As if you didn’t already hear, San Francisco LOVES it’s food.  And it loves it’s food fresh and good.

And because I’ve got SF pulsing through my veins, when I’m not thinking about San Francisco Real Estate, I’m probably thinking about food… and where to get the good stuff. These days, as I’m getting older, and my body is reminding me to eat healthy, the good stuff tends to include lots of good produce, preferably straight from the farm. But since I don’t get out of the City that often to drive some some of the Bay Area’s farm rich towns filled with roadside produce stands, I need to find my produce a little closer to home.

You might be surprised to find farm fresh produce within San Francisco city limits. Remarkably, for a rather urban city, San Francisco has a wide array of farmers markets where you can experience food at its finest. While some of the markets feel more like a small, mom-and-pop stand, others are large, organized markets with multiple vendors and extensive selections. When it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables, your local farmers market is the perfect place to locate some fabulous food finds whether you’re a gourmet chef, or just looking for some fresh greens to add to tonight’s dinner salad!

The fruits and vegetables are grown locally and picked when perfectly ripened. This enhances the taste, texture, and aroma of the produce. Often, market prices are lower than at grocery stores. The way transportation and distribution of food occurs today wastes huge amount of resources and energy.

Our existing system of food transportation and distribution requires enormous amounts of energy and resources. The Going Green Painlessly Blog points out that:

When you buy locally, you prevent food from travelling long distances, and therefore reduce the use of fuel. I’ve recently read, “before reaching your table, the average food item in the United States will travel 1,300 miles! In fact, only about 10% of the fossil fuel energy used in the world’s food system is used for production. The other 90% goes into packaging, transportation, and marketing of the food. All this inefficiency creates many environmental problems.” Shopping at the Farmers’ Market benefits the local farmer.

Not to mention, when food is picked at the peak of the season, nutrients, and phytochemicals will be more abundant. And it just TASTES better too!

Below you’ll find a link where you can find which San Francisco’s farmers markets are closest to you. If you go, bring your own bags and lots of small bills and loose change since vendors don’t always have a large amount of cash on them. And don’t be afraid to ask the vendors questions about their products… you might even leave with a recipe or two!

SEARCH FARMER’S MARKETS

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I made the mistake once of putting a pizza box into my recycling.  It was an accident, but I got a nasty note from the trashman complete with a threat that they’ll never pick up my trash again if I dare make that mistake again. 

 

Coming soon though, you’ll get more than a nasty note.  San Francisco is making it law that you will have to seperate your trash starting October 21^st.

 

The idea is for SF to reduce it’s waste drastically, and I’m honestly all over it. 

 

The San Francisco Accosiation of Realtors was kind enough to share the details of the new law with us and explain the responsibility of homeowners and businesses.

 

In June, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved, and Mayor Gavin Newsom signed into law, legislation that requires all persons and businesses located in San Francisco to separate recyclables, compostables and landfill trash and participate in recycling and composting programs. The new law takes effect on October 21.

The new law contains the following mandate:

“All persons in San Francisco shall source separate their refuse into recyclables, compostables and trash, and place each type of refuse in a separate container designated for disposal of that type of refuse. No person may mix recyclables, compostables or trash, or deposit refuse in a collection container designated for another type of refuse, except as otherwise provided….”

The legislation was proposed by Mayor Gavin Newson who cited the California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 which requires cities and counties to reduce, reuse and recycle (including composting) solid waste generated in the State to the maximum extent feasible before any incineration or landfill disposal of waste, to conserve water, energy and other natural resources. The Act mandates that each local jurisdiction in the State divert 50 percent of discarded materials from landfill.

Owners or managers of multi-family or commercial properties will be required to provide information and/or training for new tenants, employees and contractors, including janitors, on how to source separate recyclables, compostables and trash, and will be required to re-educate tenants, employees and contractors at least once a year.

The fine for any violation at a dwelling or commercial property that generates less than one cubic yard of refuse per week may not initially exceed $100.

If the Director of Public Health causes a dwelling or commercial property to be inspected to determine whether the owner has complied with the ordinance, the owner of the dwelling or commercial property will be required to pay an inspection fee equal to $167 per hour of staff time spent during the inspection.

Both Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal and Recycling will deliver a larger recycling cart, a composting cart or a kitchen pail at no additional cost. Call Sunset at 415-330-1300 or Golden Gate at 415-626-4000.

