Vail Resorts added Kirkwood Resorts to their skiing empire earlier this year. Kirkwood has obviously been struggling for a while now, and this could open a world of possibilities for Kirkwood.

The resort was increasingly looking out of date, and yet lots of territory was inaccessible via from Kirkwood’s existing lists. With an influx of new money from Colorado, what might the future hold? Will Kirkwood build new lifts? And if so, where will they go?

I received a map of Kirkwood’s Mountain Master Development Plan a few months ago, and it contains some clues. In it are two very exciting proposals: A new lift halfway up the backside, to the top of Thimble Peak and a new lift to the top of Red Cliffs.

That’s some seriously awesome new terrain that today is only available to those willing to hike. Have a look at the Kirkwood Development Plan yourself!

While I was looking for product manager and product designer postings in particular, my list eventually came to include companies hiring for any kind of jobs in San Francisco (and a few elsewhere). I figured other people might get some use out of this list. Of course, be sure to check the Zimride Jobs page first!

All jobs are in San Francisco, as best as I can tell or where otherwise noted.

• Zimride – World’s coolest transportation company
• Google – King of search companies
• Twiter – Micro-social communications
• Airbnb – Allowing people to rent any space
• Zendesk – Customer Support portals
• Bleacher Report – Sports news tailored to you
• Dropbox – Online storage tools for people and companies
• Quora – User-generated questions and answers
• Wikimedia – Home to Wikipedia, knowledge system
• Yammer – Tools for better work communication
• Rdio – Paid online/mobile music streaming service
• Twilio – SMS and mobile notification platform
• Lemon – Receipt storage and processing
• Pinterest – Showing off interests
• Yelp – Reviews of businesses everywhere
• 99 Designs – Platform for freelance design work
• Atlassian – Tools for software development
• Inkling – Platform for tablet textbooks
• Eventbrite – Platform for creating, hosting and ticketing events
• Disqus – Online discussion integration
• Path – Mobile app for social communications between friends
• Current – New-era video distribution
• Taskrabbit – Hire strangers for odd jobs
• Nextdoor – Platform for neighborhood-based social networking
• Couchsurfing – Host and stay with strangers for free, across the globe
• Say Media – Digital publishing platform
• RelayRides – Rent our your vehicle to strangers
• Thumbtack – Find and book local services
• Everlane – Direct retail-to-consumer clothing brand
• Expensify – A better way for employees to get reimbursed
• ModCloth – Social Fashion
• Gigwalk – Make money doing tiny tasks
• Getable – Share anything online
• Asana – Task management app
• Exec – Hire strangers at $25/hr for jobs
• Square – Payment processing via mobile phones
• Weebly – Easy web site creation
• Automattic – Home to WordPress and Askimet
• Storify – Creating social stories for consumption
• Strava – Track your bike rides and workouts
• Revinate – Helping hotels manage the social web
• Funzio – Social Games producer
• Zynga – Biggest social gaming producer
• Evernote – Cloud-based note-taking system (Redwood City)
• Facebook – The social network (Menlo Park)
• Reputation.com – Online reputation management (Redwood City)
• Yobongo – Real-time chat with people nearby (Palo Alto)
• Nest – Reinventing the thermostat (Palo Alto)
• Tumblr – Pretty, easy blogs for everyone! (NY)
• Skillshare – Teach or learn from strangers (NY mostly)
• Squarespace – Easy web site creation (NY)
• Park at my House – Rent your parking space to strangers

I struggled over this one for quite a while. I actually like Ed Lee, our interim, quite a lot. I think he’s done good things for the city. However, I just can’t get over the fact that he lied to get into office. He might have legitimately just changed his mind, or perhaps he was co-opted by some powerful people in the city to stick around. Whatever the case, I can’t move past his promise not to run for mayor — and I think it would haunt him were he to become mayor.

So, that leaves the decision of who else to vote for. I’ve always been a David Chiu fan. Aside from being my supervisor and getting the SF Chronicle’s endorsement, he actually personally responded to the two emails I sent him since I’ve been living in District 3 (see below). He’s very smart, and he — like me and many other San Franciscans — does not own a car. He understands what it’s like to depend on Muni or have to bike around SF, and that wins a lot of points with me. That comes across clearly in his plans for transit and mobility in SF. I think he’s the right choice to be mayor, and he gets my top choice.

