Water creates its own path through the narrowest of spaces, eventually eroding cracks and making them channels. Below are images of California’s Stanislaus River from a narrow rapid to the narrowest of passages.
Below, a narrow section of waterfall cuts through Oregon’s greenery to the Umpqua River
San Francisco is home to many alleys, some with their own unique claim to fame. Below is narrow Ross Alley, San Francisco’s oldest alley.
Two views through a narrow hole in a cactus pad.
Flying with as little separation as 18 inches (45.2 cm) at speeds of 450 to 500 mph (720 to 800 km/h) the margin for error for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds is NARROW.
“I don’t get why this is so fucking difficult.” That was the gist of my daughter’s text message to me last Saturday morning.
What was it that was so fucking difficult? A new transmitter for her diabetes monitor still had not shipped and without the transmitter the monitor was just useless hardware. Monitors can give the diabetic real time glucose numbers to help regulate blood sugar levels without spikes. Without the monitor my daughter’s blood sugars were all over the place and she was getting up every night to take in some sugars to compensate for a low or she was stressing over spikes; stress that exacerbates spiking glucose levels.
Two weeks of the customer service runaround; two weeks of calls being passed from CSR’s to supervisors to supervisors of supervisors and two weeks of the almost always required inordinate amount of time on hold. Promises made, promises broken; the “it should ship anytime now” song and dance. The request had been entered into the system but the transmitter hadn’t shipped and nobody had an answer for the all important question, why? Why was it so fucking difficult?
On reading her text I called her up, she was crying; frustration and some fear of what this was doing to her health. We talked it out. It was mostly her wanting to vent. She does that at times. Calls dad and lets loose. Hey, at least I serve some purpose – right?
I offered my help. Would she like me to call the company? Given that I’m retired I have all the time in the world to be put on interminable hold. As a former purchasing agent it used to be part of my job to unstick a stuck shipment. She thanked me but said she’d handle it, “I just needed to vent.”.
“Okay, let me know if you change your mind.”
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge from Ann-Christine is “Future.” Ann-Christine writes, “The future is the period of time that will come after the present, or the things that will happen then. Maybe a second away, a week, a year, a decade.” I’m playing very fast and loose with this week’s theme.
It’s said that a red sky in the morning portends a storm. If that’s true then a clear golden sunrise must mean bright sun for the future hours of the day. Here the future is measured in hours. San Francisco Skyline taken from Point Cavallo.
In sports the future outcome can hang in the balance seconds away or quicker than the blink of any eye. Gregor Blanco breaks for second base. His future success or failure is about 3.3 to 3.4 seconds away.
The future outcome can be even shorter than a second. A fastball takes .4 seconds to reach home plate after it leaves a pitcher’s hand, but a hitter needs a full .25 seconds to see the ball and react. Brandon Crawford watches a pitch.
In hockey the future is decided at 90-miles-per-hour (144 km per hour). The difference between a goal and save can come down to fractions of a second. Antti Niemi eyes the puck.
Kari Lehtonen’s future fortune or misfortune is measured in milliseconds
The future can be indefinite as in the case of sage advice. A mural on Vesuvio’s wall offers some wisdom to keep in mind for the future. Vesuvio’s Cafe, Jack Kerouac Alley, North Beach, San Francisco CA.
My San Francisco is a series of posts that describes my own personal relationship with The City. My San Francisco pieces might be photo essays; they might be life stories or they could be commentaries. They might be a combination of some or all three. My impressions won’t necessarily be paeans to San Francisco; it’s a beautiful city that often dons an ugly mask. These pieces will always have one common theme; they are my expressions of my personal San Francisco experience.
Fourth Street between Mission and Market Streets in San Francisco’s downtown is a crowded, frantic place that moves at a breakneck pace. Walking up Fourth towards Market you find that there’s really no straight line so you zig zag your way through the darting crowd. You don’t stroll here; neither do you meander or shuffle; you simply let yourself get caught up in the swirling, boiling maelstrom of people who have places to go and had to get there yesterday.
