John Shirley on the wanton "Blade Runner"-ification of San Fransisco:

How My Pebble Started an Avalanche

I can't be the only one dismayed by the big, brand new electronic (LCD?) billboard glaring at us as we leave the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, entering the East Bay. This is not just an eyesore, it's a traffic hazard. I wonder if it's in violation of environmental laws -- certainly it demonstrates an indifference to environmental concerns. It's really quite stridently bright, so bright the glare makes it difficult to drive past, at night, coming off the bridge. (The other side of the billboard is not so bright, for some reason -- still, it's an eyesore from the east and west both). It flickers from one vivid advertising image to the next, distractingly, like a gigantic television screen being channel surfed by an unknown controller. There is such a thing as light pollution, and this object is the very exemplar of it. It's probably deleterious to wild life. It has a Bladerunner-like affect, some glowering chunk of futuristic inner-city sleaze transplanted jarringly to an East Bay landscape.