people's republic of san francisco, is that we are creating a vision for the future, establishing a legacy for who we want to be and how we want to travel and setting a mark for creating a transit first city. i want to thank the transit advocates who are here with us today from have -- who have really been on the forefront of making us think as policy makers of what we needed. there have been many thanks to the city officials here, and i want to add my congratulations to the work that was done, as well as to my colleagues who have been leading in so many areas, not just supervisor mirkarimi, with america's cup, supervisor mar on the land use committee, and supervisor farrell because a large number of folks will be in your district sharing in this event.

we are coming together, though, as a people in all facets of our neighborhoods, and i want to thank my neighborhood leaders who just last week got a little preview of the plan, and i know we will be working with staff to make sure that this plan is as effective and efficient as possible. we need to rethink how people traveled here in san francisco. assuming not only after 2013 that the america's cup, that we continue to win for many years to come, we have to figure out how to deal with this capacity and not just if, but when san francisco comes out of the recession that we are in, we have to figure out how to continue to move not just 800,000 people a day, but many more than that. so i'd just want to welcome and thank everyone for this kick off of a conversation, a dialogue that will lead to the implementation of plans that will lead us to be one of the greatest cities in the world here in san francisco. thank you for being with us today. [applause]

>> thank you, supervisor. the next person i'm going to introduce sits on two relevant authorities, but i know a third reason he has been so active -- he is a member of the california coastal commission and chair of the san francisco county transportation authority, but he also grew up in newport road -- newport, rhode island, and was passionate about what the america's cup in to the community for so long. i did not think the documents that we have that we were successful in putting forth to the ellison people could have been successful without supervisor ross mirkarimi. [applause] supervisor mirkarimi: thank you, everybody. what he did not tell you was that i'm not allowed back into the state of rhode island, and they are not happy that they see me as the trading our homegrown interests. i am proud, as an early supporter, of trying to bring

the cup here to said francisco and wearing my other hat on the transportation authority, in rising to the challenge that i think the san francisco can do what no other city in the united states has demonstrated for a high-profile sports event. if you really put into this frame, after the olympics and after world cup soccer, the america's cup actually grosz's -- is the third-highest grossing per dollar value of an important international event. with that distinction comes an incredible infusion of population that will certainly want to enjoy, will certainly want to remain, and really take in san francisco. that puts a certain amount of pressure and opportunity for our city bought to rise to that particular occasion. i see it more on an olympic number sort of trophy with regards to is being prepared, being able to ferry and traffic over 200,000 people a day

during what will be a high- profile season routinely for san francisco. it is more about people getting on to transit. it is also about them biking and walking. it is also about allowing for residents to engage something they take for granted on an everyday basis, and that is a relationship to one of the most important assets that we have, and that is our day -- bay and all the other natural indigenous resources we have that make this city one of the most majestic on this planet. for us to be able to create that kind of infrastructure so we are getting people out of their cars, walking, biking, being able to take transit, to seriously upgrade not on an interim basis, our transit system and what it looks like, but it fortifies our commitment to the kind of transit first policy that many ask why we have

not yet. along that line, while it seems to be somewhat mainstream for ebit holders throughout the country today and even abroad to use the moniker of a green event, they often do not rise to achieving that kind of result. i think san francisco could be the first city, and we are very wedded in city hall to be the first in something every now and then, so it is not an unfamiliar distinction, but san francisco in this case can show, because of all the talent that's is really aggregated here today of the city family, neighborhood resources, and the expertise, both public and private, that is now helping us prepare for this, to say that not only do we not want a carbon different -- a carbon neutral event, but we want a carbon-- the event -- carbon-negative event.

