Though there are many contenders, the distinction of dirtiest street in San Francisco belongs to St. George Alley. It lies at the cusp of North Beach, flanked by cigar clubs and expensive paella restaurants, a swank cosmetology school, and the Academy of Art — all signs of ballooning wealth in the city. But the alley itself is strewn with bunched-up napkins, beer bottles, a discarded towel warmer from a barber shop, ominous puddles, and worse things besides.

St. George Alley illustrates, for those willing to visit it, that a city harboring the world’s most advanced companies is still plagued by the same problems that beset medieval Europe. The worst urban conditions befoul the footpath of the most well-heeled residents. The inability of the city to adequately solve the Great Waste Issue is yet another way of getting at just who, exactly, the city is for. So get comfortable: The conversation over the economic shifts in San Francisco has included luxury high-rises on Market Street, cafes and boutiques on Valencia, evictions all over town, and toast. Now, to complete the circle, we must discuss toilets.

Or, really, public restrooms. Which, like housing, are the canary or the barometer or the inkblot telling us how the city feels about the people in it.

The prospect of a truly democratic, general-purpose toilet has long eluded city officials. Utilitarian, New Deal-era restrooms were designed for everyone, followed by similar visions for one true People’s Toilet. San Francisco being San Francisco, things have since gotten weird. The green, bunker-like JC Decauxs have been monopolized by drug addicts; older facilities have been padlocked; restroom-construction costs have skyrocketed as only S.F. construction costs can. And now, of course, tech start-ups have come along to disrupt the peeing industry.

Dolores Park’s current renovation will include a Parisian-style pissoir where the IPA-infused waste of park-goers can be funneled back into an eco-friendly irrigation system. Meanwhile, a urinal in the Tenderloin that feeds into a bamboo garden will endure the harshest tests a urinal can face. Increasingly, San Francisco’s public restroom demands are getting innovated, tricked-out, and reconceptualized beyond the stainless-steel-and-concrete dreams of early-20th-century utopians. And at long last, libertarian ideals of total bowel deregulation and complete personal bladder authority (beyond the reach of government plumbing) have been achieved by sharing-economy services like New Orleans-based start-up Airpnp, which allows residents to rent out their bathrooms for up to $10 a pop.

Of course, like everything else in San Francisco, it turns out that potties have long been lashed to political debates. In a city that’s constantly reimagining itself, a restroom isn’t just a place to pee, after all. It’s part of a larger dialogue about who owns the public space. It’s a piece of architecture that’s at once public and intimate, where the landed gentry have to squat right alongside the city’s poor. “I think as you see a more stratified city, obviously the restrooms are gonna become more politicized,” former Supervisor Chris Daly says, remembering years of public-restroom football in City Hall.

For at least a decade, bathrooms have stood in for the city’s anxieties about homelessness, public utilities, and the changing economy. They’ve created fault lines and frenemies, they’ve cost untold millions of dollars. (The tab for this year’s renovation of a particularly infamous Portsmouth Square lavatory comes to $1.13 million). They’ve become porcelain tea leaves through which we can analyze the city’s development, and proxies for all of its battles. Scoff or turn away at the door, but it’s undeniable: Toilets have been markers for civilization since long before even the venerable coffee bar, and understanding the city now is just a flush away.

An amateur historian could infer volumes about any San Francisco epoch by analyzing its restroom architecture. Most of the barracks-style johns in neighborhood parks were built during the Depression by a labor force employed through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. Most of those structures were concrete, and utilitarian, though a few had decorative adornments. Frank Triska, a former Recreation & Park volunteer who sat on the department’s (ridiculous, though inevitable) Restroom Task Force in 2009, says one playground bathroom in the Sunset District stood out for craftsmanship, with its arched doors and tiled roof.

“It has sort of a cottagey look,” Triska muses. “The others look like bunkers where you’d store war material.”

Restrooms of an older vintage were built to last — one need only look at the two “Public Convenience Centers” on the Great Highway, which date to a pre-WWII era when words like “outhouse” and “water closet” were too profane to put on public signage. Though they didn’t hew to any particular aesthetic movement, Triska says, most had sturdy masonry and ceramic or porcelain fixtures. The ones by the Great Highway are impressively large, with Ionic columns built into their facades and high ceilings that bathe the interior spaces with natural light. They are tiled like the floors of a Vermeer painting, with the actual facilities — several urinals and some toilets — clustered in one corner to make the room look even bigger.

Owing to the politics of the time, these marvelous citadels were possible because they were substantially cheaper than today’s bathrooms. San Francisco’s top-down government structure of the early 20th century wasn’t encumbered by democratic ideals, or edicts to serve everyone, or directives to incorporate community input in the design. The city didn’t have to meet disability law requirements or hire well-compensated union labor, or pass muster with both the Park commission and the Arts commission. Old-school construction process lacked utopian pretensions. But then, it didn’t need to accommodate a cacophony of opposing views.

Nearly a century later, politics and city bureaucracies have transformed dramatically. Rising maintenance costs shuttered many bathrooms, while disproportionate social services led to a boom in the homeless population. There were fewer public restrooms to accommodate a greater need for them. St. George Alley and other unfortunate streets bore the brunt.

The economics of toilet design had to change.

In 1995, San Francisco hammered out a deal with a French advertising company, JCDecaux, to furnish 25 self-cleaning toilets along the downtown corridor. Squat and olive green, they promised to cheaply meet the city’s utopian aspirations. Anyone could pump in a quarter, open the door, use the toilet, and watch as the machine sealed itself shut for a mysterious 60-second cleaning cycle in which the JCDecaux hosed all its surfaces and blasted itself with disinfectant.

