when they put the ceiling, they may have to put another sprinkler system. if you were to put a ceiling in, you'd have to sprinkler above and below. but nobody knows the height of the ceiling. so the last thing you want to do is put a sprinkler head in pointing down which you really don't need because these heads will fully sprinkler. >> there's actually a lot of expense from taking a tenant space from one use, demoing it, and preparing it for the next time you're going to lease it out. you actually have an expense where you have to alter the sprinklers to be able to support the way the system is now. and then when the tenant comes in you've got another tenant improvement. to have the exit signs working, during the courts of demolition

they wanted to make sure that the workers could get out in an emergency. there is a whole system to making sure that you keep the life safety codes in place while you're doing the de demolition. >> even if a house is mountain, shs. >> that light will remain on 24/7 and the smoke detectors are on. >> the one thing we didn't talk about is the trench here. >> that's getting a little high-tech. >> is that getting a little high-tech? >> we can explain if you want. in certain classes of buildings, who have what i consider sophisticated owners, they have put in electrified floor and they can lift up the steel plate here, and there is a trench here with wire trenches going out this way. and so they can come in and say, i want an electrical outlet

right there where your foot is. and they can open up this plate, run a wire down a sleeve, drill a hole where you're standing, and pop utd a wire -- up a wire, and never go down to the tenant below. they're called monuments. well, here's one. here is a monument. here they are. when they're done and the tenant moves out, they fill these in. at one time, there was a power plug here. and this is where people want to have buildings with the ultimate flexibility. but there's a premium to that. >> there is, yes. >> and there's tradeoffs. you can either pay now or pay later. >> that's right. imagine drilling, going underneath a floor drilling a hole and bringing up a pipe for every single outlet. >> and it all has to be in conduit. you've got to pop the ceiling

down and run this. >> whereas a beautiful space,. >> hard wood ceilings. >> how about the electronics, wiring? >> electronic and low voltage wiring and all the other. >> all the wiring is in the core. we're not going to be loued to go in there -- allowed to go in there. the amount of power that comes into the building is mind-boggling. generally in the core and then taps off. >> when you say electronics you mean for the tenants themselves, all their telephone lines and computer lines. that's becoming a really big problem not just high rise but all buildings. it's a huge amount of wiring and the tenant moves out and you're left with all the wiring. the cost to the landlord is to remove this wiring. >> that's why it's nice to have a trench. but if you don't have the trench

system then you just go overhead. it's pretty simple. you go to the electrical closet. you pull the wires, you go overhead, into your ceiling and drop down into your walls. almost everything you do you're trying to do overhead. that's what's great about the sooilg ceiling systems and the tall floor systems. >> the problem with that is you have to have your walls run all the way up. and in some spaces what they like is they want their partition wall here and then the entire space to be those four-foot-high partition walls. >> actually there is a code requirement that says if the partition walls are over four feet nine inches, if it's over that it forms a corridor wall. so everyone wants to ceeb it less than that. >> then you can't bring the power down. >> there is a little -- >> you get around it you make a

tunnel for it. >> so you can get your fire rating. you can maintain the egress and the one-hour ratings to get out, you simply make a tunnel, looks like an n upside down, you make the whole thing one hour rated, and run your duct through. >> is there anything else -- >> i do have this question. >> let's talk about all the rest of the rest of bits and pieces. >> these are probably what you would call a black iron strut, and they were popped off the wall so that they could build a stud wall in front of it. and they just bent them down to keep them out of the way. >> it was some structure it was holding up. what do we have here? >> copper water lines, water, potentially there was a fountain here. this is a sewer vent of some kind. this may have been --

>> like an abandoned water. >> like water or gas or something. sewer. >> do they have gas in the ceiling? >> some do. >> want to see how a plaster wall is made? the black of the plaster wall is expanded metal lath and then it's plastered on the other side, in a couple of different layers, not just one. >> to give you an idea of the strength can, this is really strong. and it is cut in half, and i'm i'ming on it. >> we just did some earthquake testing over at u.c. berkeley and it turns out that it is the assembly of things that adds a lot of things to it. the individual segments may not be that strong, the lath, the plaster, but when you put things together you get very strong in summary. >> this thing part's got to come up, we came up the freight

elevator. this is the main elevator. so in this building, there are four elevator bank. and each bank services a quarter of the building. you don't want to get in on an elevator, and have 52 floor buttons. when they create high rise buildings they create elevator banks and break the building up into sections or quadrants. and this elevator services 1 to 14. there are other elevator banks but the they bypass these floors, service 15 through 28. another elevator bank services other floors. what is interesting is, on these super-tall buildings, since the

elevator takes up so much space, they have a superelevator that takes you from the first floor to the 50 floor lobby. and they've moved the lobby up higher up into the building, and then they redistribute you. because the elevators take up so much space in the building, and -- >> there's a whole new elevator control industry that's in play, that's coming underway? where they have offered intelligent design of elevators. >> intelligent design. i've heard about them, where you've got different people on different floors pressing different buttons at different times. the computer system is analyzing where the people are and picking up the best way to deliver people. >> there's some disabled access issues about people in wheelchairs have to wait for certain other elevators but

