The Rock

Almost everyone has heard of Alcatraz, in its day the baddest federal prison of all. It is located in the cold waters of San Fransisco Bay. "The Rock" closed as a prison in 1963. Now there are daily tourist excursions. The island is 1.25 mile from San Francisco and the currents are strong. The government claims that no one successfully escaped.

Since I have an iffy sense of balance, paddle boarding escapes me. My son did it on the lake shore of Chicago when he lived there, and still gets out on the lakes of central Michigan where he lives now. I have a friend in New Orleans who paddle boards through the bayous, dodging alligators as she goes. I wouldn't stay upright when the first ripple came by.   

Dining At Bubba Gump

Work is getting in the way of editing photos. Better get my priorities straight.

Mrs. C has a cousin who lives in Los Gatos, California, sort of out the back end of Silicon Valley towards the ocean. She has a middle-aged son who lives nearby. We've met him a few times. They picked us up from the Sausalito ferry last weekend, took us on a bit of a walk and then suggested dinner. We were on Pier 39 (see previous post) and our hosts took us to the last restaurant of the strip, Bubba Gump. There are many of them around the US.

The restaurant theme is based on the movie Forest Gump. The character had some developmental disabilities but his charm and determination took him far. At one time he was captain of a shrimp boat. The restaurant is all about shrimp. If that is not to your liking the options are limited.

I was taken aback by the balancing skill of the young man in the first picture until I noticed that the bottoms of the glasses had slots and were designed to stack this way. Margaritas were long on color and ice and short on tequila. The entrance to the place is in the lower right of the last photo.       

Pier 39

The northern tip of San Francisco has an area known as Fisherman's Wharf. Obviously, fishing boats used to dock here but that's long gone. A number of tour boats and ferries now make their base and hundreds of sea lions have decided it's the place to hang out.The center of it, Pier 39, has become a circus. It's full of tourist junk, tasteless jewelry shops and mass market restaurants. (We ended up at Bubba Gump's for dinner but that's a long story.)

There was an entertainer out at the end who was pretty good. He tried to whip up the crowd, telling us candidly that noise attracts more people, a bigger audience and, hopefully bigger tips.   

Muir Woods

We took an excursion Saturday to Muir Woods National Monument. the area north of San Francisco that is home to the giant redwoods. The experience is staggering - the silence, the feeling of awe, the sense of the depth of time. Wish the light wasn't so contrasty and that I had a tripod, but we make do with what is at hand.              

Tarnished Gold

We took an excursion yesterday to Muir Woods and got dropped off in Sausalito, a touristy town across the bay from the city. There was a mandatory stop for pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was  a bit hazy and the light was terrible so B&W was the way to go. More dramatic this way.   

Green Apples, Bowler Hats

Mrs. C and I took some time off to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It's a don't miss. We were last there several years ago. Since then there has been a huge expansion, tripling the exhibition space

The featured show was about the later work of René Magritte.  Some people consider his paintings simple and repetitive, if a bit strange. The audio guide explained how complex the paintings are, challenging the viewer to think about odd juxtapositions and the subtle layers of the seen and unseen.  

It's obvious I like to take pictures of people in museums looking at the art, such as this old favorite.  You have to wonder what what gets through.   
        

Chinatown

We did a walking tour around SF's large Chinatown yesterday for as long as my back was cooperating. A lot of the area is visually explosive and full of color. There are more of these I may get around to editing but I'm supposed to be going to school here. At least some of the time.    

Welcome To SFO

Flew into San Francisco late yesterday afternoon. We really lucked out at the conference hotel and got a room on the 42nd floor with a sweeping view to the northeast. The tall building on the right is called Millennium Tower. It has sunk 17 inches/43 cm into the ground since construction. You can't see it in this picture but it is tilting a bit. Many people who bought zillion dollar apartments find that they are now nearly worthless. Lots of lawyers and engineers have all the work they can handle.

Just south of our hotel is a neighborhood called The Tenderloin, perhaps the worst in the city. As the taxi drove through, we saw many homeless people, rundown buildings and cheap hotels.  A man was was lying prostrate on the sidewalk being tended to by emergency medical technicians. There seemed to be a liquor store on every corner. There is no place for low income people to live here. Our driver told us that the median price of a house in the city proper is $1.3 million.      