 

Tags: San+Francisco+Real+Estate+Blog, SF+Real+Estate+Blog, San+Francisco+Realtor+Blog, SF+Realtor+Blog

 

www.SundayStreetsSF.com  

Come play in the streets.

Sunday Streets creates a safe, fun, car-free place for people to get out and get active in San Francisco neighborhoods. Last year’s two events drew more than 15,000 people each weekend creating huge demand for more. This year, we’ve expanded the event to six Sundays, opening the streets to San Franciscans to explore four different neighborhoods and participate in a wide variety of activities, including: dancing, biking, skating, walking, hula hooping, yoga, and just people watching.

Sunday, August 9 & September 6

10am to 2pm

Go penguins to penguins.  Walk, bike, skate or waddle on car free streets from the California Academy of Science to the SF Zoo.

Bike, walk and play next to the Pacific Ocean. Travel from Golden Gate Park to the San Francisco Zoo, along Ocean Beach.

File Attachment: Sunday Streets.pdf (1463 KB)

Adam Greenfield recently produced a video with the Neighborhood Empowerment Network covering the first Inner Sunset farmers market back on June 7th.

As expected, the Farmer’s Market was a hit!  

As an aside, there are more Farmer’s Markets to come in San Francisco, including one coming to the Outer Sunset as well!

Adam also founded the Inner Sunset Neighborhood Group of Facebook, which he still helps run.

Through the Facebook page, several hundred members have a steady stream of information to keep in touch with the Inner Sunset neighborhood. The group also organizes monthly social gatherings, which have gotten a great response since they began last December.

The community is really taking off now. And if you live in the Inner Sunset, I’m sure you’ll enjoy being a part of it!

Urbia Adventure League kicks off the first Saturday of Summer!

View the city from secret hilltops where butterflies delight via a new adventure booklet

What: Unveiling of new sense-of-place seasonal treasure hunt for San Francisco families

When: This Saturday, June 27th, drop-in between 10 a.m. and noon to pick up a free adventure packet

Where: Starting at the bottom of the colorful mosaic stairway at 16th Avenue and Moraga Street

This summer, a staycation opportunity debuts in the form of a new series of outdoor “sense of place” treasure hunts for families. Urbia Adventure No.1 is being offered for free and guides you to numerous surprises as families work as a team to solve riddle-like clues in a booklet titled “Islands in the Sky.” Adults and children together sharpen their abilities to read the natural landscape features easily missed in this urban environment and enhance their future travels in the city or out in the wild.

Unlike traditional guided tours, Urbia Adventure League offers themed, seasonal adventures-by-mail that allow you to decide when to go and who to bring along. The tools: an adventure booklet, a pencil and a team’s collective wits and senses. The rewards: serendipity, a deeper “sense of place” in San Francisco, and fun team-building. Each journey is an experience to treasure, and a hidden box at the end contains an added reward for finding your way by solving the clues in this new booklet.

Following his recent outing, travel writer Larry Habegger remarked “Finally I discovered that amazing wild land in the heart of the Sunset and got to explore it with my family. My girls can’t wait for our next Urbia adventure.”

Upcoming booklets will explore rocky outcrops near Twin Peaks and a unique „green‟ corridor in the Mission District. Subscriptions to the Urbia Adventure League benefit San Francisco non-profit Nature in the City.

For more information about this new San Francisco tradition, please visit www.urbikids.com or contact Damien Raffa by calling 415.992.8141, or email@urbikids.com.

I live out in the Outer Sunset across the street from Ocean Beach (it’s the closest you’ll get to ocean front property in San Francicso!), so maybe I am a little biased, but I feel like we all like Oceans right?  And we’d like them to be clean and pollutant free for future generations, yes? 

Well, on April 16^th, you can help do something about it. 

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Ocean Action Team recently sent out a request that I think is worth sharing.  If you’re free on April 16^th, please take a little time out of your schedule to share youro views about preserving out oceans.

So.  I’m supposed to be in the midst of relaxing right now. 

You’ve probably noticed that postings on the blog are light and they’ll probably continue to be light for the next week or two. 

But even though I’m on “vacation” work just hasn’t stopped.

It’s a big joke in the real estate industry that if you aren’t busy enough, then go on vacation.  And damn, ain’t that the truth!

But still, when I packed up my stuff to go on my short getaway, all I brought was me laptop, and my cell phone, that is, frankly useless where I am since cell reception is non existant here.

