This seven-minute film taken from the front of a San Francisco streetcar going the length of Market Street toward the Ferry Building is said to have been shot four days before the earthquake and fire of 1906, and to have survived because it was sent by train to New York for processing before the quake. Virtually all of the buildings shown (except the Ferry Building itself) were destroyed in the quake.
The street scene is lively and chaotic, and many details are fascinating.
Most people would probably take BART and the Oakland International Airport connector shuttle. (The trip takes about 45 minutes and costs around $10.)
But Delta Airlines offers a new option. Their “Weekly Fare Specials” newsletters alerts travelers to the special fare of $69 from SFO to OAK.
You will go through Salt Lake City, where you will have about an hour layover. Your total time for the trip will be around four hours, not counting the usual air travel issues of security and the like.
I am hereby calling for a criminal investigation of CalTrans and the Bay Bridge repair contractor, C.C. Myers Inc. It’s a miracle the failure of the bridge repair did not kill several people, less than two months after the original repair work.
Blaming yesterday’s moderate breeze — in the 20-30 mph range around the bridge — is unacceptable. The original bridge lasted for 70+ years in all sorts of weather conditions. The bridge has to be functional every day, not just in good weather.
Someone has to have been criminally negligent in this incident.
I’m back from vacation, just in time to find that governor Arnold has sent a not very subtle message to the city by the bay, and the California legislature. As reported in the Guardian’s online site, the governor sent the following letter accompanying his veto of a bill sponsored by SF Assemblyman Tom Ammiano that would have strengthened the financing of the Port of San Francisco.
To decipher the governor’s real message, read the first letters of each line of the two main paragraphs.
I long for the day we have a grown-up person in the governor’s office.
Today’s image of shafts of sunlight cutting through tall redwoods along a Muir Woods hiking trail comes from vgm8383’s photostream. This is an HDR (high dynamic range) photo — a technique that combines multiple exposures to give a greater range of tonal detail. It worked pretty well in this instance because Muir Woods is surprisingly dark (test it with a light meter if you don’t believe me), and the light is very green.
This image of the presidio in 1887 comes from the public library’s historical photographs collection. Of interest are the small trees (today a large grove or forest) that punctuate the landscape. It is easy from this photo to picture how spare the sandy Pacific reaches of the city once were. The photograph is attributed to the U.S.Army Signal Corps; on the back is written the following:
PRESIDIO OF SAN FRANCISCO, 1887. This photograph was taken facing west and shows the Presidio Boulevard approach to the Post. The trees, planted in 1882 when Major General Irwin McDowell was Commander of the Western Department, today cover the hillsides.
We’ve all read the stories about the University of California’s budget problems. High adminstrator salaries. Tightening the screws on the grunt laborers who do all the actual work. Furlough days for teachers. Raising student fees. Etc.
Okay, now guess how much just one of the schools in the system is paying to just one athletic coach. The coach in question is Jeff Tedford, who coaches men’s football on the Berkeley campus.
Okay, I won’t make you guess. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Tedford is paid $1,850,000 per year. If I know Cal, and football, he probably gets a bunch of perks on top of that.
Recently we were out canoeing on the Napa-Sonoma Marsh. The tide was very strong, however, and we got a good workout paddling against it. In fact, as we navigated one slough we saw signs that other boaters before us had been overpowered by the tides and succumbed, never to regain civilization. Above a ghostlike figure restlessly haunts a wrecked craft.
Of course, boaters have been washing up stranded and meeting grizzly ends all over the greater Bay Area — the captain of the vessel below, if he surveyed at all, must have been forced to wade out through the muck. Why are our waterways so treacherous?
SFMOMApreparing for celebration of its 75th year : “a pioneering force in art worldwide and an unparalleled destination for the people of the San Francisco Bay Area” might be a little strong, but still …
There was a time when San Francisco’s Mitchell brothers were considered by many to be hip, heroes of the counterculture. Today, as a result of the direction their lives took, they are more likely to be perceived as examples of the degradations of porn.
But I’ve seen worse. Just the past weekend. In my own backyard.
I mean, the Mitchells weren’t cannibals, as far as I know. Apparently the same can’t be said for Cooper’s hawks. Four of the birds have been inhabiting my backyard this summer. They must have hatched from the same nest this spring. They got big fast, and our squirrels and finches have been looking nervous, keeping a wary lookout. These fierce birds squeeze their prey to death with their sharp viselike talons.
So this weekend I went out back and found that now we have three Cooper’s hawks — one of them was feasting on another. After I took the picture above it picked up the dead bird and flew away with it, as if it were but a single feather.
Let’s head down to SoCal for a picture today. This image of an artist on Venice Beach is one of my more popular photos posted to Flickr. Why is that, do you suppose?
Since converting our swimming pool to a garden we have had a lot more wildlife around. This year two pair of kestrels have taken up residence. We also have a lot of butterflies, beas, and hummingbirds.
This caterpillar is a swallowtail. They like plants in the carrot family, and this one was enjoying a lunch of dill. Eventually he will turn into a butterfly that will look something like this.
There are a few more photos in my nascent garden set on flickr.