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In a city bedeviled by change, the French toilets seemed like a miracle. Tourists, homeless people, and shoppers on Market Street would all pee in the same hole, and JCDecaux would deputize its own maintenance crew to clean up every morning. The French company charged nothing for its boxy toilets, which resembled big oil drums or artillery bunkers, because they also served as advertising kiosks. The company rented that signage and pocketed the revenue.

But it didn’t take long for a foreign toilet with lofty aspirations and good business sense to fall into ill repute. The JCDecauxs became known as “20 minute hotels” for prostitutes and drug users. Vagrants slept inside; addicts wedged knives beneath the doors to keep cops from getting in.

“I’ve actually seen shit on the floors,” a homeless vet named Peter Skelley says, rattling off the other iniquities he’s witnessed in those shiny European johns: people cooking up dope or shooting heroin.

Granted, his horror stories pale in comparison to a JCDecaux maintenance man at Fifth and Market streets, who easily recalls the worst thing he’s seen: “A dead body. From a drug overdose.”

The JCDecaux toilets have come to represent a form of cheap civic beneficence — a way for San Francisco to feel it was aiding its downtrodden at a time of budget austerity. And their structures convey as much: big, can-shaped bunkers with glossy panes for advertisers.

It only took a small margin of the population to ruin the democratic restroom model for everybody else. But, as is often the case in San Francisco politics, that small sliver wielded a lot of influence. Toilets quickly came to illustrate all manner of livability issues, and the utopian dream of tourists sharing clean, cottagey space with their homeless counterparts withered away. The restrooms of San Francisco had failed as a utopian experiment; they were commandeered by a small minority but inaccessible to the masses.

And still, the streets grew fouler.

Erstwhile Supervisor Chris Daly never asked to become a stalwart for public defecation, but in 2002, he became a defender of shit-by-association.

“It wasn’t a position I wanted to defend,” he says, recalling how he landed on the wrong side of the public poop debate, and how it soiled his subsequent political campaigns. Daly felt he had no choice. Another former supervisor, Tony Hall, had drafted a comprehensive plan to combat homelessness downtown, which included an ordinance against defecating in public.

“You couldn’t even walk along any of the downtown streets without smelling urine,” Hall says, explaining that the city had padlocked many of its neighborhood restrooms to cut costs and save manpower — even if, as Hall argued, it costs just as much to power-wash the streets.

Restroom austerity begot filthier streets, Hall notes, but it was hard to crack down on the itinerant defecators if you weren’t giving them a place to do their business in the first place. Daly certainly wasn’t having it.

“He would push back on anything that counted as discipline for the homeless,” Hall says, recalling that the two supervisors eventually compromised, and co-authored an ordinance with then-Supervisor Gavin Newsom. It included a fine for anyone caught copping a squat, and a provision requiring the Department of Public Works to keep up-do-date web listings of available restroom facilities.

“If you give [the homeless] a place to go, they should use it,” Hall surmises. “And if they don’t, they should be penalized. It’s an affront to people using the public streets.”

Robert Freedman, a 50-year-old homeless man in SOMA, might say it’s not so simple. Freedman’s worst call-of-nature calamity happened last year, in the dead of night, in an alley on Natoma Street. He’d just finished relieving himself when a beat cop sneaked up behind him.

“He said, ‘Clean up that shit or you go to jail,’” Freedman recalls, his eyes narrowing angrily. “I said, ‘How am I gonna do that? I don’t got a broom or nothing. And he said, ‘Use your shirt.’”

Freedman’s altercation with the cop occurred just blocks away from the coin-operated JCDecaux toilet at Powell Street. But in a neighborhood where the public toilets are just squalid enough that most homeless people say they’d prefer to pee between cars, it didn’t seem that shocking. During the day, Freedman uses the bathrooms at Hospitality House Sixth Street Drop-in Center, one of several Hospitality Houses scattered throughout the Tenderloin. But those close at 5 or 7 p.m., he says, and at night he has fewer options. Freedman stuffs wads of toilet paper in his pockets, just in case.

“It’s obviously an issue not only for the homeless people, but for people watching the homeless defecate in their doorways,” Hospitality House’s development director Daniel Hlad says, adding that he and other service providers have no way to fix the problem. “We can’t stay open 24 hours,” Hlad explains. “If we had unlimited funding I’m sure we could. But given our current capacity, this is what we can do.”

Eventually, Hall and other politicians managed to persuade the city to reopen many of its park restrooms, which helped curtail waste problems while shunting the burden over to San Francisco Rec & Park. Thus, another agency with limited resources was dispatched to manage the city’s most well-trafficked and wretched lavatories. Hall deemed it a common-sense decision, but he recalls that some Rec & Park bureaucrats cried foul. They didn’t have enough personnel to beautify johns that might have languished since the Depression, let alone clean up the ones serving high-density areas like Portsmouth Square.

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In 2008, the department, already saddled with a $2 million dollar backlog from deferred maintenance costs — and run-down facilities throughout the city — sent perky mailers out to the residents of San Francisco, each featuring a map of the city dotted by 35 stars and a picture of the new bungalow-style john that city officials installed in the Panhandle in 2007. The Panhandle potty included a shingled roof, skylights, open-air grated doors, and forest-green tiled trim — and at $531,219 cost nearly as much as a small house in the Excelsior. Plumbing renovations, ADA enhancements, and union construction all contributed to the overall tab. Scrutiny from multiple city agencies ensured that the new john would be a utility, an equalizer, and a thing of beauty, all wrapped into one costly package. It was a harbinger of the times.

