so thanks for hearing us. president buell: thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon, everyone. my name is shakira finley. i am a small food business owner. i'm also president -- a president of the castro. i am speaking -- i'm sorry. i'm speaking -- i'm here not to be the voice of, but to provide ears for small businesses who cannot be here and speak on behalf of themselves. but hopefully that you will listen and understand that. we really appreciate what san francisco has already done to increase opportunity for mobile vending. it's ironic that we're having this conversation and just several hours ago we had mobile vendors providing great food this afternoon in the plaza. and based on my twitter feed,

people love that. in light of the economic market, the tight credit market and also general obstacles for specifically people of color and women in starting and maintaining a business, we should not be limiting opportunities for these populations to operate. i think that's irresponsible. i speak very personally about this issue because it affects me directly. and i really, really feel in allowing for these businesses who come from disadvantaged backgrounds to operate in delores park and add that extra value and bring people into our public spaces and bring tourists and money and our community out. that's something that seems like a common sense to me. the 18th street is a commercial corridor. as a small business, i understand if you go into business there's going to be competition and that's just part of running a business. so i think we should be mindful of that.

i just -- sorry, i'm just real passionate about this. i think it's important that we pay attention to the populations that we be revoking opportunity for -- as it is. president buell: thank you very much. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is debora. i'm an 18-year resident of 19th street and i am a 10-year teacher at everett middle school. i'm speaking as a voice for my neighborhood and community. i am most definitely not anti-small business, i am for community, which is why i live and work in my community. as i was listening to the speakers before me, i took notes. i heard someone talk about the degree gragation of golden gate park and about the damage to

trees. i heard someone talk about neighborhoods covered in graffiti. that's been the reality of our neighborhood around delores park for the last five years. the overuse is well known and documented. i won't spend your time on that. the park is dead. there is very little green grass. it is mostly brown. the trash fills up. i invite all of you -- everyone invites you to come see things. come see our neighborhood. at 6:00 on a monday or sunday morning after every weekend the overuse and look at the trash buildup. look at the money that our city is spending to remove this trash. the extra garbage cans, the extra few porta-potties, and i agree, sir, they're very unsightly and i can see them from my living room window. it's astonishing the quality of life degrad days that has happened. there are plenty of coffee and food shops within a two to

three-block radius. it's not about not wanting vendors in the park it's about wanting to keep the park as calm and less populated as possible. it is overused and it is well documented. thank you. >> rachel, steven, michael, jeff, dina open enshime, lucifer. >> hello, commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to speak again. i just want to preface what i'm going to say by saying that i really love la cocina. they're a great organization and i think they do great work in the mission and around the city, and i personally support them 500%. i am here to talk and speak to the process by which the whole idea of food vendors came about in delores park. it seems that history is

repeating itself. in 2008 rec and park signed a contract with a vendor at clay tower without doing sufficient outreach to the neighborhood. the tower concession principles and goals document that i have with me today was drafted by various neighborhood groups in north beach and telegraph hill and is the result of community efforts, involvements and monitoring after a misguided proposal for the coit tower concession in 2008. it has become a public document and should be referred to that way. as i mentioned, i have a copy with me today for your review, but i'm sure you guys already have one. it is clear that the neighborhood is opposed to the commercialization of delores park. we have a petition with over 1,000 signatures from people who are in opposition to a commercialization of delores park. this document speaks for itself as it was posted online and it was put in a handful of neighborhood businesses only

five days ago. we have 1,000 signatures. we have about 1,200 signatures after five days. please listen to the community on this one. we understand that the park is in serious need of funding. the numbers thrown out by phil ginsberg at our last community meeting was $70,000. i know phil is doing really good work in other areas and around the city, there's no doubt about that. but let's turn this situation around. i stand before you today as a neighbor and a business owner and i give you my word that i will help raise up $70,000 for delores park. there are numerous ways to come up with that money without having to sell delores park out from under the neighborhood. so please come to us for help instead of pitting us against each other and wreaking havoc in our community. we have an opportunity to work together, so please listen to us. president buell: do we have a copy of that petition? can i take a look at it? i just want to ask you a question about it.