i think san francisco could be the first. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, a supervisor. probably the linchpin to making this begin to work is going to put the test to muni. i would like to welcome the executive director and ceo of the san francisco municipal transportation agency. >> thank you. yes, it is going to rest on our shoulders, but i think we are well prepared. in 1999, when you created the mta, you must have had this in mind. you have an agency before you that is responsible for taxes, responsible for pedestrians, responsible for parking, both on street and austria, responsible for your transit system. you have taken the lead and created the kind of coordination that would make this event a success, but we are not going to be able to do it alone. we have had a lot of preliminary meetings in designing this plan with our partners in the city,

working with dpw, our planning department, the port, and a host of others along with our regional partners. we have a coalition of folks working together to put together not just a good plan, but an exceptional plan. so it is a tall order, but i think we are well prepared for it. i tell my staff all the time -- it is not about the rubber tires and the steel wheels and what we do every day. it is about helping people have a better quality of life. i have the opportunity to plan this, we are confident we will have the opportunity, which we work for every day, to help improve the quality of life for san francisco and the bay area. with that, thank you for the opportunity. we are ready. [applause] >> thank you. we may be egocentric here, but this is really a regional event. i think no one knows better about transportation in the region than the executive

director of the metropolitan transportation commission. [applause] >> thank you. as mark said, even though the america's cup will be burst here in san francisco, it will be conducted on the day, but -- it will be conducted on the bay, which is a regional resources. it is a transportation of challenge. there is no way around it. we will have to take the transit first policy that san francisco has and apply in and around the region, at least during those races, to make sure we get people into san francisco as convenient as possible. it might be better for us, since we administer the toll bridges, if they all drove because we would get the money, but for a lot of reasons, it is better they take bart or ac transit or caltrain. i'm just reaching for a clipper card right now. but no matter which one of those

they take, they can use this card. i think many of you know that this card is named after the clipper ships, which were built for speed, to get people here during the gold rush days, and i think it is safe to say that these america's cup boats are a little bit faster. what i'm thinking is maybe we should have some special cards printed up during the races that have a big old oracle cup yacht on it, the eventual winner of the america's cup races in 2013, because it will be a token that people can always remember the races by. one other thing to think about -- by september 2013, if we are lucky, we will not only be having these races here in san francisco bay, but we will be opening a majestic new bridge, may be right about the same time. i think that would be a wonderful confluence of events, so even though i have to speak and run today, let me assure

you that the commission is going to be with you all the way through the last race. thank you. [applause] >> steve was kind enough to squeeze this in and is running off to a previous appointment. in keeping with the mayor and supervisor mirkarimi's charge that this needs to be a green and sustainable event, nothing could be greater or more sustainable than bicycles, so i'm going to ask the executive director of the san francisco bicycle coalition to come on up. >> good afternoon. thank you to the leadership on stage here. thank you to the hard-working staff and are going to make this happen. thank you to the community. nowhere could this be done about it -- better. what a day, what an opportunity. there is a reason hundreds of thousands of people are going to want to flood our city for weeks and several years to enjoy not only the gorgeous day and a bit,

but the city and the area. i'm also really proud on behalf of the 70% of san franciscans already bicycling in our city that there is such an emphasis on bicycling in this plan. thank you. it is folks like me who are fortunate to bicycle every day to work and meetings and events, and there are families who come out maybe once a month to enjoy sunday streets, or maybe they come to golden gate park on sundays, but this is a bicycling city, a community that knows how already, and i think we are going to teach the world in the images that get share on tv and the stories that get told, when people come here, i hope we are ready to share a bicycle with them through the program that the mayor's staff is talking about, and i hope they will check out the bicycle, and i hope they will ride along this gorgeous embarcadero, and i hope 8-year-old children will fill safe and comfortable doing that. i hope that there 80-year-old

grandparents will -- will feel comfortable doing that. i hope we have safe, convenient, secure parking for them on the other end. that is the way we're going to move so many people around this wonderful event. what i'm most excited about is the legacy we will leave. we could be a great bicycling city. the next two years will help us get there. so thank you. [applause] >> before i introduce our last speaker, i want to let the press know that they will not be taking questions from the stage if you have inquiries, but will be available individually, so you can test them after they depart the stage. with that, let me introduce the executive director of liveable cities and a member of the bart board of directors, tom middle of which -- radulovich. >> we have two goals -- to make

