Now I will spew forth my pictures in the order of the day, or days. We arrived on the last day of the World Series, in which the San Fran Giants were, NOT the other team, but THE TEAM, so we saw a city in a frenzy. We begin there on 11/29/14:
Now, here's the thing. They won. Hip, hip, hoorah, right? Except then what happened, long after we were gone and home in our hotel bed, was outrageous, stupid, and bad.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympleii/san-francisco-giants-fans-trash-the-city-after-world-series
Destruction, people shot, people stabbed. AND they WON! Stupid, stupid, stupid people.
Even more amazing was how it was all cleaned up and then city Hall looked like this:
Oh but the fashion statements! I have never seen so much Orange + Black! Thank goodness it was Halloween time.
 |
So we went on our tour despite the noise and hoopla outside because we wanted to see inside this beautiful building (okay and YES we had a wee bit of morbid curiosity about where Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were assassinated).
    
This is the original city hall in ruins after the 1906 earthquake.
 This fault impressed me with it's thickness. The entire building looked so massive and strong, and yet it was also damaged in the last earthquake (1989).    
The tour wasn't spooky and we didn't get to see the Mayor's office upstairs, but I do commend the folks at San Fran City Guides- an all volunteer run org. offering FREE tours of the city. We also spent some time talking to a lovely guide who used to work for Enron (remember that name?) but got out before the S#^t hit the fan.
Next we wandered around a bit to see the city. It was grid-like like many (except Boston) are.
It was nice to see this sign. I imagine Chavez is a big hero and idol to many in these parts. Sadly, he is less well known in our parts. I remember teaching about Hispanic folks during heritage month (9/15-10/15) and many had never heard of Cesar Chavez :(
And there it was again, all that Giants pride showing EVERYWHERE!
I liked these large houses on corner of S. Van Ness + 26th St. It reminded me of Dutch-influenced structures.
Not quite brownstones, but compact houses in a lot of residential neighborhoods (like somebody gave them a big 'ole squeeze).
I could have sworn I saw the same guy in Brooklyn during the summer!
As my friend Joanne would say, "Now those were some travelers!" I think they were passerby's as well- not looking like they wanted/needed a Sharpkut.
This was one of the sad and pathetic things I saw that made me shake my head at San Fran. How gross to cement to the ground these rocks to discourage loitering and it's a Vet Center too.
Then came the oddest and also fun to be witness/part of= Halloween in San Francisco:
 
The city by the bay at night.
        Here you can read about them if you'd like (I have no desire to write about them). http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Words-take-wing-in-North-Beach-artwork-3183805.php     
And a bevy of girls, some culling thru their booty, others more interested in their phones (it certainly is a changing world!).
Critical Mass is a mass bicycle ride that takes place on the last Friday of each month in cities around the world and since in October 2014, it falls right on Halloween, riders dress up and ride through the city as a costumed parade. Market Street
We found this outside the famous City Lights Bookstore. The trail is sort of West Coast version of East Coast Freedom trail in Boston, only a few hundred years later. We DID NOT walk the 4 mile trail.
   
Not many people out E-Vaping it on Halloween in SF. I kind of wanted to go in and inquire and mayhaps try, but those days have just aged right out of me and all I wanted to do was sleep!
I just have to say something here now before we move on. I already wrote about the amazing visit to Alcatraz in another post. But what I neglected to tell about was how we got hustled by a Buddhist Priest down at the pier. Well at least he said he was. Here he is:
So you can see he has a pouch in front of his monastic robe. He approached us and handed us Kai Guang Amulets. We looked at the shiny discs and said "thank you." He shook his head vehemently in a "no" response way (as if he knew no English). My bullshit meter started ticking. I have deep respect for Buddhist philosophy and those who practice its precepts. But something was fishy here down at the Pier. We were a bit bewildered and perplexed. Next he reached in to his pouch and pulled out cheap prayer bead bracelets and pushed them at us. Now we were weary. We shook our heads no. Then out came his little notebook ledger that had names in one column and "donations" in another. He then is shoving this at us with a pen and his first English word, "sign." It was not in a "loving kindness" way either. It was a directive. The whole thing felt very scammy at this point because we had the shiny amulets in our hands that we thought were gifts. Only now it was a "you must pay" situation. I pulled out a $10 bill and the dude had the audacity to shake his head no again. He pointed to some other fools signature and $20 mark in his little ledger. I shook my head just like he did, "NO." I started to put my money back and he said, "ok, ok." Money given ledger signed and he handed us the additional cheap beads and we said what we have been trained to say, even though we knew at that point we had been scammed. "Thank you," we said. No "your welcome," or "Namaste," he quickly scurried away to the next "victim" to hustle as you can see from my shot. It was all such a yukky feel, I was saddened to find this. Mere mortals we all are I reminded myself. He was a slimy one dressed in a Monks garb. I'm pretty sure he was not from the Vietnamese "socially engaged" buddhism developed in the Bay area by Thich Nhat Hanh. I think he was Chinese. But alas, I will never know because the slim slithered away without offering any information on who he was or what he was doing.
Here are our "gifts"
 
The pier is a very busy place full of tourists, even on a Thur. morning.
  
