5. Transbay Transit Center

Previous - 4. tl; dr

SOMA east

Today I walked around the area of SOMA that was once a wasteland and is now becoming San Francisco's "New" downtown. Not only are they building what will become the city's tallest building, but there is a neighborhood here that nobody really laid claim to so they were able to zone it for the tall residential buildings the city actually could use more of. 

The focus of the new commercial district will be the new Transbay Transit Center:

The white, horizontal structure is the new Transbay Transit Center. Behind it is a new building from last year that is a favorite of mine.

A closeup of the Transbay's metallic skin.

The structure will be retail at ground level; bus station in the middle; and park on top -- if they can come up with the funding for the park. There's space for a train station below ground if they can ever bring High Speed Rail or Caltrain this far into the City.

The building on the left is the new Salesforce Tower (both Tower and Transit Center by César Pelli) which is to be the tallest in town. Note the wide bridge connecting the Tower to the Transit Center park.

I need to go back and get more pictures. Still getting used to carrying my camera around -- it's been a long time. 

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4. tl; dr

Previous - 3. Change

Dream

I don't usually feel old. But I just woke up from a dream that makes me feel really old.

In the dream I was riding around in a car with a bunch of people (after a storm?) and idly writing computer programs (?!). At the very end I was getting kind of excited about rediscovering clever things you could do in the second language I learned -- which was natural language so you could guess the syntax, for the most part. Just as I was waking up I thought, "Wait. I can use copies of the technical books I wrote about that language to remind myself of exactly what you can do."

But then I realized HyperCard wouldn't run on any of my current machines... then I remembered the Mac from the late '90s I have in storage, but that's doubtful, too. And I don't have a monitor for that machine (not really sure about this). I have one of the early Mac laptops from the early '90s, but the hard drive died on that machine years ago. I was regretting (again) not saving my original Mac, but even if I had, that wouldn't help unless I also had a hard drive to go with it. This got me thinking about just how primitive that first wonderful Macintosh computer really was and about Bill Atkinson -- one of the original Mac team who was also one of the co-creators of HyperCard. (See also HERE ) I met Atkinson and his wife, Sioux, at a Mac software event (at Cañada College) in (probably) 1987-8. He was really interesting to talk to and I had an immediate crush on her. I always hoped I'd run into them again but never did.

Then I remembered that she died recently.  Someone I only remember as a young woman from 30 years ago.

Music, old

In today's paper there was a column by a writer who is probably around my age (I'm guessing) about not knowing -- or putting on his iPod -- any music since 1980. I'm guessing he was exaggerating (writers do that) but this is something that bugs the hell out of me. I mean people my age who don't know more recent music. I've even written about this before in my other blogs.

But tonight I clicked on one of those playlists YouTube assembles for you based on things you've listened to in the past, and I couldn't help noticing that much of the music collected there was in fact old -- but covered, either by Glee or Sid & Susie. (Not sure where the Aurora songs came from, but I'm sure YouTube had its reasons.) Why is it better (in my eyes) when old music is covered than when you simply hear the original 40 or 50 year old versions? (There's another factor that I won't go into that could also explain this, having to do with something Glee -- or Santana -- and Sid & Susie -- well, Susie -- have in common, but that would be beneath me.) And this leads us to a discussion of...

Covers

Covers are recordings of previously recorded music. "Cover Girl" by Shawn Colvin is a wonderful example of covers and the three "Under the Covers" albums by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs are my favorite examples of covers, though Glee takes the cake (odd term). 

Here's something I think a lot about but don't know what to think about: Are close covers (this is my terminology for covers that are very close to the original -- Naya Rivera excels at close covers) better than covers that emphasis the vocal characteristics of the cover-er -- Susanna Hoffs is the queen of this, in my biased view. Naya's version (or parts) of "We Found Love in a Hopeless Place" by Rihanna and Susanna's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" are good examples of what I mean.