A Final Note From San Francisco

.
Gotta get out and shoot some new local material. For now, a final image from San Francisco. In how many cities could you find this? This man sat on the sidewalk of The Embarcadero outside the Ferry Building. He provided poetry, much lacking in contemporary Western life, upon request. You tell him what it's worth to you. He will accept your donation, large or small, and summon the muse to his old manual typewriter. Art when you need it, whether rich or poor. That's poetry.


Finally, there is a new Arch photo on Gateway.

STL DPB Leaving San Francisco

.

Time to go tome today. It's late Tuesday night as I write this - maybe more text in the morning. Above, at Mission Dolores. Below, one of the wall paintings in Balmy Alley.

STL DPB In The Forest Primeval: Muir Woods

.

Yesterday was interesting. Alcatraz Island was worth the trip. We learned that its history included more that the notorious prison, It began as an army base and artillery battery protecting the entrance to the bay during the Civil War. After we returned, the sun peeked out here and there as we had lunch in a waterside restaurant in Sausilito. The highlight of the day, though, was a visit to Muir Woods, the preserve of towering redwood trees.

We are so busy that there has been little time for editing pictures (let alone visiting yours). Maybe I'll get more done on the plane tomorrow.

Bottom: the exercise yard from the former Alcatraz Prison. Bleak.

STL DPB On The Road: Pink Vespa In San Francisco

.

Found in the garage of the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Below, CDP meetup with Carolyn of Oakland Daily Photo and a bit more of the famous bridge..

I'm sorry I have not been able to write more text and visit my friends' blogs. This couple works hard on vacation. Out all day, back to the hotel, collapse, download pix and edit a few, dinner, upload a quick post, conk out. We plan to take the boat to Alcatraz today for the first time, then Sausilito for lunch, followed by the great, ancient trees in Muir Woods. It's a gloomy, wet day here, perfect for shooting.

STL DPB On The Road: Faces of San Francisco

.

I live in Podunk. Wouldn't see people like this back in STL. These are some of the faces I saw on the street in San Francisco yesterday, mostly at the Saturday Farmers Market at the Ferry Building and the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. I'll add more if I have time to edit them.

STL DPB On The Road: San Francisco

.
So this is part of the reason for all the rushing around of late. Mrs. C and I like to treat ourselves to something when our anniversary comes around (number 36, thank you). Her company is treat enough for me but we usually go someplace fun so we can get out of the rat race together.

This was taken from the second floor balcony of a restaurant of Pier 39 in the Fisherman's Wharf area, with the sun about to set behind the Golden Gate Bridge.

STL DPB On The Road: San Francisco - Transamerica Building In Fog

.

Yesterday morning, a lawyer-photographer friend and I took a pass on the conference and went walking with our cameras. Heavy fog was beginning to lift. This is the Transamerica Building, SF's pyramid, backlit through the fog by the morning sun. Why does a shadow of the pinnacle appear to be hanging on the cloud behind the building? If there are any meteorologists of optics experts out there, please help us out.

Lots of San Francisco pix are going up on Flickr here.

STL DPB On The Road: San Francisco

.
Mrs. C. and I are in SF for a legal conference in my specialty. Actually, I played hooky most of the day. This is the view of the Embarcadero ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street, shot from the end of the hall of our hotel.

The focus of the day was the Richard Avedon show at the SF Museum of Contemporary Art. It overwhelmed me. At times the brilliance of the work literally brought tears to my eyes. It felt a little silly to call myself a photographer after viewing 200 of Avedon's images, almost all portraits. The work was intense and beautiful, and had so much to teach. When to keep the image sharp (Ronald Reagan). When soft focus works better and when a complete blur is the best expression (Charlie Chaplin). How a very shallow depth of field can create the most intense visual image, softening into a blur by the time we see the ears. When a long depth of field grabs and holds a complex whole (a young Truman Capote or Marianne Moore, perhaps the most beautiful picture in the show). When to center the subject of a portrait in the frame (Marilyn Monroe), when to go off center (Marian Anderson) and when to go way off center (appropriately enough, St. Louis' own William S. Burroughs). And over and over again, the genius of using a plain white paper background for a portrait, stripping away everything external, leaving just a single, isolated human.