You’re walking north-ish and once you’ve snaked your way through the rushing throng to Market Street you’ve arrived. This is the main channel that carries the fleets of busses above and the subway trains below; all expelling the masses, the schools of humanity into the urban sea. Market is the eye of the public storm. It’s the grand stage, the center ring, the headliner of the show; the place where you can catch the diversity, the poverty and riches and the clean and corrupt. Here’s where, with a single glance you can catch sight of the charm and the misery, and the plain and eccentric. It’s all here, The City in a nutshell, or as visitors from the less avant-garde climes might call it, just plain nutty. Take any random afternoon:
Smack on the corner of Fourth and Market sits a big red canopy. It’s Annie’s hot dog stand where Annie, or more likely one of her minions, is doing a brisk business selling hot dogs, pretzels and other salty grub. Between customers Annie, or more likely one of her minions, is immersed in her cell phone, oblivious to the hastening multitudes that churn around her. She caters to a wide range of the urban herd that stampedes past; shoppers, tourists and that businessman who’s careful to skip the mustard in favor of avoiding a stained tie. All except the wheelchair bound man parked next to the canopy. Like many of The City’s unfortunates he holds a worn cardboard sign that asks for a handout and wishes you the blessings of the god who’s abandoned him.
A few feet away from the hot dog stand a guy is running a shell game. Look, there’s a winner. He picked the shell hiding the pea. The man behind the shells hands the player a wad of money and they play again. The operator swishes the shells around and when he stops the player picks the correct shell and collects another wad of bills. The player’s skill is amazing. He makes it look easy, and it is easy if you’re a shill and nothing is really won or lost. This player isn’t here to play, he’s hard at work; bait to attract the minnows to the shark’s jaws. He’s looking for the gullibles who think they can beat the game that can’t be beat; to strike it rich on a downtown city street. One of the shell guy’s crew approaches me and gives me a friendly but ominous warning to refrain from taking pictures. Understandable I guess. If you’re running an illegal shell game you probably don’t want your image taken.
On the other side of Fourth Street a small crowd sways to a trio playing some lively blues and further on a Michael Jackson impersonator twirls, moonwalks and lip syncs to recordings of the King of Pop. He’s good at his craft but let’s face it – he looks kinda creepy.
A pair of Hispanic women peddle bacon wrapped hot dogs cooked over a small propane grill. From the looks of it, their little operation doesn’t have the city’s official stamp of approval but that doesn’t matter to the customers who stop for a dog and a soda. The smell at this tiny operation is much more enticing than the smell coming from Annie’s big red tent; these two ladies have bacon. It’s that heavenly and seductive siren of bacon and sausage on a grill and it takes all the willpower I can muster to keep from buying. After all what could be better than nitrites wrapped in yet more nitrites. Pork fat rules, baby!
My San Francisco is a series of posts that describes my own personal relationship with The City. My San Francisco pieces might be photo essays; they might be life stories or they could be commentaries. They might be a combination of some or all three. My impressions won’t necessarily be paeans to San Francisco; it’s a beautiful city that often dons an ugly mask. These pieces will always have one common theme; they are my expressions of my personal San Francisco experience.
I know a lot of people who avoid Downtown San Francisco as if it were a Trump rally (Sorry, that’s how most of the people who I know roll). Me, I love it. As a prequel to another commentary on San Francisco, specifically downtown, here’s a little photo essay.
On the move.
Downtown is where people and things always seem to be on the move and in a hurry to get somewhere. Below, the 30 Stockton Bus just out of the Stockton Street tunnel heads past Union Square
Below, reflections from a speeding commuter bus.
Below, a Powell Street cable car crosses Geary Street.
Below a woman rushes past a department store window on Stockton Street. I guess the prices were too high for her liking.
My San Francisco is a series of posts that describes my own personal relationship with The City. My San Francisco pieces might be photo essays; they might be life stories or they could be commentaries. They might be a combination of some or all three. My impressions won’t necessarily be paeans to San Francisco; it’s a beautiful city that often dons an ugly mask. These pieces will always have one common theme; they are my expressions of my personal San Francisco experience.
It was nearly a year ago, March in fact, that I wrote a piece in which I described my love/hate relationship with San Francisco. At the time The City and I were back on good terms. It was just after the Chinese New Year celebration when Cora and I had spent some afternoons enjoying the festive atmosphere. Chinatown is one of my favorite places in The City, not for cheap trinkets or for schmoozing with the multitudes of tourists but for the food, walks through historic alleys and the general feel of the place. And then there’s a long ago personal history that I have with Chinatown, back before I was married.
Now, ten months later, I find myself revisiting the whole notion of love and hate in San Francisco. Not because we’ve had another falling out; things have been just ducky between us. It’s a movie, The Last Black Man in San Francisco that’s sent me back to rehash that old piece and review my fickle relationship with The City.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a hybrid of drama and real life but then that description can mean almost nothing. How many times have I seen a World War II movie that opens with the credit, “Based on true events,” and then come away feeling like the only true event that the movie recalled was a big war in which a lot of people got killed.
