230. A walk 'round SOMA

Almost winter 2017

I felt like a nice long walk today -- we have a long gap in the rains that finally arrived -- so I did my little architectural tour of SOMA. Here are some highlights.

A view of Salesforce Tower from Market, looking like an actual building,

Looking south down 1st street with Salesforce Tower on the left and the trees in the park now visible atop the Transbay Transit Center,

The other side of Salesforce (now on the right) with the start of the tram system that will lift people from this plaza up to the top of the TTC at the left,

Official details of the TTC,

The trains in the basement are a joke as there's no funding for either system, and the High Speed Rail scheme probably won't survive the end of this final Brown gubernatorial administration.

Yet another tower going up on the north side of the Temporary Transbay Terminal,

The support tower for the bus roadway that links TTC with I-80 and the Bay Bridge,

The completed (east) end of the new Moscone South extension. The phase that's now underway might be a little more attractive,

I do like that they left the seismic structure visible to some extent,

Phase 2 just getting started. Here you can see most of the seismic structure that I'm sure will be hidden when the building is completed. If I read this correctly, this will be a large atrium space tying the wings together and leading down to the main, subterranean hall,

This wall will probably be opened up when the new structure is finished,

213. City streets

Life resumes

My day-after-HSB rest day is now past (I really didn't have any kind of cramps or post event distress, yay!) and I started the top-to-bottom cleaning of my building. It's still a little smoky here due to all the wild fires up north, but the wind is changing now and it's getting cooler -- good cleaning weather.

There's actually a number of HOA tasks on the near horizon. End of the year documents to create, our annual fire inspection to schedule. When I get home I'm going to test our emergency lights again. Really, it doesn't amount to that much. I need a new book.

Some things that have been sitting in my notes for a while now...

SOMA

Sitting at the 4th street Peet's, needed a little oak and granite. Walked here the long way through the middle of the Financial District and the new "Downtown" SOMA. Work is progressing on Salesforce Tower and the Transbay Transit Center but neither is on the cusp of opening. 

Walking past some other projects that are still in early stages of construction, I was thinking that the best thing about the over budget Transit Center is that it gave the authorities political cover for going higher-density than SF is usually comfortable with. It's still too soon to be able to envision what this new neighborhood will look like when built out in (maybe) ten years, but it will be something new for SF.

And while I'm downtown, here's something I wrote about cities. 

Why I love cities

And by cities I mean truly urban streets. Yesterday my plan had been to eat lunch and work in a cafe out by Lincoln Park, but I had forgotten they only accept cash and I didn't have enough cash for lunch. I had enough for iced tea and a snack, and that was fine.

But today I walked down to the Peet's on Market (because I also need to buy some more septic-tank-cleaning-enzyme-stuff) and, when I got in line I realized I had even less cash and using a card for under $5 is just silly. But this is downtown and my bank has ATMs directly across Market, and there's even one of the grand, older branches a block away. In fact, I have the option of at least a half dozen Wells Fargo ATM machines within about a block radius. 

Yesterday I could have paid a fee and used a third party ATM machine if I was desperate, but in a proper city the services you want tend to be magically available thanks to the "invisible hand" of the free market. (I'm misusing Adam Smith's concept here, but just a little. And, while not affirming his theory, my variation -- that business entities, while attempting to maximize their business, end up providing services where they are most wanted, I think is true and is particularly visible in urban areas. Starbucks -- I'm looking at one directly across the street -- is the best example of this at the moment. A block from here there are two Starbucks locations directly across 4th Street from each other. One has been there forever and serves the convention trade and people flowing in and out of the massive parking garage that houses the cafe. The other is new and associated with the Target store. They both look busy every time I'm in the area.)

This is why it drives me nuts when neighborhood interests reject increased density for fear of traffic. Yes, "traffic," in the sense of cars on the road doesn't effect me personally because I don't have a car, but traffic in the sense of people, foot-traffic, on the streets is the main factor in determining the value of urban real estate. 

