>> the san francisco cons tri of flowers in golden gate park is now showing a new exhibit

that changes the way we see the plants around us. amy stewart's best-selling book, "wicked plants" is the inspiration behind the new exhibit that takes us to the dark side of the plant world. >> i am amy stewart. i am the arthur of "wicked plants," the weeds that killed lincoln's mother and other botanical atrocities. with the screens fly trap, that is kind of where everybody went initially, you mean like that? i kind of thought, well, all it does is eat up bugs. that is not very wicked. so what? by wicked, what i mean is that they are poisonous, dangerous, deadly or immoral or maybe illegal or offensive or awful in some way. i am in the profession of going around and interviewing botanists, horticulturalists and plant scientists. they all seem to have some

little plant tucked away in the corner of a greenhouse that maybe they weren't supposed to have. i got interested in this idea that maybe there was a dark side to plants. >> the white snake root. people who consumed milk or meat from a cow that fed on white snake root faced severe pain. milk sickness, as it was culled, resulted in vomiting, tremors, delirium and death. one of the most famous victims of milk sickness was nancy hangs lincoln. she died at the age of 34, leaving behind 9-year-old abraham lincoln. he helped build his mother's casket by carving the woodallen petition douche the wooden

petition himself. >> we transformed the gallery to and eerie victorian garden. my name is lowe hodges, and i am the director of operations and exhibitions at the conls tore of -- cons tore of flowers. we decided it needed context. so we needed a house or a building. the story behind the couple in the window, you can see his wife has just served him a glass of wine, and he is slumped over the table as the poison takes affect. a neat little factold dominion about that house is actually built out of three panels from old james bond movie. we wanted people to feel like i am not supposed to be in this room. this is the one that is supposed to be barred off and

locked up. >> the ole andersonner -- oleander. this popular shrub is popular in warm climates. it has been implicated in a surprising number of murders and accidental deaths. children are at risk because it takes only a few leaves to kill them. a southern california woman tried to collect on her husband's life insurance by putting the leaves in his food. she is now one of 15 women on california's death rowan the only one who attempted to murder with a plant. >> people who may haven't been to their cons tore or been to -- do serve tore or their botanical garden, it gives them a reason to come back. you think let's go and look at the pretty flowers. these are pretty flowers, but

they are flowers with weird and fascinating stories behind them. that is really fun and really not what people normally think of when they come to a horticultural institution. >> "wicked plants" is now showing at the san francisco conserve tore of flowers. unless next time, get out and play. >> hello.

9 judge terri l. jackson. the court is now recruiting prospective civil grand jurors. our goal is to develop a pool of candidates that is inclusive of all segments of our city's population. >> the jury conducts investigations and publishes findings and recommendations. these reports them become a key part of the civic dialog on how we can make san francisco a better place to live and work. >> i want to encourage anyone that is on the fence, is considering participating as a grand jury member, to do so. >> so if you are interested in our local city government and would like to work with 18 other enthusiastic citizens committed to improving its operations, i encourage you to consider applying for service on the civil grand jury. >> for more information, visit the civil grand jury website at

sfgov.org/courts or call

. >> welcome to the department of building inspection brown bag lunch. this is our market tour. we're on market street on

kearney and third. we're at the fountain, which was a major landmark at the time of the 1906 earthquake. this is a landmark because this is where people posted notices and notes to connect with people they were looking for. families and people in their business. most of this area was -- >> pretty much burnt out. >> pretty well burned out. we have pat with us, a structural engineer who has done work to upgrade the buildings around this area. >> or researched their history. >> or researched their history. we will look mostly at buildings. we have a lot of other experts in the audience. i hope they will share with us. we have craig from the planning department. we have david bono witz, all kinds of folks here. feel free to chirp in.

our plan is to take a couple-block tour and look at buildings, some of which survived the quake and some retrofitted. we will end up at 1230 at the mos connie center. we will look at them burning four model buildings. >> trying to burn. >> okay. where are we walking to. >> first let's know why we're meeting here. in 1906, this was the main drag into san francisco. this is how you came into san francisco. at this intersection, there were three major buildings. the call building, the examiner, and the chronicle. and the three major papers at that time all wanted to be at this intersection. this building has been enlarged and a number of stories added so you can't see the historic character from this building from what it looked like in 06.

