Graduation Day -- MEDA

Back in January, Onions began classes at City College. One day, the Mission Economic Development Agency came by to recruit for a Bilingual Bank Teller Program.  Yesterday, was graduation day.

Onions had been raving about the teacher, Olivia, and she helped the students get online resumes and to practice their interview skills.  In addition, she has made contacts with banks and each of the graduates has a few interviews lined up.

Each student came up and gave a short speech in appreciation of the program and to give thanks.

Diploma time!

Surprise!  They were called up again.

Turns out that one of the parts of the program that funders provide is a stipend ($500) to help graduates purchase business attire.

Onions was the only graduate to speak Chinese (turns out he'd be even MORE desirable if he spoke Cantonese, but Mandarin is a selling point),  four are Spanish speakers and one is from Syria and speaks Arabic

Olivia, Onions, Edwin from El Salvador and Angelina

Turns out Onions invited a friend from one of his City College classes, Wilson, also from El Salvador.  Who would ever have guessed a year ago, Onions would have TWO friends from El Salvador?  The program is great and fingers crossed for his interviews in the upcoming weeks.

Obscura Day -- A Walk About Trash

I'm a huge fan of the website Atlas Obscura and every year they have a day where they host these events (Obscura Days) to expose people to the interesting things in their own neighborhoods.  This year, being in San Francicso, I decided to check out one.  Well, the only interesting one (Seattle had many cool ones...bummer for me) was one of the self-guided walks through a neighborhood I never go to (Bayview-Hunters Point) about San Francisco's self-imposed challenge to go trash free by 2020.

So I dragged Onions out to Bayview (ooohh, he was not happy or interested) and we took a walking tour.

The tour started INSIDE the Walgreen's there.  It had us contemplate how much trash there is in the world and then showed us the CRV redemption for the plastic bottles and cans.  It talked about how California is taking the lead on charging for plastic bags.

Turns out the most interesting part of the walk was simply exploring a neighborhood I (and probably many San Franciscans) deem as "unsafe" and a "no go zone."  Neighborhood parks were the interesting part of the walk, the discussion of SF's, green, blue and black trash cans...not so interesting.

I did learn that there is a brewery out in this neck of the woods (hipsters drinking beer, playing bean bag toss) but we did learn that since businesses were being charged by weight to haul away their trash and organics, this brewery gives away it's post beer grains to farmers who come and haul it away.

Here's the remnants of the huge power plant that was once here in Hunter's Point.  It's still being remediated.

Development is happening as well.

But this shoreline has historically been a dumping ground.  Some of it has been reclaimed and turned into Heron's Head Park, but here's where all the things we throw into the blue (recycling) bin end up.  This is Recology's processing plant.

The old Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard.

From the end of Heron's Head Point.

The city's goats, who help clear brush.

Old dirt and gravel that will end up being recycled and used elsewhere......it ends up here in this neighborhood.

An old trainyard.....