US Rep. Jackie Speier and local political officials celebrated new safety and accessibility improvements to the Caltrain South San Francisco Station that will improve service for downtown.

“Once it is linked with electrified Caltrain [service]this station has all the hallmarks of a shot in the arm that South San Francisco deserves in terms of its economic prowess,” Speier, D-San Mateo, said at an April 8 ceremony.

The station now features a 700-foot center-boarding platform and pedestrian underpass to ensure passengers don’t have to cross the tracks to board the train. Safety considerations previously created an operational bottleneck on the railroad, forcing passengers to cross tracks to board trains at a center boarding platform. The improvements ensure more than one train can use the station at a time. Multiple trains can now enter or pass through the station at once, allowing for more flexible scheduling for future increased electrified service. Caltrain is moving to an electric train fleet that will increase trains and speed while lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

The improvements make the station fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Other upgrades include more ticket vending machines and Clipper card readers, multiple shelters, 24 bike racks, upgraded lighting, and a new shuttle pick-up and drop-off area.

Speier touted the improved accessibility for bikers and pedestrians and its role in reducing traffic and increasing options for nearby residents. The station was first put into service in 1909, with the improvements ensuring its readiness for the 21st century.

“Making the station accessible and adding modern electrification means we will have a first-rate station here,” Speier said.

Assembly Speaker per Tem Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, noted station improvement discussions have been ongoing since his time on the South San Francisco City Council. He thanked everyone for their work in ensuring a brighter transit future for the city and region.

“South City is doing exactly what the state of California wants cities to be doing. Just look around, and you can see a model right here,” Mullin said.

The downtown area surrounding the train station will see significant changes in the coming years, with development coming for more housing and retail. South San Francisco officials redesigned the downtown station area within a half-mile of the Caltrain station on and around Grand Avenue. The train station can also help in revitalizing the shopping and dining downtown corridor and anchoring housing nearby. Over the next 20 years, South San Francisco is calling for around 1,400 new housing units, 800,000 square feet of commercial space, 21,000 square feet for industrial use and 1.2 million square feet of new office space.

Walking through the new tunnel is An Huang Chen, president of the Hillsborough City School District Board of Trustees; Rohan Pandit, staff aide to state Sen. Josh Becker, D-San Mateo; Becker; Bart Pantoja, business manager/financial secretary treasurer for the Building and Construction Trade Council of San Mateo County; and Sandra Lang.

Tyler Johnston/Daily Journal

“The enhancements made to this Caltrain station are a game-changer for South San Francisco residents and visitors in terms of connectivity and walkability,” South San Francisco Mayor Mark Nagales said.

“I see this as part of a continuum. We are electrifying Caltrain, which is going to be an incredible effort to make Caltrain even more of a crown jewel it needs to be for this Peninsula,” state Sen. Josh Becker, D-San Mateo, said.

Caltrain Vice Chair Charles Stone, also a Belmont council member, praised its proximity to downtown and increasing accessibility.

“These significant changes we are seeing at the South San Francisco Station are the ones we need to make this system accessible to all in an equitable way in the years to come,” Stone said.

Funding for the $96.6 million project came from the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, South San Francisco and the Federal Transit Administration. The San Mateo County Transportation Authority provided around $44 million to help rebuild the train station, according to Caltrain spokesperson Dan Lieberman. Federal funding provided $39 million, about a third of the project. South San Francisco provided around $12 million, Lieberman said. The Transportation Authority allocates the county’s half-cent sales tax dedicated to transit needs.

Nagales announced the plaza area near the Caltrain station would be named after Karyl Matsumoto, former South San Francisco mayor and Transportation Authority chair, whose instrumental work helped ensure the project occurred. The naming was done to recognize women who made significant impacts in South San Francisco. The plaza will be constructed in 2023 with a lawn and planting area.

“We have officially moved from a train stop to a bona fide train station for our community and riders,” Matsumoto said.

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Gas prices at Schlafer’s Auto Body & Repair in the tiny town of Mendocino in Mendocino County on March 8. [Photo from Galen Bach cropped and contrasted]

The seaside town of Mendocino has a single gas station called Schlafer’s Auto Body & Repair. Yesterday, coastal resident Galen Bach took a picture of the gas pump and thought it worthy of posting on social media. For a regular price of gasoline, a customer of Schlafer’s would pay $8.45, which is just shy of double the national average of $4.25, and 42% more expensive than the average gallon of gas in California.