The mailer, proudly displaying the new utopian crapper, exhorted voters to pass ballot Proposition A, the $185 million parks bond that earmarked $11.4 million for bathroom renovation. Voters obliged, perhaps not realizing that restrooms cost as much as residential real estate in San Francisco. The Panhandle john was no outlier.

The new crop of restrooms in San Francisco are well-maintained and fabulously expensive, though a $531,000 privy might not shock a citizenry already numbed by $4 toast and $5 drip coffee and exorbitantly priced boutiques on Valencia. They’ve come to symbolize a strange cultural moment for San Francisco, when the city’s long-held do-gooder sentiments are butting up against its obsession with high-tech gadgetry, and its desire to garnish everything — even toilets — with aesthetic frills.

Nouveau restroom design in San Francisco might best be encapsulated by the new Dolores Park rehabilitation project, which will serve tens of thousands of weekend loungers on 16 acres of lumpy, manicured grassland. For anyone who’s spent a weekend drinking on those sun-dappled hillocks, the line snaking behind the park’s concrete clubhouse is a familiar sight. Add to that a tried-and-true law of human behavior — that the urge to pee in a bush rises with the amount of beer consumed. Such circumstances have led many a well-preened citizen to indulge his baser instincts.

As a result, parts of the city’s most park for the most upwardly mobile residents smell like some of the alleyways downtown.

“Public urination has been a significant problem along the western edge of the park,” Rec & Park project manager Jake Gilchrist says, explaining that the clubhouse restrooms were too small and remote to accommodate people who hang out in the southwest corner by 20th and Church streets, affectionately known as the Gay Beach. Many of those folks were peeing on the Muni tracks.

Park caretakers are determined to rectify that problem.

Over the next several months, Recreation & Parks will lavish some $12.4 million on amenities for the area, part of the 2008 parks bond. The list of enhancements includes new tennis courts, new irrigation systems, and new, intelligently outfitted restrooms to replace the ones in the clubhouse, which will soon be razed.

The two 1,300-square-foot bathrooms set to go up on either side of the park offer enough restroom real estate to fit 31 toilets, park officials say — 14 for women, five for men, eight urinals, and four unisex stalls.

But the park’s most talked-about piece of toilet architecture will crown the top of the hill. Called the “pPod,” it’s a stark, minimalist structure modeled after the Parisian pissoir — nothing more than a drain hole and modesty panel to hide the user’s mid-section. The panel, composed of 2-inch mesh screen rather than corrugated steel, will harbor vines and trellising plants, turning the pPod into a thing of (relative) beauty. It’s the next stage in bathroom evolution and, like its forebears, tells us a lot about who we are now.

In fact, the pPod illuminates S.F. cultural sentiments even more than its bigger, costlier contemporaries. It’s the iPad of urinals — sleek, ascetic, indomitably practical and, new to the S.F. restroom vision, equipped with features that match the city’s environmental sensibility (peeing back into the earth) and its Francophile aspirations. San Francisco has a long history of poaching concepts from the French: After the Gold Rush, our scrappy city tried to repackage itself as “The Paris of the West;” more than a century later, then-mayor Gavin Newsom promised to turn a newly gentrified Market Street into our own Champs-Elysees.

Incidentally, the pissoir will likely be a more flattering form of imitation. Bucking another trend, it’s a cheap $15,000.

Only one other futuristic San Francisco toilet could possibly upstage the pPod. Called the “PPlanter,” it’s a wonder of science and urban planning: part toilet, part bamboo garden, outfitted with pipes that pump urine and faucet water into an airtight tank, clean it through a bio-filter, and feed it to the plants. Engineers from Oakland’s Hyphae Design Laboratory pilot-tested the idea last year on Ellis Street, near the back entrance of Boeddeker Park in the Tenderloin (which, as any San Francisco resident can attest, is ground zero for toilet R&D). They hope to launch a new iteration this year in partnership with the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District, and a proposed budget of $160,000 for the entire project — mostly deriving from grants.

The next phase, officially christened the Tenderloin Ecological Toilet Project, will comprise a toilet, two urinals, a sink, a wheelchair ramp, and vines or trellising plants — all configured to fit within two parking spaces. Its gray-water flushing system will erase foul odors while its foliage will add a “beautification element,” according to Susie McKinnon, associate director of the community benefit district. McKinnon compares the Ecological Toilet Project to parklets that have popped up around San Francisco, converting paved streets or parking spaces into greenery. It’s a waste repository with bold aims. Its components — all wrought from scavenged industrial materials — apply high-minded ecological ideals to primordial human behaviors for those who need it most.

It transforms pee into garden mulch. Its elaborate title bespeaks a noble calling.

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In a city obsessed with innovation — app-based car services, Airbnb hotels, bridges that double as art projects — it’s little surprise that someone turned toilets into architecture. These new crappers mirror the city’s preoccupations with environmentalism, social good, and urban renewal, infusing the most basic human need with a raison d’etre. A PPlanter is the kind of thing you could field-test in the Tenderloin and then exhibit on the Playa at Burning Man.

That said, it’s unclear whether these high-concept water closets can withstand all the abuse that’s beset the JCDecaux boxes. Bathrooms are “site-specific,” and heavily influenced by their environments, Gilchrist says. A pissoir might serve as a hipster urinal in the Mission District, and a crack den when it’s redeployed in the alleyways downtown.