Next up was a toughie. I really didn’t like that Jeff Adachi and Dennis Herrera both stood up against the Central Subway, because I think it will be a tremendously beneficial project for San Francisco. However, both of them have shown themselves to be strong leaders — Adachi has almost single-handedly forced the city to address pension reform, making him a persona non grata to many city workers.

And, they also met with the Chronicle’s approval as backups.

Here’s one email from David Chiu, after I asked him what he’s doing to get more housing built, considering skyrocketing rents in San Francisco:

District Attorney: George Gascon

George Gascon is current District Attorney. It’s pretty rare to have someone be the district attorney who hasn’t actually tried a case, but I think Gascon has done a great job despite that. With crime still being significant problem in the city — and San Francisco becoming somewhat of a national laughingstock for often being seen as siding with criminals over police — having the DA being a former cop is an asset.

Despite his affiliation with Gavin Newsom, Gascon is my guy.

SF sheriff: Chris Cunnie

I’m confused why we vote on San Francisco’s Sheriff. Seems like something voters are both ignorant about and don’t need to have much say over. So I’m just going with the Chronicle on this one and voting for Chris Cunnie. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t want Ross Mirikarimi to have more power.

Local Ballot Measures

Prop A (Schools Bond): Yes
San Francisco schools are in poor shape, and this bond measure provides funds to fix them up and open one new school on the eastern side of the city, where the population is set to boom.

Prop B (Streets Bond): Yes
San Francisco streets are in very poor shape. Anything we can do to improve them is a good thing, especially when it includes new bike lanes and traffic signal improvements to speed transit. It would be better to pay for this out of the general fund, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Prop C (City pension/health care reform): Yes
As a former municipal worker, city pensions are out of control. This ballot measure was both (A) put together through a consensus-building process and (B) trims more than $1 billion off the city future expenses. It gets my vote.

Prop D (City pension reform): No
In isolation, Prop D would be my choice between C and D. It goes deeper than Prop C. However, while I respect what Jeff Adachi is doing putting this on the ballot, I have to support the measure that was placed on the ballot by a wide group of people.

Prop E (Initiative reform): Yes
Allows for initiatives to be modified. Anything that reins in the crazy initiative process is a good thing.

Prop F (Consultant disclosure): Yes
Don’t know much about this, but the Chronicle and SPUR said yes.

Prop G (Sales tax): No
Prop G raises sales tax by .5% on every purchase. While I understand that sales taxes were recently lowered and this would just bring them back near their previous high, it’s simply not the right time for this, and it goes to random public and public safety, so I’m not convinced it’s needed. SF would also have the highest sales tax in the state.

Prop H (School assignment): No
San Francisco schools need help, and the school assignment appears to have significantly contributed to the deterioration. To fix this, the school system just re-did the assignment system recently, through a comprehensive reform process. This measure would elevate the priority of letting kids attend their neighborhood school over other factors. There is much merit to that. But not only am I hesitant to undercut the new process just implemented by the School Board, but as David Chiu said, “The reality today is we do not have great schools in every neighborhood.”

For more recommendations:

• San Francisco Planning and Urban Research
• SF Chronicle endorsements
• SF Transit Riders Union Mayoral Questionnaire

In Northern California

Napa/Sonoma
The go-to, so I won’t spend much time on it. But I recently stayed at The Calistoga Inn. From Nov-Feb, it’s $60-80/night to stay there, and it’s right in downtown Calistoga.

Yosemite
People forget about Yosemite, but this is one of the best times of year to go, between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. It’s about as empty as it gets all year, and it’s fun to be there when it starts getting cold. You can go on drives, bike rides, hikes, kayaking trips, all kinds of stuff. Or just relax and plunk down for a nice room and brunch at the Awahnee. You can stay in heated tents, with public showers, in Curry Village for under $100/night. The drive isn’t far either.

Tahoe
Now is probably the cheapest time of the year to go to Tahoe. Last year, I bought a groupon and stayed up at the Resort at Squaw Creek. We did some late fall hiking (though it was October, not November) and had dinner in Truckee. If you’re staying 2-3 nights, might even try continuing on for a night in Reno. I’ve been, it can be weird, but it’s also entertaining, small-towny and hilarious.