Patrick De Haan, the Head of GasBuddy.com’s Petroleum analysis team, told us that the price per gallon at Schlafer’s has “a very strong likelihood that this is the most expensive station in America.” De Haan reviewed GasBuddy’s records of current gas prices across the United States, and he told us, “I can’t find any more expensive at the present moment.”

Last summer Schlafer’s made national news for officially being considered the most expensive fuel in the country, at that point charging $6.73 for a gallon of gas. Owner Judith Schlafer told SF Gate’s Freda Moon after she learned their station was currently the most expensive in the country, “It has to be that way, or I’d be out of business.”

Galen Bach, according to him the “best chimney sweep ever”, told us he had to raise his service prices across the board on the coast. He is paying more for parts, gas, and the general cost of living. He remembered buying six bags of groceries recently at Mendocino’s Harvest Market and paying $455.

Currently, the North Coast of California has one of the most expensive gasoline markets, as per AAA’s County Gas Prices map.

The map provides a county-by-county breakdown of the average cost of a gallon of gas. Coming in the first place on the North Coast is Humboldt County at $5.70, second Del Norte at $5.64, third is Sonoma at $5.57, fourth is Trinity at $5.41, the fifth is Lake at $5.43, and coming in sixth for the cheapest gas currently on the North Coast is Mendocino County at $5.35. Worth noting, it looks like Mono County, east of the Sierra Nevada mountains has the state’s highest gas prices at $6.02.

It was just yesterday that California’s average gas price crept above $5 per gallon for the first time in history. DeHaan told the SFGATE yesterday that he could see California’s average gallon of gas costing $6 and a growing number of gas stations charging $8 or more.

This dramatic rise in gas prices is the result of a multitude of forces converging including the deliberate dialing back of domestic oil production in 2019, sanctions against Iran and Venezuela decreasing worldwide supply, the pandemic’s heightened demand for petroleum-based products such as medical plastics, the recent sanctions levied against Russia, and finally a number of taxes specific to the state of California.

Bach told us that when he posted the photograph of gas prices in Mendocino, a heated political debate erupted on his Facebook profile with many Trump voters blaming Biden for the gas prices.

Putting aside politics, the dramatic rise in gas prices has got this father of three thinking about money in a completely different light. With these prices, Bach said, “I have three kids I’m raising. It’s not easy at all.”

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My friends and I were singing this when we were leaving a backyard party in the Mission District for an important stop before heading to the next party. We wanted to bring a very special treat: “Petrol station Chicken! Gas station chicken! “

It’s hard to believe that some of the best fried chicken in San Francisco can be found at a place called Gas & Shop on 17th Street and South Van Ness. It’s the kind of place the cashier makes you leave your debit card when you refuel your car because they don’t trust you not to use a stolen card.

The Krispy Krunchy Chicken counter in the Gas and Shop on 599 South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

I had been obsessed with “Gas Station Chicken” for a few years and stopped by occasionally when passing by or after a few drinks. When entering the establishment, it is impossible not to smell the delicious goodness that emanates from the left side of the counter, where the food is under heat lamps. Little did I know it was a chain and didn’t even want to call it by its real name until one day I saw another location on a seedy section of Eddy Street in the Tenderloin.

“What the…?” I said to myself and then sent my wife a photo with the message, “There’s another gas station chicken and it’s not even in a gas station!” And that’s when I realized I needed to learn more about Krispy Krunchy Chicken.

Stuart Schuffman, AKA Broke-Ace Stuart, reviews the fried chicken at the Gas and Shop on South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

It ends with what I thought was one phenomenal roast chicken in a gas station on Mission is actually part of a chain of over 2,600 locations in 47 states, American Samoa, Malaysia, and Mexico. They are almost exclusively available in liquor stores, gas stations and convenience stores. Which explains why I’ve seen one at the corner store at the Lake Merritt BART station and one at a gas station upstate near the California-Oregon border in recent years. Last time I got my folks on the fame of Petrol Station Chicken on a road trip this summer. They too are believers now.

So how come one of the best fried chicken chains in the country is always surrounded by bottles of Boone’s Farm and racks of Slim Jims? It’s pretty interesting and kind of brilliant.

Gas and shop manager José M. Guillen will be walking through the station’s convenience store with a fresh batch of Krispy Krunchy Chicken on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

Krispy Krunchy Chicken founder Neal Onebane had been in the convenience store business for 18 years when he realized that customers didn’t really have many options for fresh, delicious food. So he started the KKC brand in 1989 when he started roasting chicken in one of his stores in Lafayette, Louisiana. Within six years, KKC was represented at 50 locations because Onebane had come across something special; Not only were customers lacking a good variety of food, but convenience store owners were looking for ways to make more money without the expense of renting another location.

