327. San Simeon elephant seals

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Photograph day

Was down the coast over the weekend and took some photos of elephant seals.

This is the weaner pile. These seals have been weaned and are just lying around burning off fat until their moms return from hunting and teach them to be swimming elephant seals.

It was an over-cast and on-and-off rainy day, but now is probably even better as they are getting a bigger storm that is probably dumping more water through the culvert onto the beach where the weaners are hanging out. They love playing in the water, they just aren't mobile enough to get to it unless it comes to them.


Below is a detail of the model of San Francisco that was created by WPA artists in the 1930s,

It's quite interesting seeing what San Francisco looked like in the late 1930s when the railroads still operated in much of the city. 

Something like half the total model has been distributed to the SF public libraries and is on display for the first time. I went around to all the libraries with a friend to see it. Above you can also see streetcar tracks that no longer exist. Large areas, especially on the west and south edges of SF were still undeveloped before the war. 

Unfortunately, the person who was looking out for the model (at UC Berkeley) had the very odd idea of updating it as the city changed. So some of the things I was eager to see, like the Montgomery Block, have been removed. Probably the worst thing done to the model, though this was itself a sign of the times, was when the Western Addition was updated to show what it would look like after redevelopment. The redevelopment did happen, but not the way the model depicts it. So what we see now is something that never actually existed. It is nice to see that it could have turned out even worse than it did, as the reality is bad enough.

And as long as I'm making use of relatively recent photographs, here's one of the best looking parklets I've seen here.

Having a brick wall between you and the traffic when you're sitting in the street isn't a bad idea at all. I haven't heard of anyone injured by traffic while enjoying a parklet, but it's bound to happen eventually.