Today was one of those every-other Fridays when Spencer Alley belongs to the cleaning lady in the afternoon and its inhabitants must be elsewhere. After I finished at the library I took the bus downtown to buy some of Clinique's gritty face-soap at Macy's. After that I intended to visit the Museum of Modern Art (its red-brick facade is partly visible in the background of the photo above) but the sun was too inviting. Warmer today than for a couple of weeks past. I sat on a bench here in Yerba Buena Gardens and read a book, occasionally looking up and snapping another postcard-view of San Francisco.
The little brick church at center is St. Patrick's, with a wealth of stained glass windows, predominantly green, featuring now-obscure Irish saints. The parishioners nowadays are mostly Filipino-American.
The tall building in the background is generally considered one of the top-five contenders in the competition for San Francisco's ugliest building – a Marriott Hotel from the awful eighties in a bogus rendition of Art Deco slathered with mirrors, the whole thing obviously constructed on the cheap. I do well remember how it was vilified in the press when it got built, and city government much criticized for allowing it. Still, a day with sunlight like this can come close to redeeming even it.