i went down to your cafe today. had a nice cup of tea and walked the whole park and just wanted to get a sense of this location that we're proposing. >> thank you. president buell: i have to share a concern. the first line of the petition says "why not? blue bottle coffee is a national chain store and they're in the queue to get a permit to open a push cart in our park. who knows what's next?" how many national sites does blue bottle have? >> i can't speak to that specifically, but they are a $10 million to $20 million company with many locations around the city. and i'm not the author of that document. that was put together by a null of people, so i can't really speak to the specific language. president buell: well, my concern is -- i understand the concern going on here. my understanding is that they're locally started and have four locations in san francisco, one in oakland and

one outside california. that's hardly a national chain store. and so all it does for the side that's putting the petition in front of us is question the validity of the petition, if that's the information provided to the person signing. i would sign this based on that. i don't want a national chain store going into a park. that sounds terribly offensive. so i only raise that issue because i'd like to see the facts on the table as we consider this whole issue. fair enough? >> yes. and i don't want -- i want to be respectful of the commission. president buell: please. i just found that -- that it doesn't help the public discourse if we start with an information that -- as i say, i would sign that. >> point taken. and also, you know, blue bottle is a $10 million to $20 million company that is backed by venture capitalists and they have an aggressive plan to

spread their business around the world. they are opening in tokyo. you know what? that's great for them. but they don't need to come to a small neighborhood park and -- for pure profit. president buell: that may be. >> ok. >> next speaker, please. >> my name is steven elliott. i live at 19th and guerrero. i've been there many years. and i want to address some of the things that have been said, particularly by the opening speaker, about reaching out to the community. i don't believe there's been any community outreach on this. if you look at the rules under prop g, which would apply to a place like blue bottle, which applied to american apparel that was trying to open on valencia, there has to be a certain amount of community outreach in a certain amount of time. we talked about like 50 people showing up at mission delores. i get 50 people to show up for a talk on this tomorrow. i met with 20 people on my block last night, none of whom

had heard about this cafe opening. it would have been so easy for blue bottle to drop postcards or to go knocking on people's doors. they could have gotten the word out. i don't know why they didn't. i know that there's budget concerns, but there will always be budget concerns and they will always be attempts to fell public resources. blue bottle does qualify as a chain, which is five or more stores. and i know that what you guys do -- i have a lot of respect for what you guys do as commissioners. i know that you're mostly volunteers and that you're acting in the public service. and it's an incredibly respectful thing that you do. but ultimately we own the parks, and you manage the parks. and if you were to take a poll of the people that live near the parks, you would find over yemming opposition. if the -- overwhelming opposition. if the word is out on this,

it's because of the 20 people i spoke to on my block last night. i ornl heard about this two days ago. the 20 people i spoke to it last night had not even heard about it. so the community has not been consulted on a store -- a chain store that is opening in our neighborhood and it's going around the process that would normally apply to a store opening a store front because it's parks and rec. so it's not being, under proposition g, the sames rules are not applying. president buell: thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> my name is deny net bunch. i've lived in san francisco for 33 years. i've lived between 14th and 15th on delores for 22 years. i do not own a business. i'm a prelim activist for the last 33 years. i just go for coffee every day to maxfield's, which is 17th and delores. it's not a chain. and i'm concerned that this is

really a hidden tax. i understand you need money for the parks. but basically what you're doing is you're taking money out of the hands of the individual cafes, the one i go to every day, and putting it in your hands. it's a very sneaky process and it's a tax. and i think a lot of people in the neighborhood are upset about that. not just that, but the commercialization. even if it weren't blue bottle. if it were just an independent -- like a cart that i created and you gave me a permit. the commercialization of that park, we will not stand for it. this permit must be revoked. and i'd be willing to organize a boycott of this cart. president buell: thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon,

commissioners. my name is michael mcconnell. i'm a small business owner. i've lived in the neighborhood for 12 years. even though the group -- it was a group effort of writing this petition, i'm the one who filed it online. i understand your concern about that general wording of national chain, and i apologize for that. but i do want to clarify that i am also an artist, and if an artist has a show -- one show in new york, they can put on their resume that they're a national artist. they have one show in japan, they can say they're an international artist. you see how it can work either way? president buell: point well taken. >> thank you. [laughter] i also want to know that if you read further on, it says, we love food, we love food carts and we love blue bottle, we just don't want them in our park. that neighborhood is so concentrated. i own a really small business and we're the ruffian, the little guy. it's a place with the community comes and talks and hangs out. we actually know what they do for a living, their name. if i passed them on the way to

bart i would notice if they weren't there that day, and that's the type of community we're trying to instill in the park. the people on this petition, they're all people who live there. about 1,000 to 2,000 people visit delores park every day. here's half of them who don't want it. i just think that it's also -- you guys have been talking about we love portland and the food cart. but if you followed the reports that you guys are looking about, portland does their food carts in urban areas in empty parking lots, not where it's green. there's not enough green space in the city. we go there to get away from that stuff, and i attended the community meeting on the 27th and there was no questions answered. people think it's supposed to be a push cafert, it's an eight by 12 trailer. they didn't know what the generator was, how many decibels. a 75-year-old yom asked how many decibels and they didn't know the answer. they didn't know what time they