The city’s most imaginative and cost-effective bathrooms may not be able to serve everyone. They might not even be able to serve a segment of the population that needs them most. But in San Francisco, the toilet finds a way.

At midnight on a balmy Saturday in September, Doniece Sandoval stepped in the shower for the first time in five days. A handsome woman with elegantly arched eyebrows and platinum-streaked hair, she’d spent the better part of the week in shower abstinence, relying on body wipes and store bathrooms. Sandoval devised a demonstration to drum up support for her mobile shower project, Lava Mae, which rehabs old Muni buses and turn them into roving lavatories for the homeless.

Last year, Sandoval secured her first scrapped bus from the SFMTA and launched a $75,000 crowdfunding campaign to gut and retrofit it. As word got out, more donations came in. Now, Sandoval’s first bus is parked in a maintenance yard in Sacramento, where workers are installing two washrooms with showers, and a seat for people to change their shoes and socks. Sandoval hopes to debut it in the Mission and Bayview districts this spring, pumping in water from fire hydrants, cleaning it with a disinfectant, and draining it back into the catch basins in the streets. She still needs about $75,000 to finish the rehab, at which point she’ll ask SFMTA to donate three more junkers.

If the Lava Mae pilot works out, Sandoval hopes to raise enough money to put three more buses on the road. Neighborhoods famous for their fetid smells would suddenly be awash in public restroom infrastructure — which, Sandoval says, would spare those streets that have suffered so many years of abuse.

“There are 25 JCDecaux public toilets in the city, and as wonderful as it is to have them, they have problems,” she says. “People sleep there, they don’t lock, people get caught inside if they don’t leave in time for the [automated] cleaning.” San Francisco has a poop problem, Sandoval continues, but the homeless aren’t the ones at fault. “You just have to imagine how degrading it is for someone, when nature calls and they don’t have a place to go.”

Or their place to go is a side street. St. George Alley, the filthiest street in San Francisco, is a by-product of a political system that hasn’t found a true utopian solution. Maybe because there is no single People’s Toilet.

This dissatisfaction is what’s created the split: On one side are entrepreneurs like Sandoval, who want to repurpose old institutions like Muni buses into the toilets for the homeless; on the other is Airpnp, the Louisiana-based restroom-sharing start-up that infiltrated San Francisco.

Airpnp, a company modeled after the room-rental service Airbnb, allows residents to rent out their private restrooms via a website. Thus far, listings have cropped up for an apartment bathroom in the Marina, whose owners regale their clientele with incense sticks and old copies of Popular Science magazine ($5 per squat), and a pair of bathrooms in Oakland with copious supplies of Cottonelle tissue ($3). An Airpnp at 20th and Guerrero had to remove his listing because he got too many calls.

“It’s like Uber,” Airpnp co-founder Max Gaudin says, explaining that the current, primitive system is just a website that broadcasts local toilets-for-hire, but the next phase will feature a mobile payment app. In essence, it will privatize a system that’s long been the domain of public agencies, offering San Franciscans with smartphones and credit cards the chance to enjoy a new adventure in urinating.

Peeing on a bus, in bamboo, or in some entrepreneur’s flushable goldmine: The range of options has never been wider, or weirder, or more telling of the fact that the city’s heart follows its bladder. As the toilet economy keeps blossoming from its New Deal origins, better, stranger, costlier (or cheaper) models will evolve. Cultural divisions will deepen. More private homeowners and entrepreneurs will commandeer what was once a public utility to serve rich and poor in the way that unites us all. You can already recognize the city’s various dialogues in the bathroom options being installed throughout its neighborhoods.

That’s something to think about, the next time you’re standing in line with your legs crossed: You came for simple relief, but the room itself can never rest.

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It's Christmas time in the city, but if all the bright lights and busy streets (or maybe that marathon series of “It's a Wonderful Life” you couldn't pass up) have you yearning for a small-town Christmas, there's no better destination than Nevada City, California, and its annual Victorian Christmas celebration. This gingerbread-decorated hamlet in the Sierra foothills, about a 2 ½-hour drive from San Francisco, is like a portal back in time. Read on to find out where to stay, eat, and play.

Before Christmas, two WednesdayFor the three Sundays in December, most of downtown is closed to through traffic and opened to a bustling activity. Carolers, wandering minstrels, jugglers, costumed characters, horse-drawn carriage rides, local musicians, including many children, and other local talent perform in the streets while families stroll from vendor to vendor sampling, sipping, snacking and purchasing their wares. The atmosphere is warm and inviting as locals and tourists alike are there.

SantaBaby
At the bottom of Broad Street (the main drag), Santa will be available for photo ops. For $5, children and groups can have their picture taken with Santa. The money goes to a local charity – and photos are not required. If your little ones are camera shy or want to cross seeing Santa twice off their list, any child can chat with old Santa.

Bonus: There's also balloon art and a bouncy castle for the kids. Also, keep an eye out for jugglers and magicians.

Roasting chestnuts over an open fire
In addition to spiced cider, mulled wine and barbecued food, there will be chestnuts roasted over a real open fire every night. Cecil Snow, the city's favourite Victorian chimney sweep, will be stoking the fire and selling the chestnuts. This is not to be missed.

