roses, swoop you from your stoop and drop you at your destination. Choose from standard cabs, slightly nicer regular cars (mostly Priuses), black cars, and SUVs when determining your ride options. Rate your driver at the end, but be sure to flash them a smile because you're being rated on your passenger skills, too!  

25 | Zoosk: Dating on your phone, not quite to the extreme the dude in Her took it to, is the new normal and Zoosk is leading that charge. The app takes note of your taste in the opposite sex as you click around, promising to match you with people that you're most likely to find attractive. There's 25 million+ fish in this cyber sea, in 80 countries and 25 languages. Sometimes scrolling through dating profiles on your phone as opposed to a desktop computer feels a little less "somebody love me" and a little more cool, calm, and collected. The things we do for love, right?

Read more at http://www.7x7.com/WorldDomination#p47VDWItptiLbsoA.99

S.F. Airbnb rules would pull short-term rentals from shadows

The thousands of people renting out their homes on websites such as Airbnb could soon be on the right side of the law in San Francisco, but only if they agree to play by a strict set of rules being proposed by Supervisor David Chiu.

S.F. Supervisor David Chiu's proposal would effectively
prevent units from becoming full-time vacation rentals.

Chiu's long-awaited legislation, which will be unveiled Tuesday, will lift a ban on short-term rentals in San Francisco but impose a number of requirements on people who want to offer apartments or rooms as vacation rentals. Chiu said the new rules will help protect the city's rental housing stock and make sure San Francisco gets the taxes it is due.
It won't make everyone happy, particularly landlords angry that tenants are subleasing units at a premium while they are bound by strict rent-control laws. But in San Francisco, where the ban on short-term rentals has often been ignored, supporters say the proposal will at least outline a set of rules and bring a widely used commodity out of the shadows.
Chiu said tens of thousands of San Francisco visitors use sites such as Airbnb and VRBO and that "clearly the blanket prohibition with no enforcement is not working."

A fresh approach

"We believe a different approach is necessary to create a distinction between reasonable behavior and bad behavior, all in the context of our scarce housing stock," he said. "And on the other hand, (we support) the idea that working families, students and residents trying to make rent might be able to slightly supplement their income if they happen to go out of town for a weekend or go on vacation during summer break or visit family during the holidays."
In multiunit buildings, the legislation would allow short-term rentals only in apartments where someone lives 75 percent of the year, effectively banning a unit from becoming a full-time vacation rental. It would require anyone renting out their place to pay hotel taxes, hold liability insurance and register with the city every two years.

Lorraine Rorke Bader arranges fresh flowers in a room at her home before
an overnight guest arrives in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014.
Bader rents out the room, with a 3-night minimum stay,
for $120 a day using the Airbnb service.

And in a nod to property owners, the proposal specifically states that the new law won't override lease agreements and that rent-control limits still apply to short-term rentals.
If people fail to play by the rules and are reported to the city, the proposal would force websites to ban those renters. It also requires these "hosting platforms" to tell users of city laws and to collect and remit the city's 14 percent hotel tax. Airbnb last month said it will start collecting the hotel tax by the summer.
The registration requirements will apply only to two-unit and larger buildings. Single-family homes, which were already exempt from the short-term rental ban but are barred under city code from using their properties for commercial purposes, will not be affected, though Chiu said he is open to including them in the legislation.
"This legislative proposal acknowledges what our community already knows: San Franciscans should be able to share the home in which they live," Airbnb said in a statement. "We are reviewing this proposal and look forward to working with policymakers as we move forward."
Tenant advocates, whose primary concern was the permanent loss of rental housing, are pleased with the proposal, said Ted Gullicksen, head of the San Francisco Tenants Union. Gullicksen said the impact of a San Francisco resident renting out his or her home a few months or weeks a year is different from a property owner evicting long-term tenants to turn a unit into a permanent vacation rental.
"We want to focus on the latter - renters, homeowners and condo owners should be able to rent out a bedroom for a limited amount of time," he said, adding that the proposal could also help tenants who want to use Airbnb, VRBO and other housing websites to do so with less risk of eviction.

