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San Francisco, California
The ocean breathes salty won't you carry it in, in your head, in your mouth, in your soul
A nice day of San Francisco slides seem as good a choice as any for the penultimate day of another seemingly endless slideshow. The fun starts at the Embarcadero, where a woman talking on a cell phone is forever caught in the moment where she can't quite decide which is cooler- that distant, stately view of Coit Tower or that impossibly fake looking palm tree shadow halfway across the street.
An atmospheric picture from an atmospheric city (and one made all the more atmospheric with that fast rolling fog).
Los Angeles architect Thom Mayne's new Federal Building is certainly not hard to miss. Prior to my visit I had forgotten to look up where it exactly was located but that hardly mattered when I spotted it close to ten blocks away, its form and materials and scale are pretty hard to miss in a city as surprisingly (architecturally) conservative as San Francisco.
Mario Botta's acronym heavy SFMoMA is still daring and interesting enough to deserve attention, even though no matter how hard I try I just don't like it. Sure the stairs are interesting and the lobby has a look to it, but the design just has, I don't know, a sort of static pretentiousness to it, should such a description exist. Still the collection is pretty good and they are right about to host what sounds like a terrific Olafur Eliasson show, reason alone to go to San Francisco- although before you book that ticket you should be advised that it will be at MoMA in Spring 2008, should you have the patience to wait that long.
On my last day before another overnight flight home (Jet Blue to JFK) I decided to kill a few hours by taking a ride on one of those tourist boats that leave near Fisherman's Wharf. How bad can it be I thought, one last chance to get out on the Pacific waters before that long, cold flight home. And while the views of the bay and the fast rolling fog were wonderful (at times), the boat ride itself had a lot to be desired. Blaring over the loudspeakers for the entire journey was a soundtrack that shifted from horrible to insulting to pointless. Led by an over expressive voice actor pretending to be "Captain Nemo," the presentation never achieved much of anything but was loud enough that it could not be fully ignored. Even at the mouth of the Golden Gate, even on the edge of the open Pacific, the soundtrack was still there, blaring across the water, as if it needed to somehow compete against scenery that it had no right to even exist with in the first place.
As for Fisherman's Wharf, while it is not my favorite spot in the city it does have great views, lots of sourdough bread (my favorite) and an always tasty (and easy to get to) In-N-Out Burger. With all that going for it, it makes you wonder why it's not my favorite spot in the city after all.
It may not be a grizzly bear or a sea otter or a harbor seal or a bald eagle or a killer whale or a moose, but San Francisco has wildlife as well. Taken from the boat as it loudly chugged back to the dock, the lone silhouette of a lone pelican heads west toward the fog, toward the bridge, toward the sea for reasons that only such a lone pelican could ever possibly explain.
What better way to end the San Francisco pictures than with one last look back at the bay, back at the bridge as an all consuming fog starts to do just what it does best.
