Just 108 brief years after San Francisco was reduced to a pile of smoldering rubble by a cataclysmic act of God, it happened again.
What will happen to Max Wade now? Yesterday -- almost two years after his arrest for trying to kill a former classmate from Marin County's Redwood High in a brazen and bizarre drive-by-shooting in staid Mill Valley -- a Marin County judge sentenced the 19-year old to a life term in prison.
Wade was found guilty in October for the shoot-up, and for driving away in celebrity chef Guy Fieri's Lamborghini (though not for the Hollywood-worthy heist of the $200,000 car in 2011, when Max Wade was 16).
Judge Kelly Simmons went for the maximum because, she said, Wade -- whose plans, more than half-formed, for a jewelry heist in Union Square were revealed on his sentencing day and used to put him away -- is "scary." The detectives who spent months busting him concurred. "I wouldn't want my mom or girlfriend to be walking down the same street as Max Wade," one said, according to his old school's student newspaper.
He will be eligible for parole in his mid-to-late 30s; his attorney expects him to serve no less than 15. Until then, it's San Quentin or Folsom. So what's the takeaway, the lesson?
There probably won't be one.
Update, 1:51 p.m.: Screenshots provided to Silicon Valley watchdog blog Valleywag suggest that Uber's top brass may have orchestrated the ride-ditch campaign. For all Uber's protestations, it wasn't, in fact, the brainchild of a few rogue employees.
Original Story:
An Israeli-based car-hire start-up says it was hoodwinked in New York City last week, after more than a dozen people requested rides via the company's app, and then canceled them shortly after the driver was dispatched, or arrived.
The start-up, known globally GetTaxi (or Gett, in the United States), has already identified a possible culprit: Uber.
In a press release issued Friday, Gett's Vice President of Global Marketing, Rich Pleeth, claimed that Uber's fingerprints are all over this scandal. Pleeth explained in a follow-up e-mail that Gett had cross-referenced each passenger name and e-mail with a public profile on LinkedIn or Twitter, and confirmed that they were Uber employees.
Shortly after the fake ride requests came in, the duped Gett drivers also received text messages from Uber, urging them to leave Gett and join Uber.
The Wiggle, the flattest route between Market Street and Golden Gate Park, is an important bicycle corridor. This route was carved out by the Sans Souci creek and it's been used to avoid climbing steep grades for centuries. The creek is still there, kind of, which is why sewer improvements are needed to make the Wiggle more bicycle-friendly.
In fact, cyclists might just have a whole lot of sewer projects to get pumped about in the near future.
