“It certainly is something that is going to need attention,” said Joel Keller, president of BART’s Board of Directors. According to BART officials, the trouble started Friday morning when a train ran over a piece of “fabric-like” plastic with a nylon-style rope that was on the rail supplying electricity to the cars for their doors, heating and lights. The entire line had to be shut down for seven hours for repairs over 40 yards of track, said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost. Trost said BART is investigating how a piece of soft plastic could do so much damage. [...] agency officials have to worry about what other bits of trash could float onto the outdoor tracks and knock out their prized new addition. In the short term, BART’s plan is to increase line inspections from once every four hours to once an hour on stormy days. Man overboard: A senior art show at San Francisco’s LGBT Center has become the latest front in the war for artistic freedom — with 73-year-old photographer Lionel Biron saying he’s the victim of corporate censorship. According to the Bay Area Reporter, Biron submitted the photo for a 60s-and-over art exhibit that opened this week at Openhouse, a housing nonprofit for seniors at the LGBT Center. “Jurors felt that the piece was too graphic for the show,” Fairley Parson, Openhouse’s manager of community engagement, told Biron in a Nov. 26 e-mail. Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn told us Tuesday that “the jurors, who are all volunteers, put together a show to reflect the wide perspective and expressions of people in the community in order to build visibility and support and bring LGBT supporters and allies together.” “The LGBT community is basically controlled by corporate businesses” that help fund many of its nonprofits, he said. Former Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums is circulating an opinion piece urging more federal funding for U.S. hospitals to fight the Ebola outbreak, saying it’s a matter of national security. According to the database OpenSecrets, the former congressional icon is back working as a lobbyist, and one of his clients is Walmart. #SF #News #49ers
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:21:56 +0000