A friend comes over in the afternoon after work and we set off walking (and talking) from the San Francisco flats up into the San Francisco hills.
I feel conflicted about the rear add-on to this Noe Valley Victorian. On the one hand it's all too obvious where the original fabric stops and the new fabric starts. On the other hand the indoor daylight and the views must be spectacular. And (I tell myself) the white picket railings have a weird sort of repetitive authority.
In a Noe Valley window, this admirable poster concerning California's notorious Proposition 8. Many protest signs have I seen, but this one is new to me, and closer to my own sentiments than any of the others. Courtesy of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
A half-grown Noe Valley sunflower plant with holes left behind by hungry snails in the newest (and tenderest) leaves.
Garage-door lettering, painted very large by hand in a good glow-in-in-the-dark orange-red.
On the way back to Spencer Alley we pass through the Castro and I admire this poster in the window of Rolo, a store where a single pair of jeans can easily cost several hundred dollars. My friend is not impressed.
Even as it fades, the September sunlight retains its luminous clarity – and I am, alas, unable to avoid a trite but true comparison to the painted Italian background skies of the Renaissance.