Thinkwalks presents an exploration walk:

Social Justice Murals Walk

Ever wonder why San Francisco is so packed with murals of every definition? We have a long tradition dating back to before the Mexican Revolution. Then we break from that tradition in a hundred ways.

April 2011 Street Art History tour. This controversial piece, invoking events in Libya, was an unsanctioned addition to Clarion Alley. It was entirely blacked-out by other muralists a week later because, they said, “The guy that painted it has been exploiting topical issues to get personal attention while painting right over other people’s work in destructive and self-promoting ways.” The piece was not signed, but an adjacent wall had the same style with a repeated signature and the artist on hand says “everyone” knows it’s that guy. (Photo: Lisa Chou)

You can wander on your own, or you can take this Thinkwalk through the Mission’s famous mural areas with a dynamic and award-winning mural organizer. There are pockets of public art in secret places. But that’s not why you’ll love this walk. The discussion is deeply informed by research into how the Native American lineage of art came to SF and how street culture adopted it. Big Picture and provocative discussions of social issues will (if you’re like previous Thinkwalkers) actually change how you see the streets you walk through. Funding, painting technique and all the other details are fair game, too!

Your guide, Joel, was a public mural organizer for twelve years and will also provide insider stories, too. Joel’s work redefined community mural techniques when he produced the Duboce Bikeway Mural in 1996-98 (lead artist: Mona Caron).

We’ll end at Church Street Station. Dress warmly if it’s windy. Maximum 15 people.

⭐ Rain or shine

⭐ RSVP required (Click “READ MORE” to RSVP.)

Sliding Scale

At the end of your Thinkwalk if you can’t afford the standard price please feel free to pay a lower amount, on a sliding scale going from the standard price down to no lower than $10.

Thinkwalks presents an exploration bike ride:

Park History Deep in Manure

The Park was built with rich waste from 19th Century street sweepings on what was considered a poor wasteland of shifting sand dunes.

We’ll ride our bikes around to explore and find the oddities… A railroad right-of-way in the Park? A 900-year-old building? A quarry-turned-pond-turned-pregnancy-test-eradication-zone? A living fossil third species of redwood (coast redwood and giant sequoia being the first two)? Yes, amazingly, all of the above.

We’ll also see historic photos at the sites of… A mini Brooklyn Bridge? The ship that found the Northwest Passage? A virtually unknown plan for a superhighway from 1928? Yes, true!

Ride without rush, appreciating how the dunes became today’s lush garden. We’ll unearth how the Park was made, and make it more ours.

⭐ Rain or shine

RSVP required

Sliding Scale

At the end of your Thinkwalk if you can’t afford the standard price please feel free to pay a lower amount, on a sliding scale going from the standard price down to no lower than $10.

Click “READ MORE” for RSVP, meeting location and full info.

Thinkwalks and SF Natural History Series present:

A talk at the Randall Museum

Restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley

Spreck Rosekrans of the organization Restore Hetch Hetchy will speak about his work.

Ever since a UC Davis graduate student proved that enough water could be stored in other parts of the San Francisco drinking water system, and that therefore the reservoir at Yosemite National Park in Hetch Hetchy Valley is not necessarily needed, a debate has been raging.

Spreck will present idea for emptying the reservoir and returning the valley, known for its original beauty, to its natural state again.

Check back here for more details soon.

⭐ No need to RSVP—Just show up!

Thinkwalks presents an exploration walk:

Social Justice Murals Walk

Ever wonder why San Francisco is so packed with murals of every definition? We have a long tradition dating back to before the Mexican Revolution. Then we break from that tradition in a hundred ways.

Mona Caron’s amazing multi-ethnic fabric mural in the Tenderloin. It isn’t on the tour, but this is the muralist I worked with for 12 years.

You can wander on your own, or you can take this Thinkwalk through the Mission’s famous mural areas with a dynamic and award-winning mural organizer. There are pockets of public art in secret places. But that’s not why you’ll love this walk. The discussion is deeply informed by research into how the Native American lineage of art came to SF and how street culture adopted it. Big Picture and provocative discussions of social issues will (if you’re like previous Thinkwalkers) actually change how you see the streets you walk through. Funding, painting technique and all the other details are fair game, too!

Your guide, Joel, was a public mural organizer for twelve years and will also provide insider stories, too. Joel’s work redefined community mural techniques when he produced the Duboce Bikeway Mural in 1996-98 (lead artist: Mona Caron).

We’ll end at Church Street Station. Dress warmly if it’s windy. Maximum 15 people.

⭐ Rain or shine

⭐ RSVP required (Click “READ MORE” to RSVP.)

Sliding Scale

At the end of your Thinkwalk if you can’t afford the standard price please feel free to pay a lower amount, on a sliding scale going from the standard price down to no lower than $10.

Thinkwalks presents an exploration walk:

Social Justice Murals Walk

Ever wonder why San Francisco is so packed with murals of every definition? We have a long tradition dating back to before the Mexican Revolution. Then we break from that tradition in a hundred ways.

Set Damm painting part of the Duboce Bikeway mural, on which Mona Caron was lead artist and I (Joel) was the producer/director.

You can wander on your own, or you can take this Thinkwalk through the Mission’s famous mural areas with a dynamic and award-winning mural organizer. There are pockets of public art in secret places. But that’s not why you’ll love this walk. The discussion is deeply informed by research into how the Native American lineage of art came to SF and how street culture adopted it. Big Picture and provocative discussions of social issues will (if you’re like previous Thinkwalkers) actually change how you see the streets you walk through. Funding, painting technique and all the other details are fair game, too!

