jeremyrandall / blog /

I have been thinking for quite awhile about giving up television. I don’t even consider myself to be a hardcore TV watcher; I never watch in the morning and there are only a few shows that I really follow. Wow, that sounds really convincing, huh?

Unfortunately I do flip on the TV more than I’d like too, especially when I’m tired or just bored.

I’ve lived without TV before. I’ve read more. I’ve listened to music and the radio more. I may have even exercised more. It’s the reading that I really like and want. I have stacks and stacks of books, many of which looked interesting when I bought them but remain unread.

I already use a good deal of my free time going out, spending time with people I know, meeting new people, walking around The City, volunteering with some progressive organizations and looking for new activities of interest. What could I do without that luminescent screen facing prominently into my living room, drawing me in just because it’s there?

I know I would read more and listen to music more. I’d probably spend more time online reading about news and politics and history. Would I go out more? Meet more people? Tend to my job more (I can work just as well from home as I can from my office)? Meditate more? Exercise more? Go on walking tours or take classes or volunteer more? Draw, paint, think, create? It’s intriguing and I think it’s worth exploring.

Tonight my faithful boxy old CRT will move down to the basement storage room and my living room will be rearranged to better accomodate the computer, music gear and more books. I’m going easy on myself, knowing that it’s still there, ready to be hauled back upstairs to give me a fix if necessary. I’ll just take it one day at a time.

I need to start taking pcitures again and posting them here to pep this place up some.

I rode the T-Third a week or two ago (whichever week was the first one of regular service). It was so slow; I couldn’t believe how long it took to get back on to King Street after passing the Fourth Street Bridge. I read the next day in the paper that the delays were caused by an automatic safety system that would stop the T if the J was at the other platform across the street. The article went on to say that further problems were caused by people running from one platform to the other — across the street — since they had no way to know if the next train would be a T at one platform or a J at the other.

Oh, this is so Muni.

So, first of all, why are there two platforms? One platform is on the T line and the other is basically a one block spur that the J stops at. Why not have all trains stop at the platform which is on the active track? The other platform should have been removed when the T was built to avoid this very issue. It seems like such a simple thing for the transit engineers (Muni does have some, right?) to have thought about.

Secondly, why would the safety device stop trains that are passing through on what is essentially a mainline when there is a train pulled in to the aforementioned one block spur? How about having the parked J trains be “automatically stopped” — which they are anyway — when a T train is making its way through, mid-route?

I rode it again over the weekend. Once a T arrived (25 minutes waiting) it was not bad. It sort of just meanders out to Sunnydale at a moderate pace. It’s interesting to see the areas served. I suspect the next round of redevelopment and gentrification will really heat up from Mission Bay to Cesar Chavez. I’m not sure about the immediate prospects for the more “industrial” areas between Cesar Chavez and the end of the line.

Personally, I’d like to see new Muni rail lines serving denser parts of The City, such as the Geary corridor and the Van Ness/Polk Gulch corridor.