it survived a fire as most steel framed buildings -- i'm sorry. survived the earthquake as most steel-framed buildings did. here is the chronicle building. it also survived the earthquake. the chronicle building is made up of two buildings in front. at the time of the '06 earthquake they were building the rear annex, which was the tallest building west of the mississippi. this building survived until the fire came. the fire did a lot of damage here. there is the examiner building. it also survived the earthquake, and the fire came. >> really interestingly, steel-framed buildings were a newish thing in the turn of the century. how many do we have in the city? >> from that vintage, that are actually still here, we probably have 30 or 40.

but what was interesting is, the robeling steel institute sent a team out here. there is a document where they went through the buildings. all the buildings they reported on went through the earthquake just fine. >> one didn't. the williams building. >> interestingly enough, the williams building was not in the book. they chose to ignore that. it was like a statistical throw out. >> all the ones they looked at were great. >> great. the one building they didn't include did poorly. in the '89 earthquake i was the engineer retrofitting that building. it sustained a lot of damage. we did some research, and we're able to actually find the daughter of the engineer who built the building. according to her, the building was severely damaged.

instead of going hmm not a good idea we better change it. they pulled out the building and rebuilt it to the same specs. >> after the 1906 earthquake the codes did not change and the standards didn't change and people generally rebuilt buildings as fast as they could without substantial seismic upgrades. can anybody tell us what is going on here with the building? here we have craig. go ahead. >> speak this way and loudly. >> what is going on here is an 8 to 14-story addition on the top of the historic building. first of all, you should know the original building here is steel and terra cotta building that in the '60s was clad with metal panels on little steel

panels to give it that look. some of the terra cotta was scraped off. the current project will restore the facade of the historic building designed by burnam and root, a famous chicago architectural firm, with one of our most renowned architects working on the detail. the addition will be setback and made of a different color brick. the building will be changed from office use to a mix of hotel, time share and residential units. that is the story on the old chronicle building. >> we have a question over here. hold on. >> when is it due to be complete? >> my guess is, i don't know for sure, but on the order of a year and a half from now. >> this is affordable housing? >> surprisingly what it did was generate the restoration of another landmark two blocks up

designed by the reed brothers, all the affordable housing component will be two blocks up the street in a landmark building. >> when people do development, there is trade-off for affordable housing. it is not always within the ritz carlton itself. it can be relocated or paid into a fund and used another way. >> we will walk a block down this way down commission street. we are down here at the corner of third street and mission street. there is lots of construction going on. some old buildings. this is not necessarily a historic walking tour. this is to talk about buildings and earthquake issues. let me mention something more modern about earthquakes. i have been at this earthquake conference for a whole week. one of the big issues is what is the public expectation of the performance of a building. this is a good time to point out

to you, the buildings only have to be built as well as the code that was in effect when they were built. if somebody said is my building up to code, i will say yes it is up to code. it is up to the 1909 code. in 1909 there was no requirement for earthquake design. >> until 1933 when the reilly act went into effect after the disastrous 1933 santa barbara -- >> long beach. >> destroyed elementary schools. they were brick. if the kids were in school, we would have lost thousands of kids. that banned brick construction and required seismic designs to be incorporated in buildings. >> there was a major -- there are a number of thresholds over the course of the development.

the big one is in the mid '70s, but a whole threshold, series of these thresholds. many of the older buildings, like the 1 across the street have been upgraded to meet some modern standards. this is the williams building that we were talking about that is the replacement of the building that was damaged in the 1906 earthquake. it was built just like it with the plans. >> this building they were going to dynamite it. in '06, they dynamited buildings to clear the path. >> from an interesting point of view, spencer is here, this building is incorporating into the brand-new building next to it, which makes the new building an addition. it is not a new building. it is a brand-new building meeting today's code.

we say you are a gigantic addition to an old historic building. >> did it change the permit fees? >> of course. >> one thing about publication able is how well buildings will perform. the brand-new building down there which is what? >> the brand-new glass and steel building. when we build brand-new high rise buildings they're required to meet the minimum standard of the building code. the building code is a minimum standard document. can you choose to build beyond it. few people choose to build buildings that are immediately occupiable after an earthquake. most build buildings that won't collapse, which is what the building standard is. they won't collapse and they can be repair side whed