Monterey Bay
Monterey is awesome. I’ve done 2 trips down there for a weekend. The aquarium is awesome, year round. Tons of good restaurants. Personally, I like renting a place in Parajo Dunes, just north of Monterey city but on Monterey Bay. It’s classic california beach scenes, with houses built into the dunes (http://www.pajarodunes.com/). You can then do trips to Santa Cruz, Monterey or even down to Big Sur during the day (or even camp in Big Sur, if you’re so inclined).

Lake County
OK, so I haven’t been yet, but Lake County is high on my list of places to go. It’s the next county north of Napa, and it’s supposedly what Napa used to be like 30 years ago. A few wineries. Small towns. Not a ton of tourists but some. And much cheaper than Napa.  This place looks cool and strange: http://www.featherbedrailroad.com/

Russian River/Sonoma Coast
I spent a great weekend in Guerneville. It’s super quiet, right on the Russian River. There’s a ton of wineries nearby, and you can rent a home there for not a ton of money. I used this company: http://www.riverhomes.com. And being there, you’re only 25min drive from the Ocean.

Mendicino
Never been, but I hear good things.

A short flight away

Portland
There are few better places for trip that’s just a short flight away than Portland. Breweries, bicycling, parks, good weather, shopping, restaurants and hippies.

Cabo
You could easily do a 3-day trip to Cabo and not break the bank on housing and car for 2, before airfare. You can fly Virgin direct there from SFO.

Other parts of Mexico
Despite a bad rap, most of Mexico is totally safe, and parts of Mexico are amazingly beautiful:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/09/28/mexico_national_parks.DTL&ao=all

But, at 70 pages, it’s a long a read. As part of designing Ning’s iPhone app (not the highest ratings, I know), I read through the guidelines and summarized them. I figured other people might find the summary useful, so here it is!

Ch. 1: Device Characteristics

• Use the small screen real estate as a reason to eliminate any needless functionality and focus on only the UI elements that are absolutely necessary
• Newer iPhones support iOS 4.0, which allows apps to continue running in the background even while they are not the active application
• Take advantage of standard iOS UI controls, so that users are better able to quickly learn how to use your app
• There are three main types of application styles
  • Productivity apps
  • Utility apps
  • Immersive apps
• Productivity apps are hierarchal and the model user interaction model consists of
  • Organizing the list
  • Adding to and subtracting from the list
  • Drilling down until the desired level of detail is reached, then performing tasks
• Remember, users will typically want to open your app, use it briefly, then quit
• 80-20 rule: 80 percent of your users will use very few features, while 20 percent will use most of them
• In productivity applications, use hierarchal breadcrumbs to remind users where they are, where they came from and make it possible to navigate back

Ch. 2: Creating a great user interface

• Use metaphors to communicate actions to your users, like folders or on/off switches
• Use existing iOS metaphors where possible and don’t redefine them
• To enhance the sense of direct manipulation:
  • Objects on screen should remain visible when you manipulate them
  • The result should be immediately apparent
• Present options instead of allowing open-ended input
• Allow users to cancel operations before they begin, or even after they start
• Be sure to get confirmation when a user initiates a destructive action

Ch. 3: From Product Definition to Branding

• Craft a product definition statement — a declaration of your applications main purpose and intended audience
• How is your audience different from other iOS apps?
• To ensure that your audience can learn your app quickly, follow these ease-of-use guidelines:
  • Make it obvious how to use your app
  • Concentrate frequently used, high-level information near the top of the screen
  • Minimize text input
  • Express essential information succinctly
  • Provide a fingertip-size target area for all tappable elements
• With each UI element, ask yourself “Is this is something that users need right now?”
• Subtle animation can communicate status and feedback, but be wary of overdoing it
• Avoid technical jargon in the UI
• Users can perform specific movements, or gestures, to get particular results
  • Fingers are much larger than mouse pointers, so you UI must be finger-friendly
  • Examples include pinching to zoom, flicking to scroll
  • Try to limit the gestures you require to the most familiar — the tap and drag
  • Avoid making less common gestures the only way to complete an action
• Strive to include branding in a refined, unobstrusive way
• See gesture chart

