The Franciscan Manzanita, a shrub thought to have been made extinct when its habitat in the SF cemeteries of old was eradicated, has been discovered growing wild near the Golden Gate Bridge. More after the jump…
Continue reading Native San Francisco Shrub – Not Dead Yet!
I’m usually not a fan of paintings that take their compositions from photographs in an obvious way, but these impressionistic rainy San Francisco scenes by local artist Jeremy Mann just feel right this weekend.
Reader Anna Spektor found this by accident at a private residence at Shrader and Belgrave. She says:
the house name is “Ursa Minor Dacha”, which is pretty cool in itself, but they also have this sculpture carved out of a dead tree.
Thanks, Anna!
These guys climbed on the 38L during my lunchtime ride. Some video after the jump…
Continue reading Balloon Boyz
“Organic vegan Mexican” is such a redundancy. Seriously, though, it’s blowing my mind, despite this totally eloquent explanation:
Gracias Madre is truly an expression of who we are – it represents our deep love of and reverence for food, our commitment to health and sustainability, our unconditional love for our multicultural family and community, our devotion to the Earth and the divine feminine, and our commitment to raising consciousness on the planet.
Blah blah blah, you love food – bring on the three sisters!
We’ve seen the aftermath before, but this before/after is impressive, no? More after the jump…
Continue reading Valencia Street Sinkhole
Carl Nolte offers a reminder about the original inhabitants of a re-activated Mission Bay:
“There are thousands of us,” said Andrew Galvan, who is a descendant of a Bay Miwok man named Liberato and an Ohlone woman called Obulinda who were married in Mission Dolores in 1802. Galvan is the curator of Mission Dolores and is not extinct.
With the forthcoming death of several MUNI lines, I suppose transit is on the brain. More after the jump…
Continue reading ‘For Saving Life’ – Streetcar Fender Design from 1895
Why on God’s green earth did anyone dream up this 1938 stunt? To quote the narrator, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
This poor horse chased a handful of sugar and towed a fat, useless human named “Shorty Roberts,” as it swam the Golden Gate just to settle a bet about whether horses can swim:
The swim took 23 minutes and 15 seconds—an hour less than it had taken an Olympic swimmer. When Blackie and Shorty arrived in SF, the SPCA was waiting, but admitted that Shorty looked much worse than the horse and didn’t cite him. Shorty always insisted that the horse loved swimming in the bay.
Sure he did, and why not?
(Spotted@)
Recommended book: Historic Photos of San Francisco
The black and white footage at the beginning of this video, grabbed from the Square America blog, shows some dapper Japanese-American immigrants in the 1920s in San Francisco. Especially dignified given the open historical discrimination against them, even before the internment atrocities of WWII.
Be sure to check out this poignant 1942 timeline from the SF Chronicle of the history of the Japanese American community in SF, which ends with the last of 5,280 people being “evacuated” out of the city.
Last night Japanese town was empty. Its stores were vacant, its windows plastered with “To Lease” signs. There were no guests in its hotels, no diners nibbling on sukiyaki or tempura. And last night, too, there were no Japanese with their ever present cameras and sketch books, no Japanese with their newly acquired furtive, frightened looks…
They left San Francisco by the hundreds all through last January and February, seeking new homes and new jobs in the East and Midwest. In March, the Army and the Wartime Civil Control Administration took over with a new humane policy of evacuation to assembly and relocation centers where both the country and the Japanese could be given protection. The first evacuation under the WCCA came during the first week in April, when hundreds of Japanese were taken to the assembly center at Santa Anita. On April 25 and 26, and on May 6 and 7, additional thousands were taken to the Tanforan Center. These three evacuations had cleared half of San Francisco. The rest were cleared yesterday.
I wonder what became of the hopeful, posing folks in the above film clip during this era. (I presume the second, color portion of the clip means they managed to stay together, even if they had to move to Chicago.)
Spotted@ 19th & Mission Streets
I guess I’ve been a little behind in the city’s coyote news. I know of its presence in the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Glen Park, and Bernal Hill, sometimes with lethal consequences. But until my girlfriend gave me a small self-printed booklet from (of course) Dog Eared Books, I was unaware that there was a coyote on Twin Peaks.
Aside from the author’s account, I’ve been unable to find any mention of this urban canine carnivore. Have you seen it? Can you point to any online resources about it? I hope it has fared better than some of the others.
And, if you get a chance, don’t miss the KQED special, “Wild at Heart,” about SF’s urban wildlife. Here’s a trailer from a derivative DVD:
Erik Wilson, known as Generik11 on Flickr
Igor Uriarte, known as 20R3Mun on Flickr
They each get a ticket to Rick Prelinger’s Lost Landscapes of San Francisco.
Thanks to everyone who submitted images and helped to get our Flickr pool started with a bang.
If you haven’t bought your ticket to the screening yet, hurry up, because they’re going fast.
So wrote Father Junipero Serra, that great self-flagellator, to the Spanish Commandant General upon encountering the welcoming Ohlone Indians on the land that is now San Francisco. Congregations of Indians were struck with awe as Serra struck his body with chains, pounded his chest with stones, and burned it with hot candles.
He dreamed of a utopian 10-year apprentice program whereby, after intense “rehabilitation,” the native residents would have fully adopted the customs of European living and could be given back some of their land as devout Catholics. More after the jump…
Continue reading “Missions, my lord, missions – that is what this world needs”
S is for Satanic Swerve. Troy Holden captures visually the dark side of the Bay Bridge enhancements.
It’s not the last time someone will die in that S-curve. There will be more. We might have to rename the bridge the “The Devil’s Bridge…”
(Via Caliber)
With the Mission on the verge of getting its Valencia Street West sidewalk back between 16th and 19th Streets, reader Brian Stokle points us to this nifty Flickr set complete with drawings of how Valencia Street looked over the ages. According to brunoboris, with the latest round of modifications, the sidewalks will return to their original width. More after the jump…
Continue reading Valencia Street Lane Saga, 1925-2010
(spotted@ 16th Street BART.)
This sandwich board ad is a big, tall drink of WTF. Where to begin?
“Magical lingerie,” perhaps? (For men!) Or, how about “Squeem” as a name for a product line (slight handicapping for being a Brazilian company)?
If those don’t wake you up, we can take a look at the claim, “Get Fit Immediately.” And, finally, take a look at that model. Does he look like a candidate for a man-girdle? Is the Squeem thing-a-ma-bob “magically” re-distributing his spare tire into his pecs and biceps (or his…Johnson)?
(spotted@ Mission & 21st)
(spotted@ 19th St./Capp)