we'll get over that disabled access. >> the other thing that is interesting is that the elevators will call you for your floor. you put your card up to the elevator, and it brings an elevator down, and says get into elevator number l, you step into elevator number l and there's no floor button to push. it's already been preprogrammed that your security pass is going to take you to floor 13. >> we had a question about how this and other buildings perform in earthquakes. i know that the transamerica pyramid, i think it was instrumented and i keep reading that it drifted a foot in the loma prieta earthquake. doesn't seem like much to me. how do these buildings perform in seismic events? >> historically no modern

high-rise building has ever collapsed in a major event except for one building in mexico city where it was designed as an office building and the government converted it to a book warehouse. and they filled the floors up this high with paper. which effectivelily mad effectie building three times heavier than it should be. as a class, these buildings are probably some of the best buildings you could be in. >> but there was an interesting anomaly that came up as a result of the northridge earthquake in los angeles in the '90s. that was the welded steel joints which we up to that point thought were absolutely terrific, allowed a lot of movement, turned out to not just fail but to be weaker than we thought, to crack. there was an enormous effort

coming forward, to figure out how this happened, how to prevent that in the future. >> part of the problem with those, the city has an ordinance on a certain size earthquake is that you will come out and inspect the welded joints. >> a welded joint is one of the places where the beam and the column -- >> this particular building has been instrumented andettes been reviewed by the author of the northridge report. >> instrumented means there is seismic motion instruments so as the building sways it can record what the duration is and what the forces are. >> this building's response was this building was so conservatively designed, you couldn't believe how conservatively designed it was. that was one of the authors of

the northridge report. >> some buildings are not as sceflconservatively designed. >> they changed the design of the buildings after northrich. the two connecting the beam is now kind of tapered in a little bit. >> dog boned. >> dog bones in a building. so we expect most high rise buildings to perform quite well. some of them will have a lot of investigation to do. >> well, the biggest issue would be glass. in general, if you're downtown, stay in the buildings. the buildings are perfectly safe. the biggest issue is probably -- well, my mind is, that's my office. >> you're a whole lot safer in the building. >> my life, ten hours a day seven days a week in that building. that building is a brunier building, same gieg who designed this building. for 40 years this guy was

brilliant. so i'm in a 27 building. i'm staying in the building. i don't want to be on the street because i don't want to be can climbing through the glass. stay in the building. if you're in the street and there's an earthquake, jump into the building. thereto going to be a lot of things falling. >> who knows what's going to be falling? we've seen that a lot. >> are there any other questions? >> older high rises are not required to make special let retrofit? >> there is no requirement for any retrofit except for brick buildings in san francisco. some older high rises do pose a potential problem. those are the ones that are not steel but concrete buildings. older concrete buildings. >> that's a problem that we haven't quite greapsd politically. because those buildings are the exact same buildings that were

built up into the 60s has very high-end residential contents. very high end. those owners are going to go ballistic when they say retrofit your building. there is not a lot of nonduck tile concrete frame office buildings. there is a few. the majority of them are steel. the building i'm in it has been evaluated and it has compared well with -- >> is it a coul concrete buildi? >> it is right there. >> the concrete building on the west coast is third street, built just a couple of years back. >> modern concrete buildings we think are very good. but the buildings that were built before the mid 70s, when the codes changed, the buildings that are built out of concrete are a hazard maybe. >> 1920 to 1970, there is a

class of buildings we're struggling with. in 1971 they built a hospital out of this. and a week before the hospital opened, they had the san fernando earthquake and the building collapsed. now, trust me, when you have a hogs collapse, you've got a lot of attention. and they banded in the next code cycle. >> so there is a class of high rise buildings that it's a potential hazard. it's not the downtown office buildings. it's these tall concrete high rise buildings and they have a problem in mexico city with that. >> when the when they do the ba, they've got four of them all the way around. >> here is the fire sprinklers. somebody accidentally hits the fire sprinklers. >> they bring the stove top of drum, 55 foot high, retur run to

turn it off and the other guy gets the next 55-gallon garbage can. >> it used to be, if you fire sprinklered your building, you got a real cut on your insurance. now if you fire sprinkler your building, insurance companies are thinking, the water damage is so high, maybe the rates should go up. >> it gets a minute to a minute and a half before that fills up. >> that's why they have four on a floor, and keep filling it off. one guy goes to turn it off and another guy goes to get the next drum, he brings it over and gets the next drum and pulse i pumz . >> i think that's all for today. i want to thank the building owners for letting us use their beautiful space. thank you all and we'll see you on the third thursday next month.

