Making Special Events Possible

Making Special Events Possible
By Michael Delia

A crowd of people at a street fair with blockades in the foreground and businesses in the background. Outdoor festivals like Sunday Streets Phoenix Day celebrate the spirit of San Francisco. Such special events rely on the cooperation of many city departments.

San Francisco is a city that loves its outdoor events. Whether it’s a cultural heritage or holiday festival, farmers market, street fair, dance party, road race or even just a neighborhood block party, what often gets overlooked is the intricate collaboration and planning across city departments to make these events a success.

Nick Chapman is one of the people behind the scenes at the SFMTA who helps make them a reality. For seven years, he has worked to manage the permitting process that’s required for any special event. As a native San Franciscan who knows many corners of the city, Chapman has an appreciation for the public’s requests and finds the work to be fascinating.

“Every project is a little different. Every event, every location is a new situation with different stakeholders. Working with other city departments makes it fun and interesting,” he says.

Chapman is the manager of ISCOTT, or the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation. The board is made up of representatives from seven city agencies, including the SFMTA, Public Works, Police, Fire, the Entertainment Commission, Public Health and Planning. ISCOTT is responsible for approving or denying any event permit that requires a street closure on a roadway managed by the SFMTA. Certain exceptions outside of its jurisdiction include requests for street closures within parks managed by Recreation and Park, the National Parks Service and the Presidio Trust.

ISCOTT convenes for public hearings twice a month, except in November when it meets once. There are many considerations that go into any event request.

The first step is to submit an application. There are two types, one for Neighborhood Block Parties and one for all other Special Events. Applicants are encouraged to provide as much detail as possible about their event, including a site plan of any streets requiring closure.

Chapman reviews each application for possible issues. If an event falls on a particularly busy date, he may contact other city departments to determine resource availability and suggest alternatives to the applicant. He ultimately wants events to be approved and tries to caution applicants before they submit the non-refundable fee.

The minimum deadline to submit an application is 30 days before the event date, but applicants are encouraged to send in proposals as much as four to six months in advance. This allows time to secure any additional resources, such as food, alcohol or vendor permits, insurance, a medical plan or restrooms. It also provides flexibility if a certain date is unavailable. In recent years, the SFMTA has tried to improve the process by moving applications online, offering increased transparency about permitting and working to reduce fees, especially for small scale block parties and non-profits.

When ISCOTT approves a request and the date is set, we coordinate resources to determine next steps. Several agency groups work together to prepare an array of services for upcoming street closures. Parking Control Officers might be required to direct traffic around the area. Reroutes of Muni lines need to be planned and communicated to the public and operational staff. Transit stops need to be moved with new temporary signs posted. Taxi stands, paratransit pick-up and drop-off zones or areas for car and bike shares might need to be defined. For the largest events, the signal timing of traffic lights may even be modified. Thought also goes into notifying Google Maps, Waze and autonomous vehicle services about street closures, so they show up on maps on the day of the event.

The contributions from the Streets, Meter Shop, Temporary Sign Shop, Transit and Communications divisions are small but vital parts that make these events a success. The interagency work that goes on between the SFMTA and other city departments is also key.

Special events help to stimulate the economy, strengthen social ties within the community and encourage civic pride. Every planned event requires resources so that they can be held safely, and it’s important that different city departments are aware of them. ISCOTT helps to serve that need so that these events continue year after year.

For more information about applying for a special event street closure, please visit our website (SFMTA.com/StreetClosures).

Published August 11, 2023 at 04:19AM
https://ift.tt/NW7pQav

Comments

FOX NEWS: 'Lego Master' artist explains his job creating building challenges for contestants It takes almost as much creativity finding a Lego Master as it does to become one.

'Lego Master' artist explains his job creating building challenges for contestants It takes almost as much creativity finding a Lego Master as it does to become one. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3yhaAqx

FOX NEWS: Dog earns Guinness World Record for longest ears This dog can definitely hear it when people say he’s a good boy.

Dog earns Guinness World Record for longest ears This dog can definitely hear it when people say he’s a good boy. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3zKc8tR

MLA hostel in Mumbai evacuated after bomb scare https://ift.tt/3n307dK

An MLA hostel in south Mumbai was evacuated after the city police received a phone call about a bomb being placed in the building, an official said on Tuesday. However, no bomb was found after a search in the premises and the phone call turned out to be a hoax, he said. The incident took place on Monday night when an unidentified person called the police, saying a bomb was placed inside the Akashvani MLA hostel, located near the state secretariat, the official said.

New top story from Time: The Rolling Stones Open Their American Tour, Paying Tribute to Drummer Charlie Watts

https://ift.tt/3o7cVTy ST. LOUIS — The Rolling Stones are touring again, this time without their heartbeat, or at least their backbeat. The legendary rockers launched their pandemic-delayed “No Filter” tour Sunday at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis without their drummer of nearly six decades. It was clear from the outset just how much the band members — and the fans — missed Charlie Watts, who died last month at age 80. Except for a private show in Massachusetts last week, the St. Louis concert was their first since Watts’ death. The show opened with an empty stage and only a drumbeat, with photos of Watts flashing on the video board. After the second song, a rousing rendition of “It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll (But I Like It),” Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood came to the front of the stage. Jagger and Richards clasped hands as they thanked fans for the outpouring of support and love for Watts. Jagger acknowledged it was emotional seeing the photos of Watts....

