A Digital Journal - San Francisco Public Works
In the Works
June 2024
Public Works crews hustled to reposition 30,000 cubic yards of sand on Ocean Beach under a tight deadline this month, an annual operation with a mission – and a Sisyphean vibe.
FEATURE STORIES
One Thing for Shore:
It’s Hard to Fight Mother Nature
Every year, Public Works conducts a massive sand-moving operation at Ocean Beach.
Showing Our Pride
Inspired by this year’s in-house theme, “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” Public Works got into the spirit of Pride month, an annual tradition celebrated throughout June to highlight the contributions and history of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Are You Game? Check Out Neat Street
While in real life there’s no simple click to get this good work done, we have created our very own internet-based video game to capture the spirit of maintaining, cleaning and greening San Francisco’s streets and sidewalks.
Creating a More Accessible
Green Oasis
Public Works is helping upgrade a little neighborhood park along Minnesota Street to make the area safer and more accessible for all.
A Golden Opportunity to
Spruce Up Downtown
Father-and-son team Dale and Marcus Berger gave new life this month to a part of San Francisco history. Their task: Repaint 23 ornate light standards in the City’s Golden Triangle – the area bounded by Market, Powell and Sutter streets.
#LoveOurCity
Volunteers joined forces with Public Works crews at this month’s Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day event.
Dennis Kapsas, a universal operating engineer with the Public Works Bureau of Building and Street Repair, maneuvers an excavator on Ocean Beach.
One Thing for Shore: It’s Hard to Fight Mother Nature
Every year, a major Public Works sand-moving operation at Ocean Beach involving massive excavators and bulldozers takes its cue from a congregation of Western Snowy Plovers, the federally protected shorebirds that are about 6 inches long and weigh less than 2 ounces each.
Western Snowy Plovers, a federally protected bird, frolic on Ocean Beach about 10 months a year and only when they depart can we conduct the sand operation.
Our crews only can work when the small birds migrate from Ocean Beach on the western edge of San Francisco during a short window in late spring or early summer to nest in other coastal areas and inland salt flats.
This year, we got the OK from the bird monitors at the federal Golden Gate National Recreation Area to start work on June 17. The work must be wrapped up by the end of the month to make sure the plovers, which are listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, won’t be disturbed upon their return.
“We’ve got two weeks out here so we’ve got to pretty much go as fast as we can. There’s so much sand to move,” said Dennis Kapsas, a universal operating engineer with the Public Works Bureau of Building and Street Repair. “We’ve got to keep moving all day long.”
Dennis Kapsas adds fuel and oil to the excavator.
Normally, he grinds and paves streets as part of our resurfacing program. But the sand relocation operation puts him behind the controls of an excavator...
Dennis Kapsas (left) gets ready to go back to moving sand, while his co-worker, Cesario Aton III, adds fuel to his bulldozer.
...where he scoops up sand with a bucket, moving it from one location to another, in this case, from the east side of the beach near the promenade closer toward the shore.
Sand builds up along the pedestrian promenade at Ocean Beach.
Once he positions the sand into large piles, a bulldozer comes through and spreads it out more evenly along the beach.
The excavator and bulldozer operators work as a team to move sand from the eastern edge of Ocean Beach toward the water.
“Mother Nature brings it in … and we push it back out,” he said.
Bucketful after bucketful. After bucketful.
Bucket by bucket, the sand is moved closer to the ocean to delay its incursion onto the adjacent Great Highway.
In all, this year, our heavy machinery operators, running two excavators and two bulldozers, will reposition about 30,000 cubic yards of sand, weighing approximately 75 million pounds and enough to fill more than nine Olympic-size swimming pools.
It’s a beach, so of course there’s sand. Lots of it.
The annual operation has one goal: reduce the likelihood of sand buildup on the Great Highway, which runs adjacent to Ocean Beach, during windy weather.
Moving the sand that has built up into small dunes where buildup is worse – notably between Noriega and Santiago streets and at Judah Street – delays the natural progression of sand incursion onto the Great Highway.
