Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Castro Weather


New and more seasonally appropriate weather arrived in San Francisco, ending the week-long warm spell that got more than its share of photo coverage here. Leaves are changing (above) at the entrance to the MUNI underground station at Castro & Market.


The daylight when I took these had gone back to being diffused again, more like the local norm.


Hermetic verse with blue background from a mural painted many years ago on the back side of Bagdad Cafe. It dates to the early AIDS days and begins now to fade. I did not photograph the missing bits, and there are spray-paint defacements here and there. I don't know whether the white vapor around the face below (with its air-tubes up the nose) was original or added later.

When I first moved to the Castro in the early nineties, young dying men were still a common sight, hobbling with canes and oxygen tanks. People of course are still are dying of AIDS, but in far smaller numbers and less visibly.