31. Grids & Grahams

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Surprises where street grids meet

San Francisco has a typical American street grid, though not quite properly oriented north-south as you would expect. But then a diagonal street, Market, was tossed in with a completely different grid to the south (in SOMA). Besides creating a whole series of devilishly complicated intersections, this merging of grids does a couple interesting things.

This is a fun image. This shows Market separating the SOMA grid at the lower right from the Union Square/Financial District grid at the top left. You can use Maiden Lane and Commercial street to orient yourself if you know SF. Claude Place is missing along with my alley and at least one other mid-block street.

First, as Jane Jacobs pointed out, it creates perspectives ending in architecture on almost every street downtown -- at least when looking in one direction. The lack of streets that seem to run on forever is a key factor in making SF look compact and "different" for an American city.

The second, and I'm sure unintended, consequence of the  grid collision, is that it's hard to anticipate where something in the other grid is going to appear from the perspective of the grid you are in. And that -- long lead in -- is what I want to talk about.

The new Salesforce Tower is rising over where the old Transbay Terminal was, and when completed will be the tallest building in SF. Most of the tall buildings in town lie between there and where I live, so I assumed it would not affect the skyline for me. Wrong, as it turns out.

Recently it has reached a height where I can see it, still rising, in a gap between two nearer towers as I walk on Bush street just below where I live. (Where I took those "French" photographs.) A block above (literally) on Pine, the skyline is dominated by what was the BofA Building -- a massive, dark presence only a few blocks from me. 

But down on Bush you can hardly (if at all? You can see it from one sidewalk but not from the other.) see that structure due to the hill and other buildings, and now Salesforce is getting ready to take it's place as orientation point for SOMA and downtown. 

And I'm serious about the "orientation" aspect. Once it gets its decorative tower cap it will become a visual guide to where the Transbay Transit Center and that whole "new" area of town is and, consequently, where you are in relation to it. It will serve to end, at least in part, the disorientation of the grids. At least I think it will. There's a tiny chance that what I'm seeing is a lesser building also going up in the same area. If it is that building instead (which I really doubt) then Salesforce Tower is blocked and the effect I want wont come to fruition. Time will tell.

Belle Ruin

Yes, I'm still reading this as slowly as I can. Getting close to the end now and there's only one more book. 

Martha Grimes published Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism which I have not read. I'm interested, but I have the feeling I have everything I need to understand her in the Emma Graham novels. I don't really want to know if she is less like Emma than I think. But what got me thinking about this was a passage in Belle Ruin with a bit more detail than usual about Emma's mother.

While every cab driver and diner patron in this fictional world develops more and more of a character, Emma's mother does not. She stays a mystery outside of her cooking. As readers, we have to encourage Emma's independence and isolation -- we don't want her mother suddenly acting parental -- but it is odd and totally unexplained. She's like a cloaked character at the center of the book. In a sense everything revolves around her either as cook or mother or hotel co-owner, yet we can hardly see her. We know more about the cat.

I'm guessing if I read Double Double I would probably get some insight into this, but do I want to know too much? Now I'm sounding like Emma, with her round-about method of gaining information and not asking questions of the most obvious people.

Next - 32. Mann + retrofit

1. In which we begin

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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