Ch. 4: Handling Common Tasks

• When your app is starting, it should:
  • Specify the right status bar style
  • Display a launch image that closely resembles your first screen
  • Avoid displaying a splash screen that delays interaction
  • Launch in portrait orientation
  • Restore state
• Stopping
  • All iPhone apps should be prepared to quit at any time, so save user data as soon as possible and as often as reasonable
  • Save current state, with as much detail as possible
  • Never quit programatically, ask users to correct information
  • If some needed action prevents some of your apps’ features from working, display a screen alert and allow user to correct
• Allowing for Multitasking
  • App should behave responsibly when running in background
  • Be prepared for interruptions, and be ready to resume
  • Be sure your UI can handle the double-high status bar
  • Be ready to pause activities that require attention or participation
  • Ensure audio behaves appropriately
  • Use local notifications sparingly
  • When appropriate, finish user-initiated tasks in the background
• In iOS 4.0 you can allow advertisements to display within your application
• Managing settings and configuration options
  • Settings represent information that users change once, or very rarely
  • Configuration options are values that users might change often
  • Settings and configurations should be mutually exclusive; your app should have one or the other
  • Focus your solution on the needs of 80 percent of your users
  • Get as much info as possible from other sources, such as info from built-in apps or device settings
  • Prompt users to enter settings within the application
  • You can make configuration settings available via the main user interface or on the back of a screen
• iOS provides a pasteboard menu that supports cut, copy, paste, select and select all in text views, web views and image views
  • You can customize these behaviors to suit your application
  • Accomodate menu display in your layout
  • Consider enabling the selection of static text if it’s useful to the user
  • Don’t make button titles selectable
  • Combine support for undo and redo
• Enabling local and push notifications
  • Local notifications are scheduled by an application and delivered by iOS, even if the application is not in the foreground
  • Push notifications are sent by an application’s remote server
  • When notifications arrive, you can update a badge on app’s hoe screen or display an alert — and you can display a sound when either happens
  • Be sure to provide a custom message for the alert
    • Short enough to display on 1-2 lines
    • Use sentence style capitalization and ending punctuation
  • Provide custom title for action button. Typically “Close” on the left and “View” is on the right, but it can be changed
• To make your application accessible, give VoiceOver the information it needs
• Providing and displaying search
  • You can responsible for implementing search in your application
  • Display a search bar above lists
  • When possible, filter remote data as users type, but display progress for lengthy searches
  • Avoid using a tab for search, unless it’s a primary action
  • You can add “scope” bars to search, like “From” and “Subject” in Mail
• Location sharing is a system-wide setting
  • If your app needs location to run, show the alert to request it immediately
  • If user’s location is not essential, you can just restrict the feature of your app that requires it
  • If a feature needs location information to function, avoid any programmatic calls that trigger the alert before the user selects the feature
• If a user rotates the device to “see more” don’t scale the view, you must rewrap text
• If part of your app displays in only orientation, your app should not respond to changes in orientation
• Managing sounds in iOS
  • When a user switches to silent mode, it does not silent sounds from actions that are explicitly meant to produce sound, like playing music
  • You must decide how your audio should behave when the user or other apps generate sound or change settings
• iOS provides the following elements you can use to offer choices to users:
  • Lists. Users tap a row in a list to select an item.
  • Pickers, such as date and time pickers
  • Switch controls, such as sliders.

Ch. 5: Tour of the Application User Interface

• Every application has an application window
• Screens correspond to a particular view, state or mode within your app
  • Application screens can extend beyond the device, requiring scrolling
• Four types of views have special status in the user interface
  • The status bar, at the top of screen, can be customized by apps in limited ways
  • The navigation bar, includes titles and controls
  • The tab bar, allowed access to segmented sections of an app
  • The toolbar, allows users to access actions
• Content area is the are between the navigation bar and the tab/toolbar
• As much as possible, user standard user interface elements, so that…
  • Users are accustomed to look, feel and behavior of your application
  • If iOS changes look/behavior of controls, your app is updated instantly