Decorate the halls
In addition to the unique gifts sold throughout the streets by local artists and artisans, the United Methodist Church at the top of Broad Street hosts an open house and craft market. It's the perfect place to escape the cold, enjoy the festive atmosphere with Santa, apple cider, cookies and music, beautiful decorations, and use the restroom! Or visit the Nevada City Craft Fair on Sunday, December 11 In the historic Miners Foundry you will find a wide selection of artisan gifts.

Photo by Erin Thiem, outsideinn.com

Park your car
Parking is very limited and it can be frustrating when a whole troupe of carolers is ready to hit the road, so drop them off and park your car at the Nevada County Government Center, then take the shuttle back to town. There is a $5 fee on the ride into town, but it's free on the way back to the car! Check out the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce website for more information.

Good night everyone
There are many bed and breakfasts, hotels and motels in this area. The Outside Inn is a family and pet friendly motel style accommodation that is within walking distance of all of downtown Nevada City. Or if you'If you're looking for something unique, rent an RV and try the new Inn Town Campground, less than two miles from downtown Nevada City.

The Northern Queen Inn offers reasonable rates and its own Christmas lights – plus you can choose between traditional rooms or little cabins in the pines! It's a little further away than the Outside Inn, but it's still within walking distance of downtown.

What to wear
Dress for the occasion, but wear your warmest clothes. It's not unusual for snow to fall this time of year! Wool coats and capes and top hats are also appropriate! Bring gloves, hats and scarves for the kids, and wear good walking shoes. Most activities are outdoors, and Nevada City is hilly. The main street, Broad Street, is a long, rolling hill, so wear comfortable shoes.

When: Sundays, December 411th and 18th of 1:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m. and Wednesdays 14 and 21 December out of 5pm-9pm

A fairy tale about two cities
The neighboring town of Grass Valley, which is equally charming, celebrates a similar Cornish Christmas that begins the Friday after Thanksgiving and runs through December 20th. Mill Street and Main Street are closed off and the cool mountain air is filled with the scent of roasted chestnuts, kettle corn and pasties. Make it a weekend of super-retro Christmas celebrations and have the best time – experience both events in one weekend. For more information on Cornish Christmas, visit the Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce website.

Have you ever celebrated the season in Nevada City? Tell us about it in the comments below!

–Erin Thiem and Amber Guetebier

All photos courtesy of Nevada City Chamber of Commerce unless otherwise noted

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For those pursuing a career in musical theater, life on tour can be a blessing and a curse. Casting a touring production of a Broadway musical means steady work—eight performances a week, a sizable paycheck, and a per diem that covers food, lodging, and other related expenses.

But traveling to a different city every week can take its toll on any artist, regardless of age. Being on the road also means living out of a suitcase for months. Additionally, an actor might be in San Francisco when an important audition takes place in New York.

For the two leads on the Disney/Cameron Mackintosh tour of “Mary Poppins,” which opens in Oklahoma City on Election Day, this show is a major credit on their resumes and an opportunity they are eager to take advantage of. The hardships of the road obviously didn't dampen their spirits.

Con O'Shea-Creal, a 2008 graduate of the University of Oklahoma, plays the cheerful chimney sweep Bert. University of Michigan graduate Madeline Trumble plays the title character in the musical that made young Julie Andrews famous.

Although both contracts run until January, the young actors approached their roles very differently. As a student at Michigan, Trumble had limited performance opportunities because the musical theater program was so competitive.

“I never thought I could do this,” Trumble said recently. “In college I did a few plays and a few ensemble roles, but this role seemed so out of reach. Because of my performance, I got the audition (“Mary Poppins”) and then got about three callbacks before I was hired as an understudy for the tour. That’s why I appreciate getting this role even more.”

In contrast, O'Shea-Creal worked steadily as a student at OU, landing roles in “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” “Anything Goes,” “Company” and “Urinetown.” He has also been cast in Lyric Theater productions of “Swing!” and “42nd Street” and appeared in four consecutive productions of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic’s “A Very Merry Pops.”

After graduating, O'Shea-Creal went to New York, where he quickly landed roles in the Broadway musical White Christmas (limited holiday runs in 2008 and 2009), Annie Get Your Gun at the Goodspeed Opera House, and Singin' in the Rain in Westchester, NY

Resilience pays off

All along, this versatile performer had his eye on the role of the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins.

“For a song and dance man, Bert was a role that was always on my radar,” O'Shea-Creal said recently. “I didn’t know if it would happen, but I was determined to do whatever it took to get there.

“I first auditioned for Mary Poppins in 2008 when I was in White Christmas. From that point on I probably went there about ten times every year. I showed up so many times that they knew what song I was going to sing. I also got to the point where I didn't think I could audition for the show anymore.

“But I criticized every aspect of my audition and stuck with it. Last year I think I was called back 14 times. A great gift of this experience is resilience. You audition no matter how many times you are asked. It finally worked for me. I was understudy to Bert for about five months and while I was on a break from the show, I got the call that I would be taking on the role.”

Based on the Mary Poppins novels by PL Travers and the 1964 Disney film, the stage musical premiered in London in December 2004. Laura Michelle Kelly won an Olivier Award for her role as Mary Poppins; The production also won an award for choreography.

The Broadway production premiered at the New Amsterdam Theater in New York in November 2006 and won a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design the following June. The production is still playing to sold-out crowds and celebrates its six-year anniversary on November 16th.

Nine of the film's 17 musical numbers – written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman – were adapted for the stage production, which was subsequently supplemented by seven new songs by British songwriters George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.