Lisa Weitekamp, 27, and Chad Selph, 25, pictured in their kitchen April 1, 2014
in their apartment in San Francisco, Calif. The two, who have been
roommates in the apartment since July, hosted two AirBnB
clients for a total of three nights in October 2013. On Thursday, March 27, 2014,
they received a 72-hour eviction notice out of the blue.

Harder to evict

The legislation will make it more difficult for landlords to evict tenants who rent out their units in violation of their lease. Currently, property owners can either move to boot out tenants because they violated their lease - a longer process that allows a renter to first try to fix the problem - or kick them out for being in violation of the city's short-term rental law. Chiu's legislation would eliminate that second option, which can result in a swifter eviction process.
But that's not the biggest concern of property owners, said Janan New, executive director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, which represents property owners. She said her members are primarily worried about "the health and safety of other tenants," who are going to be forced to live near strangers who are passing through and only using a unit for a short time.
"People that are using a unit for transient use typically aren't as careful as they are when it's their primary residence," she said. "We would prefer the status quo to anything else - and we are not in support of creating another dysfunctional bureaucracy."
Ed Singer, a lawyer who represents landlords in eviction suits, said to be completely fair the legislation should simply ban short-term rentals in apartments subject to rent control and should clarify that landlords can ban Airbnb rentals in their buildings.
"A tenant should not have the right to unilaterally change the use of a building owner's apartment," he said.
Airbnb hosts also expressed concern that the proposed rules could be too onerous.
"We know there needs to be change, but this is a bit extreme," said Emily Benkert, whose Guesthop company manages 50 Airbnb listings in San Francisco.

Two complaints

Her biggest quibbles are with the registry and the residency requirements. She said the registry - which would be kept internally by city officials but would be accessible to the members of the public if they filed a public record request - could cut the number of San Francisco hosts in half, and the residency requirement infringes property owners' rights.
"A lot of renters who are subletting their places, many of whom do it just a few times a year, won't want to be listed on a registry because they don't want their landlord to go in there and find them," she said. "A lot of property owners in San Francisco don't live here; it's their second home and they come here a few times a year. Doing short-term renting has been a way for people to keep their properties and have the freedom to continue coming here part time."
Chronicle staff writer Carolyn Said contributed to this report.

Marisa Lagos is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mlagos@sfchronicle.com

Article & photos Sourced From:  http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Airbnb-rules-would-pull-short-term-rentals-5402598.php#page-2

$21M Renovation in Store for the Fairmont in Nob Hill

One of the most iconic hotels in the country, the Fairmont San Francisco, is about to get the ball rolling on series of improvements that should cement its reputation for stellar hospitality and elegance. Woodridge Capital Partners LLC and Oaktree Capital Management LP, the groups that purchased the propertyfor $200 million back in 2012, are now spending $21M to improve the grand old hotel. Their plan consists of transforming the Fairmont's 591 guest rooms and suites to meet today's luxury hotel guests' sky-high expectations. The new rooms are being refreshed by the interior designers at Forrest Perkins, whose portfolio includes Fairmont properties in Boston, Vancouver and Bermuda. The renovated guest rooms will feature gold and sapphire accents, as well ashandblown floor lamps and pieces by local artists. The upgrades should help draw tourists and business travelers, who now have more and more options down in SoMa, back up to Nob Hill.


Article and photo Sourced from:  http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/03/28/21m_renovation_in_store_for_the_fairmont_in_nob_hill.php

Here’s What Facebook’s New Frank Gehry-Designed Campus Will Look Like

The world-famous designer was asked to tone down his usual "expression" for the assignment, which gives a more subdued feel than his other iconic designs, like Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall and Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum

If you took each square foot of Facebook’s proposed expansion and laid them in one long line, the length of that line would be the equivalent of 75,400 Mark Zuckerbergs, laid head to toe (not including the 5’9″ CEO’s hoodie or Adidas sandals). The new “West Campus” planned to be completed by spring 2015 is a sprawling 433,555 sq.-ft., design by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry.






New photos of a model of the campus, provided to TIME by Facebook, show a design that is more subdued than iconic Gehry landmarks like the flowing silvery sails that make up L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Facebook asked that the design be less brazen, something that fit naturally into the marshlands that are already there in Menlo Park, Calif. “They felt some of those things were too flashy and not in keeping with the kind of the culture of Facebook, so they asked us to make it more anonymous,” Gehry’s partner Craig Webb told the Palo Alto Daily News. “Frank was quite willing to tone down some of the expression of architecture in the building.”






