This Week in Noe Valley: Beautiful Fall, Serious Halloween, Election Drinking

The latest news from, about and for Noe Valley from around the interwebs:

• Found in the street in Noe Valley [via Craigslist]
• Noe Valley residents strongly support expanding Bikesharesf [@jimgreer]
• Gorgeous fall mornings [kelishaw]
• And fall evenings too [rebeccapariser]
• Serious Halloween [apropos_sf]
• Spiders too [alexiacornu]
• Halloween when your neighbor is a set designer [devonslwest]
• Dubious distinctions: SF's worst neighborhoods for poop, needles [SFGate]
• Happy hour and $2 oysters all night on election night at Hamlet [SF Weekly]
• The man behind Mobius, the recording studio on Sanchez at Valley St. [KQED]

[Photo: Morning via _bildl_ich]

NVV October 2015: We Read It So You Don't Have To

The Noe Valley Voice is published ten times a year and has been a neighborhood fixture since 1977. Here are notable highlights from the latest issue. Links are to stories we've covered here on NVSF or other resources. Follow the NVV link at the bottom for full articles and all the ads.

October  2015

Front Page: Realtors love drone photography for marketing (like this one of 147 Day Street) - neighbors just wish the annoying flying machines would go away; The Noe Valley Community Benefit District turns 10 and celebrates transforming Noe Valley's downtown area from a "frumpy shopping strip to an attractive commercial corridor that draws tourists and locals alike;" The guerilla gardeners of 22nd Street have cleaned up their steps; Where to go and what to do in Noe Valley on Halloween.

Letters: The Glen Park History Project thanks the NVV for the article on Glen Canyon trail improvements; Coyotes have reportedly been spotted 3 times at 25th and Hoffman (still no pictures); The flowers at 1566 Guerrero honor the memory of Alicia Titus, a United Airlines flight attendant who died on flight 175 when it was flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Features: Local Democratic Club and Supervisor Scott Wiener say no on Props F and I, yes on D.

Cost of Living in Noe: The average sale price for a home was $2.6 million.

Short Takes: Harvest Fest has been replaced with Fall Fun Day this year on Oct 24 - a day of no street closures but lots of fun on 24th Street [Ed.--can't find any info online]; Holy Innocents Church at 755 Fair Oaks is turning 125; A final community meeting for the Noe Valley Town Square will be on Oct 13 at 7:30PM at St. Philips - it breaks ground in January 2016; Cliche Noe is featuring night photography by a local artist Graham Perry through Nov. 2; Lots of local readings this month at Folio Books; A memorial for Vicki Rosen will be held on Oct. 14 from 7-9 pm at the Upper Noe Rec Center auditorium.

Rumors and Tid Bits: La Bou is back - soon; Cradle of the Sun has moved to West Portal; Common Scents is closing at the end of the December because of dropping sales and high rents - owner Jan van Swearingen will reopen the shop online at CommonScentsSF.com [Ed.-- it's not live yet - can someone help her get at least an email entry form up asap?); Video Wave has moved but the Peace Pole has gone missing; no news on the old Real Foods space and no permits have been filed; The new Noe Valley Town Square will be getting a bathroom after all at a cost of $600,000, thanks to an anonymous donor; Horner's Corner is closed and turning into Hamlet - it will reopen at the end of October (hopefully); The storefront vacated by Ambiance at 3989 24th St is still not rented; the low-flying copters in September were part of a radiation study; Happy Donuts was named a top 7 donut shop by Eater; Al's Place at 26th and Valencia was named the best new restaurant in the US by Bon Appetit; Starbucks should have the permits needed to bring back the sidewalk benches by the end of October says the manager; Larry Lauterborn of Noe Valley Cheese Company lost his house in Middletown (South of Clearlake) in the recent Valley Fire - friends have set up a fund if you want to pitch in.

