Sometime last month I went down to the Bay Area and visited an old friend and played with his kid and saw another old friend who was in town and visited his mother in the same awesomely cool old house she lived in when I was a little kid going to birthday parties, and hemmed and hawed and changed my mind three times and finally at the last minute went to my 30th high school reunion. That was fun: Talked to some folks, didn't talk to some others, stuff like that. But this isn't about that either.
That afternoon we went to the City, three men and a baby ('cept the baby was three), and walked around in San Francisco's brilliant sunshine and fresh air, and as usual I took too many pictures of buildings. What is it about buildings? One of the Three Occupations I Didn't Follow But Wish I Had is architect. I would have really enjoyed being an architect. Especially in San Fran. But no, so instead of design buildings I take pictures of them, especially the old brick ones that went up before they understood earthquakes yet have miraculously survived several.
And I take pictures of other things. Like where Sal lives. Up there somewhere under Coit Tower.
So that's what this post is about: Climbing out of the mental hell that is the mind of the hopeless corporate drone and posting a few pictures taken on a nice day in San Francisco.
13 comments:
Nice pics. I especially liked the F-line pics.
And, yes, you caught us. Were we waving?
Check out the Coit Tower photo. We're in a two-fer building. We have the top three floors of a five-floor place. (My, doesn't that sound grand ... but the building is maybe twenty-five feet wide, if that, so ...)
If you check out your photo, you'll see a terra cotta-colored building at 4:30 if Coit is 12. That building has its front door on lower Montgomery and its windows facing east.
We share the patch of dirt between the building and our walk. Well, "share" isn't the right word. We take care of the plot (which, as with all the dirt around the steps and the paths is City dirt but the neighbors take care of it) and we try to find plants that will grow in an inauspicious habitat.
At 4:30 'neath the terra cotta building if you look real close, you'll see a patch of something blue. That blue is the east facing wall of our top floor, which we painted a bright fisherman's blue after we moved in.
(Why? Because I wanted some color and I love bright hues. We also did the deck edges and trim in the same color and they look swell against the sky and against the Bay.)
Our deck is east of the blue, obviously. You can see the windows on our next two floors down and you can also just barely see the windows in the top floor of our downstairs' neighbors' two floors. North of us is a multi-floor yellow building. South of us is a brown building.
Got it? OK then, there you have us. If you're a stalker, you know where to find us.
Huh? No cookies?
Great pics, and very cool on the hospital thing.
I like Corporate Drone Mental Hell less than Christmas, because for one thing you don't get any presents for CDMH. And I know this post isn't about that, but the songs are also not as good.
The blue house is much clearer in the full-size picture file that I didn't upload. I won't upload it, lest Roy come west again and he and I and Harry get drunk and come sailing up Montgomery and get turned back at Julius' Castle and decided to stumble down the Filbert Steps looking for a blue building to bang on the door of ... Boys are weird, as Jen astutely observes, and there's no good in encouraging them. ;)
Great pics! Makes me want to come up there for a visit. That's another thing I hate about the OC: nothing good to take pics of.
another thing I hate about the OC: nothing good to take pics of
Take me to the beach in summertime, I'll find something.
Bravo on the singing, and lovely pics.
I think I remember a picture posted by Sal of the Filbert steps, and they didn't seem like something you would want to navigate while judgementally impaired.
-Roy
Nice pictures, by the way. I swear I'm going to visit the Bay Area one time with NO comittments, and do some serious goofing off.
Roy
Do you suppose S.F. can shake the "Baghdad by the Bay" moniker? I always thought it sounded stupid, and now it's even more inappropriate for such a great city.
Baghdad by the Bay was most appropriate before folks new anything much about Baghdad beyond 1001 Nights, and Herb Caen was making his way from martini to stylish martini. Sometimes I feel that if I could go anywhere back in time, I'd go to SF in about 1954. What a ride that would be.
By the way, that was fine day in The City, all the way around.
Mmm, yeah I suppose they coulda done much worse, like calling it "Calcutta by the Bay."
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