O'Shea-Creal said that after hearing one of Stiles and Drewe's new numbers, one of the Sherman brothers reportedly called it “the best song he had never written.”

The opportunity to perform in the city where you were born or where you went to school is a highlight for actors in any touring production. This will be O'Shea-Creal's first opportunity to return to Oklahoma City. There are also plans to conduct master classes for OU musical theater students.

“My whole family is from Nebraska and the OU musical theater school purchased a block of tickets for the show,” O'Shea-Creal said. “Performing in Oklahoma will allow me to give back and thank everyone at OU, the Lyric Theater and the Philharmonic for giving me such great opportunities.”

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San Francisco is expanding its vaccination mandate for city employees to include contractors who work with the city.

The mandate takes effect Dec. 31 and applies to contractors and nonprofit workers who work at city facilities or alongside city workers, the mayor's office said Friday. Contractors may be granted waivers for certain religious or medical exemptions, and the city manager is charged with implementing the mandate.

The new mandate represents a significant expansion of vaccine requirements for city workers in San Francisco, which was the first of its kind in the country when it was announced in June. San Francisco contracts with hundreds of companies, from construction and engineering firms to nonprofit social service providers.

According to the mayor's office, the obligation does not necessarily apply to all contractors: only employees who have regular personal contact with city employees are subject to the obligation. The mandate also applies to city commissioners.

The city is currently clarifying specific enforcement details, but companies working with the city must certify that eligible employees are fully vaccinated by the deadline.

“City contractors are an important part of the broader workforce that provides needed services to San Francisco. “It is therefore important that contractors also get vaccinated and help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in city facilities and among staff,” said Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax, in a statement.

According to the Department of Human Resources, 94% of city workers had been vaccinated as of Wednesday. Employees who do not comply with the vaccination requirement by November 1st, the final deadline for submitting complete proof of vaccination, must be terminated.

Some city departments with large frontline workers, such as the SFMTA and the Police Department, are preparing to lay off potentially hundreds of employees in November.

As of last week, 313 police employees, including 276 sworn officers, were unvaccinated, according to a department-wide email viewed by Here/Say Media. Of those employees, 228 requested religious exemptions, and the vast majority were denied.

This week, the SFMTA warned that more than 300 transit operators could be terminated on Nov. 1, causing “unforeseeable” disruptions starting over Halloween weekend and delaying their plans to restore service.

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A new affordable housing complex with on-site support services for families transitioning from homelessness opened Wednesday in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

The City Gardens complex at 333 12th St. adds 200 units to the city's inventory of permanent supportive housing. This is housing that includes long-term rental assistance and supportive services ranging from education and job training to health care. The new complex will increase the number of such residential units for families in the city by more than 20 percent.

The building and its services will be funded with $100 million from the city's Our City, Our Home Fund, a tax on businesses that generate gross receipts of more than $50 million. It was approved by voters as Proposition C in 2018.

City Gardens apartment complex at 333 12th St. in San Francisco.

City of San Francisco

The project was supported by an additional $56.7 million from the state's Homekey program, which funds a variety of permanent housing options as part of addressing a housing crisis declared in 2019. The city funded with Homekey funds.

“The City's investments in shelter, housing and prevention across our system make a difference for people and our neighborhoods every day, and we will continue to work to bring stability and hope to those most in need,” said San Francisco Mayor, London Breed, in a statement statement.

San Francisco Administrator Matt Dorsey said the project will provide families exiting homelessness a place to call home.

“The opening of City Gardens provides safe housing for San Francisco families at a time when it is desperately needed. It’s more than just a building, it’s a sign of our commitment to helping our most vulnerable neighbors,” Dorsey said.

On-site social services, including case management and mental health counseling, are provided by the nonprofit organization Abode Services. Other building amenities include common areas, resident lounges on each floor, a rooftop terrace, offices and a bicycle repair shop.

“City Gardens is a wonderful family project that we are happy to be a part of,” said Louis Chicoine, CEO of Abode Services. “We are grateful to have been commissioned by the City and County of San Francisco to operate such a beautiful and meaningful building where many San Franciscans live today.”

Under Proposition C, the city imposed a tax on annual gross receipts of businesses over $50 million to fund supportive housing and other solutions to the city's homelessness crisis. Legal challenges delayed the implementation of funds for city projects until the 2020-21 fiscal year.

More from CBS News

Read more

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SAN FRANCISCO – The Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board of Directors has adopted amendments to Regulation 9, Rules 4 and 6 to eliminate emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from residential and commercial natural gas furnaces and water heaters in the Bay Area. be free.

Emissions from natural gas building appliances cause a similar amount of NOx pollution to passenger vehicles in the Bay Area. As a group, they are among the largest emitters of nitrogen oxides of all stationary air pollution sources regulated by the Air District.

“The Bay Area’s 1.8 million water heaters and furnaces significantly impact our air quality, leading to dozens of early deaths and a variety of health impacts, particularly in communities of color,” said Dr. Philip Fine, managing director of the air district. “This groundbreaking regulation will phase out the most polluting devices in homes and businesses to protect Bay Area residents from the harmful air pollution they cause.”

The rule changes would only apply to new devices and would not require the immediate replacement of existing devices. They also do not apply to appliances used for cooking, such as: B. Gas stoves. NOx-emitting natural gas furnaces and water heaters will be phased out over time, starting with water heaters in 2027. The rule changes will improve overall regional air quality through outdoor ventilation of these appliances and reduce exposure to particulate matter, particularly in communities They account for up to $890 million per year in health impacts due to exposure to air pollution. NOx emissions affect local and regional air quality and contribute to the formation of ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5).