New top story from Time: In the Gently Moving Minari, a Korean Family Finds Home in America’s Heartland

https://ift.tt/3ksxkyn Most stories about immigrants adjusting to America take place in cities, environs where a newcomer may already have family or friends, or at least be able to find a community. The family in writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari takes a different route: Jacob and Monica (Steven Yeun and Yeri Han) have come to America from Korea to seek better opportunities—we don’t know much more than that. But we do learn that Jacob has a dream of growing things, of being a farmer. Jacob, Monica and their two young children, David and Anne (Alan Kim and Noel Cho), have lived for a time in California, but as the movie opens, we see them driving to what will be their new home: A blocky rectangle of a house propped on cinderblocks, adjacent to a stretch of land that looks like paradise to Jacob—but not to Monica. She says little at first, but her stern silence tells us what she’s thinking: Why have you brought us here? This is 1980s Arkansas; there may be a few Koreans ...

New top story from Time: To Build Back Better, Tax Ultra-Wealthy Families Like Ours

https://ift.tt/2Y1lvIB After a summer of speculation, the contours of the deal needed to pass President Joe Biden’s popular “Build Back Better” agenda are becoming clear. To win key votes , Congress will have to find fresh sources of revenue to match new spending. Fortunately, there is an economically sound, overwhelmingly popular path that the President is endorsing: requiring ultra-wealthy families like ours to pay more in taxes. Doing so would mean reforming a tax code that allows the wealthiest to build and maintain fortunes without paying their share in taxes. Ultra-wealthy families further reduce their tax burdens to a pittance by deferring sale of their appreciated assets, borrowing against those assets and structuring their charitable giving. From 2014 to 2018, America’s 25 wealthiest people amassed a combined $401 billion, but in some years paid zero federal income tax, according to ProPublica . The Biden Administration calculates that America’s richest 400 famil...

FOX NEWS: Hurricane Ida forces dogs and cats to be airlifted from Louisiana, Mississippi to shelters across US As Hurricane Ida hits the South, animal shelters nationwide have been helping cats and dogs escape affected areas.

Hurricane Ida forces dogs and cats to be airlifted from Louisiana, Mississippi to shelters across US As Hurricane Ida hits the South, animal shelters nationwide have been helping cats and dogs escape affected areas. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3kHFCmR

New top story from Time: Jasper Johns: “Dying While on Assignment Doesn’t Seem Like a Bad Idea”

https://ift.tt/39PD2WS Jasper Johns, possibly America’s most famous living artist and still plying his trade at 91, launches two retrospectives on Sept. 29; one at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and the other at the Philadelphia Museum of Art . The exhibitions, known collectively as Mind/Mirror, illuminate the through lines of Johns’ large body of work: his fascination with such everyday symbols as numbers, targets, maps and flags; his sometime habit of limiting his color palette to red, blue, yellow and orange; and his exploration of such techniques as collage, hatching and scale. One section of the Whitney is dedicated to his variations on the motif of a Savarin coffee can crammed with brushes, which is widely believed to be the artist’s way of representing himself. Johns, who famously destroyed all his prior work before painting his first flag, lives in Connecticut and rarely gives interviews. He answered questions from TIME via email. [time-brightco...

New top story from Time: The Overlapping Worlds of Author Amor Towles

https://ift.tt/3AUkxMM Amor Towles had never actually been beneath the vaulted ceiling of an Adirondack lake house when he described the one in his 2011 debut, the best-selling Rules of Civility . He could only imagine the appeal of such an exalted communal space—“this great room where the family gathers”—until, while shopping for a second home with the money from that book, he found himself touring a property an hour and a half north of Manhattan. “I was like, This is it!” says Towles, throwing his arms toward a 30-ft. ceiling that, like the glistening lake outside, now belongs entirely to him. “It was this weird thing where I was kind of buying the living room that I had written about,” he says. “Which, in a Stephen King novel, would end badly.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In the storybook life of Amor Towles, however, the new owner lays down thick Oriental rugs (thicker still where they overlap), sets his laptop on a long oval table by floor-to-ceiling windows and—...

New top story from Time: Here’s What We Learned From Three New Britney Spears Documentaries, From Secret Surveillance to #FreeBritney Infiltrators

https://ift.tt/3m9avBb A flurry of new documentaries centered on Britney Spears and her court-ordered conservatorship have shed more light on the immense hardship that Britney has faced over the course of the 13-year legal arrangement. The three specials—FX and the New York Times’ Controlling Britney Spears , CNN’s Toxic: Britney Spears ‘ Battle for Freedom and Netflix’s Britney Vs Spears —were all released in the week leading up to Britney’s highly anticipated Sept. 29 court date, a hearing at which Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny is expected to address Britney’s petitions to remove her father, Jamie Spears, as conservator and terminate the conservatorship as well as Jamie’s own unexpected petition to end the arrangement . [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Attention surrounding the hearing and the fan-driven #FreeBritney movement has continued to ramp up in recent days as reports of shocking new details regarding Britney’s case, as alleged by t...

My precise view

Search This Blog