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>> the san francisco arts commission held celebrates -- helps celebrate, and we do that with many festivals throughout the city. one of those festivals is celebrated in december by the filipino community. joining me today to talk about this festival is the coordinator of that festival. you work with the cultural center, do you not? >> yes. >> in 2003, you helped to establish this in san francisco. >> that is correct. >> what motivated you? >> i come from a town where this is rich and very much popular in our hometown, so we important the tradition and we can do it

in san francisco. >> this is -- and rekindled it in san francisco. >> there is the story of inactivity -- >> here in san francisco, many different community groups come together to create things for the festival, is that correct? >> yes, that is correct. it is coming from different villages. it is only during before christmas where they show all of their lanterns, and then they have the competition among the different villages, and the villages will determine which of

those will be the man turn of the year -- the lantern of the year. >> i know you worked earlier for the festival. >> yes, september -- i know you work earlier. >> yes, september. this is so they can see for themselves what kind of lantern they will do. >> and can you describe to me who comes to these workshops? >> during the first year, because there are very, very few, but everybody in the neighborhood came to the workshop, children, seniors, different areas, and they do the

lantern festival in their area, but they do not have the technology. if you go to a place where you have a filipino household, chances are, they have the lanterns, because that is a symbol of hope and blessings, so, therefore, filipinos identified with the lanterns -- identifiey with the lanterns. it is a great collaboration. they are more connected with this community, but then to showcase them and their performance, their profession, the festival, and the most prestigious award of the year -- >> i want to thank you so much for sharing this insight with us

here on "culture wire" and bringing this cultural tradition to san francisco. >> a thank you. >> the bards commission has played a leading role -- >> thank you. >> the bards communication has played a leading role. ®ñdcommis sion has played a leading role. thank you for joining us. how did your organization, but being part of the parole festival? >> it is a way to organize communities -- how did your organization come to being part of the parole festival? >> it is a way to mobilize the

communities. there is a lot of warmth, and a lot of the younger generation, a lot who are born here, second and third generation filipinos, they also really appreciate having this kind of event. >> you have a unique perspective begins you have been part of the festival from the very beginning. -- because you and part of the festival from the very beginning. -- you have been part of the festival. >> there have been many changes. aspect of it, based on performance production, the presentation, so we were able to bring in sort of like scheduling different ways of making sure that we were organizing the five letter people that were going to be coming in, and most of the time with the festival, that basically ends up in the church. last year, in preparation, we

were able to secure st. patrick's church to do a program there. it is a year round thing for the workshops, so folks can come. the website, check it out. we have a lot of things that the people do not know about. come on down. we are also working here. >> thank you so much for sharing your insights with us here on "culture wire" and for helping to make san francisco such a diverse community. >> thank you. >> welcome to the 2011 spj town hall.

i'm here with my co-host to welcome you to what promises to be a fascinating discussion about the changes taking place in journalism today. tonight's program is presented by the society of professional journalists in collaboration with the san francisco public library and san francisco bay area journalists. after several years of difficulty, we are seeing a lot of activity, particularly involving new media organizations. we have seen patch.com open hundreds of bureaus across the country. yahoo! is expanding its staff across the country. aol bought the huffington opposed. in the middle east, we saw how citizen journalists are reporting on the uprisings, and in papers like the "san francisco chronicle" are finding ways to collaborate with groups like spj's journalist of the

year in northern california. his last three of this year's winners were new or nonprofit media, a ratio that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago when newspapers and large tv stations dominated the news media. to be sure, most of the hard work is still ahead of us. few new start-ups turn a profit. many community newsrooms' still rely on volunteer labor, and broader economic issues. we want to encourage the members of our audience here at the public library to drive this discussion. this is your chance to ask these experts what is happening to the news that you depend on to make your day to day decisions. our conversation tonight will include five elements -- we will talk about the quality of reporting available to the public and move on to what is

being done to create sustainable newsroom jobs. we will talk about creating a new system that enjoys constitutional freedom of the press, celebrates the diversity of our communities, and enjoys the economic independence needed to support ethical journalism. i would like to introduce my coast -- co-host of the evening, and she will be introducing our panelists. >> thank you, rose. it is a privilege to stand up here. we are not used to looking this good. we can go to radio in pajamas. i would like to introduce our panelists for today. we will start back from the left. executive producer of the "daily mandarin and cantonese newshour." next to him is the director of multimedia and technology programs at the night digital

media center at uc-berkeley. next is the managing is theidd -- managing director at idd ventures sf. nexus' the editor in chief of marketwatch.com, part of news corp. -- next is the editor in chief. the co-founder and senior community manager of oakland local, a nonprofit media that promotes public discourse on issues. in the front row is a media analyst, who publishes an was a key developer of the mercury center. next to him is an assistant professor of broadcast and electronic media at san francisco state university. next is the managing editor for

local news at -- i'm sorry. he is not at yahoo!, right. he is editor-in-chief of patch.com, a division of aol that provides news to specific communities. very local. after him, we have the managing director for local news at yahoo.com, guiding the company's local coverage nationwide. last but not least is the senator who represents san francisco and san mateo counties, and he is the recipient of spj's freedom of information award in 2010. that is our panel. back to you, rose. >> before we start, i want to get a sense of who we have in the audience. how many of you currently work in the media? in the media? lots.