would be operating. there was all kinds of questions. it was just no answers. and they also said that 1.2 million people go through delores park annually. 13 million go through gold epigate park and i propose for them to use social networking and asking people to donate $10. if you ask all 10.2 million people to donate $10, you would be out of your deficit. president buell: great idea, thank you. >> can i say that they never answered my emails in a timely manner? president buell: commissioner levitt. commissioner levitan: i'm not putting you on the spot to speak for all peoples on this, but i'm curious. the dynamic that you're talking about at your cafe -- and that's what we love about independent cafes, especially in san francisco -- do you feel that that cannot exist simultaneous with something in the park? >> it could exist simultaneously with something

in the park, but i don't think that's what's going to be created in the park. people that go there, they all go there in the morning with third dogs. i brought a dog and people were like, oh, my god, it's red, are you going to take him? all these questions. but you're going to have these kids going in the park and waiting in line for a cup of coffee. we live -- it's right across from a cafe, where i will see someone abandon their car, run across the sidewalk to get a croissant. blue bottle is great. they have a following, they make a great product. but do you need all that? the park is on record of being too many people going there, and that was one of the arguments is that they told us at the meeting that it will bring more people to your neighborhood. we don't want more people. [applause] commissioner levitan: ok. president buell: thank you, thank you, thank you. >> my name is jeff and i live at 45 delores, which is pretty much catty-corner from the park.

by the time i heard of this and most people that i know in the neighborhood heard of this, it was already a done deal. it was no longer a question of should something go in there. not only was it decided that something was going to go in there, blue bottle and la cocina were the ones that were going to go in there. nobody in the neighborhood knew that before it was done. one of the problems with that is that whoever made the decision deprived themselves from input from the community. this is a community that knows the park better than anybody else and knows the neighborhood better than anybody else. what it knows is that neither the parks can take additional traffic, business, nor can the neighborhood. the infrastructure simply doesn't permit it. the streets are already a gridlock friday, saturday and -- friday afternoon, saturday and sunday. there's absolutely no parking whatsoever, so last weekends or two weekends ago i was walking half a block to delores and every single driveway had somebody parked in the front of

the driveway without anybody income the car. for the last -- for the last weekend, two weeks ago, but three weekends before that, there was somebody parked in front of the driveway that is next to our flat on delores. there is trash every single weekend that is overflowing from the bins. there is noise like you cannot believe. it's not just a 75-year-old woman who is worried about the noise, but for the last three weekends there has been from 4:00 in the afternoon to 7:00 at night loud deejay music, he electromusic that is playing without permit from the park. the fact that we have to consider permanent porta-potties as a solution is an indication of how much -- how little this park can take. i do not know how it is possible that something that went -- started -- when i first heard about it was going to be a cart for coffee, and then it became a trailer, and then a van, and now it's two advance.

you saw the printouts or the images that were up there. those are large things. they're l-shaped and they're circumscribing an entire section of the playgrounds in the southern part of the park. i don't know how anybody could possibly come up with this. if you had asked the community first, you wouldn't have come up with it at all, thank you. president buell: thank you. >> i'm going to read a couple of more names. larry lynch, crystal van wallstrom and alicia gomez. >> hi, my name is lucifer and i'm a retired registered nurse. i've lived at 18th an delores street since 1989. when i first moved there, you wouldn't drive down that street. now they're fighting for parking. it's crazy. monday morning you go out there and you step in human feces. i'm not kidding. during the weekends you can't even pull your house key out. last weekend i was out having a

smoke and a girl asked me if she could september into my hallway to wipe herself. i mean, nice peel, i don't blame them. they're already being brought to the park by some very successful, wonderful businesses, who all jump through the proper procedures of opening their businesses on our block. i'm glad they're discussful. they've jumped through the hoops. this lady here who opened this item up at our community meeting apologized and said she did not follow the procedure properly. so now we're stuck with permits that were given out, without going through proper procedures. what's this town coming to? meanwhile, i have to -- i have to navigate people that want to use the bathroom and they're putting a coffee vendor in. cut me a break. and this mr. ginsberg, on the 27th as far as the hearing -- he's not even listening now. on the 27th he spoke for 31 minutes, and then he left for a

prior commitment. how is that hearing our concerns? i think not. i want to get some truth out of you folks. that would be nice for a change, thank you. president buell: thank you. [applause] >> next speaker. >> hi, i'm jill. until today i did not see the map that nicole just presented. and it wasn't at our last meeting. this seems to be typical of how this patrol process has been handled. we need a better process. and, again, not having seen this new map of where the cart is proposed to be, i simply can't comment on whether it's good, bad or indifferent until such time as things are opened up and let us see things and then we can talk about it intelligently. president buell: thank you. >> next speaker, and the last two names i have are john rinaldi and kojo.