[The Noe Valley Voice]

Noe Valley Music in the Park - Saturday, Sept 10

The real summer in San Francisco is upon us, and the Friends of Noe Valley has unveiled the details [sic] for the Sept. 10 Music in the Park event at Noe Courts:

A neighborhood event with music, BBQ and fun-filled family activities including:

• Emcee for the day Noe Valley’s own Michael Capozzola, comedian and cartoonist. Michael has performed at many local comedy clubs as well as hosted the Noe Valley Harvest Festival.
• District 8 Rock Band, a rip-roaring amalgamation of roots, prog and indie elements, made up of local parents including drummer Dan Luscher from Noe Valley, who will treat us to a roster of their greatest hits.
• Hilary Craddock, Noe Valley singer songwriter and piano teacher, along with former Playdate members Sharon Gillenwater, also from Noe Valley, and Rich Burns who preform in a style that is strong on harmonies with a bit of alternative twist.
• Willow the Wisp a banjo, accordian group based in Noe Valley.
• Hula hoop demo and workshop presented by Nicloe Wong, founder of Cherry Hoops. Nicole brings high-quality instruction complete with professional hoops to make it easy to learn this mesmerizing art form.  Get ready for single hoop, poi-style twin hooping, and multi-hooping in this laughter-filled and fun workshop!
• San Francisco Scottish Dancers who provide fun, fitness, friendship and great music in a performance including lively jigs, hornpipes and reels, and elegant strathspeys.
• A Jumpy Castle that is sure to delight the kids.

What: Music in the Park
When: Saturday, September 10 11:00am-4:00pm
Where: Noe Courts (24th and Douglass)

Fall in Noe Valley: Spiders!

Just in time for Halloween ... Noe Valley grows a fresh crop of huge spiders with huge webs. What are they? Are they dangerous? How do they help us?

They're Orb weavers:

Orb weavers (Araneidae) are often brightly coloured with rounded abdomens, some with peculiarly angled humps or spines. However, there is considerable variation in size, colour and shape in this group. They are often recognized for building beautiful, large, round webs, on which they rest, head downward, waiting for prey. The webs consist of a number of radiating threads crossed by two spirals. The inner spiral begins in the centre, winds outward, and is made of smooth threads like the radiating threads. It covers only the central 1/3 of the web. The outer spiral begins at the edges and winds inward. It is made of more elastic, sticky threads, coated with a liquid substance. One of the largest and most commonly encountered members of this group is Argiope aurantia, the yellow garden spider.

More on the web (pun unavoidable) and their prey:

Like all spiders, black-and-yellow argiopes are carnivorous. They spin an orb web to capture small flying insects such as aphids, flies, grasshoppers, and Hymenoptera (wasps and bees). A female can take prey up to 47mm in diameter, up to 200% of her own size (Nyffeler et al. 1987)[Editor: that's almost 2" in diameter!! Think small bird or bat.]

The web can be up to two feet across. The spider hangs, head down, in the center of their web while waiting for prey. Often, she holds her legs together in pairs so that it looks as if there are only four of them. Sometimes the spider may hide in a nearby leaf or grass stem, connected to the center of the web by a nonsticky thread which quivers when prey lands in the web.

...The entire web is usually eaten and then rebuilt each night, often in the same place.

As for why we see them in the fall?

Yellow garden spiders breed once a year. The males roam in search of a female, building a small web near or actually in the female's web, then court the females by plucking strands on her web. Often, when the male approaches the female, he has a safety drop line ready, in case she attacks him. After mating, the male dies, and is sometimes then eaten by the female.

...She guards the eggs against predation as long as she is able. However, as the weather cools, she becomes more frail, and dies around the time of the first hard frost.

In the spring, the young spiders exit the sac and are so tiny that their collection of bodies look like dust gathered inside the silk mesh. Some of the spiderlings remain nearby, but others exude a strand of silk that gets caught by the breeze, carrying the spiderling to a more distant area.

And while all spiders are poisonous "these spiders are not dangerous to people, and their bites result in nothing more than a sore, itchy swelling that goes away in a few days."

[Argiope aurantia]
[Wikipedia: Argiope aurantia]