10th Street, South of Market, San Francisco. On my way from work up to the Civic Center BART station — a change of pace from 16th and Mission BART. I just liked the door color. And the rest of the palette, too. If you’re not a habitue of the city, this part of San Francisco was once filled with warehouses and light industry. Some still remains, but large tracts have long since been cleared and redeveloped into parks, hotels, condos, retail centers, and the like. This part of the South of Market neighborhood, well west of downtown, has changed more slowly and there’s still plenty of evidence of what used to be.
Bay Bridge: Friday Dawn
Warning
Seen today, posted in several locations near 16th and Mission streets in San Francisco. Several people who saw me looking at the poster stopped, took in the picture, and expressed dismay. Words to the effect of “that’s terrible!” Unknown to me is whether this is street art or a real warning or some of both. (Now to bed: I’ve got to get up in four hours to go out to the Bay Bridge construction site tomorrow to help in KQED’s coverage of the weekend closure.)
Potrero Avenue: PM Clouds
The other end of the day. Looking south on Potrero from Mariposa. Another warm evening, one that prompted me to run up to the top of Potrero Hill after I left work to watch the city and the sky. (And I mean run: I passed a cyclist who was struggling up the upper part of San Bruno Avenue. We said hi to each other, and she said, “You go!”)
Berkeley: AM Clouds
We at Infospigot Information Services are great fans of the evening sky, but we’re not often out and about to report on dawn-time sky conditions. This morning was the exception to that rule. According to the National Weather Service area forecast discussions, there’s some sort of low spinning off the coast and sending in a stream of moisture from the southwest, which takes shape as unusually high, fluffy, and abundant clouds hereabouts (are typical cloud cover in the summer months is a dense bank of low stratus). It’s also a warm, muggy morning, also atypical of our Mediterranean climatic regime.
Potrero Hill Sundown
Beautiful summery night here — which would be an odd statement in August almost anyplace else but the Northern California coast. It was warm with a variety of high clouds that were gorgeous as the evening came on. The sight and the evening’s gentleness were enough to make me detour from my usual walk to the 16th and Mission BART station over to the Civic Center Station on Market Street.
Friday Night Ferry: The Walk
On Mariposa Street, just east of Potrero Avenue. This one-block slope is at the beginning of my Friday evening walk from KQED to the Ferry Building. From that stop sign up above, I turn right, then cross U.S. 101 on the pedestrian overpass that connects to 18th Street on the east side of the freeway. One more block up from there is Kansas Street, a corner with one of the great views of downtown. From there, I walk north and east down the slope of Potrero Hill and across the South of Market flats to the Bay, sometimes walking over the low eminence of Rincon Hill. What I noticed most about the walk this week: It’s getting dark much earlier than it did just a month ago.
Friday Night Ferry: The Walk
On Mariposa Street, just east of Potrero Avenue. This one-block slope is at the beginning of my Friday evening walk from KQED to the Ferry Building. From that stop sign up above, I turn right, then cross U.S. 101 on the pedestrian overpass that connects to 18th Street on the east side of the freeway. One more block up from there is Kansas Street, a corner with one of the great views of downtown. From there, I walk north and east down the slope of Potrero Hill and across the South of Market flats to the Bay, sometimes walking over the low eminence of Rincon Hill. What I noticed most about the walk this week: It’s getting dark much earlier than it did just a month ago.
Perrita Extraviada: Se Llama Sasha
In San Francisco on Mariposa Street, on the hill just east of Potrero Avenue.
…. And Back Again
We’re back west. And to get here, we took a flight at 6:30 a.m. from Newark to San Francisco. That’s a shot out a starboard window, a couple minutes off the runway. It was a beautiful trip, even if most of the pictures did not turn out.
To get to the flight, we got up at 4 in the morning or so and were on our way from our friend Lisa’s house to the airport at 4:30. The weather on the other coast was summery but not appalling. Meaning humid and warm bordering on hot. I saw in the weather forecast last night that alerts for poor air quality had been issued for parts of the New York area, and a string of 90-degree days are coming up, too. Maybe we dodged some unpleasant, sticky, August weather. I don’t mind missing it. What I will always miss, what memory does not oversell, are the nights, so warm and lush they practically demand you come outside and sit or stroll.
Back by our bay, our summer is in full force, too. Sunny and highs in the 70s. After sunset, the temperature was a breezy 60. Our summers aren’t oversold either: they’re humane and let you go from Memorial Day to Labor Day without thinking about air conditioning. You just need to remember your sweater or flannel shirt for that after-dark walk, and your fine.