The next 2,599 locations prove that he was obviously on to something. Onebane and KKC Executive Vice President Dan Shapiro were even named Louisian of the Year once.

An eight-piece box of Krispy Krunchy Chicken from the Gas and Shop on South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

But what makes the chicken so good? I knew you would ask that. Onebane and Shapiro claim it’s because they inject the marinade into both the chicken and breading so that the bird tastes great throughout, rather than just the crispy fried portion. I’m more of a eater than a cooker so take your word for it, but holy hell it’s delicious.

Stuart Schuffman, AKA Broke Ace Stuart, shows an eight-piece box of Krispy Krunchy Chicken from the Gas and Shop on South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

The outside has the perfect crispness while the inside stays juicy, soft and flavorful. It has more character than KFC and less spice than Popeye’s … though I love some Popeyes. However, the sides on the other chains are probably better, and I don’t recommend buying the fried shrimp from KKC. Aside from the alarming concept of getting shrimp at a gas station, it’s not nearly as good as the chicken, either. I have yet to try her entry into the great chicken sandwich war, so I’m curious to see what other tricks old KKC has up its sleeve.

Stuart Schuffman, AKA Broke-Ace Stuart leaves the Gas and Shop on South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco with a box of Krispy Krunchy Chicken on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

After the march down 17th Street and sing “Gas station chicken! Petrol station chicken! ”We finally reached our sacred goal: Gas & Shop. Of course we wanted to get some beer and white claws for the next party, but most of all we needed a bucket of Krispy Krunchy Chicken. So we brought in some delicious $ 25 worth of fried goodies (which is a lot of KKC) and marched to the next party. When we arrived we were greeted by someone who yelled, “You brought petrol station chicken?!?”

The Gas and Shop, 599 South Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

Charles Russo / SFGATE

There are eight Krispy Krunchy Chicken locations across San Francisco.

Stuart Schuffman is the editor-in-chief of BrokeAssStuart.com.

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Oakland news now –

Astronauts return after pipeline problems at the International Space Station

– YouTube channel video with the logo in the top left corner of the video. OaklandNewsNow.com is the original blog post for this type of video blog content.

Astronauts will return to Earth from the International Space Station, where their capsule had a minor problem with the wiring.

about IFTTT

Note from Zennie62Media and OaklandNewsNow.com: This video blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media, Inc. network for video blogging systems for mobile media launched in June 2018 by Zennie62Media, Inc .s new and innovative approach to news media production. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a YouTube channel. When the YouTube video channel for 23 ABC News | KERO Bakersfield, CA News will upload a video and it will be automatically uploaded and automatically formatted on the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62’s own social media pages created and created by Zennie62. The overall goal here is, in addition to our smartphone-enabled real-time reporting of news, interviews, observations and events anywhere in the world and within seconds, not hours – the use of the existing YouTube social graphic on any topic in the world. Now messages are reported with the smartphone and also by advertising current content on YouTube: There is no need for heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop or a camera team to film what is already on YouTube. The secondary goal is faster and very inexpensive production and distribution of media content. We found that there is a discrepancy between post length and time to product and revenue generated. This means that the problem is much smaller, but by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system’s network coding and is looking for interested content and media technology partners.

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HAYWARD (CBS SF / BCN) – A person is dead Thursday morning after colliding with a Capitol Corridor train in the Hayward train station area, an agency spokeswoman said.

Capitol Corridor reported the problem shortly before 7:10 am on the 524 train, which runs from San Jose to Sacramento.
Spokeswoman Karen Bakar confirmed the death but had no further details about the person’s death.

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All passengers on the train were switched to BART and the train stopped at Hayward station for more than three hours. At about 10:20 a.m. train 524 left again, said Bakar.

Capitol Corridor stated on Twitter that the delay was due to a so-called “intruder incident”. A second tweet said that another train, train 523, stopped at Oakland Coliseum station because of the delays with train 524.

Finally, train 523 was almost an hour late. Just after 9 a.m., the Capitol Corridor said that train 524 was still stopping at Hayward Station because of the incident.

UPDATE: Train 524 is currently on hold in Hayward (HAY) due to an intruder incident. We will update when more information is available. #CapitolCorridor #CapitolCorridor

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– Capitol Corridor (@CapitolCorridor) September 2, 2021

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© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Bay City News Service contributed to this report.