Next - Transbay Transit Center

3. Photos

Previous - 2. Change

Ocean Ave, 2

After forty years in the City I still forget how foggy it is on the west side of town in the summer. Downtown it was sunny and a bit warm (for here.) In the Ingleside it was cold and the fog was at street level in places.  

Above and below are shots of the complex that has replaced the auto parts store. (That's an outbound K streetcar above.)

Above and below are shots of the building where the streetcar turnaround and parking lot were.

Above are the two building across the street from Whole Food. The one with scaffolding up is the older, already in need of maintenance. 

A too quick shot of Beep's Burgers -- a long time, local hangout that still exists under new management.

Here's the new bus terminus and turnaround.

Since I was there I decided I should grab my own shot of City College up on the hill, but the fog had other ideas,

It would be up behind the pole in the center of the shot if you could see it.

And here's a bonus, the recently closed, last gun store in San Francisco (in the Mission district and more or less on my way home if I take the bus so I can stop at my favorite taqueria,)

 

Postscript

You are supposed to be able to edit in Photobucket, and I can -- the edits just don't stick. If I can figure out what's going wrong I will crop most of these photos much tighter.

Update

A day later my edits are all there, but now we have the problem that what Photobucket saves is not what you see in the editor. I'm going to try to make these as presentable as possible but I'm also going to switch to Google Photo. I use so much Google software pretty soon I'm going to have to make Google the beneficiary of my estate.

EDIT: Now lets see what Google Photo can do. Here's that neighborhood building I mentioned that has a modern take on bay windows,

Now let's try some shots that have been edited:

Lesson above, don't save low-res if you're going to crop.

This is a closeup of the overhead wires in the photo above.

One of SF's old ballrooms.

So it works. I just need to keep an eye on the image quality.

Next - 4. tl: dr

2. Change

Previous - In which we begin

Ocean Ave

Forty years ago this stretch of Ocean Ave. near City College was dead and decrepit. Besides City College itself, up on the hill, 

Two things worth noting in this image: The Benny Bufano St. Francis statue in the foreground and the legend carved above the entrance, which I've always thought was a little too close to "Arbeit Macht Frei." 

...the most fun thing out here was the street car turnaround by the fire station. When the K-Ocean street car completed it's outbound run, the car would loop around behind the fire station, through a passage between the fire station and the college bookstore, and then the driver would take his break at this old, covered facility built between sets of tracks (or tracks and a bus lane -- I can't quite recall and I can't find a photo.) Just to the north was a sloping mound of dirt that was one edge of an old reservoir in the years before it occurred to people that a massive volume (and weight) of water contained by dirt mounds, with thousands of people living below, probably wasn't a good idea. This is only a few miles from the epicenter of the 1906 earthquake. (OK, more than just a few miles but still pretty close.)

First the K-Ocean line was extended across the freeway to the BART station so you could connect between train and what was now termed "light-rail." (If you could discover where the light-rail stopped, as the signage was possibly the worst I've seen anywhere.)

More recently, the auto-parts store -- and its large parking lot -- were replaced by a generic apartment complex with retail below. I'm sitting in the cafe of the Whole Food market where the parking lot used to be. To me that's progress. 

The streetcar turn-around was finally removed and reconfigured for several bus lines, making space for yet another apartment building. And there are now a couple more new buildings added across Ocean. Meanwhile, the old reservoir evolved from college parking lot to an extension of the City College campus. 

The street and sidewalks were tarted up over a decade ago now -- though they are still making local improvements -- and the commercial strip west of the reservoir in now looking more prosperous, though one wouldn't call it upscale by any means. A small Target store opened there just recently (I guess you could call it a "small box" store) and more buildings are going up increasing, one supposes, the foot traffic on Ocean. There's even a new branch library. 

A friend of mine bought a house a block off Ocean twenty some-odd years ago because it was the only place they could afford in the City. I just checked Zillow and they now value that property at just under a million dollars. (Zillow is not always accurate, it's way off with my condo, but I don't think this is too far off.)

Progress or just change?

