Hot spell started yesterday and hotter still today but the city work crew is out in heavy orange suits (with a disconcerting resemblance to the orange suits of shackled jail captives) trimming palm trees on Dolores in the Mission. They trim around the bottom of each canopy, drop the withered chopped-off fronds to the ground and feed them into a chipper. Some people say that palms belong in L.A. or Miami and not San Francisco where they are not native. I even found an article on this controversy, where I learn that palms are not in fact homes for rats. This is an urban myth which I had supposed was true, but which I will never repeat any more. I have never actually seen a rat in a palm tree, after all. Occasionally in this neighborhood early in the morning when the streets are empty I have seen a rat or two, but always in the vicinity of storm drains.
Another accidental internet find came from a Texas tourist who visited San Francisco last month and posted some remarkable night time photos on Flickr, including several spooky ones of Dolores Street palm trees, as sampled below.
