The Dolores Hill Bomb happens once a year — so why do we have to deal with a bunch of ugly, teeth-rattling plastic warts on the road the 364 other days of the calendar?
For many years, the famed skateboarding event has drawn hundreds of skateboarders from all around the Bay to the Mission District, to take on a right of passage that often involves gnarly falls at high speed. But a fatal collision between a cyclist and a skateboarder at the 2020 Hill Bomb renewed a fierce debate about whether the event should be allowed to continue at all.
Shortly after the crash, SFMTA installed a large “rumble strip” at the intersection of 20th and Dolores streets, composed of a ubiquitous traffic tool known as “Botts’ dots”: domed plastic devices glued to the asphalt, spanning the entire roadway and creating a deeply unpleasant experience for drivers and cyclists, as well as skaters.
The dots are designed to demarcate places where people aren’t supposed to drive, like highway shoulders, not to be driven over regularly. That means, in the last four years, the city has had to regularly replace broken ones in advance of each year’s Hill Bomb. They’re also really awful to drive on or bike over, as I have routinely experienced while exploring the Mission.
Perhaps most absurd is that they haven’t stopped skateboarders from bombing the hill. After last year’s Hill Bomb led to a violent crackdown by police, SFPD officers blockaded Dolores Street entirely this year (costing the city nearly $250,000 in overtime). Undeterred, a group of skaters merely moved one block over, to the equally steep Church Street, for their festivities.
Even putting aside whether the dots can really stop skateboarders, there’s a certain Sisyphean futility in replacing them each spring. Public records show that this year, the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) spent $4,323 to purchase 220 dots in advance of the July 6 Hill Bomb. At least two city staffers warned that the dots are being used incorrectly and could cause future problems, according to emails obtained through a public records request.
“Please note that the tiles both come up on their own with enough wear (they're not intended to be driven over repeatedly. They're supposed to mark where one is supposed to avoid driving), which is why we're so hesitant to use them for purposes other than marking,” Joél Ramos, local government affairs manager for SFMTA, wrote to an aide of District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose office helped coordinate the dot installation ahead of this year’s pre-bomb replacements.
A similar conversation unfolded in advance of last year’s Hill Bomb, with SFMTA Senior Transportation Engineer Mike Sallaberry arguing to fellow transit staffers that the dots could endanger skateboarders who are not breaking the law.
“I agree that speeding and running red lights or STOP signs is illegal. But skateboarding here, in itself, is not. In any case, my point is that I’m not going to sign a work order that puts dots or any equivalent on the street that is meant to deter skateboarding and could cause crashes given that it is a legal use of the road,” Sallaberry wrote in an email on May 22, 2023.
(In a statement, SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato noted that the community and SFPD asked to implement Botts’ dots again this year to dissuade hill bombings, related injuries, and “disturbances.”
“[The dots] are not utilized as a ‘traffic calming’ measure in a traditional sense of slowing down everyone — it is meant to minimize organized high speed stunts,” Kato wrote.)
For Aaron Breetwor, who helped facilitate this year’s Hill Bomb, the contradictions and frustration are signs that the city is approaching the issue all wrong. The 31-year-old San Francisco native is the brand manager for Comet Skateboards and a fierce advocate for skateboards, scooters, and other forms of “small-wheeled” transportation; this year, Breetwor handed out helmets and checked in with skaters during the Church Street Hill Bomb.
He has lobbied city officials to provide resources to make the mass skating event safer, rather than attempting to stop it, to little avail. He finds the use of Botts’ dots particularly frustrating, and believes the city is using them to deter any kind of skateboarding, not just the annual event.
“Usually when you use these dots, they’re used to deter sideshows or mark where you should not drive, and there is a pass-through for motorcycles and bicycles. At the center of the lane or side of the lane. But the way these were installed on Dolores, they make an explicit point of going curb-to-curb on both north and south-bound lanes,” he observed. “The only way the city appears to approach skateboarding is via an anti-skateboard stance.”
Mandelman continues to defend the use of Bott’s dots at the intersection.
“[Year] after year, neighbors have advocated for the replacement of the dots to discourage skaters from bombing the hill from unsafe heights,” Mandelman told me in an emailed statement. “I’m supportive of a sanctioned skate event, but Dolores Park is not the right place. We need to find a better location and one that is safer for participants and the general public.”
Whether or not they work to deter skateboards — and whether or not that’s something neighbors want — the plastic bumps are extremely slippery and can cause damage to wheels and shocks on bikes, motorcycles, and cars.
Odds are, come 2025, the city will throw a few more grand at replacing all the Botts’ dots that have been ripped off by car traffic. Skaters, meanwhile, will surely find another side of the hill to bomb in 2025. And that leaves the rest of us, forced to judder our way over the teeth-rattling stretches of plastic on one of the city’s busiest streets — all in the name of neighborhood “safety.”