Sporadic closures of the Great Highway, due to the buildup of windblown sand on the roadway, normally occur every year during the winter and spring months. In recent years, the situation has significantly worsened due to climate change, drought and sustained high winds. Sand accumulation on the Great Highway makes it difficult and hazardous for vehicles and bicycles to navigate.
Wind blows sand from Ocean Beach onto the adjacent Great Highway. Several times a year the buildup makes the road impassable for cars and bikes.
Kapsas, who has been operating heavy machinery for 35 years, the last 10 with Public Works, enjoys the assignment. He played with toy trucks when he was a boy, and now he gets to operate the real thing.
“This is pretty fun, these big pieces of equipment. They’re pretty powerful. You move a lot of sand in one day with these things,” he said.
As a bonus, he has a great view of the Pacific.
He understands the Sisyphean aspect of the work, knowing full well that the sand will blow back towards the Sunset neighborhood over the coming year.
“It’s an ongoing process out here,” he said. “It’s never going to end.”
Our goal: Move more sand toward the Pacific and away from the road and pedestrian promenade.
PUBLIC WORKS
BY THE NUM83R5
2024 -YEAR TO DATE
6,939
POTHOLES
FILLED
3,838
TREES
PRUNED
129
CURB RAMPS
CONSTRUCTED
237
NUMBER OF BLOCKS TREATED
11,794
TONS OF DEBRIS COLLECTED
Showing Our Pride
Inspired by this year’s in-house theme, “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” Public Works got into the spirit of Pride month, an annual tradition celebrated throughout June to highlight the contributions and history of the LGBTQIA+ community.
One of our most illuminating Pride projects this year involved Public Works electricians. They programmed the special lights that bathe the palm trees along the Market Street median in the Castro in the hues of the rainbow. The neighborhood place-making project, championed by the Castro Community Benefit District, was completed just in time for the peak of Pride festivities. The colorful uplighting will illuminate the trees year-round.
Each tree is lit with a different color of the rainbow.
While many activities were focused on our staff – with a Rainbow Flag raising at our Operations Yard and another at our street tree nursery, department-wide emails showcasing history-making LGBTQIA+ people and events and more – the highlight was participation in the annual Pride Parade on June 30.
We hosted two staff-led Pride flag-raising ceremonies this year – one at our Operations Yard (left) and one at our street tree nursery.
We boasted the largest-ever Public Works contingent marching in the high-energy procession that started at the foot of Market Street and ended at Eighth Street near Civic Center.
The day before the Pride Parade, Public Works employees join together on their day off to ready the floats.
Prior to the parade, our street inspectors check the route to make sure construction sites in the public right of way are secured and tripping hazards are abated. And, as always, a team of our hard-working crews followed the parade, cleaning up after the hundreds of thousands of revelers. The Pride Parade cleanup is one of our largest events of the year – a well-choreographed operation involving dozens of Public Works Operations employees using brooms, blowers, rakes, shovels, power washers and specialized sweeper and flusher trucks to get the job done.
Public Works celebrates Pride 2024 with our biggest-ever Pride Parade contingent.
Left behind in the roadway and on the sidewalk were all manner of Pride Parade debris, from colorful beads, feather boas and confetti to empty water bottles, deflated balloons and hand-drawn posters.
As soon as the last float takes off, our street cleaning team gets to work.
Whether walking in the parade or cleaning up after, the Public Works team takes a lot of pride in our Pride involvement.
Neat Street, a new internet-based video game, gives players an opportunity to virtually green, clean and maintain San Francisco neighborhoods.
Are You Game?
Check Out
Neat Street
Click. Street tree planted! Click. Pothole filled! Click. Graffiti tag wiped out!
While in real life there’s no simple click to get this good work done, we have created our very own internet-based video game to capture the spirit of maintaining, cleaning and greening San Francisco’s streets and sidewalks.
Neat Street unites civic pride and arcade-style gaming to promote the value of caring for our neighborhoods – while having fun.
Players of Neat Street will benefit from sharp vision and nimble fingers to progress through the levels of Guitar Hero-like gameplay to make San Francisco’s streets greener, cleaner and more inviting.
