We started out at
St. Peter and Pauls at Washington Square. This town has LOTS of fonts of
Holy Water. No wonder the Vampires keep their heads down.
View from atop
Telegraph Hill. Left of Center is Alcatraz.
Shot of part of the
working piers.
Filmore Street
Boardwalk Filmore Street was too steep so they put wooden steps over it
and the houses around it attached a wooden boardwalk. The plants decided
it would be spring so heres a shot of boardwalk and spring flowers.
Shot up at
Telegraph Hill from Levi Strauss Corp. Headquarters. Did you know there is
a S.F. on the rivets of their jeans?
Shot from a bus
(crossing town) of bustling downtown (Market street.) Three card monty.
The some of the
nice houses of Haight Ashbury.
Crowd of tourists
walking along Haight. The shadowy figure far right (and the neighboring
figures) are relevant to upcoming commentary.
Shot of Haight.
Homeless person on
Haight. (Now for commentary.) Haight Ashbury is homeless friendly (out of
a sense of historical duty.) For this and other reasons (like the climate
- not the economy there is a labor shortage) there are LOTS of homeless
especially in this area. Lots means we probably saw 3-400 in our visit to
the area. Very few (unlike Atlanta) were in the "crazy"
catagory. I wanted a picture of this homeless person because as I was
trying to compose a shot Demaris and I were sitting on the ground looking
sort of like "local street urchin" an explanitory tale of the
city unfolded.
The feel of Haight is a lot like that of Little 5 Points in Atlanta only bigger and with a lot more street people. There is a touch here and there of what the Haight may have meant in the 60's but it is only a faint glimmer in the appearance of some of the street people, and the dress of some of the tourist and the tye dye t-shirts sold by the gift shop & crystal store. As we sat there doing our best to be innocuous (I feel it's rude to just blatently snap a picture of street people,) 3 street people late 20's early 30's somewhere between homeless and thug (based on the functionality of attire, certainly it had seen better days but was still a leather jacket and decorative/functional chains) approached the homless person seen above. These are the individuals seen (badly) earlier. They looked around, saw only us who they catagorized as street urchin or at least street, and proceeded to roll the sleeping person. They took his blanket and recoverd him with one out of his cart searched his other possesions (took nothing else that I could tell) and left. This was not on Haight but was within 20 feet of it.
It is entirely possible that they needed it more than he needed two blankets but this tale should give you a feel and also a sad commentary on what the Haight has become. It's lost the ability to retain what was good about it's hey-day and holds on dearly to whatever is left.
On another note
Golden Gate Pak. Seen above is a redwood. The small figure is J. Due to
the nearby large homeless population I wouldn't visit the park after dark
and felt uncomfortable on less traveled paths during the daylight (no
matter how much Mayor Smith claims to have removed the homeless from the
park - I saw 50 or so.)
After our visit to
Haight/Golden Gate, we returned to downtown. Saw lots of people playing
chess, including Older Russian Immigrants playing people and charging for
it. We decided on North Beach (formerly Little Italy) for dinner. We
crossed Chinatown to get there and we got this shot of the Cable Car in
front of the Chinese McDonalds No they were not advertising the Mulan 20
piece.
Demaris with
Gnocchi in a blush sauce at a great Italian Tratorri recommended by Let's
Go!. Superb infused Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.