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SAN RAFAEL (BCN) – The Marin Municipal Water District provides a direct supply of recycled water to residents through a recycled water filling station that opened Wednesday to encourage the county’s residents to reduce water waste during the county’s exceptional drought.

The station will be located on Armory Drive in San Rafael across from the Marin County Civic Center. Marin County residents can visit the site on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to fill their own resealable containers with recycled water. The district assumes that the station will remain open until autumn, depending on the rainfall.

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Promoting the use of recycled water is one of several measures to combat the exceptional drought in the area. Using recycled water for cleaning or irrigation reduces the amount of water that is drawn from the drinking water supply. Marin Water’s board of directors had previously declared a water shortage emergency and a mandatory 40 percent reduction in water consumption across the district.

Recycled water can be used to water lawns, trees, and gardens, and to wash exterior surfaces, windows, walls, and furniture, as long as it doesn’t run into rainwater. The water is also not subject to current water restrictions, which limit irrigation to specific days, so residents can use the water whenever they want.

However, residents should not use the water for drinking, cooking, bathing, showering, filling swimming pools or water toys, or connecting to household pipes.

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Before using the station, each county resident must submit an online or on-site application to confirm their residence and ensure they are using the recycled water safely. They will then receive an ID that must be shown each time they fill up with water.

The station accepts all lockable containers that can hold at least 10 gallons, and residents can collect up to 300 gallons of recycled water per trip. The county warned local residents to consider the weight of the water – just over 8 pounds per gallon – when deciding how much water to add.

Applications and more information on recycled water can be found at marinwater.org/recycledwater.

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© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Considering that the massive network of hidden paths and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad stretched from the Deep South all the way to Canada, it makes sense that hundreds of people were involved in its operation. Some, like Harriet Tubman, were “conductors,” who led the rescue missions, while others—John Brown, for example—were “station masters,” hosting fugitives in their homes and arranging safe passage to freedom. Here are nine other valorous heroes who risked life and limb to help people on their way to liberty.

1. William Still

Born to formerly enslaved parents in New Jersey in 1821, William Still moved to Philadelphia at age 23 and took up the abolitionist mantle in more ways than one. He taught himself to read and write, got a job as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and advanced through the organization until he was named chairman of its new Vigilance Committee in the early 1850s. In that position, Still oversaw the region’s network of safe houses—his own house among them—and raised money to finance key rescue missions, including a few of Harriet Tubman’s.

It’s estimated that Still ferried about 800 people to freedom during his tenure; one of them was his brother Peter. But there’s another reason he’s often referred to as “the Father of the Underground Railroad.” Still documented the stories of more than 600 escapees and published them all in a groundbreaking volume called The Underground Railroad in 1872, making him the only Black person ever to write and self-publish a firsthand account of activity on the Underground Railroad. He hoped that the “extraordinary determination and endeavor” exhibited in the harrowing narratives would inspire Black Americans to continue the struggle for civil rights.

“The race must not forget the rock from whence they were hewn, nor the pit from whence they were digged,” he wrote in the introduction. “Like other races, this newly emancipated people will need all the knowledge of their past condition which they can get.”

2. John P. Parker

When John P. Parker was 8 years old, a merchant separated him from his enslaved mother in Norfolk, Virginia, and sold him to a doctor in Mobile, Alabama. There, Parker apprenticed at an iron foundry—and learned to read and write, with the help of the doctor’s children. At age 18, he persuaded one of the doctor’s patients to purchase him and let him gradually buy back his freedom with his foundry earnings. The plan worked, and Parker left for Ripley, Ohio, where he built a house, started a family, and patented a few popular mechanical parts for tobacco machines during a successful career as a foundryman.

Through it all, Parker made regular excursions across the Ohio River to spirit fugitives from Kentucky back to Ripley’s safe houses (one belonged to John Rankin, a prominent white abolitionist who lived less than a mile from Parker). Parker’s rescue missions were especially dangerous, partially because bounty hunters looking for fugitives knew who he was, and partially because Parker himself was dauntless. Once, an enslaver suspected a married couple would attempt to escape, so he took their baby and put him to sleep in his room. Parker snuck into the room, carefully plucked the child from the bed—where the enslaver also lay sleeping—and dashed back through the house. The enslaver awoke and tore after him, firing his pistol, but Parker and the family managed to escape across the river.

Parker recounted these rescues to journalist Frank M. Gregg during a series of interviews in the 1880s, but the manuscript sat forgotten in Duke University’s archives until historian Stuart Seeley Sprague unearthed it and published it in 1996.