I can't really say anything in favor of these new buildings besides that they house hundreds of people -- and a few businesses -- in structures that meet current seismic standards. I've seen worse, but I couldn't pick these structures out of an architectural lineup. 

It is hard to design buildings that look like "San Francisco" architecture without simply mimicking the familiar bay windows. One local architect has tried to invent new versions of the bay window but, while one is in my neighborhood and I think it's an interesting looking structure, I had to be informed that that's what they were up to. Borrowing space, and light, and views, from the street is something that should appeal to even today's developers, but few of the new buildings attempt it. 

One of the first post WW2 skyscrapers here, what was then the Bank of America headquarters, did perhaps the best job of incorporating this feature in a modern building -- though it is surrounded by a stupid plaza so is more form than function.

To be fair, my favorite buildings downtown, mostly built after 1906 and before 1950, do not have a distinctly San Francisco character either. Their appearance was shaped by the École des Beaux-Arts -- rather than the more recent structures that are shaped by the Bauhaus -- and could probably have been built in any American city of the day. 

Here's a perfect way to wrap up this post: A Muni driver just came into the cafe to buy some refreshments before his next run. He at least has many more options than he would have had even 10 years ago.

Postscript

As I was boarding the streetcar to go home after writing the above, it suddenly occurred to me that I could take photos of what I was talking about. Genius! I'm going to publish this now just to keep my momentum from falling victim to the entropy of not-planning-what-your-doing, but I now think I see one way this blog will be different than the ones before. I will be doing more "showing" along with all the "telling."

Next - 3. Photos

1. In which we begin

Link to Table of Contents

New blog

I've published three previous "blogs" but I've always cheated before. These were projects I created and edited over time and then finally published in blog format. This time I want to do something in real time. I may come back later and edit, but I will publish whatever I think of writing on a given day. Spontaneity will be my watchword. (That may be a better name for the blog.) (Reading this years later I'm sorry to say that not only did this "real time" aspect not happen, but I had even forgotten that was the plan. Maybe I will try getting back to this.)

I'm sure I will also alter the format as I proceed.

Starting...

You'd think this would be the place for me to describe what all is on my mind at the moment, but I'm here in part to escape all that, so, no.  I will say that it's a lovely summer in San Francisco -- which means it's been cold to sort-of-warm with our usual mid-day sun book-ended by fog blowing off the Pacific. Yesterday the marine layer was particularly low and dense and when I walked out into our alley, just after 7am, the air smelled of the beach. Quite wonderful. 

I used to think that maybe someday I would move to Seattle or Portland for the even cooler and rainier weather, but whenever I'm up there it is sunny and hot; so now I think of moving out to the west edge of SF bordering the beach. The Outside Lands are like a different city, and it takes forever to get out there by bus or light rail. It still has a beach town vibe -- though one wonders how long that can last the way SF is getting built up.

Martha Grimes & Emma Graham (hint: like Superman & Clark Kent)

I'm also near the end of one of my favorite books, Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes. I think this is my third reading. At this point I'm only allowing myself to read one short chapter at a time, so as to draw out the time I have before the book ends. There are two sequels to this, the second book in the series, but I think this is the best of the four so I'm savoring it. 

If I was teaching creative writing, I would assign The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery to teach the concepts of foreshadowing and misdirection. Then I would forbid my students to read Martha Grimes' Emma Graham novels because they so spectacularly violate all the rules of novelistic conservation. (There's probably a good technical term for this, but I can't be bothered to look it up because I'm just so spontaneous.) What I mean are the conventions in novels -- and even more so on screen -- that if you introduce something (a gun, say) you have to use it, and if you introduce a character -- give that character a name and a personality -- they have to play a role in the plot of the story. 

