Tag: san francisco

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Palm, Tower, Norfolk Island Pine

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Went on a long, unorganized walking tour of a small part of San Francisco on Saturday with a visiting Chicagoan. Through gentrified SoMa to the Giants’ ballpark, then up the gentrified waterfront to the gentrified Ferry Building (is there a theme here?). Then through the deserted Financial District to Kearny, up across Broadway to Telegraph Hill, to Montgomery and the Filbert Street steps (above; nearby, we spotted the wonderful Art Deco apartment building at 1360 Montgomery, below). That’s a Norfolk Island pine in the left center, I’m pretty sure; didn’t notice it when we were at the spot. We hiked up to Coit Tower, set a Saskatchewan native straight about who is depicted by the statue on the summit (Christopher Columbus; he’s on the wrong coast; on the other hand, he’s where he belongs as far as San Francisco’s Italians are concerned). Then down to North Beach, back through the Financial District, and a quick stop at the Palace Hotel (where President Warren Gemaliel Harding died in 1923). Four hours, some number of miles, countless nearly-to-the-point anecdotes.

After 30 years out here, San Francisco is still fresh to me; I never take a walk in the city without happening across a surprise.

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Rain, Rain

Heard on the street on my walk to work as clouds rolled in from the west and swallowed up our brief morning sunshine: “Rain, rain, g–d–n m—–f—–‘ rain.” Except my fellow stroller didn’t use the dashes.

Although I’m coming perilously close to a weather whine, our March rain has mounted into wetness of historic magnitude: We’ve had 23 days of measurable rain this month. If it rains today or tomorrow — and that’s almost certain — that will set a new record for most rainy days here in March. As my friend Pete pointed out the other day, forecasters say some large-scale global weather patterns have kept it wet here for weeks (and will for at least the next week, it looks like).

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Snow: Profoundly Shocking

I’ve occasionally wondered what would happen out here on the roads if it snowed. Really snowed, I mean, with snow on the streets down by the bayside and not just up on a distant peak where it’s striking but not quite real. Travel? Impossible in an area with hilly terrain and drivers who generally have no experience driving in truly wintry conditions.

So Friday night/early Saturday morning, it was cold here. In the mid-30s, say. Not so cold you’d expect a snowstorm, but cold enough that the forecast brought the possibility of snow down to the 500-foot level. The road that runs near the top of the Berkeley Hills, Grizzly Peak Boulevard, tops out at about 1,700 feet, and sure enough, when our neighbors Piero and Jill drove up there, they saw a little snow-like material along the road. But nothing dramatic. No, the dramatic stuff was over on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you haven’t been there, the bridge on its north side is built at the foot of a mountain. The highway, U.S. 101, climbs up a grade to go through a tunnel blasted through the ridge. On the north side, the road descends very sharply — from just over 600 feet down to sea level in about a mile and three-quarters — close to a 7 percent grade. Last night, that’s where the snow happened, apparently very suddenly just before 2:30 in the morning. And here, as narrated by the Chronicle, is what occurred when traffic was added to the weather:

“San Francisco cabbie Mort Weinstein had picked up a fare at Fisherman’s Wharf and was headed to Marin City early Saturday when he emerged from the Waldo Tunnel on Highway 101 to find himself in a freak blizzard.

“Slushy snow coated a hillside illuminated by the taillights of panicked drivers careering out of control. Weinstein hit the brakes, but there was nothing he could do.

” ‘There were four to five cars already colliding with each other,’ Weinstein, 51, recalled. ‘My car wheels locked. I started to slide. The front of the car careened off the rear of another car. It was such a profoundly shocking event. Nothing like this has ever happened here.’ ”

Twenty-eight cars piled up. Two people were killed and a dozen injured. The road was closed for 11 hours while the wreckage was cleared.

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The Things I Think About

Here’s a pointless exercise I spend time on nearly every morning. The Chronicle has a weather page. Not up to the standard of the Chicago Tribune’s page, which is the best I’ve seen; its overseer, Tom Skilling of WGN, has apparently worked with people at the paper to give the page real dimension and depth; they actually make an effort to tell readers something meaningful about the science of weather, they pore over the record books to put the current weather in some sort of meaningful context, and they highlight interesting weather happenings outside the Chicago metro area.

