[During all of this Powell Street Promenade stuff, please remember:
"...the benches draw their inspiration from the aluminum chassis of the all-new A7, the Audi ASF® frame."
There will be a test later.]
[Chronicle Urban Design Critic John King just weighed in. Uh, John, the original plan was supposed to relieve "pedestrian congestion," as this recent design concept from Audi shows, but the current design won't do that. And "parklet" is a pejorative in this case. And those "abstract oars" you see are "inspired by" a 2012 Audi. Thusly:
The hockey stick behind the rear wheel - see it? That's where your oars came from.]
Get up to speed on the new Audi Avenue / Powell Street Promenade Project right here.
Let me tell you, the Powell Street Promenade in Union Square will look nothing like this:
Click to expand.
Instead, it will look like this, with aluminum grating and paddles and twisted things. See?
Are these tables? I think they’re tables:
We were promised no advertising, but you make the call:
“…like much of the promenade, the benches draw their inspiration from the aluminum chassis of the all-new A7, the Audi ASF® frame. While the twisting and sculpting of the metal is intended to reflect the dynamic styling of the luxury sedan…”
Is this why Audi owners make such bad drivers, generally, the boldness? (I’d call it hubris, frankly.) Anyway, let’s let Audi make the case:
“We believe that a boldly designed car, like the new Audi A7, deserves a boldly designed world. So today we’re breaking ground on an urban design initiative to re-imagine Powell Street in San Francisco.”
I’ll tell you, the last thing Audi drivers need is anything to do with boldness.
Oh, and Foursquare too: Audi Powell Street Promenade
This is the primary surface. Number one will pass right through, number two not so much:
Now, the original idea was to have a widened sidewalk but that would have caused issues with area hotels (like them suing the City and County for starters). So we’re going to get cutouts on both sides of both blocks. Thusly:
Here’s parklet eight of eight, near the Cable Car turnaround:
Now let’s thank Gaia that the aluminum hasn’t been arranged in interlocking rings to further advertise Audi and its million-dollar Audi Avenue. But there will be Audi’s name onsite and that’s too much, IMO. Oh well.
And I can’t think of any other carmaker that’s as closely associated with aluminum as Audi, so there’s that.
Was this marketing deal put out to bid, like maybe some other car companies might want to market their vehicles using the streets of San Francisco as well, right? Anyway, I don’t know.
Feel free to share your thoughts with SFGov – oh, whoops, comments be closed, just like the way they have it at BeyondChron, which is also financed with your taxpayer dollars.
All right, which particular Audi did the Powell Street Promenade draw its inspiration from? All together now, the A7! Get one today – starting price is merely $60K.
Hurray!
Lively SocketSite has some deets along with reaction from the commonweal.
[Earworm of the day: We're going rock down to-oo/ Audi Avenue.]
[UPDATE: And a commenter from FineInternets.com frets over the metal theft issue. I wonder how much this aluminum would be worth melted down. See comments.]