>> hi, thank you. we all know that blue bottle is a successful business that started in the bay area. however, long gone are those mom and pop days. blue bottle has been growing aggressively in the bay area. they're also in new york, hawaii and internationally in tokyo. soon one of the blue bottle accounts there's a possibility that it could be going on 18th street. they are also three blocks down the street on valencia and on the other sides of the park a couple of blocks as well. we are inundated with coffee places. it is important to recognize at our last neighborhood meeting that 99% of the community opposed this permitting process to move forward and we don't want an enormous stainless steel trailer in our park, especially where long lines will be forming by the playground where our children play. this is not the place for something of this magnitude when our park can barely handle the flow right now. the delores park community have been misinformed from the beginning. we were told in the beginning that it was a small coffee cart. then it moved up to a kiosk

status and now it's presented as a stainless streel trailer with a general athor that will be going for nine hours a day. it he's so large it has to be hitched and pulled in by an automobile. when the community asked blue bottle for a picture we were given a cartoon drawing of a tiny trailer in a park hidden behind some trees. lastly, blue bottle has noted that they want to come to delores park to create community. our delores park community was created a long time ago. the delores park community has spoken loud and clear and we do not want this in our park, thank you, commissioners. >> next speaker, please. >> my name is larry lynch. and i live on 18th street for 25 years. 20 years ago you wouldn't dear be caught going in delores park. we don't need another vendor.

we have people urinating, leaving their trash, porta-potties -- you have six porta-potties now. who wants to look at a port ta potty in your backyard? you wouldn't want them in your backyard. who's going to maintain them? you guys didn't say. you're creating another problem for our community. i think you really need to take a look at it. thank you. president buell: thank you. >> next speaker. >> commissioners, my name is john rinaldi. i'd like to defend that petition and the wording of that petition. you had said that it was not very clear the national chain thing and you said that you would sign that petition. that petition as it was worded was kinds of a little bit of hyperbole and stuff but its intention was to create a dialogue, and it's done that really, really well. and the reason why you had to

use that kind of tactic to create the dialogue is because we only had a couple of days to really get to the heart of the matter, like who's going to stand up and defend this and who's going to be against this and how is this going to work? it's pretty obvious to me that everybody is pretty much dead-set against it. however, if you would like, you can word a petition and i'll get 10,000 people to sign it in another five days. i mean, the more that this gets out, the more people are going to be like, no way. that's one point i want to make. i'd also like to define the word local. you were saying, oh, this is what a national chain is, or whatever. i'd like to say, if i were to take a link of a chain and put it on the table and ask you to define it, you wouldn't say it was a chain. you'd say it was an oval of metal or a circle or a ring lett or something. but if you were to put four lengths of a chain together and put it on a table and say what's that, you'd say, oh, that's a chain. a national chain is defined by, you know, a couple of stores, one of them in another state. that's how you would define this kind of thing.

to define the word local, though, is a lot easier than this. to define the word local, i'm going to use your definition, the parks and rec definition to define local. anybody can go in and rent delores park. anyone can. the only caveat is is that you have to be a residents of san francisco if you want to rent delores park for your event, and i'd also like to say that with every generator -- and this isn't just in this particular scenario, because we're against the giant trailer being in delores park. but if it were that you would do this, any time you say a generator is ok you're saying ok to a five-gallon can of gas, and that would be 17 feet from a swingset where the kids play, thank you. president buell: thank you. >> next speaker. go ahead. >> hi, commissioners. my name is koji.

we have selected photo carts in a plaza and we just started last week. first, i would like to say thank you very much to the park department. we are also in a program in la cocina. we are a really small company but have a bringing dream. three years ago i came up with our idea and also, we have a great product idea. it was really tough to start our business because we are too small and a low income and the rent is really expensive. we know we have a great product from japan, but we couldn't do that. and we went to la cocina

because they know a lot of things and they have a lot of connections with food people. and finally, we got a chance -- we got the vending permit and it was really great. we asked the rec and park department and la cocina and we couldn't do that, and we just want to say we really appreciate it. and hopefully la cocina and other small business owners will have the same chance to start a business. thank you very much. president buell: thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> hello, my name is lisia. i moved to the area immediately around the park in 1994, so

i've been a resident there for a long time. i saw it move from the days of being a heroin alley to being a destination park for the city. i have four points. three of them are very brief. one is the request for proposal stated, "before entering into permanent agreement for the operation of a push cart in any neighborhood park, the department will conduct a community outreach process to determine the appropriateness of such use in the park." clearly people are very upset because that was not followed. we, the community, did not know, and that is why people are upset. we're coming in as what it feels like the ninth inning to try and stop something that is upsetting. the second thing is children have a very small footprint in the city. they have very few places to play. and we're talking about putting the push cart, the trailer, the mobile home, directly into the