Little San Francisco

Art Nouveau Stern Grove

2011-09-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Mission Street Signs

2011-09-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

I just looked through this blog and saw all these comments I failed to reply to, and was surprised this blog had any comments at all! Neither Simone or I are currently living in SF, so Lilttle SF really stalled. I feel very homesick for San Francisco, though. And sorry for not replying!

I love handpainted signs so much. It's part of the problem with very modern signs and chain stores, the slick boring signs. I love the jumbled look of streets like Mission, with its old vintage signs or awesome hand-done ones like those above.

Half Moon Bay

2010-05-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

We went here over the holiday seasons, and it was appropriately cold, windy and foggy. The Northern California coast tends to be rocky, windy, and treacherous. Because it's in California, San Francisco is often associated with sunshine, surfing and palm trees, when in fact the weather is characterized by dense, low-lying fog and gusts of wind, and if it's sunny it is a brisk sunshine, not a pleasant, warm, lazy one.

But all this, combined with all its hills, contributes to San Francisco's airiness, which I guess isn't so refreshing when you want to go out at night during the summer and have to wear several jackets, but contributes to a light, crisp sort of feel, which east coast cities are definitely lacking. They always feel as if they are broiling under the pavement during the summer, but San Francisco seems to be perched atop a cool breezy hill. It never feels stuffy. Sometimes when I go back I think stuff like, "This is the air I was meant to breathe!" Plus we have no bugs.

Being in this environment, among native Northern California plants and trees (and non-native ones which we have adopted as our own, like eucalyptus) really takes me back to my childhood- I have many photos of me in preschool on nature walks on the coast, all of us huddled together in sweatshirts.

Alemany Flea Market

2010-02-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

Thumbs up all the way for the Alemany Flea Market!!!

People in Motion/People in Mooottttiiioooonnnn!!!!*

2010-02-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

Oh, Dolores Park. Am I wrong or are there far fewer Speedo-clad gays than there once was? Still, it's fun to get a treat from Tartine/a High Life with a paper bag around it and people-watch on a warm day. Note the view of beautiful Mission High and downtown.

These photos are worth clicking on.

*This is the crescendo part of If You're Going to San Francisco (Make Sure You Wear some Flowers in Your Hair)

Twin Peaks Properties

2010-01-24T12:56:00.000-08:00

Now that Streetlight Records is closed (along with a lifetime of angsty teenage memories of buying CDs that CHANGED MY LIFE), there is no reason to go to Noe Valley (except to visit the city's best consignment store, Mary's Exchange!!!!); all the little neighborhood-y things that made it semi-charming get more and more swept away by dog pedicure places and $18,000 custom bike-eries very day. However, despite the death of the owner, realty office Twin Peaks Properties and its idiosyncratic window displays are still there. Noe Valley is obviously politically liberal (in a "I paid a million dollars for my two bedroom home to live here but I am just middle class and not, like fancy or anything,"/Gavin Newsom type way) and owner Harry Aleo was a real holdover from the area's working class roots, what with his pro-Reagan propaganda and "English Spoken Here" signs and whatnot.

While I don't agree with his views, I appreciate the effort he put into making these windows and the way he used them to further his own viewpoint and celebrate San Franciso's history- you can see old property prices, a Tonga Room menu, a 30's era photo showing a movie theater with a "NOE" marquee, and so much more. It's sad to think of this storefront being replaced. Also, check out the adorable old-school Noe Valley Merchant Assoosication logo! Way cuter than the new round one seen to the lower right.

PS: The Peaks Tavern, home to perhaps the best bar sign in the city, is another old school Noe Valley holdout at odds with the rest of the ultra-yuppie neighborhood. While I can't say I find the drunk 49-ers hatted men leering at me outside the bar at 4pm all that charming, it's certainly preferable to whatever it could turn into, like a wine bar or something. Anyway, I forgot to take photos of that. Also, remember oxygen bars? Hahahaha.

PPs; I stole this photo of The Peak's sign off flickr: It's a Tyrolean dog! Or something!

It's Tops & Grooves

2010-01-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

Like Stow Lake, these two businesses next to each other look super-charming.

Stow Lake = Darling!!!

2009-10-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I lived in the Duboce Triangle and the Richmond, so I spent a lot of time in Golden Gate Park- which truly has everything. And one of my fondest memories is going to the picturesque Stow Lake with my parents, eating a bar of pink popcorn and/or It's It, drinking an Icee (blue or red flavor!), and renting a boat, which I thought was like totally a real adventure on the High Seas.

Recently, I returned to Stow Lake to rent a row boat on one of the few warm days we have, and my god it was charming! So 1950's and cute! Anyway, it was one of those old-fashioned, leisurely type of Day-In-The-Park activities I feel human beings could use more of. Like I should have been wearing a boater hat and reading Wind In the Willows alo. You know, something queer like that. Anyway, Simone, if you are reading this: we should totally do a photo shoot here!

Mary's Musings: Incomplete SF Edition

2009-02-04T11:16:00.001-08:00

Since I never post for real, I hope it's okay I do a rambling post about....the New Musuem of Natural Sciences!

This musuem was the BEST kid's/science museum ever. It had halls filled with 1950s style taxidermied scenes of African animals (who can forget the dik-dik? I cannot), an earthquake simulator that you could stand on and get knocked off of that was meant to show us how the 1906 quake felt, an alligator pit, and a Damian Hirst-like entire Great White Shark encased in ice. Seriously! That was crazy! It always smelled like fish around the shark.

Anyway, they have revamped this museum and made it "green" with a $25 admission fee and whatnot so I hope they didn't RUIN it.
Here are some upcoming posts we want to do but are too lazy:

-Local TV personalities such as the ever-classy Dennis Richmond, Terilyn Joe of the large hair and mercurial personality, and, you know, Elaine Corral or something.

-The amazing rooftop Christmas carnival that used to be held on top of the Emporium department store when we were kids.

-SF landmarks like Tonga Room, Starlight Room, and House of Prime Rib

-Hey, whatever happened to those twins?

-Playland at the Beach, the Sutro Baths, and the old Musee Mechanique

-Fairyland and the early 90's-era Great America

-A San Francisco World's Fair post in which I share some of my personal memorabilia

Some Pretty Pictures

2009-01-31T15:48:00.000-08:00

Apparently we are the worst at updating this blog. It would probably be easier if either of us actually LIVED in SF right now, but oh well. Here be some lovely photos of random stuff in San Francisco to enjoy:

The Dance Party Laundromat on the corner of Mission and Ocean. (Not really a dance party).

Ye Olde California Savings Bank sign on Mission & 16th.

Cute Art Deco Building somewhere downtown - Sutter Street maybe?

Postwar stucco houses on the North Side of Bernal Hill.

View of the Backs of some houses from a pedestrian overpass near the Glen Park Bart Station.

Twin Peaks & Sutro Tower from... Noe Valley, I think.

The Strand, and old theater on Market Street that has been empty forever.

Old Tile Storefronts on Market Street.

A really cute building and storefront in Chinatown.

More to come, I swear. Like, actual entries that I sorta did research on and stuff. For serious!

Don't wanna be buried in a pet semetery (sic)

2008-10-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

Whenever I tell anyone there's a pet cemetery in the Presidio, I'm usually met with something like, "oh cool! where is it?" And the answer is: Uh... I can't really tell you. The best I can do is say it's underneath the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. Kinda up from Chrissy Field, sorta. The point is, it totally exists.

It exists but no one is sure if it's origins. Some of the grave markers date back to the 1950s, but there are no official records of the pet cemetery. Consequently legends have developed alluding to burial grounds for 19th century cavalry horses or World War II guard dogs. But most likely it was just a spot for the military families who lived in the Presidio to bury their beloved pets.

And perhaps my favorite grave marker:

But maybe I'm just partial to wiener dogs.

Apparently the fate of the cemetery is unknown, as there's going to be a new approach to the bridge built sometime in the future. Hopefully the pet cemetery will be left unscathed, and appreciated as the folksy landmark it is.

In conclusion, here's a photo of the intense scaffolding that was under the bridge approach when I was at the cemetery taking these photos way back in March:

(Apologies to the Ramones. Except for Johnny. He was such a jerk.)