3. and 4. Harriet Bell Hayden and Lewis Hayden

Born enslaved in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1812, Lewis Hayden watched enslavers tear apart his family not once, but twice. First, his siblings were sold to a different enslaver; and later, his wife and son were bought by Kentucky senator Henry Clay [PDF] and sold somewhere in the Deep South. Hayden never saw them again. In the early 1840s, he married an enslaved woman named Harriet Bell, adopted her son, and soon began plotting their escape.

With the help of Calvin Fairbank, a minister, and Delia Webster, a teacher, the Haydens fled their enslaver’s estate and eventually arrived safely in Canada. By 1846, they had returned to the U.S. and settled in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, where they opened a clothing store. Before long, Lewis and Harriet had joined the Boston Vigilance Committee and turned their home into a boarding house, which became a highly trafficked stop on the Underground Railroad.

Though slavery had been illegal in Massachusetts since 1783, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 stated that enslaved people who had escaped to free states could still be found and returned to their enslavers in the South. The Haydens fearlessly protected hundreds of people from bounty hunters who tried to do just that. Ellen and William Craft, for example, had garnered widespread attention for their risky escape from slavery in Georgia, which involved Ellen impersonating a white man and William posing as her Black servant. When bounty hunters pursued them to the Haydens’ house, Lewis announced that he’d readily blow up the whole property with the two kegs of gunpowder he kept inside if they tried to kidnap the Crafts. The bounty hunters didn’t chance it, and left empty-handed.

Lewis also helped recruit Black soldiers for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry—one of the Union’s first all-Black military units—and was even elected to the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1873. When he died in 1889, Boston’s city council praised him as “one of the pioneers in the freeing of this country from the curse of slavery.” Harriet, who died in 1893, donated her entire estate to Harvard Medical School for the purpose of establishing a scholarship for Black students, which still exists today.

5. Henrietta Bowers Duterte

In 1852, Henrietta Bowers, a 35-year-old tailor, married a Haitian-American undertaker named Francis A. Duterte. They both came from well-respected Philadelphia families, and Francis’s mortuary was successful; in other words, it should have been a long, happy union. But by the end of that decade, Henrietta was alone: Her children had all died young, and Francis had also passed away suddenly. Instead of handing the mortuary business over to a man—which would have been expected at the time—Henrietta took it over and, in addition to running the mortuary, turned it into an especially clandestine stop on the Underground Railroad.

Not only did Henrietta use funeral processions as opportunities to help disguised fugitives slip unnoticed through the city, but she also sometimes smuggled them out of Philadelphia in actual coffins. The mortuary continued to be lucrative, and Henrietta funneled the profits into organizations that served Philadelphia’s Black community, like the First Colored Church and Stephen Smith’s Philadelphia Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons. In 1866, she helped arrange the Freedman’s Aid Society Fair to support formerly enslaved people in Tennessee.

6. David Ruggles

David Ruggles, born free in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1810, moved to New York City at age 17 and opened a grocery shop, which he staffed with emancipated Black Americans. Before long, Ruggles pivoted to lending and selling abolitionist books, pamphlets, and newspapers, too, making him the nation’s first Black bookstore owner. In 1835, Ruggles and other local abolitionists founded the New York Vigilance Committee, an interracial organization which, like the one in Philadelphia, helped people escape from slavery. Not only did he provide legal aid to Black Americans targeted by bounty hunters, but he also housed many fugitives in his own home on Lispenard Street.

One of these temporary guests was Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery and arrived in New York penniless and famished in 1838. He was rescued, he explained in his 1845 autobiography, “by the humane hand of Mr. David Ruggles, whose vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget.” Douglass wrote to his fiancée, Anna, who joined him within a few days, and Ruggles even arranged a marriage ceremony in the house. Soon after the wedding, Ruggles gave the couple $5 and booked their passage on a steamship to New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Throughout his years as an Underground Railroad station master, Ruggles distributed countless anti-slavery publications and advocated for “practical abolitionism,” or the idea that each person should actively take part in emancipating Black Americans. He wasn’t without enemies: twice his shop was burned down, and he was physically attacked on several occasions. By his late twenties, Ruggles’s health was failing, and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child encouraged him to come live with the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a self-sufficient community in Florence, Massachusetts, that championed equal rights for all. There, Ruggles regained some of his strength through hydrotherapy, and he eventually opened his own hydrotherapy hospital, where Douglass often visited him. When he died at age 39, it was Douglass who wrote his obituary.