I didn’t bring a printer.  I didn’t bring a fax.  I mean, who brings these things on vacation, right?

Well, the day that I left, things started happening. 

One client had to renegotiate a purchase contract.  I had to send 8 different documents back and forth to make it happen.

Another client had to remove contingencies in an offer.  This took about 3 different documents since there were all sorts of things that were complicated about this deal.

And a third client (I’ve only been on vacation for 4 days) needed to submit a purchase offer, which included 180 pages of disclosures for the property itself, the purchase contract, several other standard mandated property disclosures, more random property disclosures that popped up and three counteroffers.

Every single document mentioned above needed a signature.  Some needed to be marked up as well.

I won’t tell you where I’m hiding out for vacation (Ok, maybe when I get back) but I will tell you I’m miles from a Kinko’s or anything similar.

Yet, with no, printer, no fax and no Kinko’s within miles (and no, I didn’t use smoke signals or carrier pigeons either), I still managed to get all of these documents signed by my clients and sent off to the various parties that needed them. 

Best of all, I did it all without printing (and therefore WASTING) a single piece of paper!

I feel like some cheesy commercial – but I have to say, that I did it all thanks to the amazing tool that is DocuSign.

Yes, I pay for DocuSign.  I don’t even remember what the cost is, but it’s something like a couple of cups of coffee a month.

But what DocuSign allows me to accomplish without printers, fax machines, scanners, Kinko’s or killing a single tree is absolutely priceless!

The short version of how it works is that it allows you to receive a document via email and to sign it electronically with the click of a mouse!

Using DocuSign to sign documents is free!  (as in my clients don’t pay for it.)  But using DocuSign to send real estate documents does cost a little something (as in other agents do have to pay to use it.)

The electronic signature is legally binding, and while it isn’t recognized as legally binding in some instances such as when signing loan documents or a deed because these things require a notarized signature, it is legally binding in all sorts of contracts.

Oh, and the best part – you don’t need to sit near a fax machine or printer while your real estate transaction is happening.

I’ve had clients sign documents in airports, in hotels in foreign countries, on their Iphones while driving down the freeway (I hope they meant they where a PASSENGER, since driving while signing just can’t be safe!)

And of course, that means that I too can help my clients complete a transaction wherever I am – whether in my “real” office in Noe Valley, my home office on Great Highway (which translates most often to my couch), at a conference or seminar, or on vacation in a secret location.  All I need is my laptop, the documents to be signed in PDF format (I have a PDF creator for that) and my clients’ email address. 

The rest is a just smooth transaction history – without a single tree killed in the process!!!

So – what does it mean to you?  It means that if you want to be green and sign documents in the most efficient way possible, you need to find yourself a Realtor that uses DocuSign. 

And if you’re in the San Francisco area, you need to look no further.  Call me at 415–307–1392 to find about about this and other innovative tools I have that benefit my clients in their search for a home, the sale and preparation of a home and through the entire purchase or sale transaction.  Oh, you can also email me.  That doesn’t kill trees either.

Sunset Farmers Market – Exploratory Survey

The Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center and Supervisor Carmen Chu’s Office are working with community members and the Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association to explore the possibility of starting a Sunset Farmers Market.  We would like to hear your thoughts.  Please complete this super short survey (only 5 questions) to let us know what you think.  If you already filled out a paper survey, we’ve got you covered, otherwise respond now!

I just logged into the SF MLS to look at some new properties for sale and saw this cool notice:

SFAR MLS is excited to announce the addition of “Green Features” to our property descriptions. You will now find the following amenities in the Single Family Home, Condo/Coop/TIC/Loft and 2-4 Units property types:

1) Bamboo Floors
2) Cork Floors
3) Recycled Carpet
4) Natural Fiber Carpet
5) Energy Star Appliance(s)
6) Dual Flush Toilet

Stay tuned for more Green Features as Rapattoni builds the platform.

How awesome is that?  Granted, there are a ridiculous amount of green features that are missing from this list including some obvious ones such as low VOC-free paints and carpets,  concrete or recycled glass counters, concrete floors.  And, not all “green” products are created equal – for instance, even bamboo should be FSC Certified to make sure it’s sustainably harvested since some bamboo farmers clear-cut other forests to grow the profitable product. 

But even though there is room for improvement, being able to search a home’s green features is a step in the right direction and goes to show that people DO care about the environment enough to go out of their way to do something about it.