(clapping.) we have john from our moscone and from the mayor's office of disabilities is here you're going to hear from them but we have our incredible sponsor keeping up and iga gay from kaiser and other person is from the other company here let's talk about the tree this tree behind us 85 years ago you don't think mclaren who was our one of our key fourpd in golden gate park our park superintendent started a tradition of lighting this tree and mile-long of trees that end here in mclaren lodge

this is san francisco's official holiday tree and the cypress are over one hundred and thirty years old and despite losing some of its limitations it's standing at all and supporting over 5 hundred and 50 lights let's give a big round of applause for uncle john's tree (clapping.) so this is the night that offers up the time to get together one of the most important aspects of parks it's sense of place; right? an opportunity to get together to create community and think about our tasks and to see our past, present, and future and people that are going to help us light the trees and brought kids this is something

of san francisco's fabric and we remember it's pretty amazing this holiday season offers the opportunity to reflect american people things we are they've for i'm thankful to work with our amazing staff everyday and help to manage our 2 hundred and 20 parks around the city and most porcelain importantly on behalf of the rec and park department we are thankful for caring about our parks and enjoying them and supporting what really is the best park system in the united states of america. (clapping.) >> so, of course, now and then none of this would be possible without the rec and park department i want to shout out to our superintendent of recreation a gentleman i call p t barn newspaper that's bob

(clapping) i also want to congratulate linda and all of bobs managers and our entire recreation staff our treetopers and our story maybe sad maybe not this tree has been around inform a long lesson time and those of you over time know it's lost some of the lower limbs in big storms throughout the decades well thankfully and even though mayor likes to talk about rain as a sign of prosperity thankfully we have a big storm but we lost one the big tree limb and our tree toppers predict 4 this will be around for decades and decades a

shout out to our tree toppers. >> yeah. >> i also want to thank our partners and special maintenance staff and frankly everyone that works other mclaren leveraging looming and the respect respect i will say to you rec and park department it is the hardest group of city employees around give them a shout out all right. i now want to introduce to you our mayor who recall him mayor but at mclaren lodge he's the park champion he loves foist and loves to play a big hundred to mayor ed lee (clapping.) >> thank you phil happy holidays everyone well, what you deserve is a very short speech

so we're going to give you that because those kids want to play i walked by in the snow this is outside play for kids i want to say a hearty thank you to phil beginning berries and the staff that deserves that but mostly i'm thankful for the people of san francisco those times of trying for families but all the others are getting prosperous and prosperity what we need to do that is share that in the city of san francisco and especially a recognition of many more families that may not be able to receive all the things they need you want to ask you to reach into our hearts and make sure you help others this season of giving tonight our police officers and

first year are here to collect toys for families in need help them do so in their dream effort to collect toys for the needy i know you'll join me in not only a welcome way to thank our partners we have great announcements this year when companies like google decided to help us put wifi in our urban parks now you've got zinc can and kaiser hermosa beach us throughout the year we're going to find more partners to make sure our parks are remaining for all of the people and families to use this is an incredible city a wonderful city it is a 3 times world series champion city that's what we get to represent

(clapping.) i'm proud we worked together but mostly proud of people that live lessor day to day great partners when we brag about the city i visit other places i'll talk about the people that are here essence of innovation in our city thank you very much and happy holidays (clapping) thank you, mr. mayor we have a couple of other speakers i want to first introduce randy through did public affairs if kaiser permanente at the rec and park we share with our tag like we're not - we like to say our mission is really to help families thrive we're grateful for kaiser to port this, please welcome randy up to the podium.

>> thank you phil i'll keep to short i wanted to say happy holidays we're thrilled to be here to celebrate the tree lighting and we're fortunate to have the best urban rec and park department in the country there are 2 hundred and 20 neighborhood parks in san francisco that's a lot of opportunities to get out and thrive so we love the rec and park department and happy to be here and courage you all to get out and get active and healthy and winner you all a happy and healthy holiday season thank you very much (clapping.) thank you randy. >> our other tag like from the rec and park department we like to say get out and play you said it and so our next partner that helps us is ken weber if monk

knows play as you sit here now can welcome ken. >> (clapping.) good evening, everyone what an honor to be up here with with mayor ed lee and phillip and you'll i all those people that work hard to make san francisco whether we love playing on a cell phone or tablet that's why we're proud of our partnering rec and park department with the san francisco parks alliance on behalf of as you sit here now gases more than one thousand based employees we want to wish a safe and happy and hopefully happily lit holiday season. >> one piece of business left