This young lady had such a cool dog collar I just had to ask her about it. She said she found an old dust mop + made it out of that. She was such a lovely person. She explained that she has a seizure disorder and her dog can sense them coming on and helps her. Incredible the relationships some of us have with our animal friends.
  
because he was just setting up and we were on our way.
Next up is one of our favorite ways to see a city on the fly:
Three hours on top in the front row was cool. No like it really was cool, like almost freezingly cool. But well worth it. Here is what we saw:
 While we were waiting for the bus to go I just shot random stuff       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbo's_365_Club   I captured skating man in time lapse video: 
The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline. The building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, who moved their U.S. headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland, but it is still associated with the company and is depicted in the company's logo. Designed by architect William Pereira and built by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, at 853 ft. on completion in 1972 it was the eighth tallest building in the world.
North Beach's Little Italy a restaurant that serves over 3,000 lbs. of garlic a MONTH. No evil spirits here. Unfortunately no time for us to sample.
Columbus Tower, also known as the Sentinel Building is a mixed-used building in San Francisco, California completed in 1907. The distinctive copper-green Flatiron style structure is bounded by Columbus Avenue, Kearny Street and Jackson Street, straddling the North Beach-, Chinatown-, and Financial-districts of the city. It is designated landmark number 33
I loved these old copper and iron fire escape staircases
   
Dapper dude is strolling in the Business district
 But apparently there is a line somewhere on Market St. that demarks the Tenderloin district. At first I thought, "Wow another avid Giants display. Then when I saw Glide on the awning I thought upscale store, but I was very wrong.
I did some reading on this area and found this site:
The blogger did an excellent job on the history of the district.
 The police were just arriving on the scene.  
This kind pedestrian went out to help. She was yelling, "hey someone help. hey this man was just hit by a car!"
We moved on, but still were in the Tenderloin. In fact I got the feeling the bus spent too much time there so we all could gawk. I was torn about this, but photo documented anyway.
Hotel Aldrich. 439 Jones Street. Rooming house with fifty-four rooms and fifteen baths. Architect: Charles Peter Weeks. 1910.
The stories these rooms could tell...
 
I mean just look at the vibrant colors and visible vitality of this gaggle of gals!
Another disparity in views= a cute kid fence alongside a serious barbed fence. Makes me wonder why.
Here's the edges of the Tenderloin. Basic working class digs.
 
Don't you just want to know who the New Princess is and whatever happened to the old one. Tenderloin Turf Wars?
  I need to copy what I found on the front page of the site:
The Tenderloin: A Neighborhood Turned Inside Out
October 14, 2014
It’s spectacle for the folks on the tourist buses, people who have been warned not to come to the Tenderloin yet are shepherded through on double-deckers to gawk or avert their eyes. But for 20,000 or more, the Tenderloin is home. Whether on one’s own, in a couple, as a family of
two or more generations, in a condominium you own, an apartment you rent, an
SRO (single-room only) hotel or under a cardboard canopy, from elders to newborns,
this place is home.
For a City that prides itself on its progressive politics and policies, making the
Tenderloin a catchment area for the illicit drug and sex trade must seem to some to
be a good deal for the rest of the city. For the vast majority of the city these crimes,
the degradation, are dramatically less visible. And with an injustice system the only
possible intermediary in the best of situations, what can anyone really hope for to
change this picture?
The shining light of the Tenderloin is nearly impossible to see when we look with
that lens focused on the shadow. If we spend time on the streets we begin to
experience the kindness, the generosity, the humor, the playfulness, the resilience.
No one is all of what they have done, right or wrong. And if you cannot see yourself
calling for a street sweep, condemning men and women to our horrific, soul-stealing
injustice system, you either turn away, run away if you can, or step in and search for
something else to make some kind of sense, some kind of meaning, some kind of tie
between and among us.
If you spend a little time on the streets with the Faithful Fools the particularity and
complexity of the people come through—not just the people we see, we talk with,
but our own complexity too. We are asked to keep in the forefront of our minds
these words: What holds me separate? What keeps me separated? As I walk the streets
what still connects me? With these words, this mantra, we face our own fears,
shattering myths we hold in our heads and hearts, and find our common humanity.
And that makes all the difference.
JD Benson
      http://johannapoethig.com/public-art-projects/humming-with-life/ So it wasn't the neighborhood, it was an artist. I don't know the process of procuring her or who she is (does she live in the neighborhood?) I still thought it was cool.    http://www.studycenter.org/test/cce/issues/84/ccx.84-cp4&5.pdf   
So this was the end of the Tenderloin and you definitely knew we left by remaining pictures.
|
The median price of homes currently listed in Pacific Heights is $1,795,000 while the median price of homes that sold is $1,311,750.
Our final morning was spent seeking out very specific architecture that I really wanted to see. I think I will leave them for another day.
I love architecture, and could look at it all day. But I really, really have a hard time with the great disparities in our midst. Disparities of income, wealth, education, and access. I dislike how expensive SF seemingly is. How much wealth and yet so much poverty. How and why this happens is complex, I know. But I just don't like them, no I don't. I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
Does money give you the ability to be ultra-liberal? And if it does, do you loose some of the "salt-of-the-earth" humanity that the masses experience? What do you do when you get there (in the Ultra-Liberal neighborhood of anything over say $1 mill. for your home)? Do you drive by the Tenderloin and avert your eyes? Do you drive around and never look? I get poverty, I don't understand affluence. That to me means you have whole bunches of money and most likely you don't share much of it, otherwise you might not have_______(you fill in the blank). When and what is too much and what is not enough? And who decides? I just don't know. What I do know is I was not fond of SF. Too hilly, too expensive, and just not my cup of herbal antioxidant naturally made cup of tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment