California, here I come

Right, the trip. It was short but we packed a lot in.

Took the BART from the hotel straight into a shady area. Why is it that every town's civic center is a shady area? It is a mystery.


Also it was mind-numbingly cold. I was in two shirts, a jacket, long pants, socks with a scarf, hat and fleece-lined leather gloves and I was still fuh-reezing.

We went to Alamo Square which is also a dog park so I kept looking down for the most part. Surrounding the park are old Victorian homes which have undergone revitalization in recent years. According to one of the homeowners, they're not all private residences. Some are owned by organizations, some are still multi-family, some are rentals. All of the ones immediately facing the park were either restored or in the process of being restored.






I loved that this small park has such old growth, I never see that here. Our parks are made by tearing everything down first and then replanting. This looks far more graceful.


Ah yes. I'd lost the spare battery for my camera right before the trip and so was stuck with the original battery which was dying (which is why I bought a spare). It won't hold a charge for very long, maybe an hour. So I borrowed my friend's old camera which I remembered as being a tired old clunky thing prone to running out of juice at random times. Ha! It turned out to be better than my camera! Behold the Fillmore.


I learned that if I readjusted the focal center of the shot, the camera would adapt to the crap lighting, like so:


Huh? Huh? I was very very impressed and I still have the camera because I am loathe to give it back now.

Here's an old coach house, still in use as a coach house.


I was pretty amazed at how many original structures there were, especially for being so damp and earthquakey. People seemed to actually want to preserve this stuff which was remarkable to me. Here, nuh-uh, anything from the 70's is considered "old" and needs to be torn down and replaced with mixed-use condos and offices immediately.

Japantown, as seen from the pedestrian walkway on Webster and also the only bright, clear part of our stay. It even started warming up a bit.


Because of the borrowed camera's history of crapping out, I was very sparing in taking photos since I expected it to die at any second. It held out for the entire trip which we attributed to the miracle of Guavidad.


Chinatown. One of the few places open on New Year's Day, which was an excellent day for sightseeing since the streets weren't that crowded and no stores were open to distract me.




Klaxon! I wondered if this still worked and if they used it for anything. Still in Chinatown.


This prompted a discussion on Rice-a-Roni, which I have never eaten and which I don't know of anyone who has eaten it.

That streetcar photo there is also demonstrative of the pedestrians of San Francisco. You see how she's crossing the street by walking directly in front of a heavy trolley coming downhill? Yeah. They all jaywalk. All of them. Signals have no meaning. Oncoming traffic has no meaning. It's like they're all suicidal.

And the next day at the Palace of Fine Arts, where it was very difficult to get a photograph without a lot of construction equipment showing up in the frame. It was all fenced off. And raining. Did I mention the rain yet? It rained off and on and then steadily on. I didn't bring an umbrella because I am a moron.


This photo is only interesting because you can see my fingers turning blue. My gloves were not yet broken in so I had to take them off every time I needed to hold something and as soon as I took them off, I started to lose feeling. Oh golly, it was cold.


We even got to go to Mission San Juan Bauptista which also had a convent on the grounds. And chickens, they had chickens roaming around too.


Every mission has a statue of Fr. Juniper Serra in their garden somewhere.


This is what the scenery looked like.


Across from the mission was a murder mansion! Sure it claimed to be a Freemason's Temple but look at it! It has scene-from-a-horror-movie written all over it.


Other notable sites not pictured because it was too wet or dark or I was being judicious: Golden Gate Park, the Dutch windmill, Union Square and tons and tons of Victorian homes.