what is that. >> the lighting of the tree. >> we're going to light the tree. >> actually, my wife is boggs me around (laughter) before you before we do one thank you to two other organizations here tonight the ferries is the san francisco parks alliances two folks are here thank you to them (clapping) and also who i saw in the crowd representing the hard working who take care of our works vince from the local. >> (clapping) we're now going to light the tree our swiss is in the back there

so there's a switch that is going to light the tree and the mayor is going to pill the switch and joining him a syosset who is here i asked them to come up i met yvette before the ceremony stated she's with her own parents talking about this is a generational connection she's been here since 1969 come on up and join the mayor on the sign. >> yeah. i think the switch came from candle stick park we want to make sure it works mr. mayor 3 may not be the best example. >> here's our switch and she's

here with her daughter and husband mark all right. and also lilly come on up and i like to ask the kids co-to come up and surround the mayor in pulling the switch kids to the high voltage zone and special shout out to literally will i her joe is an employee he lights it everyday so let's give a special shout out to joe landlord/tenant so will you all count down from 5 5 example 4, 3, 2, 1. >> yeah.

happy holidays everybody may there be lots of love in our holiday season and get out and play and enjoy our paradoxes thank you very muchyour paradox thank you very muchparadoxes thank you very muchaparadoxes thank you very murparadoxes thank you very muchparkparadoxe musparadoxes thank you very muchparksradoxes thank you very mu thank you very muchdoxes thank you very muthank you very much so many many out to many of our sponsors. she shared our streetscape. big cheer for manuela. thank you. people are out and enjoying it. i see kids enjoying it.

it's wonderful. thanks to all the volunteers and especially our mayor ed lee and thanks to all, i really appreciate all of your sponsor ship to make this happen. in addition to this pop up pedestrian plaza we are calling it, we are also featuring every night at 5:00 a fabulous light show at the macy's store. it's on a loop every night for the next month. it's designed by the google doodle folks. the ones that bring you the google doodle. jack frost is taking you through a tour of san francisco. so please enjoy it tonight or come back and enjoy it every night here after. and we also have off the grid here as you can see. they will be here throughout the month. so

come and enjoy bites. for a full list, go to our website. it's now my distinct pleasure to introduce our mayor ed lee with the city and county of san francisco. about a month ago we went to your office to ask you to bring relief to the merchants who have dealt with so much construction. we are grateful. mayor edwin m. lee: thank you for all of your great work at the bid as well. happy holidays! before it rains, i want to make sure you know this, i told you the world series will end the drought. so it's happening. congratulations, everyone. welcome to

our pedestrian pop up place right here at union square. i want to begin by saying thank you to the union square merchants, the bid for working so closely with us but a very special thanks to manuela king whose vision and idea here really sparked this and you spent countless volunteer hours just visualizing how this could happen. i'm going to say just a special thank you because it's people like you in this business that really care about what happens down here, what happens with our shops and will is -- also the experience that people should have as they shop here during the holidays. we have one of the most important transportation projects in the city's history and certainly in this modern history and this is our subway. i know all of you here have

had a high level of tolerance when you have seen these gigantic cranes and hammers and that high degree of tolerance has been because they support the ultimate aim of the central subway project. it is our city's future, but also, in spite of that high tolerance as well, there has been some economic impact to greater degree on many of the small businesses but all businesses around union square. so, instead of just saying sorry, sorry, sorry, i think the central subway team and bid and all of our partners that karen just named by seven by seven and grants for the arts as well as others came together and said, why don't we meet up with this challenge. why don't we do something

about it. so of course a moratorium, do you hear any pounding? no. this should be sleighs and kids and coins, you know. that's the sound that we want to hear during these holidays is people having fun, listening to each other, greet each other, give each other warm holiday welcomes right here in union square. the moratorium is in effect for the next month. it is a pause. it's been buttoned up. this is a time where we should be celebrating each other and uniting during these holidays with our families and our friends. part of this was to do that to announce the pause and the moratorium on this, the other was to create to kind of use

this creative space that manuela had so dearly spent so much time visiting and i spent some time here last week and i was jumping up and down and we spent some serious dollars in our local stores. but we wanted to enjoy it ourselves before we announced it to get a feel for this. it's incredible with the lighting here and the open space. i think all of the stores recognized there was some ilo -- love to be paid back with the construction. hopefully this is the part of it. the other part is that to really in vigor this entire city of ours with the enthusiastic initiative that we launched last week, shop and dine in the 49. that's why i got started early because i wanted to