The details of what is true and not true in The Last Black Man, are unimportant to this piece. The story revolves around a young black man, Jimmie Fails (played by Jimmie Fails) and his good friend Montgomery Allen ( Jonathan Majors). The two men share cramped quarters in a single garage turned bedroom in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunter’s Point District. The district, the poorest and most neglected of The City’s neighborhoods is geographically isolated from the rest of San Francisco and located near the old Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard which the Navy abandoned in 1974. As a not so friendly parting gift The Navy left The City and its residents with a toxic dump, something that is not lost on the angry residents of the area.
The two men, particularly Fails, see the garage and the blighted neighborhood as temporary digs until they can move into Fails’ old family home, a stately wood panelled Victorian located in San Francisco’s Fillmore District; a section of town which during and after World War II became a largely African American district (the home that was used for the shoot actually sits on South Van Ness Avenue in a district called SOMA ).
Early in the movie the two men periodically show up at the house to make minor repairs, touch up the paint and envision what Fails sees as their future in the old home. All this is to the chagrin of the white couple who occupy the house. It’s the twenty first century and money and gentrification are pushing the original residents out and the Fillmore is starting to take on a distinctly WASPish flavor.
Further into the film the white couple is forced to move out and the home, left vacant, is ripe for the two men to become squatters. Jimmie’s plan is to establish his residence in the home and take possession but the plan hits a snag when the home is put up for sale. Fails visits a real estate agent who informs him that the house is worth seven figures, about 6 figures more than Jimmie can lay his hands on.
The film is rife with nuance. It’s able to deliver a message without hitting the viewer across the face with it. The closest that we come to a villain is the real estate agent who takes on the role of metaphor for all that’s going wrong with The City. Without a mention we know that the evil geniuses are the tech companies, the techies and the investors who trade real estate like kids trade baseball cards. Free of flashbacks the film delivers a sobering dose of nostalgia without being maudlin.
For me there was one striking scene in the movie. Continue reading
Red is a strong, happy, optimistic color, and I like having fun with it, you know? Like, when colors clash – I love that strangeness. ~ Victoria Beckham
This weeks’ Lens Artist Photo Challenge is….wait for it…. find the red.
Lens Artist challenge # 81 from Pattichallenges us to a scavenger hunt for red. Not a difficult task. Red awakens us; red doesn’t just catch the eye, it keeps the eye. Here is my take on red, from the most famous red dog to an iconic bridge.
Lounging setters. Golden Gate Kennel Club Dog Show, San Francisco
Being a show dog can be a tiring task. Between struttin’ their stuff and meeting the adoring public a little nap time is a welcome break. Continue reading
This week’s Lens Artists Photo Challenge is leading lines. Tina’s challenge is to display photos with lines “carry our eye through a photograph. They help to tell a story, to place emphasis, and to draw a connection between objects.”
Cover photo: San Pablo Bay, California
Converging lines. The lines of the shore and the clouds.
Chinatown, San Francisco, California
In this image, the buildings of Washington Street carry the viewer’s eye to the Bay Bridge. WIth a careful look (and some imagination) the image is all about lines; the vertical lines of the buildings and the bridge tower and the horizontals of the shorelines, the bridge, the hills and the lines of clouds.
Lafayette Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana
Two converging paths are the lines that lead to one of the few painted tombs in the cemetery. Continue reading
It’s at times like this when I remember that I was one of Lance Armstrong’s last suckers. Armstrong; he was the man. Seven Tour de France wins in a row. Who does that? Turns out, a cheater does that. I was a Lance defender right up until the time that the wheels came off Lance’s victories and he became indefensible. Disappointed – yes. Surprised – not really. Crushed – oh hell no, I was way past those days of looking at sport as a builder of character.
And so when Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros got busted for cheating during the 2017 season I wasn’t at all surprised. Just another day at the ballpark/stadium/arena/track, you pick the venue. This particular infamy involves the Astros using video equipment to steal the opposing catcher’s signs and relaying the upcoming pitch to the Astros’ hitters. When a hitter knows exactly what pitch is coming he’s given a tremendous advantage.
The point of this isn’t to replay the minutiae of the Astros’ cheating. Anyone who wants to know the sordid and at the same time ridiculous details can just Google, Houston Astros to come up with a veritable library. No, this is about cheating in sport and the notions that get batted around every time someone gets caught trying to “get an edge.”
The Life in My Years 