Ch. 6: Navigation Bars, Tab Bars, Toolbars and the Status Bar

• The Status Bar
  • Immersive applications can hide the status bar, but be wary of doing so, as most users want it to be visible
  • If you sometimes hide the status bar in your app, consider allowing users to bring it back with a single tap (like Photos in detail view)
  • If your app is performing an operation that will take more than a few seconds, you can display the “network activity indicator”
• Navigation Bars
  • The bar typically does three things:
    • Usually displays title of the current view
    • Enable navigation among different views in an application
    • Contains controls that users can take on that view’s content
  • Initial view in a productivity app should be a navigation bar with nothing but the title of the first view
  • When user navigates, title should change and back button should appear
  • A multi-segment, breadcrumbs-style back button is not recommended
  • If you do not need to display a back button, you can display an “Edit” button to manage the view
  • In landscape mode, the navigation bar is thinner, so take that into account when designing icons
• Toolbar
  • Appears at the bottom of the screen
  • Contains buttons that perform actions related to objects in the current view
  • Designers should aim to have no more than 5 action icons in the toolbar
  • You can design your own icons, or use the predefined iOS buttons
  • Just as with nav bar, landscape view can change the toolbar height
• Tab Bars
  • Tab bar allows users to switch between different views or modes within an application
  • Tab bar should never include buttons for actions users can take
  • The tab bar displays icons and text in tabs, all of which are equal in width and display a black background.
  • A tab bar does not change its height or opacity, regardless of orientation
  • If your tab bar contains more than 4 tabs, iOS will show the first four then use a “More” tab to display the rest
    • Users can click the “Edit” button in “More” view to customize which tabs are displayed first
  • Add a badge to a tab to display non-critical information, like the number of unheard voicemails

Ch. 7: Alerts, Action Sheets and Modal Views

• Alerts, action sheets and modal views are views that appear when something requires user’s attention
• See: Visual breakdown of alerts, action sheets and modal views
• All are modal, meaning a user must dismiss them to proceed, so don’t use them too often
• Alerts give people important information that affects their use of an application
  • Alerts appear unattached, signifying arrival is due to a change in the app or device, not a user action
  • Display text explaining the situation, and allow give user ability to take action to rectify
  • Also use alerts to notify user that action is potentially dangerous, and allow them to continue or cancel
  • Hitting the “Home” button when viewing an alert should be the same as hitting “Cancel”
  • To confirm a user-initiated action, use an action sheet
  • Don’t use an alert to notify user about something they can do nothing about
• Action sheets give people additional choices for the action they are taking
  • Provide a selection of ways the task can be completed
  • Get confirmation before completing a potentially dangerous task
• Modal views provide more extensive functionality for the current task
  • Support multi-step user interaction
  • Use to select more than one option, or collect information
• Designing an alert
  • You can specify the text, the number of buttons, and the button contents in an alert
  • Alert titles should be short, informative, fragments — and can be negative
  • Alert message should be sentences with punctuation, ideally two or fewer lines
  • Avoid explaining which button to tap in the alert text (“Tap ‘OK’ to…”)
  • Text alert in both orientations
  • Aim for two-button alerts, as one-button alerts are purely informative
  • Give alert buttons short, logical titles, especially verbs/verb phrases
• Designing an action sheet
  • Action sheets display as a result of a user action
  • Action sheet background colors should coordinate with your navigation and toolbars, being either black or blue
  • Display “Cancel” at the bottom of an action sheet
  • For potentially destructive actions, use a red color button and place it at the top of the sheet
• Designing a modal view
  • Include a title that describes the task
  • Include whichever controls are needed to accomplish the task
  • You can specify the “Vertical” or “Flip” method to reveal the modal view
    • If you use different methods, make sure there is logical reasoning, as the user will assume there is

