By an odd chance I happen to have a nodding acquaintance with the man who lives behind this striking facade in San Francisco on 16th Street near Church. He is a large shy person who does his laundry very early every Sunday morning at a laundromat I also use on occasional Sundays at an equally early hour. We have never spoken but always smile and politely bow to one another when our laundromat trips happen to coincide, and once several years ago entirely by chance I observed him unlocking his front door and taking his clean laundry inside. I wonder if this building was originally constructed as a little store or machine-shop and then later amateurishly adapted to its present rather frightening incarnation as a dwelling. But I cannot picture addressing such a question to my laundromat friend, sensing as I do that such curiosity would be unwelcome.