San francisco

Danielle Baskin, the ringleader of the flash mob, stepped up to the podium to address the growing crowd, which buzzed in anticipation for one of the most irreverent Bay Area art events of the year: BART Basel.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said, wearing an IKEA bucket hat over her blue hair. “This is a place to network. To do deals. Money laundering. Art. There’s wonderfully talented artists here…”

Just then, the robotic voice of Bay Area Rapid Transit interrupted.

“Six-car train for Millbrae in eight minutes…”

Now in its second year, BART Basel is a guerilla art show that roams across the city via public transit. It’s one of many prank projects from Baskin, who has previously turned Google’s offices into a Spirit Halloween store , fooled thousands with a fake blue check house verification website and founded a pandemic version of Chat Roulette . Inspired by the spectacle of the Art Basel conferences held in Miami and Switzerland, anyone can sign up to present and give a short speech about their “art” at the event, whether that be a gingerbread house, a TV remote, a teleportation cap or simply a business card.

“I ask people to bring something that’s personally meaningful to them,” Baskin said. “I think you can have a conversation about any object, and I really liked the artifacts that came from stories. Someone brought art which was the trash of their egg freezing process, which is a painful process, and they talked about that. There was a Ouija board purse. I liked the paint brush made of hair.”

After eight minutes of presentations, Baskin stepped back up to the mic and announced that the show would momentarily pause before resuming at Powell Station. The crowd squeezed into a row of BART cars, packed nearly to their capacity of 181 people, a number casually dropped by Jay Bolcik, a retired BART employee of 22 years who later presented himself as a “BARTifact.”

“I’m still proud to wear the uniform, and I’m thrilled that the uniform still fits,” Bolcik said. At a time when BART ridership is so low that they’re considering cutting weekend service , Bolcik saw the crowd as a positive “disruption in the force.”

“BART needs energy… When there’s more people on BART, it’s a better experience and safer place,” he said.

By the time the band of art world pranksters reached 16th and Mission, it had swelled to around 200 people. A patrolling crew of volunteers reminded people not to stand on the yellow edges of the platforms. As the presentations continued, the podium was surrounded by so many people it was almost impossible to see the art itself.

“It was double the size of last year, which was both delightful and, like, terrifying,” Baskin said.

One of the more memorable artists was Paul Drexler, who wore a pinstripe suit and fedora, looking like something between a hard-boiled detective and a mob boss. He’s lived in San Francisco for 40 years, and now leads a true crime-themed walking tour of the city.

This year Baskin noted that the art often had darker themes of oppression, mortality and comments on capitalism — often expressed through farcical pieces created the day before, like a crucified Barbie doll.

Despite the massive crowds, BART never stepped in to intervene, and the crowd continued all the way to San Francisco International Airport . In fact, later that day, BART tweeted out videos from the event.

“BART’s a cool train station,” Baskin said. “So many people were excited that BART tweeted it. But, you might say, BART Basel’s no longer underground. It’s gone mainstream if BART’s tweeting about it…”

A new People’s Slow Streets plan, endorsed by dozens of organizations, calls for the city to begin building that network. The plan aims to connect every neighborhood in the city via safe, intuitive and enjoyable slow streets by 2024.

This web of interconnected routes would be perfect for allowing tourists to explore our neighborhoods and for helping residents more easily access all their daily amenities, like parks and grocery stores.

That’s why the upcoming December 6 meeting of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors, at which the future of Slow Streets is scheduled to be discussed, is so important. Please speak up not only for the kids, the seniors and all who are using these havens of safety now — but also for the many visitors to San Francisco who would much prefer not to add to our local traffic woes if they have safe corridors along which to explore it.

I’ve spoken with some of these visitors, and they’re always excited to explore beyond the usual tourist attractions without having to worry about the hassles of parking. Seniors love the way rental e-bikes flatten out our city’s famous hills, but visitors don’t always know the best or safest ways to go. Sometimes even a current “recommended route” leads them into bad traffic situations.

What if they could follow safer, clearly marked loop routes all over the city, each one making for a great day trip with places to grab a coffee, eat lunch, sightsee or shop along the way?

The operative word is “safer.”

Despite the city’s vaunted Vision Zero commitments, so far in 2022, there have been at least 30 traffic fatalities , most of which involved people not inside motor vehicles. As documented in a recent report by Walk San Francisco, car speeds on many of the city’s streets put pedestrians and bicyclists at great risk. Top speeds on the two- and three-lane streets that Walk San Francisco surveyed averaged more than 34 mph, which translates to more serious injuries and fatalities in a collision with a bicyclist or pedestrian.

A person is about 70% more likely to be killed if they’re struck by a vehicle traveling at 30 mph versus 25 mph. At 40 mph, about 75% of pedestrians hit by cars will suffer a life-threatening injury or die. If we welcome tourists to branch out farther into the city, they need to feel (and deserve to be) safer.

We do not need another study to prove the local popularity of such streets. The landslide vote for car-free JFK Drive and against reopening the Great Highway to cars full time demonstrates this. But it’s not just about locals.

A safer streets network could be a critical factor in revitalizing San Francisco tourism. A web of connected streets all around the city in which pedestrians and bicyclists are truly prioritized as street users, and cars are limited to local traffic going just a few blocks, could be a visitor magnet. Many such areas in European cities — once clogged with car traffic — are now hugely popular with tourists. And San Francisco’s compactness, neighborhood variety and scenic beauty make it the perfect candidate to demonstrate that this can be done in the U.S., too.

Picture an intersecting set of loop routes delineated by wide, color-coded pavement — as easy to follow as floor markings in an airport. These loops begin at current key tourist areas, and some or all intersect at JFK Promenade, connecting to allow tourists to safely and easily explore many areas of the city on a bicycle. Imagine a rainbow-paved loop leading through the Castro or a golden loop that takes one to Golden Gate Park.

It needn’t be expensive: paint on the street and some effective traffic diverters. Instead of the small, inadequate, hard-to-see bike route signage we have now, riders could just follow the colored pavement.

We have a golden opportunity to expand San Francisco’s tourist base at a time when other sectors are faltering. Globally, the bike tourism market is expected to grow significantly in the near future. Research predicts a compound annual growth rate in the bike tourism market of 14.78% between 2021 and 2030. E-bike sales in the U.S. outpaced electric car sales last year.

In the European Union, a 3 billion euro fund is aimed at capitalizing on the growth of bicycle tourism by expanding safe cycling infrastructure.

It always takes visionary leadership to imagine things otherwise and change the status quo. With political will and vision, San Francisco could shape a whole-city network of safer bike and walking routes, thereby generating a brand-new tourism draw.

Ruth E. Malone is professor emerita of nursing and health policy at UCSF and a car-free senior e-bike rider.