Ch. 8: Table Views, Text Views and Web Views

• Table views can be used to display lists of choices, grouped lists or indexed lists
• Text and web views are unconstrained ways to accept and display content
• Table view presents data in a single column list of rows
  • See: Table view examples
  • You can display header and footer information, around the whole list, or around groupings
  • You can allow users to add, remove or reorder list items
  • When an item in a list is selected, it should appear highlighted then either move to a new view or get a checkmark
  • When row selection results in a new view, selected row should highlight briefly as new screen slides into place
  • A table should display content immediately, e.g. display text then images as they download
  • If data changes infrequently, consider displaying the stale data while the app downloads the latest data
  • If nothing can be displayed right away, consider showing a “Loading” message
  • iOS defines two types of table views
    • Plain (UITableViewStylePlain), includes rows that extend from edge-to-edge
    • Grouped (UITableViewStyleGrouped), includes groups of rows inset from the edges
  • Text truncation is standard in all table styles
  • iOS offers four different predefined table cell styles
    • Default style, includes optional image on the left, followed by left-aligned black text
    • Subtitle style, includes default style plus a label on the next line
    • Value 1 style, includes left-aligned text label in black, with smaller, right-aligned text label in blue
    • Value 2 style, includes right aligned text label in small font, followed by left-aligned black text label on the same line
  • You can avoid text truncation by increasing row heights, but it can be problematic
  • If you want to create your own table cell style, it’s better to start from scratch than modify a standard one
  • iOS includes some standard table-view elements:
    • Disclosure indicator, which tells users they can tap on the row
    • Detail disclosure button
    • Delete button
    • Row insert button
    • Row reorder control
    • Checkmark
    • Switch control
  • Table views can allow users to do common actions, e.g.:
    • Selecting options where a user can choose a single item
    • Navigating hierarchical information
    • View conceptually grouped information
    • Look up indexed information
• Text view is a region that displays multiple lines of text and supports scrolling
  • Keyboard typically is shown, allowing user to edit text
  • You have control over font styles of the entire text view, but not particular parts of text
• Web view is a region that display rich, HTML content in your app
  • Web view can support mini-navigation controls for navigating web pages
  • You could implement web view to simply wrap a web site and create an iPhone application

Ch. 9: Application Controls

• iOS provides controls you can use in your application that are familiar to users
• Activity indicator shows progress of a task that is of unknown duration (e.g. the “spinning gear”)
  • You can control the size and color of the indicator
  • Indicator disappears when task is complete
• You can use four different modes of a date and time picker to allow user to select:
  • Date
  • Time
  • Date and time
  • Countdown timer
• Detail disclosure buttons can be used in your app outside table view
  • Reveal additional features or functionality
• Info button reveals configuration details
  • Well-suited to utility applications
• Labels are variably sized amounts of static text
  • You can control font, color and alignment
  • Ensure they are legible
• Page indicators displays a dot for each page within a view
  • The dot representing the current page should have a glow
  • There is no programmatic limit to the number of dots
• Use a picker to show a list of values
  • Users spin the picker wheel into the desired value appears
  • Remember that most values in the picker are hidden from user view
  • If you need to display a great many values to choose from, consider a table view instead
• Progress views display progress on a task of known duration
  • Default style is designed for the main content area
  • The bar style is thinner, and designed for the toolbar area
• Rounded rectangle buttons use title case and allow users to perform an action
• Search bar accepts text from users, allowing them to input terms for search
  • Bar can have placeholder text, bookmarks button, clear button and descriptive text above
• Segmented controls allow user to change views
  • It’s recommended to have five or fewer segments in each control
  • Control can have text or image, but not both
• Sliders allow users to make adjustments to a value within a range
  • Slider consists of a track, a thumb, optional right/left images
  • You can use either vertical or horizontal sliders
• Text field is a rounded rectangular field that accepts user input
  • When user taps a text field, keyboard should appear
  • You can display images on the right or left of the text field
  • Use left end of a text field to indicate its purpose and right to indicate additional features
  • You can use placeholder text to help guide users
  • You can specify the corresponding keyboard types

Ch. 10: System-Provided Icons and Buttons

• iOS provides numerous icons and buttons, so avoid designing custom ones that look similar to defaults
• Buttons have two styles: Plain (toolbars only) or bordered (navigation and toolbars)
• Take advantage of iOS’s predefined icons/buttons
  • Use them as designed, don’t use them for a different purpose
  • See: Standard buttons for navigation bars and toolbars
  • There are also buttons users can use to manipulate content (see: Action buttons)
  • Standard buttons for tabs are available (see: Standard tab buttons)
  • Standard buttons for table rows (see: Standard table buttons)

