San Francisco Pictures

There was a lot of unusual stuff in San Francisco, but I had forgotten the spare battery for my camera, so I restrained myself. Also, if I had taken pictures of everything that caught my eye I would never have put the camera down. There were a few people that I wish I had talked to and taken their picture, but that's hard to do, and it would have embarrassed my daughter. Anyway, here's some pics:

Mural on side of house in the Sunset Neighborhood
Click the link to see the rest.

Update May 2019 replaced dead Picasa album with link to Google Drive.

Parking in San Francisco

I don't know if parking in San Francisco is actually worse than it is in Portland, or if it just seems that way because it was unfamiliar to me. A week ago Saturday daughter and I borrowed my brother's van and headed downtown to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, which is a street that runs along the waterfront in downtown. We got to downtown on Mission. We drive by a parking garage across the street from Bloomingdales (which backs onto the Westfield Center, where we had lunch later on). It might be a good place to park, but I want to see just how far it is to the Ferry Building, so we drive on until we get there. It's not too far (about a mile), but the Embarcadero is a parking lot and it takes forever to get turned around and head back the way we came. We spot two parking garages on the way back, but one is a city garage and is closed for renovation and the other is only open on weekdays.

There are lots of parking meters, but they only take coins to the tune of $3.50 an hour, or some sort of card that you have to get beforehand from some unknown location. We finally spot a hotel with parking. The guy quotes me $10 for the first hour, and $4 an hour after that. Fine, we've been in the car for pert near two hours and I am ready to be out. Turns out the rate was $4 for each additional HALF-hour, which made our total parking bill $30 for three and a half hours. Fortunately they take credit cards.

We went out to eat a couple of times in Central San Francisco, not downtown, but busy areas. My brother drove. Sometimes we had to drive around five or six blocks before we could find a place to park, and it was always marginal. There are never any open parking spaces on business streets. It looks like there are lots of spaces on the surrounding residential streets, but they are actually driveways, fire hydrants or loading zones. Once we found a place to park between two driveways. Dan had to adjust the car twice to avoid impinging on the driveways. We are talking inches here.

Down in the Sunset, where he lives, it's a little better, but not much. Houses are built right next to each other, like row houses, but each one is a little different. Most houses have single garages and a single driveway. Sidewalks are wide, 15 feet minimum, and go from the street to the front of the house. Some houses, maybe half, have some kind of shrubs or flowers out front, but you are just as likely to see a car parked on the sidewalk. Once again you have the appearance of lots of available parking spaces on the street, but they are actually driveways. Lots of concrete, asphalt and stucco and virtually no grass.

The North-South streets are a normal width: four lanes, two traffic lanes in the center with one parking lane along each side. The East-West streets are like expressways: six or seven lanes wide, and they go for forever. I'm pretty sure I've seen these streets in the movies. There is very little traffic because every two blocks there is a stop sign. It's very odd. On one hand it feels very cramped, on the other it seems like there is an awful lot of space. Next time there is a boom here I would expect this area to be made over.

Don't leave anything valuable, or anything that looks like it could contain something valuable, like a paper bag, in your car because that is a recipe for having someone break into your car and steal it.


View C & K's Trip To San Francisco in a larger map

Philz Coffee

Diligent daughter ran across this place last time she was here, so naturally we had to stop by and sample the wares. We were so busy goofing off that we didn't get around to stopping in till we were on the way to airport. We got a pretty amazing show. It's about 9AM and there are a lot of people standing around waiting for coffee. Once we get past them there is virtually no line at the register, but the cashier tells us to repeat our order to the barristas: they don't keep track of what you order. There are two guys making drinks and they are just flying. Right away one of them wants to know what we are drinking, which makes me think that our drinks will be ready soon.

They don't have an espresso machine, they are making drip coffee. They each have four funnels in front of them, a hot water dispenser between them, and a coffee grinder on the counter in back of them. Each drink involves putting in a paper filter in the funnel, pouring in the right amount of coffee and then the water. Slap, bam, boom, no hesitation, no fooling around and the drinks appear, one after another. But not our drinks. I think the guy we were waiting on must have made about 10 drinks before he got to ours and he made them all correctly. Just amazing.

P.S. While I was in San Francisco I stopped ordering regular coffee and started ordering lattes. Every regular coffee I got tasted like Starbucks coffee: way, way too strong. A latte is just coffee with milk, which is how I drink my coffee anyway. Kind of stupid to have to pay extra just for the fancy name, but at least it's drinkable.

San Francisco Crazies

We ran into several odd people while we were in San Francisco. Our first one was a woman working at the local Safeway collecting grocery carts. She's hustling carts, bagging groceries and carrying on conversations with customers left, right and center.

On Saturday we went downtown and a couple of women asked us for money in very polished and polite phrasing, not your typical requests for "spare change". We also saw a tap dancer and several musicians. The tap dancer was a black man about seven feet tall and a hundred and fifty pounds, no shirt and he's dancing on a steel plate about two feet in diameter. We saw guys playing trumpet, saxophone and drums. One mad drummer in front of the Ferry Building had a sign promoting his YouTube video. He also had a group of fans dancing. Then there was this pair of guys with the accordion and drum:
Click the pick to see the video.