this city a great place for the people who live here, but another is to make san francisco and is a blur. i am a proud san franciscan -- transplant, but a proud san franciscan, and i think san francisco values are our greatest export. i think the america's cup is a great opportunity to highlight both of those things -- how to make this a great event for all of the attendees, but also a great event for all the people who live near the waterfront and for san franciscans. we do not want to overload our streets with traffic. we want to keep this a livable city as we do this huge event and make -- bring mass numbers of people through. the other is to be an example, and a lot of people have talked about this. every event wants to be the greatest ever. i want this event to be the greatest ever feared with any other city is doing a large sporting event, i wanted to go to san francisco's people plan and say this is where we start. hopefully, we will not be the eggs of live forever. hopefully, this will continue to advance, but we should have that

reputation, considering what we all espouse. i think we have a great opportunity to do it here, and i think we are off to a great start in that. the other goal that we would love to see advanced with this is permanent improvement. about 20 years and one month ago, demolition work started on the embarcadero freeway. it was great. for those of you recall that, there were a few articles. it was a great anniversary. i remember those big machines, eating at the freeway, and here we are. there is a freeway column, so you can get a sense of what the outline of this was. the waterfront was a great project. it has really been -- i say a generational project. this event has the opportunity to advance the idea of creating the greatest waterfront in the world, a people's waterfront, and i think we have made tremendous progress, but if this could be able to get a bunch of products that have been in

people's minds or been on the books for a while, get those going. it is that permanent legacy piece i think that we want to see. any event is a terrific amount of work and a terrific amount of energy goes into it. we want this to be great for all the attendees, but we also what folks to walk around. barcelona is a great example. as an olympic city, they were able to create a permanent legacy said that decades after the event, they are still enjoying that for structure. we have got this project we are thinking about, and to move some of them into reality is going to be something hopefully great. i have been in government 14 years. i know getting stuff ready in a year or two years is the closest government comes to a sprint, but i think we can do it. there seems to be an incredible willingness on all parts of the city to really pull together and make this happen, so we are very much looking forward to it and i

just wanted to also acknowledged all the work that the city staff has done. just their openness, talking to all of the stakeholders, trying to bring all these issues and concerns together and address them effectively has been so impressive to me. i just say, we cannot do it without you. and hang in there. it is going to be a very eventful two years, but hopefully, you will have a proud legacy. thank you very much. [applause] >> with that, i want to thank the mayor, the members of the board of supervisors, a distinguished speakers and gas -- distinguished speakers and guests for coming. i hope if you go away with one thought, it will be that we are all very serious about making this work and making it work for everybody. many, many thanks. [applause]

>> welcome to "culturewire." for the past year, the arts commission has been participating in the city's effort to revitalize the central market street corridor. in addition to the thursday arts market and are in store front, the art commission recently launched the artery project. for the next year, the artery project will bring energy and

excitement to market street, recalling the st.'s heyday as san francisco's vibrant and bustling theater district. >> un.n plaza during business hours seize hundreds of passing office workers and students, but the activity winds down at 5:00 every day. theater productions bring some but traffic, but central market is more of a thoroughfare than a destination after the sun goes down. on december 9, the artery project's launch brought a party atmosphere to market street, led by mayor gavin newsom, city officials flipped the switch on three new art installations that light up the st.'s architecture. a looping a video at 1119 market

street was the first words to be some -- the first work to be seen that evening. before the unveiling, the director of cultural affairs spoke to artist jim campbell about the concepts behind bourbon reflection and how he created the work. >> i'm really excited to have your installation on public view starting today here on market street. you created a site-specific work. can you talk about that? >> yes, i looked at two or three different locations, and this one seemed the best. i work with customer electronics, so indoors seemed the best for the work. i also like how close it was 2 market street itself. it is only about 10 feet away, so i chose this location. >> what is the duration? if someone were to stand in front of your installation today. >> at the moment, it is 12 minutes, but i've been thinking about adding footage over the

time because it is going to go through a couple of seasons. >> could you describe a little bit in terms of what your creative process is? >> it is a curtain, and image made up of a curtain, so it is very valuable, and the idea was to use this technology that i've been using for the last 10 years, low resolution imagery, to reflect market street back to the pedestrians walking by. the reason that it kind of works in this environment is that you see people walking by. you see cars going by. you see buses going by, but you cannot help we the people are because it is low resolution. you cannot see their faces. you can see the way they walk. you might be able to tell the kind of car going by. >> what do you think passersby will experience? >> i was thinking it was going to be a test of the success of the work if people stop and look. i have noticed in the last few nights that people do stop and

look. a certain percentage. one of the things i was playing with was the ambiguity of whether it is alive or not, so people walk by, and they might even move like this back and forth, thinking that they are in the image, and they realize that it is a daytime shot, and that kind of thing. >> thanks for being part of life on market street. >> my pleasure. >> after the lighting of urban reflection, mayor newsom led the party to the corner of seventh street. lighting the way down the street were members of the filipino cultural center's youth program, carrying traditional core role lanterns. on the side of the resort hotel is a projection titled "storylines." working with students from the art commission writer's corps program, paul organized a series of images with text captions. they will change every evening until a different -- and tell a

different story. one block away, theodore watson has created an interactive installation that crosses over six street. spaces' begins with a photo capture station on the north side of the street that projects your face on to a building on the south side of the street. on opening night, the installation was an immediate hit with the crowd. we talked with the or what said about his remarkable installation. >> what inspired you to create this interactive piece? >> the work i typically do is kind of interactive installations or both indoor and also outdoor and public space. for me, what i'm most interested in is how we can use technology to make the city, which is typically quite a static

environment architecturally speaking -- how can we make it come alive? >> what i love about your work is there is such sophisticated software and electronics and complex connections that all have to work together to make it successful, but yet, all of that is invisible to the people interact with the work. >> they do not realize there is all these cables and projectors and computers and all this technology behind the scenes, and if you can keep it hidden, it feels like a really magical moment. to me, that is what is inspiring, and that is what makes the public, their eyes light up. >> you feel a little bit like the wizard of oz? >> totally, yes. >> having been on market street for a while and seeing how the public is reacting to your piece, what is your impression of what it is going to be like here? >> i'm already loving it. just the fact that i can look up and see someone seeing how crazy

it is, and i have been bumping into people in the street who are recognized only from their portrait. i'm hoping that people will provide a slightly more friendly way to look at each other in this neighborhood. >> it is helping to reinforce and create a sense of neighborhood. so we want to thank you for being part of this project and thank you for bringing "faces" to san francisco. >> the artery project will have installations on market street until june 2011. this revitalization initiative is funded by the national endowment for the arts in an effort to transform market street into a nationally celebrated cultural district. additional projects and events will be launched throughout the year, including art and storefronts and coordinated nighttime events hosted by the gray area foundation for the arts and the luggage store gallery.

to learn more about the artery project, visit sf >> i have 2 job titles. i'm manager of the tour program as well as i am the historyian of city hall. this building is multifaceted to say the very least it's a municipal building that operates the city and county of san francisco. this building was a dream that became a reality of a man by the

name of james junior elected mayor of san francisco in 1912. he didn't have a city hall because it was destroyed in the earth wake of 1906. construction began in april of 1913. in december 1915, the building was complete. it opened it's doors in january 1916. >> it's a wonderful experience to come to a building built like this. the building is built as a palace. not for a king or queen. it's built for all people. this building is beautiful art. those are architecture at the time when city hall was built,

san francisco had an enormous french population. therefore building a palace in the art tradition is not unusual. >> jimmie was an incredible individual he knew that san francisco had to regain it's place in the world. he decided to have the tallest dome built in the united states. it's now stands 307 feet 6 inches from the ground 40 feet taller than the united states capital. >> you could spend days going around the building and finding something new. the embellishment, the carvings, it represents commerce, navigation, all of the things

that san francisco is famous for. >> the wood you see in the board of supervisor's chambers is oak and all hand carved on site. interesting thing about the oak is there isn't anymore in the entire world. the floors in china was cleard and never replanted. if you look up at the seceiling you would believe that's hand kof carved out of wood and it is a cast plaster sealing and the only spanish design in an arts building. there are no records about how many people worked on this

building. the workman who worked on this building did not all speak the same language. and what happened was the person working next to the other person respected a skill a skill that was so wonderful that we have this masterpiece to show the world today.