Saturday, October 24, 2009

Valencia (Mostly)


These warm, calm, sunlit days will continue in San Francisco through the weekend, we are told. They will be something to remember with gratitude once the rainstorms start rolling in off the Pacific.


New paint job in two shades of turquoise, navy blue, and cream. Personally I would never have chosen such high-contrast shades, but it seems to be working in this case.



The ginkgo trees in town are right on the cusp of going from green to gold. Just one cold night and they will be ready to launch their fall look.


Murals will be fresh for this weekend's community party in Clarion Alley, which runs along the pink-painted side of Community Thrift Store. Clarion is one of the best mural alleys in the Mission and one of the strangest. The end of Clarion visible here intersects with the decidedly upscale shopping & dining environment of Valencia Street, while the other end of Clarion intersects with the stretch of Mission Street most favored by junkies and hookers.


San Francisco's vintage street cars are restored to the various color schemes they originally displayed in the different cities they served back in their heyday. This olive-orange-cream scheme with maroon accents is one I hadn't seen before today. It originated in Cincinnati, or so the little sign says.


Window of X-21 vintage furniture store on Valencia @20th Street (with my own faint reflection, as so often, inadvertently imposed). Chaos inside. Maybe they are just remodeling but it looks like the store has closed. I would be sorry if that were true, if only for the sake of the oddball rotating window displays -- of which the example above is not typical. Today it looked more like miscellaneous leftovers had been piled into the window to get them out of the way.


Even the battered staircase at Spencer Alley cannot escape its small share of the general illumination.