On Sunday we went from a walk in the park out to Land's End. We saw this guy going the other way. He seemed a little off. He was looking at some plants by the side of the path and he pulled one up. He only has one sock and he has an empty id holder clipped to his shirt. On our way back we catch up with this same guy, and again he is looking at something on the ground by the side of the path. He picks it up and examines it. He notices us walking by and he turns to me and hands me a key telling me something about his "soistahs" and to take a few days for myself at Goth (Gough?) & Broadway. Then he walks off on another path, smiling and waving. Why did he pick me? Later on daughter tells me she could smell alcohol on him.

On Monday we spent some time walking around the Fisherman's Wharf area, which is mega-tourist land. We're walking down the sidewalk. The edge of sidewalk along the street has stuff on it like parking meters, plants, signs, trash cans, etc. Up ahead we see a couple walking and just as they pass by a bush, the bush leans out and roars at them. Gave them a start and gave everyone else a good laugh. 30 seconds later the performance repeats itself. I howled. I gave the guy running this ruse a buck. Funniest thing I've seen in a while.

Tuesday we went to Haight-Ashbury just to see what it looked like. There was one black man sitting on a box on a corner yelling his head off. It was mostly unintelligible, but occasionally I thought I could hear him say "Get A Room".

On Wednesday, on our way to the airport we were stopped at a light and we saw a woman stop in the middle of crosswalk and put on some kind of performance. She might have talking to someone in another car, or someone we couldn't see, or someone who wasn't there. She was gesturing and, for want of a better word, posing. It was quite a show.

I'm Back

Just got back from a week in San Francisco with my daughter visiting my brother Dan, his wife and new baby (!!!). Baby is only two months old. It's been a long time since I've been around a kid this small. It was fun. I'm so much older than her it's like she's my granddaughter.

We hiked around town, went out to eat, did a little shopping (I bought a battery for my watch). I finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. It is an amazing book. He covers more ground in one volume than you could get out of a dozen lesser books. It will take me some time to digest it.

I wanted another book for the flight home, but I was pretty beat, so I picked up something light at the airport bookstore: Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich. Funny murder mystery. I get a kick out of it every time I open it.

Paranoia (or common sense?) kept me from putting up a note explaining my absence here. I could have put up a few post-dated posts before leaving, but that would have required planning ahead. I had access to a computer, so I could have posted while I was there, but it was nice not to be slaving away at the computer for a while.

Anyway, I was away, I had a good time, and now I'm back.

Bicycle Lift in Trondheim, Norway

California Bob reports on a similar endeavor in San Francisco:

Bicycle Lift Shuts Down

20 months after its installation, the Post Street hill bicycle lift in San Francisco is being dismantled.

Modeled after a $20,000 bicycle lift in Trondheim Norway, the lift was originally budgeted at $100,000 and scheduled to open in 1999. The construction was blocked for years by various special interest groups. The automobile lobby spent an estimated $5 billion dollars lobbying against the project, and several city supervisors receiving contributions vociferously opposed the lift, citing noise from the chains, the possibility of skateboarders using the lift for unintended purposes, and safety issues of people tripping over the rails. Wildlife advocates argued that squirrels and rats might get their tails stuck in the machinery, and the lesbian coalition raised a similar argument about cats. Advocates for the homeless opposed the lift for not accommodating shopping carts. Several bicycle groups even argued against the project, arguing that the lift would encourage bicycle use by less dedicated riders who "didn't deserve" to ride bicycles.

The project even drew the ire of the group Support and Advocacy for Depressed, Sad and Angry Citizens, who argued that the word "lift" was discriminatory. According to SADSAC chairman Bill Blight: "The word 'lift' implies that being lifted, elevated or raised to new levels, either physically or emotionally, is somehow desirable. Adoption of such ugly attitudes is sure to engender persecution against persons in low spirits."

After 7 years of hearings, the project eventually won adoption. Interest groups successfully pushed through engineering changes, including: modifying the lift to accommodate shopping carts, wheelchairs, skateboards, motorcycles, small boats, furniture dollies, cars, and tractor trailers; 24 hour security surveillance; GPS systems to track a riders progress as they progressed up the lift; 4 handicap-access restrooms along the lift's route; an architect-designed facade and tower to meet neighborhood aesthetic standards; and enclosing the project in 6-foot thick concrete walls to secure it against terrorist attacks. Engineering changes pushed the project's costs form $100,000 to $5.4 billion.

The lift opened in early 2008, with a per-use rider fee of $625. During its operation the lift served a total of 43 users, 40 of whom belonged to a single wedding party of a Hong Kong billionaire, who used the lift for a one-time photo op. The lift was shut down after a homeless man fell off a stack of garbage cans while trying to gain illicit access to the lift. He is suing the city for $7 million to cover a bruised shin and a torn loincloth.

The city has contracted with a central valley salvage firm to dismantle the project at a cost of $1.4 million. A spokesman for the salvage company said: "We already have a number of parties asking for items from the project -- mostly superwealthy clients looking for 'design items' for yachts and penthouses. Plus we'll get a few hundred for the scrap metal."