From filling potholes and removing graffiti to building benches and installing trash cans, kids (and kids at heart) will learn about some of the crucial work Public Works does 24/7 to maintain, clean and beautify San Francisco.
San Francisco Public Works’ very own arcade-style video game aims to promote a spirit of community stewardship.
Although the game is designed primarily for young people ages 5 to 12, teens and adults also will find it entertaining, challenging and – hopefully – inspiring.
Neat Street drops players into fictional San Francisco neighborhoods to fix, paint, plant and clean their way to completing the adventure. They can choose from among five young characters with interesting hobbies and quirky personalities. As a player progresses through six challenging levels, they unlock new skills and characters; the game was designed to encourage replay and goal completion.
Players progress through increasingly challenging levels of Neat Street, testing their online gaming skills.
Our communications team partnered with San Francisco-based lowercase productions to bring the game to life.
At Public Works, we’re always on the lookout for new and creative ways to engage the community and teach them about our mission to take care of San Francisco.
Neat Street requires a mouse and a keyboard to play and can be launched from any web browser, such as Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
The Minnesota Grove in the Dogpatch neighborhood serves as a magical urban oasis.
Creating a More Accessible
Green Oasis
In San Francisco’s Dogpatch – a neighborhood with industrial roots that has undergone a transformation into a sought-after district dotted with restaurants, bars and art galleries – a community-made oasis sprouted years ago, nestled among warehouses, loft apartments and barbed-wire-topped fences.
The lush greenspace along Minnesota Street, between 24th and 25th streets, was created by residents more than a decade ago. Now, Public Works is helping upgrade the little neighborhood park and providing streetscape improvements to make the area safer and more accessible for all.
The Public Works-led project – which encompasses Minnesota Street, between 23rd and 25th streets, and 23rd Street, between Minnesota and Tennessee streets – includes new landscaping, sidewalks, ADA-compliant curb ramps, corner bulb-outs, roadway paving, drainage, street lighting, seating and more. Crews were busy this month, working on the comprehensive $2.5 million project that kicked off in February and is expected to wrap by summer 2025.
Yordan Nikolov, a junior engineer with Public Works, shows where improvements are going in along the Dogpatch streetscape.
Much of the work is intended to make access safer and easier for pedestrians. In some cases, the current sidewalk just abruptly ends or is nonexistent. Many of the streets themselves are in poor condition, worn down from heavy use in the mixed commercial-residential area. Curb ramps are mostly missing.
“If you're visually impaired, you're kind of just left pretty much to fend for yourself,” said Public Works Project Manager Trent Tieger.
To shorten the distance people need to cross to get to the other side of a street, crews will install bulb-outs, which also help slow down vehicles. As part of the ADA requirements for the improvements, crews will use “visually distinct concrete colors,” Tieger said.
“Typically, our sidewalks are kind of a lighter gray color and then our curb ramps are a darker gray,” he said. “You'll see in other places, specifically downtown, they use the dark sparkle kind of concrete and so you have kind of the reverse where the sidewalk itself is dark and then your curb ramps are a lighter color.”
Crews install a new sidewalk on 23rd Street near Minnesota Street.
Crews also will repave the project area and install drainage improvements, including catch basins, to help with stormwater management and curtail localized flooding. New street trees will be planted and for the grove on Minnesota Street, crews will make the pathway ADA-compliant to improve accessibility, add new seating structures and fix up the retaining wall hidden within the magical community park.
Inside the leafy grove, the current pathway is made of what’s known as decomposed granite, which works much like a dirt path and can be tricky to navigate.
“You can imagine anybody pushing a stroller or a wheelchair would have a much more difficult situation just trying to push it through – let alone if there's any kind of rain or any kind of adverse weather, it makes it much more difficult,” Tieger said.
That’s why part of the project includes replacing the decomposed granite path with a decorative sidewalk that meets today’s accessibility requirements and also matches the theme of the grove.
“It’s a very beautiful, unique space,” Tieger said.
Rock and timber seating elements provide a resting spot for Minnesota Grove visitors.
The path through the grove has a number of existing pinch points. City standards dictate a sidewalk needs to be at least 6 feet wide and crews will widen the path in these areas to make sure it's up to snuff.