Grant Street, Chinatown

2008-01-04T14:10:00.001-08:00

I'm not often in San Francisco's official Chinatown, which swarms with packs of gawking tourists from the midwest on the best of days. I prefer Clement Street or Irving near 19th for my chinatown fix. (which, oddly enough, usually involves Vietnamese food, not Chinese...) Anyway, as a young child, I remember my mom loved to take us to Chinatown, where I would be shoved aside by mean old Chinese ladies trying to buy the freshest vegetables at various green-grocers on Stockton, and inevitably rewarded with some cheesy tchotke (a "jade" horse figurine is strongly embedded in my memory) purchased at some sort of "showroom of the oriental arts" or something on Grant Street.

As one would assume, Chinatown has a lot of interesting history. In 1906, after the earthquake/fire, the SF goverment, in a valorous showing of both racism AND greed (oh, they go hand in hand!) tried to keep the Chinese from coming back to Chinatown, because the rich white people wanted the real estate for themselves. So the Chinese community had to make some concessions, one of them being that they would make Chinatown more tourist-friendly, and more "Chinese" looking. So that's why a lot of the buildings in Chinatown have a little oriental flare to them - it was to placate the white populous and make Chinatown more "cute", and, I assume, less of an opium den.

Anyway, here are some photos I took the other day of old signs and stuff on Grant Ave.

The Buddha Bar on Grant &... something. Obviously, I wasn't paying close attention to street signs. I wonder how old the street lights are here?

"The Art Co" sign. I wonder what it was like down here before everything was a goddamned souvenir store.

Old Signs for souvenir shops.

Some really cute deco tilework on storefronts... It's kinda amazing to me how much tilework like this there is in SF.

Eastern Bakery sign.

The amazing thing is, this place is STILL a drug store.

Looking down Grant towards Bush St.

Looking down Grant towards Columbus St.

You know the Chinatown Gate on Grant and Bush? It's ugly, you know, and has, like, dragons on it? Anyway, apparently when they put that up, the committe in charge of it had a choice between building a new library or putting up that gate. Just so you know where everyones priorities lie. sigh. Oh, and apparently the gate is wrong, the animals on it are in the wrong place or something. heh.

Doorway on Pierce and Oak (or something)

2007-11-15T17:27:00.000-08:00

Driving Home at Sunset

2007-11-15T17:18:00.000-08:00

Mission and 30th

2007-11-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

Something about this photo is weird. It looks like a movie set. For the longest time, I always assumed that the red and white State Farm Insurance building was occupied, but it's been empty for a long time. It has a cute old sign and awning though, and it used to be tiled on the bottom. They're doing something to it- last summer or something Simone and I took a picture of the inside all gutted out as they were remodeling or something. PS: Here comes the 14! We should take photos of all the old 70's brown, white and orange buses before they all get replaced by their boxy gray counterparts.

The Mission

2007-10-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

Beautiful old sign for the New Mission theater.

Cute 50's neon Chiropractic sign.

Old El Capitan theater, not a parking lot and Greek imports store.

A very mid-century Modernist dentist office.

RE: Light Shining on Bernal Hill

2007-09-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Mary's post of the evening light shining on Bernal Hill reminded me of a bunch of photos I took in January 2006 from the top of Bernal Hill. The way the light falls on the victorians in San Francisco is really one of the most beautiful things about the city. Her description of the houses jumbled together looking like a patchwork quilt couldn't be more apt. Anyway, here be the photos:

Oooh, pretty!

Lower Valencia Street

2007-09-19T13:45:00.001-07:00

A crumbling Victorian, lit from the top.

I've always liked the exterior of this 50's era building on Valencia and Hill. Even the gold cursive writing is very midcentury.

An old plaque from Horace Mann Middle School that looks like it was pasted on this metal rail.

A little bottle-green Victorian house in the middle of the commercial/more modern block. These sort of rectangular Victorians always seem older to me than the A-frames. They seem very "old West."

Light Shining on Bernal Hill

2007-09-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

These are really pretty (and huge...) if you enlarge them. I love how when the sun is setting certain things or buildings will get illuminated. All the A-frame houses crowded together always remind me of a jumbled quilt.

Pointy Little House

2007-09-10T19:36:00.000-07:00

This house looks like a gnome's hat. I should have photographed it with other houses to show how incredibly pointy it is, as you can't quite tell from this image. It's on Paris street between Brazil and Persia in the Excelsior. Who built this house? None of the other ones on the street look like this at all.