Ch. 11: Creating custom icons and images

• Every application needs and application icon and launch image, along with some optional images
  • When iOS displays your icon on the home screen, it adds rounded corners, a drop shadow and a reflective shine
• You must provide at least one launch image
  • A launch image looks very similar to the first screen your app displays
  • Design a launch image that’s identical to the first screen, except for:
    • The text
    • UI elements that might change

1. Ride bikes over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito, or all way the to Tiburon if you’re feeling adventurous. Have lunch over there, near the bay. In Sausalito, I usually eat at Salsalito’s Tacos. In Tiburon, Sam’s is the classic go-to.
2. Have lunch at a dim sum place in Chinatown, like New Asia. It’s a scene, and very cheap ($8-10 per person usually for a large meal).
3. Walk from the Ferry Building, down the Embarcadero, to Fog City Diner. Then, walk up the Filbert Steps to Coit Tower.
4. Ride the Cable Car (you can borrow my Muni pass if you want, so at least one of you can ride for free)
5. Take a rock climbing lesson at Mission Cliffs gym (not super cheap, but it’s a good time and quite a scene)
6. Rent kayaks and paddle around the shore
7. Go to some of the museums. the MOMA is cool and right downtown, and the De Young and Academy of Sciences are top-notch. I hear the cable car museum is cool, but I’ve never been.
8. Take a free walking tour of a SF neighborhood. Yes free. It’s done by SF City Guides.
9. Walk around the Castro, SF’s most colorful neighborhood
10. If you can, try try try to do a tour of the Anchor Brewing factory. The tours are free, last 2 hours, and are awesome. They’re usually reserved, but I would call now to check on the dates you’re here — as well as just call the day of to see if there are any cancellations.

What am I missing!? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve tried my best to do that, and below you can see the way I’m voting on this ballot. In making these choices, I relied heavily on two voter guides — the SF Chronicle endorsements and the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research association’s voter guide. I encourage everyone to check them out, as well as the ballot language/candidate web sites themselves.

I was particularly torn on Prop 19 and Sit/Lie, because of the tangle of problems that could ensue from both measures. In the end, though, I decided to vote Yes on both, because I think there’s more good than bad that can come from their passage.

– CA BALLOT –

Proposition 19 (Legalize Marijuana) – Yes
Proposition 20 (Expands Redistricting Commission) – Yes
Proposition 21 (Increases vehicle license fees) – No
Proposition 22 (Limits state from taking funds) – No
Proposition 23 (Suspends pro-clean air Prop 23) – No
Proposition 24 (Eliminates Tax Breaks) – No
Proposition 25 (Lowers CA budget threshold to 55% from 67%)  – Yes
Proposition 26 (Requires 2/3 legislature to pass fees) – No
Proposition 27 (Kills Redistricting Commission) – No

Governor: Jerry
Lt. Guv: Gavin Newsom
Sec. State: Debra Bowen
Attorney General: Kamala Harris
Controller: John Chiang
Treasurer: Bill Lockyer
Public Instruction: Larry Aceves
Insurance Commish: Mike Villines

– SF BALLOT –
District 10: 1. Tony Kelly, 2. Chris Jackson, 3. Steve Moss
Judge: Richard Ulmer
Board of Education: Menzoda, Brodkin & Hoehn
CC College Board: Grier, Rizzo, Wong
Public Defender: Jeff Adachi

PROP. AA ($10 vehicle registration fee) – Yes
PROP. A (Earthquake Retrofit Bond) – Yes
PROP. B (Increasing Employee Contributions to Benefits) – Yes
PROP. C (Question Time) – No
PROP. D (Non-Citizen Voting for School Board)  – No
PROP. E (Election Day Voter Registration) – No
PROP. F (Health Service Board Elections) – Yes
PROP. G (Setting Transit Operator Wages Through Bargaining) – Yes
PROP. H (Dual Office Holding) – No
PROP. I (Saturday Voting Pilot) – Yes
PROP. J (Hotel Tax Increase) – No
PROP. K    (Hotel Tax Loophole) – No
PROP. L (Sit/Lie) – Yes
PROP. M (Community Policing) – No
PROP. N (Property Sales Tax) – No