7. and 8. Harriet Forten Purvis and Robert Purvis

Robert Purvis, the son of a white man and a free Black woman, was active in practically all facets of Philadelphia’s anti-slavery movement from the 1830s through the Civil War. He helped found and lead the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia and its Vigilance Committee, which offered boarding, clothing, medical attention, legal counsel, and northern passage to fugitives; and he also worked alongside prominent abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison to establish the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society a few years later.

Since women weren’t originally allowed to be members of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Robert’s wife, Harriet Forten Purvis, joined Lucretia Mott and other activists in forming the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833. Harriet, like Mott, would go on to become a leader in the suffrage movement, too.

Robert and Harriet had both come from extremely successful and respected Philadelphia families, and they used their influence—and financial resources—to assist escapees in any way they could. Their house on Lombard Street became a well-traversed thoroughfare for fugitives heading north.

“He was President of the ‘Underground Railroad,’ and throughout that long period of peril his house was a well-known station where his horses and carriages and his personal attendance were ever at the service of the travelers upon that road,” read Robert’s 1898 obituary in The New York Times.

The couple’s high-profile work sometimes made them a target for those who opposed the upward mobility of Black Americans. In August 1842, a parade celebrating the eighth anniversary of the end of slavery in the British West Indies devolved into violence when an Irish mob—resenting their own low position in society—attacked the revelers and began looting and setting fire to Black-owned buildings along the street. The rioters planned to progress to the Purvises’ house, where Robert stood armed and waiting, but a Catholic priest reportedly diverted them.

After that, Robert and Harriet moved their family to a farmhouse in Byberry, a northeastern neighborhood of Philadelphia, and promptly turned their new estate into another station on the Underground Railroad. Robert approximated that between 1831 and 1861, he had helped emancipate about one person per day (though it’s possible that this calculation included his broader work with various anti-slavery organizations).

9. Samuel D. Burris

Samuel D. Burris worked tirelessly during the 1840s to lead fugitives through his home state of Delaware and into Philadelphia, where he lived with his wife and children. Though Burris was a free man, he could be imprisoned and sold into slavery if caught helping fugitives in Delaware—and in 1847, he was.

Officials apprehended Burris when he was trying to smuggle a woman named Maria Matthews onto a steamship. Since they set his bail at $5000 (more than $157,000 today), he was forced to spend months in jail while awaiting trial. “They uphold and applaud those slave traffickers, and those inhuman and unmerciful leeches, in their soul-damning conduct, by making the colored people legal subjects for their bloody principles to feast on,” he wrote from his cell, in a letter that was later published in William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator.

On November 2, 1847, Burris was convicted, fined $500, and sentenced to 10 more months in prison. After that, he’d be sold into slavery for 14 years. While Burris was serving his 10-month sentence, a group of Philadelphia abolitionists amassed $500 and sent a Quaker named Isaac Flint to pose as a trader and purchase Burris at the auction. Luckily, Flint ended up being the highest bidder (though according to William Still’s account in The Underground Railroad, luck had little to do with it: Flint savvily bought off a Baltimore trader who had tried to top his bid).

“[Burris] was not by any means aware of the fact that he had fallen into the hands of friends, but, on the contrary, evidently labored under the impression that his freedom was gone,” Still wrote. “The joyful news was whispered in the ear of Burris that all was right; that he had been bought with abolition gold to save him from going south.”

As Delaware State University historian Robin Krawitz told CNN, Burris continued helping fugitives after his release, and angry Delawarians actually petitioned the government to discipline him more severely. After officials enacted legislation that recommended public whipping as punishment for anyone caught a second time, Burris halted his operations in Delaware. Instead, he moved to San Francisco, where he raised funds to help newly freed people establish themselves.

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The master plan for the Foster + Partner power plant in San Francisco breaks the ground

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https://www.archdaily.com/963162/foster-plus-partners-power-station-master-plan-in-san-francisco-breaks-ground

As part of Dogpatch’s mixed-use waterfront development, Foster + Partner’s power plant expansion has finally broken ground. The master plan will create several new residential, commercial, and recreational spaces that honor its industrial past and reconnect the community to the San Francisco Bay waterfront. The architectural office’s 2-building proposal offers the neighborhood an ideal urban framework to create a lively, healthy and integrative community.