Perhaps the Cutest Building Ever

2007-08-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some not-very-good photos of the Royal Baking Company building and storefront (plus an anonymous beautiful lady!) on Mission between Persia and Russia. I don't know anything about this building, but I'm guessing it was built around the 30's, and it is beyond adorable. They make their own bread and have a little bakery where you can buy rolls shaped like turtles and coffee, and are a relic from when the Excelsior was a predominantly Italian neighborhood. (More on that later!) There are lots of old businesses in the Excelsior, aka the neighborhood that time/the rest of the city forgot.

Below is a better image I stole from flickr of the building before its recent paint job. Anyway, I hope the Royal Baking Co. is protected, because it's super unique and beautiful. I wonder what it looks like inside? Old deco tile? A girl can dream!

Too Beautiful for This World: "The World's Finest Theater" (Part one of a series of rants)

2007-07-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

These photos are all of the Fox Theater, designed by Thomas Lamb, located on Market and 9th, built in 1929, the self-proclaimed "World's Finest Theater!" Based on these photos, I'm pretty sure they were right. It's all so baroque! Can you imagine going to see a film in a theater like this? I mean, the Castro is alright and all, but man... (My father remembers seeing some sort of Boris Karloff movie at the Fox with his cubscout troop, probably in the late 50s. "It was really cool," he says). Unfortunately, like many theaters in this town, the Fox was just too beautiful for this world, and in 1963 it was torn down.

I don't even want to write about what it was replaced with. It's called Fox Plaza and it's the ugliest fucking building in San Francisco. Sigh.

Even Boring Stuff at Least Used to Look Cute

2007-07-27T14:10:00.001-07:00

Back in ye olden days, even boring stuff like the sign for a parking garage had some style. Like this one, located on the San Francisco Marketplace building, which is on Market and, uh, 9th or something:

Anyway, the point is, it seems like everything that is built nowadays, especially buildings/structures which serve a semi-utilitarian purpose (government buildings, hospitals, parking garages, etc.) are made as boring and ugly as humanly possible. It's like, Slab Of Concrete, Slab of Concrete, window, repeat, ad nauseum. You know? I mean, a parking structure is not an interesting place to be. But do they really need to be so aggressively ugly?

What's up with the Hibernia Bank?

2007-07-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend today, and he mentioned the Hibernia Bank building. "What's up with that old bank, the one with the kinda weird name?" he asked. Well, uh, I did a little (very little) research and here's what I came up with: First off, Hibernia is the Roman Latin name for Ireland. The Hibernia Bank Building in San Francisco is located on the corner of McAllister and Jones, right next to Market Street, in the always glamourous Civic Center area. Hibernia National Bank itself was a New Orleans-based institution (founded 1870, natch), and was bought out by Capitol One in 2005. As for the actual building here in SF, I really don't know what the deal is with it. For as long as I can remember, it's been abandoned and fenced in. Which really seems like a waste to me. I bet the inside is really cool and old! Also, with a name like "Hibernia," you could open some sort of swingin' clothing store that doubled as a night club. That is, if it was still 1965. It also reminds me of the local sex/relationship show called "Hibernia Beach" that used to be on LIVE 105 at like 1am back when I used to listen to LIVE 105, ie, over 10 years ago. Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this building, like why it's all boarded up, or how long it's been abandoned, or if we're wrong and there's actually something totally awesome going on in there (and no, I don't mean a meth lab), let us in on it.

Ex Round Table, Market Street

2007-07-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

Above is a building on Market Street, between 7th and 8th. It has faces carved allover it, which you will see if you enlarge the picture. Like lots of gorgeous old buildings, the bottom has been hollowed out (probably the inside too) to make way for something else beautiful and special- a now abandoned Round Table Pizza. In the first photo, you can see the remains of the carved columns peeking out from behind the boarded-up exterior. Who knows what might be next? A store selling Nike Dunks? Or maybe they'll just knock it down.

Discolandia

2007-07-15T22:39:00.001-07:00

This is a little record store on 24th street in the Mission (from about Mission to Potrero)- an area that is rapidly gentrifying. 24th street is full of trees and old storefronts and businesses and great architecture, and shall feature prominently in Little San Francisco, at least until all the hipsters boring it up, with their American Apparels and expensive cocktails and whatnot.