And, Yes, developments like La Defense are a spectacular and indefensible waste of foot-traffic density. But here, around Union Square, most of the buildings and the urban design is 19th century (pre-City Beautiful!) and the exorbitant cost of real estate has driven landlords to maximize rents by creating as much retail space as possible accessible to the sidewalks. The best example of this being the Metreon, which had to be completely redesigned to take advantage of all the sidewalk frontage they were wasting.

The worst frontage wasters in the area now are the convention center and some of the newer hotels, but even the Hilton is attempting to do what Macys did and rent out spaces on their perimeter to retail tenants. Unfortunately for them, they are on the Tenderloin side of Union Square and, for the moment, much of their foot traffic is interested mostly in their chemicals of choice and social services.

193. You will have only one story

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Jack London

A passage from Elizabeth Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton struck me as I'm re-reading the book. Here she's quoting a famous writer acquaintance, 

"You will have only one story," she had said. "You'll write your one story many ways. Don't ever worry about story. You have only one."

And this made me think about the Jack London story "South of the Slot," set in SF I just read. (See HERE.) One of my first thoughts was that it could also have been titled "The Call of the Wild." But now I'm wondering to what extent Buck is just an animal version of Big Bill Totts in this story. Buck came first, in 1903, but did London have Bill Totts in mind all along, and thought it would be easier to sell an allegorical tale set in the Yukon?

But what I've been thinking about even more, is that Jack London is the person I would like to talk to about what's going wrong in America. I think his perspective on the gentrification of South of the Slot, now called SOMA, would be very interesting. The world he described in this story is almost totally gone now. There are some last vestiges around 6th and Mission, but in general, the infrastructure that supported the lower and under classes in this part of the city has been methodically destroyed (phase one of "urban renewal") or is in the process of being re-purposed for the benefit of the middle and upper classes. 

The flop-houses and SROs that Thomas Pynchon wrote about in The Crying of Lot 49 are virtually gone now along with most of the work that provided a living for the people living South of the Slot. Even the shipyard around pier 70 is in the process of being transformed into a mixed use development with tech incubators and a thousand to two thousand units of new, up-to-code, housing. Is it any wonder that the descendants of the people London was writing about here, thought voting for Trump would be worth a shot? Even if they don't get anything out of it, it's still worth it for riling up the gentry.

And there's another side to this gentrification of South of the Slot, the trashification of the north. I wrote the paragraphs above at the Peet's on Market and then walked home -- across where the slot once was -- and through the heart of the previously posh Union Square shopping district. Based on the businesses you see lining the sidewalks of Grant street, the area is even more posh now than it was in the past, but when you look at the crowds on those sidewalks the picture changes. And not just because this in near the end of the peak tourist season. The days of hats on men and women, and gloves on women is long gone. If you were to bring back a gentleman or lady from London's time (or as late as the 1950s) they would be appalled by the vagrants and scavengers, but the commonness of the shoppers and sightseers would be just as shocking. I'm pretty sure they would see this as an invasion from South of the Slot, culturally if not strictly based on residential addresses.

Where Liberals meet the Alt-right

This weekend there's a to-do in town over some Alt-Right group attempting to demonstrate in town, or on the Presidio -- which is almost, though not quite, SF. What amuses me about this is that the thing you can not say in polite (liberal) circles is that most of the people who are making the most noise against the White Separatist factions, already live in (defacto) White Separatist suburbs. (These are the same people who drive their cars, granted many of them are hybrids, to oil pipeline protests.) 

First generation at university

I woke up Sunday to a news radio report on a California program to assist students who are the first in their family to attend university. It occurred to me that that would have applied to me, while I was in school, so I started paying more attention. One of the characteristics of these novice students, according to the report, was not speaking up in class or asking questions. This would be amusing to anyone who shared classes with me. Though, to be fair to the program, I was not at all typical since I had practically grown up on college campuses.

13. Architecture walk + The Sunflower

Previous - 12. Budd Road

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Photos!