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Foster + Partners has designed two mixed-use residential buildings in the center of the site, which offer an integrative and diverse living and working community. The ground floors of both buildings are dedicated to common social rooms and co-working areas, which are built around a central open courtyard. The planning team implemented this central green area based on the traditional courtyards and alleys of the area. Pedestrian and cycle paths will be sewn within the master plan and thus create new connections to the adjacent areas.

© Foster + Partner

The design of the building is based on a series of interconnected two-storey elements and spatial flexibility. A modular organizational grid is implemented in the architecture of both buildings, creating a dynamic arrangement of geometries. The apartments have been designed to maximize airflow, natural light and access to the landscaped terraces. These terraces run up through the building and reach the garden roof terraces with a view of the bay.

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Herzog & de Meuron are converting the former power station in San Francisco into a mixed-use project

The former industrial site is bordered on one side by the Dogpatch district and on the other by the waterfront. The power plant plan is San Francisco’s largest development project to date and will include residential, retail, office and outdoor spaces, creating a new mixed-income neighborhood on the city’s waterfront. Other buildings within the development will be designed by Herzog & de Meuron and LMS Architects.

© Foster + Partner

Foster + Partners recently shared the draft for a residential-led master plan on the outskirts of Bangkok. The project, titled The Forestias, encompasses a great forest in its heart to help bridge the growing gap between contemporary city life and family traditions. The Forestias proposal focuses on promoting multi-generational family coexistence and new models of urban life in Thailand.

The post Foster + Accomplice’s Energy Station Grasp Plan in San Francisco Breaks Floor appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The mixed-use Potrero Power Station project, a waterfront urban development in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, officially broke ground.

This project is located in a historic industrial area and provides for the revitalization of the decommissioned Potrero power plant, which was first built at the end of the 19th century. This development will open up much of the city’s central waterfront for the first time in 150 years. A new 29-acre mixed-use neighborhood with supposedly sustainable features will be created, accommodating 2,600 residents, 1.6 million square feet of work space, 100,000 square feet of storefronts and seven acres of green space. These include restaurants, hotels, cafes and childcare facilities, among others.

The development reportedly delivers over $ 860 million in community benefits, including hundreds of affordable housing, heritage protection, public infrastructure, and the expansion of Dogpatch’s streetscape. The original structures of the power plant will be preserved, including station A, the chimney structure and the power plant block 3, which was one of the oldest power plants still in operation in California at the time the plant was closed. The neighborhood will also prioritize active and public transportation, and all buildings are expected to meet or exceed LEED Gold standards.

In the heart of the area, Foster + Partners designed two residential mixed-use buildings with affordable residential units.

Armstrong Yakubu, Senior Partner at Foster + Partners, said: “This project is a unique opportunity to revitalize a former industrial district and to breathe new life into this part of San Francisco. Our proposals will deliver much-needed homes guided by a people, sustainability and community-borne design approach rooted in the site’s rich history. It is our goal to give Dogpatch an ideal urban framework in order to create a lively, healthy and integrative living and working community of the 21st century. “

Inspired by the traditional courtyards and alleys of the district, the buildings are grouped around a central, ground-level open space, lined with local shops and local supplies. Pedestrian and cycle paths lead through these spaces and create new connections with the environment. The lower floors of the buildings house several common social rooms and co-working areas, which are a focus of activity throughout the day.

The design is based on a series of interconnected two-story elements within a modular organizational grid that allows both spatial and programmatic flexibility. The buildings combine to form a dynamic arrangement of step blocks. In addition, the apartments have been carefully designed to maximize fresh air, natural light and access to the leafy terraces throughout the property. The new district park is visually and physically connected to the garden roof terraces with a view of the water.

The Potrero Power Station mixed-use project was unanimously approved by the San Francisco Planning Commission and the city’s board of directors early last year. Developer Associate Capital bought the property for $ 86 million in 2016, and Perkins and Will oversaw the development master plan. The project will be built in six phases and has an estimated duration of 16 years.

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The historic East Brother Light Station Bed and Breakfast on the three-quarter acre island in San Francisco Bay has been without power for nine days, and lighthouse keeper Desiree Heveroh is now living like a pioneer on the rock as the landmark’s future darkens.

“It’s getting really cold on this rock,” Heveroh told SFGATE from the island on Friday morning. “If it was at all possible, I’m still living further back in time here, every morning I get the fireplace packed with eucalyptus bark and branches from all over the island that I collect.”

On April 1, the submarine cable that powers the light station from the Richmond coast failed, leaving the buildings in the dark.

The cable is owned by the US Coast Guard, and although they repaired it after a lightning strike in 1991, this time around, they decided against it and instead provide minimal power to the tower’s flashlight.