Exposure to NOx is associated with coughing, wheezing, difficulty breathing, asthma, and increased susceptibility to respiratory infections. Exposure to particulate matter has been linked to asthma and other respiratory diseases, neurological diseases, heart attack, stroke, lung cancer and premature death. The new changes will protect public health from the dangers of these pollutants and prevent an estimated 85 premature deaths and dozens of new asthma cases in the Bay Area each year.

The air district released a draft environmental impact report and sought comments on the proposed rule changes during a 45-day public comment period that ended Feb. 6. Compliance dates are between 2027 and 2031, depending on device type, use and size. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is the regional agency responsible for protecting air quality and the global climate in the nine-county Bay Area. For more information, visit www.baaqmd.gov/building-appliances.

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It's Christmas time in the city, but if all the bright lights and busy streets (or maybe that marathon of It's a Wonderful Life you couldn't resist) make you want a small town Christmas, there's no better destination than Nevada City, California and its annual Victorian Christmas celebration. This gingerbread-adorned hamlet in the Sierra foothills, about a 2½-hour drive from San Francisco, is like a portal into the past. Read on to find out where to stay, eat and play.

Two before Christmas WednesdayOn public holidays and the three Sundays in December, most of the city center is closed to through traffic and offers a lot of activity. Christmas carolers, roving minstrels, jugglers, costumed characters, horse-drawn carriage rides, local musicians, including many children, and other local talent perform in the streets as families move from vendor to vendor sampling, sipping, sniffing and sipping their wares buy. The atmosphere is warm and inviting and is frequented by locals and tourists alike.

Santa Claus baby
At the bottom of Broad Street (the main street), Santa Claus is available for photo ops. For $5, children and groups can take a photo with Santa. The money goes to a local charity – photos are not required. If your little ones are camera shy or want to check seeing Santa twice off their list, every child can talk to Ol' Saint Nick about it.

Bonus: There's also balloon art and a bouncy house for the kids. Also keep an eye out for jugglers and magicians.

Chestnuts roast on an open fire
In addition to spiced cider, mulled wine and grilled delicacies, there are chestnuts roasted over a real open fire every evening. Cecil Snow, the town's favorite Victorian chimney sweep, will tend the fire and sell the chestnuts. Not to be missed.

Deck the halls
In addition to unique gifts for sale from local artists and craftsmen on the streets, the United Methodist Church at the top of Broad Street hosts an open house that includes a craft market. It's the perfect place to escape the cold, enjoy the festive atmosphere with Santa, cider, cookies and music, beautiful decorations, and use the restroom! Or stop by the Nevada City Craft Fair Sunday December 11th Find a wide selection of artisan gifts at the historic Miners Foundry.

Photo by Erin Thiem, Outsideinn.com

Park your car
The number of parking spaces is very limited and can be frustrating when the group full of carolers takes to the streets. So drop them off, park your car at the Nevada County Government Center, and then take the shuttle back into town. There is a $5 fee to drive into town, but the ride back to the car is free for everyone! For more information, visit the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce website.

Have a good night's sleep everyone
There are many bed and breakfasts, hotels and motels in this area. Family and pet friendly, The Outside Inn is a motel-style property located within walking distance of all of downtown Nevada City. Or if you'If you're looking for something unique, rent an RV and check out the new Inn Town Campground, less than 2 miles from downtown Nevada City.

The Northern Queen Inn offers affordable rates and its own light show – plus you can choose between traditional rooms or small cabins in the pines! Although it is a little further away than the Outside Inn, the city center is still within walking distance.

What to wear
Dress festively, but wear your warmest clothing. It's not uncommon for snow to fall this time of year! Wool coats, capes and top hats are also appropriate! Bring mittens, hats and scarves for the children and wear good walking shoes. Most of the activities take place outside and Nevada City is hilly. The main street, Broad Street, is a long, rolling hill. Therefore, wear comfortable shoes.

When: Sundays, December 4th11th and 18th of 1:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m and Wednesdays December 14th and 21st out of 5-9 p.m

A fairy tale about two cities
The neighboring town of Grass Valley, which is equally charming, has a similar Cornish Christmas festival that begins the Friday after Thanksgiving and runs until December 20th. Mill Street and Main Street are closed and the cool mountain air is filled with the smell of roasting chestnuts, corn on the cob and pies. Make it a weekend full of super retro Christmas parties and enjoy the best moments – attend both events in one weekend. For more information about Cornish Christmas, visit the Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce website.

Have you ever celebrated the season in Nevada City? Tell us about it in the comments below!

–Erin Thiem and Amber Guetebier

All photos courtesy of the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce unless otherwise noted

The post Victorian Christmas Celebration in Nevada Metropolis, CA appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Photo by Rich Yee, courtesy of Dickens Fair

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair and Victorian Holiday Party have reached their final weekends at the Cow Palace in Daly City. This popular annual event takes you to Victorian London, brought to life by hundreds of costumed players and a variety of players Shops, stages, pubs, parties and unforgettable performances. You can still buy tickets for the weekend fair until December 17, 2023.

This annual event began in the 1970s and celebrates the world of writing Charles Dickens, author of “A Christmas Carol,” “Oliver Twist,” “Great Expectations,” and other literary classics. The trade fair functions Experiences and characters iinspired by and directly from Dickens' novels, including The Santa Clause; Crazy Sal; Mr. Dickens himself; and his ghosts of Christmases past, present and future.