It's like Martha Grimes' books are haunted by characters that sprang up almost against the author's wishes and who then not only refuse to leave but demand additional scenes. My fallback position, since I couldn't really forbid the reading of these novels, would be to use her as an example for characterization. Delbert, the taxi driver, is my favorite example of this. I was surprised to discover this reading of Hotel Paradise, the first novel in this series, that Delbert didn't yet have a personality in the first book. His only role is to transport Emma from place to place in the interest of her investigations, so there's no reason he should have a personality. But, slowly, he has gained one. It seems that with every ride we see him a little more clearly and I know by the end he will be one of my favorite, mostly irritating to Emma, characters while serving no purpose at all (aside from his driving) in furthering the plot.

Really starting...

Well this is not auspicious. I've been so involved in the real world problems I'm trying to avoid, that it's now been a week since I wrote the above. I completed Cold Flat Junction and immediately moved on to Belle Ruin -- for me the equivalent of lighting the next cigarette with the dying embers of the prior one.

But this time I'm really going to do it.

Presidential election

I'm not looking forward to the next three months -- and I'm not referring to the problems facing my HomeOwners Association, but rather the Presidential election. I avoided almost all the coverage of the Republican convention besides what flashed at me on The Onion, YouTube, and Facebook. So far the begging for Democratic contributions is annoying me as much as the Republican oratorical idiocy. 

It's beginning to look like America may need to consider something more like a city manager/mayor form of government. We may need a high visibility office for everyone to see while the actual work of government is done by a more professional federal manager. Mind you, I don't think this is actually possible, I'm just saying it would make sense. This is also a way of saying that we need a legal guardian since we seem no longer capable of making important decisions for ourselves. Historically, this is interesting -- though painful to observe.

To cope with my HOA problems I really ought to be drinking more or abusing drugs -- like a normal person. But that doesn't work very well for me (so far) so I seem to be eating out more instead. Partly this is because there has been an amazing racket coming up from directly below my unit the past several weeks, as concrete and dirt and old walls were removed and then replaced with new ones after studs and joists and posts and beams were all fastened together in a truly impressive way. The racket should be coming to an end next week. 

Unfortunately, three of my neighborhood hangouts -- where I would normally be hanging out more -- are owned by the unit owner I'm attempting to force to vacate his unit so we can complete our seismic work. Normally I never see him, but the day after I sent out an assertive email he walked into the pizzeria where i was eating. Awkward. Since then I've avoided his establishments. 

I'm doing a really bad job of avoiding this topic, aren't I? 

Berkeley Kite Festival

Next weekend is the Berekely Kite Festival, one of my favorite events. Work-wise it's problematic: The event is stretched over a large area (on top of an old landfill on the edge of the Bay) and Berkeley city crews pick up the bags of trash we collect and don't much care where they go. We have to fight to get our sorted compost in the dedicated compost truck. This is even more of a problem at the end of the day as they make their final pass through the event with the trucks picking up all the remaining bags. 

But, the kites are spectacular in the (usually momentarily) blue sky mid-day, with SF and the Bay to the west and the Berkeley Hills rising to the east. As with Berkeley 4th of July (on the other, south, side of the Marina) it isn't easy to get in and out of this event, you end up walking a long way, but it's worth the trouble. The International Dragon Boat Races on Treasure Island is even better (and easier to access), but that's still two months in the future.

Apple Stores

We're still years from the opening of our new (Central) subway, which runs almost underneath my building, but the new Apple Store opened some weeks ago now. 

I much prefer the look of the store in Portland, 

but this location (by Foster + Partners) features massive, multi-story, sliding glass doors that open the store to both the sidewalk and Union Square to the south, and a courtyard, featuring a Ruth Osawa fountain I'm very fond of, on the north. 

I have no reason to be in the store (my only Apple product is my original iPod Nano with a battery so dead I have to leave it plugged in all the time) but I did stroll through once just to see what it was like. 

Every time I pass it's packed with people -- doing what I'm not sure. I wish Google would take over their old store location, down Stockton at Ellis, for Chromebooks. I wouldn't mind having access to a Genius Bar for Chrome and Chromebook questions. Not that I have that many at the moment.

...Now

Next - 2. Change