Letters for December 18, 2014

Nice beans

Re “Versatile bastards” by Shoka (SN&R The V Word, December 11):

I just wanted to let Shoka know that in my family, we have been eating horse beans for ages. Super favorite snack. You can also find them at the Asian food market on 13th Street and Broadway. We enjoy your column.

John Orrin Gann

Sacramento

Crusty issues

Re “The pizza issue” by Janelle Bitker and Nick Miller (SN&R Feature Story, December 4):

These pizza descriptions all sound really yummy, except for one thing: They are all white-flour bread! Why are they serving that white pasty stuff when they could be serving all those luscious fixings atop a nutty, chewy brown crust? So close and yet so far …

Muriel Strand

Sacramento

Insane jihad against car traffic

Re “More than one way” by Alastair Bland (SN&R News, November 27):

The notion of removing free-flowing, one-way streets in downtown and Midtown and turning them into two-way, permanent gridlock is utter folly.

K Street “works” as a slowed-down street only because the through traffic uses J Street eastbound and L Street westbound instead. If J and L streets were given the same K Street treatment, there would be a hopeless traffic mess in downtown and Midtown.

The changing of formerly one-way streets will be disastrous, and not only because of the reality that downtown is a job center drawing commuters from elsewhere. It will get worse than that. As more residential units are built in the central city, there will be much more traffic coming. Even if the residents of downtown and Midtown entirely walk or ride bicycles (or unicycles?), they will still drive elsewhere often.

And let us mention the environment, which is the most prevalent excuse we have for this insane jihad on vehicle traffic. Gridlocked, stop-sign-to-stop-sign automobiles create twice the NOx contaminants and six times the carbon contaminants per mile as those operating at peak efficiency. Think about that. Simply adding more stoplights, metered to a 25 to 30 mph pace in order to punish speeders would be better for air quality than having the cars creep from stop sign to stop sign on J Street and other major streets like it.

Nicholas Byram

Antelope

Everyone needs it

Re “Kids, not criminals” (SN&R Editorial, December 11):

We also need better mental-health treatment for all. As the debate over the California voter-approved mental-health initiative rages on, we also need to have a discussion on a national mental-health bill to improve our mental-health system overall.

Mark Rodriguez

Sacramento