But back to the Chronicle’s weather page. It’s full of numbers, and it features a giant Bay Area map. But it’s really narrow and dull when you get down to it. One feature it has presented presented since I started reading the paper regularly, back in 1976, is a list of a dozen California cities and their current seasonal rainfall. From Crescent City in the north to San Diego in the south, the list reports precipitation in the last 24 hours, how much rain has fallen since the start of the current season (which runs from July 1 through June 30), how much fell in the same period last year, the “normal” seasonal rainfall to date (an average taken over the last 30 years), and the “normal” total for the entire season. Doesn’t that all sound interesting?

I have a daily habit of checking the precipitation numbers if it’s been raining. I have a minor, ongoing fixation about one particular fact: how Oakland’s rainfall stacks up against San Francisco’s. As a resident of the East Bay, it’s a source of pride that humble Oakland has been, on average, a little more rainy than its vainglorious cousin across the Bay Bridge — Oakland’s season normal is 22.94 inches versus San Francisco’s 22.28. But a worrying trend has developed: In several recent years, San Francisco has wound up ahead in the rain race; this year, Oakland is nearly two full inches behind, 25.22 to 27.21.

It makes you wonder whether the fix is in — maybe West Bay meteorologists are doctoring the results to claim Bay Area Rain Capital honors. It makes you wonder what the penalty is for tampering with an Official Government Rain-Measuring Instrument.

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City Hall Red

Cityhallred

I was working up in Marin County yesterday (for a home-furnishings catalog that will remain nameless) and got a ride to San Francisco so I could catch BART to Berkeley. Walking to the Civic Center station, the new moon hung in the west; to the east, City Hall was lit red. My first thought, San Francisco being the self-consciously romantic place it is, was that the lights were set up for Valentine’s Day. But it’s more likely the special lighting is part of the Chinese New Year celebration (which began with that new moon). I’ve never seen City Hall lit like this before.

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Learning to Love MARSEC

Ferrygate

The war on terror: It’s as far away as some country you can’t even pronounce or find on the map, and as close as your local ferry terminal.

I was over in San Francisco today and decided to take the ferry home. No matter how many times I ride the boat, the trip is fun and the scene on the bay is always engrossing. But getting on the ferry isn’t the same as it used to be. Until sometime in the last year or so, when you wanted to take the ferry, you just walked onto the dock and waited for the boat to come in. Now, as part of our new anti-terror reality, the company that runs the ferry keeps the access doors to the dock locked until the boats are moored and ready to board. Not a big deal, I guess. But here’s something else: There’s an official posting at the dock entrance announcing the current Coast Guard "MARSEC" (Maritime Security) level. Right now, we’re at MARSEC Level 1, "the level for which minimum appropriate security measures shall be maintained at all times. MARSEC 1 generally applies when HSAS Threat Condition Green, Blue, or Yellow are set" (that seems to mean that we’re always at MARSEC 1;  just like the global war on terrorism, the threat never ends).

Beyond conveying the news we’re at MARSEC 1, the sign also advises that "boarding the vessel or entering this area is deemed valid consent to screening or inspection …. failure to consent or submit to screening or inspection will in denial or revocation of authorization to board or enter." That declaration is followed by a couple of citations from the Code of Federal Regulations, including: 33CFR104.265 (e)(2), that specify security measures to be taken under various threat levels..

It’s true that these security precautions, as implemented, are quite mild; I’ve never seen anybody searched on the Oakland ferry, and as far as I know, no one ever has been. It’s also true I have no desire to see someone set off a bomb on a ferry or in any other public place. Still, there it is: If someone else says so, you have to submit to a search to ride the boat. It’s just another place where we surrender just a little bit of our right to be left alone, where the presumption about citizens in public spaces is that they’re potential threats until they show otherwise.

If the ride wasn’t so beautiful, I’d probably find another way to get home.
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Un Pez sin Agua

Sinagua“I feel like a fish without water.” The small type under “sin agua” says “Francisco, 5 años, descridiendo el asma.” It’s a billboard at the corner of 7th and Brannan streets in San Francisco. Kate says she’s seen English versions of it. It struck me just because of my (nearly lifelong) problems with asthma; and also because of the fact the disease seems to have become so prevalent among city kids now; the why of that still seems largely unknown, but one has to think it has got be due to basic environmental causes.