Your guide, Joel, was a public mural organizer for twelve years and will also provide insider stories, too. Joel’s work redefined community mural techniques when he produced the Duboce Bikeway Mural in 1996-98 (lead artist: Mona Caron).

We’ll end at Church Street Station. Dress warmly if it’s windy. Maximum 15 people.

⭐ Rain or shine

⭐ RSVP required (Click “READ MORE” to RSVP.)

Sliding Scale

At the end of your Thinkwalk if you can’t afford the standard price please feel free to pay a lower amount, on a sliding scale going from the standard price down to no lower than $10.

Thinkwalks and SF Natural History Series present:

A talk at the Randall Museum

SFPUC’s HQ Wastewater Treatment

SFPUC HQ Operating a Mini Wastewater Recycling Plant in the Heart of San Francisco
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) incorporated on-site wastewater treatment and reuse at its new headquarters which opened in July 2012. The highly visible engineered wetland system, known as the Living Machine™, treats the building’s wastewater in the public right-of-way and lobby areas for reuse in toilet flushing on-site.

John Scarpulla who was project manager in charge of installing the system will discuss the commissioning and performance of the on-site system over the first year of operation. Additionally, this presentation will provide lessons learned when incorporating on-site treatment plant operations into an office environment – including proactive employee outreach, responding to odor or color issues, and educating staff that not all new office problems are due to the Living Machine!

⭐ No need to RSVP—Just show up!

Thinkwalks & Sacramento County Historical Society present:

A history talk in Sacramento

Storms Like You’ve Never Seen—Yet

Joel Pomerantz of Thinkwalks will present his research on the giant storm sequence that blasted the West Coast in 1862.

Nature is an almost infinitely complex system. Once it’s broken it’s not possible to get it back to where it was. We might be able to fix it, but only in the sense that we may find a way for our troubled species to survive beyond this century. If survival, or even avoiding raucous chaos is our goal, we’d do well to observe closely all the larger systems we’re part of, especially the history of extreme life-threatening events.

The storms of 1862 don’t even rank in geologic terms, but we have accounts from eye witnesses who saw towns washed away, stranded people plucked from treetops by steamships cruising well beyond the riverbanks in the Central Valley. We know that the state government was in disarray, fighting about whether to escape to San Francisco (they did move for a time). We know that mine tailings and silt were stripped from Gold Country ravines and deposited into San Francisco Bay.

And we know that the Sacramento flood control systems failed.

Come learn and discuss what newspapers and other sources from 150 years ago can tell us about a storm that will eventually come again, but maybe bigger.

⭐ No need to RSVP—Just show up!

Thinkwalks presents an exploration bike ride:

Park History Deep in Manure

The Park was built with rich waste from 19th Century street sweepings on what was considered a poor wasteland of shifting sand dunes.

We’ll ride our bikes around to explore and find the oddities… A railroad right-of-way in the Park? A 900-year-old building? A quarry-turned-pond-turned-pregnancy-test-eradication-zone? A living fossil third species of redwood (coast redwood and giant sequoia being the first two)? Yes, amazingly, all of the above.

We’ll also see historic photos at the sites of… A mini Brooklyn Bridge? The ship that found the Northwest Passage? A virtually unknown plan for a superhighway from 1928? Yes, true!

Ride without rush, appreciating how the dunes became today’s lush garden. We’ll unearth how the Park was made, and make it more ours.

⭐ Rain or shine

RSVP required

Sliding Scale

At the end of your Thinkwalk if you can’t afford the standard price please feel free to pay a lower amount, on a sliding scale going from the standard price down to no lower than $10.

Click “READ MORE” for RSVP, meeting location and full info.

Thinkwalks and SF Natural History Series present:

A talk at the Randall Museum

Living in the Plate Boundary

Superstar Geophysicist Tanya Atwater, will present an incredible and amazing series of images and ideas on the geologically active San Francisco area. She’ll also throw in some climate-related stuff because it’s amazing.

Tanya is a retired faculty member from UC Santa Barbara. After the initial theories of plate tectonics were established, Tanya was deeply involved in completing the theories. Her early papers on the topic were incorporated directly into text books and set the standard for geology education. She also is well known for using animations as an educational tool. More animations.

Check back here for further details closer to the event date.

⭐ No need to RSVP—Just show up!

Thinkwalks and SF Natural History Series present:

A talk at the Randall Museum

Sky Phenomena

Joe Jordan will come back with new material after having really wowed and inspired us with his slides on this topic in 1997.

Joe is the kind of excitable guy who, when he sees the conditions are just right for unusual cloud formations at the North Pole, hops on a specially instrumented plane commandeered from NASA just so he can go photograph and study them. (Well, he did, back when he was working at NASA Ames.)

Joe has recently focused his attention on energy planning and will regale us with some details of that project as an added treat.

Check back here for further details closer to the event date.

⭐ No need to RSVP—Just show up!

Thinkwalks and SF Natural History Series present:

A talk at the Randall Museum

Ice Plants, Mattress Wireweed & Other Onslaughts

Lew Stringer of the Presidio Trust and formerly with the Golden Gate National recreation Area (GGNRA) will give us a presentation about the creepy plants that seem to be creeping all over the place. Invasives aren’t 100% evil. They’re 100% complex and give a real challenge to restoration efforts in the parks.

Check back here for further details closer to the event date.

⭐ No need to RSVP—Just show up!