This means that the bed and breakfast, which has been receiving visitors by ship for over 40 years, has an uncertain future.

“We showed [the U.S. Coast Guard] around, “says Heveroh,” and they basically said, ‘It would be cheaper for us to just put the light in the tower on a solar panel.’ So you are not going to replace the cable, which will leave us with no electricity at all. And your responsibility is done. “

The light station on East Brother Island was first lit in 1874, powered by whale oil, but after a fire on March 4, 1940 that destroyed the island’s wharf and boathouse along with four boats, the lights were automated and the government tried to keep the keeper’s house and other buildings.

Following protests from local residents, the site was barely saved in 1979 by the newly established non-profit East Brother Light Station, which managed to get the landmark on the historical register so it couldn’t be demolished.

“Before ’79, this place was boarded up, ravaged, and left to decay for decades. They wanted to level it and just put up an aluminum pole with a light to do its job,” she says. “We made such a call to action to save this lighthouse and 40 years later we will make history again.”

“The light itself is working now, it charges when I run the generator,” says Heveroh, “so I watched it like in the old days. The Coast Guard told me when they came out that if the lights went out, I would I need to notify you. “

“They said directly – their responsibility is to make sure the light in the tower is flashing,” she adds, “and they can do this in a much more economical way by using solar instead of swapping the cable.”

She says the Coast Guard wasn’t opposing it, but the news was devastating.

East Brother Light Station on San Francisco Bay near Richmond, California.

dypics / Getty Images / iStockphoto

“They have certain marching orders that they cannot exceed. Maybe something will happen if the people who make these rules get wind of it. We just have to convey the message to them. “

(The U.S. Coast Guard told SFGATE that more information on the situation would follow shortly.)

Richmond Mayor Tom Butt, one of the founders of the nonprofit that saved the light station in the 1970s, has also released a public plea for ideas and funding to save the station. But if the Coast Guard doesn’t cover the costs and the nonprofit can’t raise the funds, the East Brother Light Station could shut the inn down forever.

Heveroh now lives in hope on the rock, but without electricity, beyond an old generator that she runs intermittently.

“I go out as rarely as possible, but recently I took a boat to the mainland to find antique machinists to fix the generator or get diesel,” she says.

“It’s freezing in the morning, so I light the fire and heat my room, turn on the generator for an hour so I don’t spoil the freezer and fridge,” says Heveroh. “We have no television out here, no WiFi or anything like that.”

“Sometimes I’m gardening and canning because I’m losing a lot of my frozen fruit, so I’ve turned it all into jam. But it’s springtime and there are pups on my rock that I watch from my fence in the morning when I water my garden. It’s magical. “

In normal, non-pandemic times, a Coast Guard-approved light station attendant would manned the light station. This would also be the host of the now closed light station. But since the coronavirus closed the inn, Heveroh has been watching it alone.

“We haven’t made any money for a year. We still have our running costs. We have planned to reopen, you know, we have remodeled several rooms and replaced the copper roof that was donated to us.”

“I’m the first goalkeeper who isn’t Coast Guard approved so I’m kind of a pioneer,” she laughs. “You can’t leave this place empty. Word will get around, people will come and crouch, destroy, steal. We can’t leave it alone. That’s why I’m right here on the island. “

She realizes that replacing the cable is not an easy task.

“It will cost at least $ 100,000 to repair the cable, get permits, and shut down the duct,” she says. “It’s a lot, but she [the Coast Guard] have the resources and the strength to get the permits through. But if they don’t help, we’re in big trouble. “

The nonprofit has also looked into off-grid solar, wind, and wave power, but knows that it can cost as much as replacing the cable. A GoFundMe was set up on Friday to raise funds.

“We’ve been operational for the past 40 years, we didn’t really need anyone’s help. But not making any money with something like that, after the coronavirus, it’s a crippling blow, ”she says. “If they don’t pay the whole bill, maybe they will make up for it, or maybe there is a grant to qualify for. Everything. Now is the time, and if it has to be saved again, that part will too be away.” into the history of the island and its history. “

Heveroh doesn’t want to be the last guard at the 147-year-old light station and vacillates between optimism and dejection.

“Last night I was worried and sad, but today I have the determination that the Foundation members had when they set up the Foundation in the 1970s, I feel that determination and that fire. We can do this island. I think that can happen, “she says.

“And everyone who helps us knows that they were there for us so that we can be there for them. We had planned a reopening. It’s just devastating. “

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