start to spend some money for my family and eating here. we are doing this because of the construction impact and another thing is to honor the stores and local businesses in san francisco. this is where you should spend that money, this is where that money will come back at you in return with a lot of jobs and local residents with having those jobs and people being happy to make some extra bucks to afford this big ve expensive city. i'm going to be building a lot more and a lot of the fordability agenda is reflected in this transportation project. transportation is affordable in this city. it allows people in an affordable way to get around this entire city. so does more housing, so does parks and open space and

so does working together with all of our small businesses and local businesses to ensure they have the economic foundation to pay the higher salaries that we are asking them and now legally requiring them to do within the next 3 years. with all of that i wanted to say with a great great deep thanks to all of the partners at the bid, the central subway team, the sf mta, our police department that is here to continue to have a high level of safety for everyone. to my friends at dpw who i asked to pick up the extra trash cans here because people were having a lot of fun and didn't know where to put the the trash. we know where to put the trash. dpw, ed, muhammad. these holidays and what we are creating here is very

significant for san francisco. people are coming from all over the world over the holidays as well as from chinatown, north beach, from taravel and sunset to have good reasons to be here. have a safe successful warm holidays. remember, rain is good. it's about prosperity to everyone, it's about world series too and to say again, whenever you come to this place, i just wanted you to know that the people who created this space had in mind to bring lots more people together and thank and support all of our local businesses here in union square. we meet challenges, not with sad stories. in san francisco, just as they did 100 years ago when they did the panama pacific world fair exposition. we celebrate by

meeting these challenges by innovation. is this park innovation? you got to say yes, it is. this spirit which i think will dominate all of our holidays. thank you. have a great holiday. thank you, everybody, for working together. [ applause ] >> as i have often said, two eds are better than one. here is the other ed working very hard. today we were together at the new improved san francisco mta's traffic management center where we are trying to decongest our city and we are doing better and better with it as we get more data flowing through the city. ed reiskin and the head of the central subway project. [ applause ] >> thank you, mr. mayor. happy holidays! as the mayor said, first of all we are so delighted to be able to

be a part of this. for anyone standing here just a few weeks ago, that stockton street could look this way is so unimaginable. central subway is such an incredible project for our city, for union square, a tremendous benefit it will bring but mainly the whole city, but we get there is disruption that doing a project of this magnitude is going to create with this city with such vibrancy. what the union square president said, we understand the pain is worth the gain, but we get nonetheless that there is pain. we are very grateful for the partnership that we have with the union square bid and karen and her board and her staff. they do a great job in advocating for the needs of union square, making sure we are doing what we need to

do to make the project as least disruptive as we can and about assured that she is quick to hold us to account anytime we are not. we'll continue to do that but this opportunity that the holiday moratorium presented with us to transform stockton street, not just back to how it was, but i would argue better than it was during this holiday period to really attract and invite people to come down here toen jo i -- enjoy the holidays with their family and friends and spend money and be very happy to be a part of. we will continue to support the businesses of san francisco. they are a lot of what brings the character of san francisco to our great city . in the transportation we want to do everything we can do and more with the mayor's direction to make

sure people can get around with ease and safely. this year we are bringing the mission garages and put our transit only lanes around market and third so you can get to and from union square more easily and we have flywheel with all of our taxis and generally working for those who want to shop and dine. i do 100 percent of of my shopping and dining here in san francisco. the last thing i will say is we want this holiday season to be a safe one. last year in december, we had a lot of people lose their lives just trying to get around the city of san francisco. the city has embraced a concept vision

zero to achieve zero fatalities in the city. as we are out and about enjoying our great city and shopping and dining with the great businesses in san francisco, i encourage everyone to be safe. everybody, take your time and put your electronic devices down and particularly when you are behind the wheel so we can all enjoy this great season. i would like to acknowledge john and his team who worked really hard with karen and her team. every time he would show me the rendering of this, he was giddy with excited as a school kid as exciting as those pile drivers that the mayor talked about which is an opportunity for us to transform such as important part of

our city with great space. it's really a wonderful opportunity. we are grateful for it. i want to encourage everyone to keep coming out and keep spending your money and have a great holiday season. thank you. [ applause ] >> so, thank you again and so much and to your team, really for believing in us and buttoning up our streets in the last couple of weeks and presenting the wintering walk and and mayor lee, thank you again for being here this evening for your kind words and for your support for this project. we really appreciate that. to all of our sponsors, thank you for your support and thank you for coming and with that we invite you to enjoy the rest of the season. we have food trucks. please enjoy the different options and please enjoy the lights here and if

you join us at the hotel, that will begin in a short time. have a great holiday season. >> >>

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