“We worked with the community to specifically expand into areas of plants that they were less concerned with,” Tieger said.
The project also includes improvements to the existing seating area at the 24th Street end of the grove.
Like a wildflower peeking through a crack in the sidewalk, the community-created park defies the odds, a burst of nature – nurtured by dedicated neighbors – greening a concrete jungle. The site itself was originally a rail spur “when railroad cars crisscrossed the district connecting warehouses and factories to the City’s busy eastern waterfront,” according to the neighborhood’s Green Benefit District website.
The community-driven park abounds with beautiful landscaping.
The special District, created by Dogpatch and Potrero Hill neighbors, is the first benefit district in San Francisco “to focus primarily on parks, greening and public realm improvements in a residential neighborhood.”
Engaged residents planted the seed for the Minnesota Grove. The current Public Works-led project aims to help it thrive.
Paul Woolford, an architect who serves on the Public Works Commission, said the project showcases the good that can sprout from thoughtful community-government partnerships.
“Having the City proactively step in, work with the neighbors, design something that's sensitive and thoughtful, that is designed for universal access for everyone and that's uplifting is really an important gesture – and the responsibility of Public Works,” he said.
A pair of Public Works painters, father-and-son team Dale and Marcus Berger, gave new life this month to a part of San Francisco history. Their task: Repaint 23 ornate light standards in the City’s Golden Triangle – the area bounded by Market, Powell and Sutter streets.
Installed starting in 1918, the cast iron posts are designated as City Landmark 233. They were built with the same type of arc lamps, considered the most advanced type of street lighting at the time, that also helped light up the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the world’s fair that marked the return of San Francisco after the catastrophic Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.
Public Works painter Marcus Berger uses a scissor lift to reach the highest parts of the historic light standard.
More than 175 of the decorative lampposts still stand today, some in better shape than others, aesthetically speaking. The fresh coats of paint in hues of dark blue and gold not only give them an eye-pleasing pop, but they also help stave off corrosion.
Each towering pole takes about a day to complete, starting with sanding and spot priming, followed by detailed hand-painting with brushes. The painters apply at least two coats.
A freshly painted light pole on Powell Street near the cable car turnaround.
“The work is really rewarding,” said Marcus Berger, the son of the duo, who rides high in the scissor truck, while his dad handles the work reachable from the ground. “There’s a lot of pride in what we do.”
During the job, it’s not unusual for tourists or locals visiting Union Square to stop and watch, and thank them for their work. “This is a part of San Francisco history,” Dale Berger said, “and we’re helping preserve it.”
Marcus Berger paints the top portion of the decorative lamppost high above Stockton and Geary streets.
A Golden
Opportunity
to Spruce Up
Downtown
A group of young volunteers plant Prague Triangle in the Crocker-Amazon neighborhood.
#LoveOurCity
There was a lot of greening and cleaning work taking place in Crocker-Amazon, Mission Terrace, Merced Heights and other District 11 neighborhoods as community volunteers joined forces with Public Works crews at this month’s Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day event.
The teams weeded, mulched and planted new landscaping at Prague Triangle, planted trees and removed graffiti along Alemany Boulevard and pruned back overgrown plants along Brotherhood Way. The James Denman Middle School campus, located in the Cayuga Terrace neighborhood and the site of the kickoff for the June 22 event, also got some love with pruning, mulching and landscape beautification.
Every month, Neighborhood Beautification Day focuses on a different supervisorial district, bringing together residents, community groups, merchants and Public Works employees – including many volunteering on their own time – to improve San Francisco neighborhoods.
New street trees take life on the 2700 block of San Jose Avenue (left), while a young rosemary plant gets readied for planting at Prague Triangle.
The work may be tiring, but the results are energizing. The workdays are open to people of all ages, with lots of multi-generational families on hand. Neighborhood Beautification Days are great opportunities to make new friends and give back to our communities.
Next month, we’ll be in District 2 neighborhoods on Saturday, July 20, getting the day underway with an 8:30 a.m. registration at Sherman Elementary School, 1660 Green St., in the Cow Hollow neighborhood. Please join us!