The building is oblong, roughly the shape of a blank status-update box, and 73-ft. high at its tallest. The plan is for one of those giant, open working spaces that start-up culture adores, with no divisions or walled-off offices. (A Facebook spokesperson concedes that a few necessities, like the bathrooms, will not be open-plan.) A total of 2,800 employees can fit in the space, which is about the size of Facebook’s current offices across the expressway in Silicon Valley.






The crown jewel of the design is the roof, which will be covered by a park with trees transplanted from around California and “drought-resistant grasses.” Picture: coffee shop, burger shack, walking paths, an abundance of benches. On the ground floor, employees will look out one side to another park and the other to native tidal marshlands.






To get approval for the plans, Facebook had to make plenty of promises to the local city council, like contributing millions toward affordable housing and a new charitable foundation, according to the AllFacebook blog. “Congratulations,” Menlo Park Mayor Peter Ohtaki told Facebook employees after the council voted unanimously to approve the plans last year. “Where’s the ‘Like’ button?”












Article & Photos Sourced From: http://time.com/30705/facebook-frank-gehry-campus-menlo-park/

Undercover at Golden Gate Park's Conservatory of Flowers

Welcome to Foliage Finder, where Curbed takes a look at public and private landscape projects around the Bay Area. Gardens will be chosen at random, but do drop us a line if you'd like to see a certain area featured.

Fact: One of the most photographed landmarks in San Francisco, the Conservatory of Flowers is the oldest glass and wood Victorian structure of its kind in Northern America. Delighting lovers of the natural world for over a century, this architectural gem underwent enormous millennial repairs and remains in top gothic form. 

How much will it cost me? $5 for San Franisco residents, seniors, youths and students; $8 for visitors; $2 for humans age 5-11, and free to anyone under 5. Find the latest on hours here.
What's so great about this garden?Glasshouses and conservatories were the Victorians' answer to industrialization and dense urban spaces. These "theatres of nature" were designed to bring the urbanite face to face with masterpieces of the natural world otherwise unavailable in city living. And while we're slightly more comfortable with industrialization than our 19th century counterparts, in 2014 we still hunger for green-space and experiences of nature to transport us out of city life one afternoon at a time. Plus this 16,800-windowed wonder is kept humid and hot for its 1,700 tropical plant species and will warm you right up on a rainy day. 

Why visit now? After almost a year on display, there's only 2 weeks left to catch the Butterfly Exhibit (ending on March16th, 2014). Starting in April the garden will replace cuddly butterflies amidst beautiful daises and sunflowers with deadly carnivorous plants, including the alluring pitcher plants (Sarracenia and Nepenthes), the seemingly harmless looking butterwort (Pinguicula -- watch as it lures flies to their doom), and everyone's favorite wicked plant -- the Venus Fly Trap.




 The Conservatory of Flowers [Main Site] Current Special Exhibits [the Conservator of Flowers Site]


Article and Photos Sourced from: http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/03/03/undercover_at_golden_gate_parks_conservatory_of_flowers.php#more

Bridge Theatre Sold for $2M, Will Become Baseball Academy

Thursday, February 27, 2014, by Tracy Elsen

The Bridge Theatre on Geary closed down to movie-going audiences more than a year ago, but it has now been sold and will find a second life as the home of a local baseball training school. The San Francisco Baseball Academy bought the Bridge for nearly $2 million and will be moving its operations from the Dogpatch to the Geary site. The theater, which was built in 1939 in honor of the then-new Golden Gate Bridge, is historic so don't expect lots of renovations or construction. It has one screen and 350 seats, and its facade sign is painted in International Orange as a nod to the Golden Gate.  

The Bridge is the third old San Francisco theater to be repurposed for athletic purposes; the Metro Theater on Union Street will soon reopen as an Equinox Gym and the Alhambra Theater on Polk Street became a Crunch Fitness. According to SF Business Times, the Bridge could not become a more traditional gym because of the lack of foot traffic on that section of Geary. 

Article and Photos sourced from:  http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/27/bridge_theatre_sold_for_2m_will_become_baseball_academy.php