Be One

This BE ONE panel-ad from the Gap Be Bright campaign – with two boys inside one t-shirt – has been floating around San Francisco on buses for the past several weeks. It features actor Rory O'Malley with his real-life boyfriend Gerold Schroeder.  This morning on the way to the library I finally found a workable opportunity to capture it (before it disappears). There is a piece here about the controversy this particular photo is causing.

Deadly Nightshade

I was waiting for the bus and leaning against a boundary wall belonging to Golden Gate Park. Standing there, I noticed this plant growing over the wall from inside the park. I thought this plant looked a lot like Deadly Nightshade, so I suddenly wanted to make clear photos and see if I could confirm what it was. But at the same time that I formed this wish, the bus started its slow turn around the corner from Fulton onto Stanyan. Consequently I could only take a few quick photos, and then I had to jump on the bus.

It is a good thing this botanical photography attempt was not a school project, because I would not be getting a good grade.

Precipitation

San Francisco's latest rainstorm stopped – or paused – not long before I went out to catch the bus this morning. How cinematic, I thought, slick pavements and stop lights and silence.




Hail came pelting down in the afternoon just as I set out for the dentist on Mission near 24th and the umbrella that I carried did not protect me very much. Consequently I arrived at the office with loud squelching feet. But the visit was just an exam and the dentist did not find any problems so it was a pretty good bargain suffering no worse misfortune than wet shoes.

Bus Stop Views

The 33 Stanyan bus begins to seem reliable again during the very early morning hours. Less so in the afternoon. So again on many mornings I am waiting at 18th & Guerrero shortly before 6. There is always something new to see on this corner.

Workers

EVERYBODY'S WORK IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT

Can't remember ever before seeing a Marxist-inspired ad campaign aimed at middle-class urban Americans. In the picture above (displayed on a San Francisco bus shelter at the corner of McAllister and Divisadero) the message seems to be that the work of the ranch hand in the middle is equally important with the work of the young fashion models posed on either side of him. I thought of this image when I came across the photo-spread below showing hard-working fashion models in their civilian clothes as they exit a recent Dolce & Gabbana runway show in Milan. Personally, I am more than ready to accept the equal importance of their work with my own or anybody else's, but whether Marx would agree is a whole other question.










Photo source is here

Pintura Fresca

The fog had already come in this evening when I saw this sign at Potrero & 16th in San Francisco and stopped to take its picture. I was on my way home from the gym, intending to walk. But with a cold ocean wind in my face, I was not sorry either when an empty bus pulled up and I could jump on it and ride home instead. So I thank this sign for causing me to pause in admiration long enough for the small but happy accident of the bus to occur.

Slanted Light

This was the brightest sunrise of any day since I switched last week and started waiting for MUNI on 16th Street near Guerrero.



The transfer stop at Fillmore and McAllister was still dim and dark thanks to the abundance of big ficus trees growing along the pavements and to the monolithic public housing blocks and to a natural declivity in the terrain.




So on the walk up the hill before emerging into the sun again I was noticing the oddball details, as is my natural tendency, instead of the landscape.


But then when I did look up, the slanted light was transforming even downright ugly monsters like the one below (all detailing stripped off and asbestos shingles slapped on) into meritorious monuments.


Below is what the gray-shingled monster must have looked like originally. The two buildings are only a block apart and must have been put up by the same builder at around the same time.








All the houses, fancy and plain, looked at this hour like containers for lives that could never be other than happy. Cameras are handy for capturing brief illusions like that.



In this last long view facing back down the hill toward the east, the dome of City Hall (at lower left) was certainly not intended to be part of the picture. It looks here as if it must be fairly near, but in reality is more than a mile away. Only when I uploaded the images did I discover that the remote dome was even in the frame.

Early Light Again

The black and white tile is the ancient pavement outside a bar on 16th Street where I now wait every weekday morning for MUNI's 22 line to carry me from the Mission over to the Fillmore. Then from there I can either catch the 5 up to the library near Golden Gate Park where I work, or else walk there.



To witness absolute emptiness on 16th Street seems pretty apocalyptic. At any other hour this street is bursting with overlapping cultures and and modes of transport and lives. Then too, it is only in the summer that all this emptiness is truly visible. Most of the year this is a pre-dawn hour, but just at present it is a dawn-occurring hour.



After getting off the 22 this morning I walked several blocks up McAllister before a 5 came along and took me the rest of the way to work. Just that short walk revealed a respectable number of wonders that I wouldn't have seen at any other place or time.

Beach Chalet

The Beach Chalet across the highway from San Francisco's Ocean Beach was another 1930s WPA project, and this explains the lavish decorative schemes, every available surface covered in fresco or mosaic. A plastic inscription told me that the man among roses below, leaning with his cigarette over the back of a park bench, is the beloved local sculptor of animal kitsch, Beniamino Bufano (1898-1970).

But the Beach Chalet was overflowing with tourists (in contrast to the beach itself) so I did not linger there but made my way back outside and headed through the park toward the MUNI stop.



Out at this western end of Golden Gate Park the weeds are rejoicing even more vociferously than the weeds I have been watching with more consistency at the eastern end (as here and here and here and here). All this unseasonable rain is good news for the weeds, and even better news is the absence or indifference of gardeners – who are victims like all the other municipal workers of the city's budget sorrows.






Nowadays waiting for the bus can be truly suspenseful, since there is a much better chance than in the past that it will not come at all. But my miniature Friday seaside vacation was graced with luck from beginning to end, and my short wait was made even shorter by the Emerson String Quartet playing Schumann through my headphones, an ardent soundtrack that kept me company all the way home.