Photo by Zoart Photography, courtesy of Dickens Fair

This year brings some new drinking experiences including this Jekyll and Hyde Pub Crawl Mystery, where guests can sample five different bespoke “elixirs” at different drinking establishments; And Port wine and chocolate tasting 4 times daily at the Green Man Inn.

Guests can enjoy a spectrum of Performances on 7 stages including Irish singers, English mimes, Bedouin belly dancers and juggling. This is also a good time to do something Holiday shopping as there will be over 100 shops and vendors selling fine handicrafts. Finally, this Sherlock Holmes experience is back by popular demand for those looking to try out a delightful new puzzle.

costumes play a big role in the overall experience, but don't feel bad if you're not looking for a vest or hood. Victorian costumes are not required but are welcome. Before your visit, be sure to read the costume guide and guidelines, which contain many do's and don'ts regarding your clothing.

Photo by Rich Yee, courtesy of Dickens Fair

The Great Dickens Christmas Market invites you to indulge in the fantasy of the experience, enjoy a fencing lesson, drink some absinthe or Turkish coffee and enjoy the ride.

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair and Victorian Holiday Party take place on the weekends Nov. 18 – Dec. 17 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The fair takes place in Cow Palace Exhibition Halls, 2600 Geneva Avenue, Daly City, CA.

Full day general admission for adults is $45, youth (13 and under) is $25. You can also count on discounted Twilight tickets after 3 p.m.

Written by Grant MacHamer and Jamie Ferrell

The post 2023 Nice Dickens Christmas Honest Returns To Daly Metropolis appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

In October 2022, San Francisco Raised eyebrows when the city budgeted $1.7 million for a single public restroom in the city's Noe Valley neighborhood. According to city officials, the high price was due to high construction prices in San Francisco as well as remaining supply chain issues.

But shortly afterwards the state intervened, which scrapped the planned bathroom after outrage spread over the high cost to taxpayers. Fifteen months later, there is still no place to pee in the public square where the toilet was originally planned – and it doesn't look like there will be one any time soon.

“Why isn’t there a toilet here? I just don't understand her. Nobody has them,” said a resident told The New York Times last week. “It’s another example of the city not being able to do it.”

San Francisco has the most expensive Construction costs worldwide – and that is hardly surprising. To build a public toilet in Noe Valley, a place that already had the plumbing necessary to install a toilet, developers had to overcome a dizzying number of regulatory requirements. This includes obtaining approval from the Arts Commission's Civic Design Review Committee, passing review under the California Environmental Quality Act, and approval from the city's Rec and Park Commission and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. As if that wasn't enough, the project would also be subject to a “community feedback” phase.

Even after receiving approval, the city would not be free to simply find the cheapest acceptable bathroom — likely a prefabricated option — and connect it to city plumbing. According to a year 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Article, Prefab bathrooms violate the city's public works agreement. In addition to the cost, the city would also have to use union labor to build the bathroom.

While the $1.7 million price tag was rightly criticized, if the project had been allowed to move forward, the budget might not have been set too high. The regulatory burden in San Francisco for new construction—even something as simple as a single-stall bathroom—is just so high.

Even the San Francisco government has acknowledged that the Noe Valley bathroom fiasco was a sign that the city is over-regulated. “It is worth changing the current laws around construction projects such as toilets that slow things down,” said a spokesman for Mayor London Breed Just.

However, this is far from the first time that local governments have allocated absurdly large sums of money to fund public toilets. In 2017 New York City spent 2 million dollars in a public park toilet. And last year, Philadelphia caused controversy when it announced it would spend $1.8 million on six modular buildings Portland loo bathrooms over the next five years — a model that cities across the country have spent millions on in recent years.

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This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

While it might seem awfully tempting to try to fix that wobbly table or rattling AC unit on your own, most home repairs are best left to the professionals. Hiring a handyman can save you time and stress — and Thumbtack, a convenient home services app used by millions, makes it easier than ever to find a handyman in the Foster City area.

Each pro on Thumbtack has their own profile with price information, allowing you to find a handyman who works within your budget. The average cost to hire a handyman in the greater San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA region is $68 per hour, according to data obtained by Thumbtack.

Eager to get started on those home repairs? Here are some professional handymen in the Foster City area.

Find out what’s happening in Foster Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Build serrano

• Customer review: “I am very pleased with his work and will hire him again if I ever need a handyman! 5 stars”
• Check availability

EV general home services

• Customer review: “Very nice, very hard worker. Very detailed and most importantly – she did an amazing job. The house is CLEAN.”
• Check availability

Alex The Handyman: Wall and Doors Repair, TV Mount

• Customer review: “Strongly, I would like to recommend Alex The Handyman to other friends.”
• Check availability

Once you’ve identified those home repairs, Thumbtack can connect you to pros in the Foster City area to complete just about any home task. You can hire a house cleaner, electrician, plumber, landscaper and pretty much any other professional you can think of to help you tackle that to-do list. Thumbtack pros even have reviews, so you know exactly what other Foster City community members thought of their services.

Need help with a home repair or task in the Foster City area? Let the pros at Thumbtack help you get the job done!

Pricing data is based on projects requested on Thumbtack in the past 24 months as reported directly by the independent service professional or individual consumer.

Find out what’s happening in Foster Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This post is sponsored and contributed by Thumbtack, a Patch Brand Partner.

Need A Repair? Here’s How Much A Handyman Costs In The Foster City Area

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