I finally went back and got a couple shots of that multi-building project going up where a bus parking lot once was: 

None of these structures have much appeal on their own but I think they are an improvement over a parking lot. Would also be unfair to judge the complex until the landscaping is finished. The buildings on the far left of the bottom image are common to both photos -- just for reference.

[Note to self: You have to select the image in Google Photo then two finger click it to get the correct image address.]

An assortment of new buildings in the SOMA/Mission Bay area of San Francisco. We start with some indifferent urban infill:

And then move into Mission Bay where they started from scratch and decided that people who choose to spend a premium for building space in San Francisco really want buildings and a new neighborhood that could be anywhere:

Yes, these are goats clearing brush on lots that haven't yet been built on.

The view towards downtown.

Back to the pre-existing street grid as we near Pier 70 (the old shipyard) and Dogpatch:

The building below, and in the center above, at least has some visual interest. Why is it feasible to do small projects of interest as infill but not as part of large scale projects? Why is bigger almost always duller?

They are starting to re-develop the old shipyard. I had hoped they would preserve these old cranes as industrial sculpture (think Gas Works Park on Lake Union in Seattle), but apparently that isn't going to happen.

More infill, the second image below shows a project that incorporates older, masonry buildings (the two structures on the left) along with the new.

The building below with the interesting facade is an older structure converted for use as an event venue.

This sculpture of the SF Bay is in the lobby.

A new take on the traditional SF bay window.

The images below show the interesting podium that supports a very dull residential building that tries everything it can think of to be not quite so dull.

Loved this detail of the electrical hookups.

The north facing wall of the building -- above the podium -- reads as flat and blank even a few blocks away.

My life...

...seems to be getting back to normal. I'm currently reading The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal while very slowly re-reading Martha Grimes' Belle Ruin. An odd sort of normal, I'll admit. 

Belle Ruin is dreamy and full of good food and innocent childhood. The Sunflower is the "problem of evil" coupled with an ethical dilemma. 

I've only started the latter today, but I'm plowing through rather quickly. The question presented is, "Can a Jew in the midst of the Holocaust forgive a repentant member of the SS? And if he can, should he?" 

As for the first question, I'm tempted to say that we are all just doing the best we can, so we have to be willing to give others a break. We can't know how we would have behaved in their place so we are really in no position to judge them. 

But the second question is harder. I can say the above in part because I've lived a very easy and fortunate life. In Wiesenthal's place I could only say, "I wish I could forgive you but you're asking the wrong person. I sympathize but I can't be the one to forgive."

I couldn't help noticing that the SS guy in this story had a background similar to Mussolini's -- a socialist father and a religious, Catholic mother. I tend to think that people adopt the prejudices of their families, but here he rejected his family's values and embraced the values of his peers and society, in this instance the Hitler Youth. In some ways this is even more depressing than people raised to be hateful. (We really don't know that much about the values of the parents except that they were not National Socialists. So I may be reading too much into this little biography.)

Next - 14. Turnbuckles

8. I've got nothing

Previous - 7. Socks and concrete

Best intentions

My plan was to take pictures of some of the new development happening in SF's SOMA. I even brought my camera. But I neglected to take a single picture -- I am so out of the habit of photography. 

We started with a cluster of buildings going up on a quarter block site that used to be a bus parking lot. Then there were a variety of smaller projects and an even bigger one on a half-block site where the Concourse Exhibition Center once stood... I spent so many hours in that building it's odd for it to be gone. Like my high school which also now exists only in my memory.

Over where SOMA, Potrero Hill, and the Mission blend together was the only architecturally interesting new building we saw, By McDonough, I believe. (I just noticed that his office is near me, but I can't find that building on his web site.) 

You can see an image of the building HERE. Or their pretentious web site HERE. And I was wrong about the architect, HERE's their web site, and I recognize another interesting building conversion they're doing in Pacific Heights.

I did remember to have my favorite veggie cobb salad for lunch at Brainwash and a wonderful slice of peach pie at Mission Pie. My priorities are pretty clear.

Next - 9. Painting