By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

The Haight-Ashbury is the home of another San Francisco first: the first parklet permit revoked. Martin Mack’s (web chat says its soon to be renamed “Joplin’s”) parklet, built to resemble an outsized suburban brick barbeque pit, sprung on an unsuspecting neighborhood in 2011, ended its checqured life in June when DPW revoked its permit.

The closing of the parklet should be a lesson for all who are interested: the privatization of public space is a risky business, especially when conceived as a mere extension of a business, done with little or no public involvement and failing a clear understanding of the law.

The bar owner thought he could simply extend his bar, smokers and drinkers included, to the street under the banner of being a trendy new “parklet”. He simply built the thing, seemingly designed on the run and un-burdened with any public discussion, with no clear understanding of the law governing smoking and drinking in public spaces. Other merchants tried to tell him that being built over a gutter he needed to give some design consideration to drainage. He didn’t and it soon showed (or, more correctly, smelled).

Yet the absurdity didn’t end there. Ted Loewenberg, our one man Tea Party, had to inject himself into the farce. Loewenberg, President of the moribund Haight-Ashbury Merchants and Improvement Association and the father of the ineffective “sit/ lie” law that was supposed to turn Haight Street into a gentry heaven was stunned at the sitting going on in the parklet. Eager to find a reason to explain away the clear fact that sit/lie is a near complete failure, he seized upon the poorly conceived and executed parklet. It was attracting the “wrong” people, undermining the very essence of sit/lie.

A credulous and lazy press eagerly followed Loewenberg’s lead, ignoring the wildly successful Haight Street Market’s double sized parklet less that 100 feet to the east which features the entire human array that makes up our commercial street. 

Parklets, like food trucks on a neighborhood shopping street, sounds great but the urban reality of a central city shopping street requires more than being a “good idea” and “hip” ; it requires, as the Haight Street Market did and does, neighborhood participation and support, intelligent and consistent management and the ability to treat people with dignity and respect. The Martin Mack effort came up short in all three areas.