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San Francisco, California
I've been punching through the walls, I've been living on the edge, I've been fighting with my demons so long they've become my friends
Like a lot of people, I tried to make my free time during the pandemic somewhat productive by starting all sorts of projects, things like cleaning, reorganizing and starting this site, a place where all of my past (and future) slideshows could be found in one place. Another pandemic project was to achieve WELL accreditation. I already had my LEED AP BD+C, and I thought that WELL would be a strong compliment to it. And while I was not especially anxious to take on the burden of needing to complete additional credits, luckily just about every WELL credit can be used for LEED BD+C and vice versa. So I watched some videos, read some PDFs, bought some app with flashcards, studied, took the test online from home (an insane experience that I’ll spare you the details of), passed and became WELL accredited, making my email signature even longer- there are now more letters after my name than in my name. Through luck and the timing of the pandemic, my two year reporting periods for both WELL and LEED BD+C overlap every other year, meaning that in even numbered years it is beneficial to accrue a lot of credits and attend USGBC’s conference Greenbuild which, in 2022, was in San Francisco.
So after not flying at all in most of 2020 and all of 2021, I was now on my third United round trip of the year and my second to the west coast. And after an easy flight, a quick BART trip to my hotel (which is so much easier now that you can store a Clipper Card on your iPhone), I was exploring San Francisco and standing atop the Salesforce Transit Center looking at the Salesforce Tower and probably other things named Salesforce that I just didn’t know about yet.
The Transbay Terminal (or Salesforce Transit Center) is the Grand Central of the West, kind of. It certainly is a grand building, with a lot of impressive public spaces, solid public art, a goofy but fun little glass aerial cable car and of course that wonderful rooftop park. It is connected directly to Oakland and the bridge with a second floor bus terminal, and was designed to eventually accommodate CalTrains and California High Speed Rail. The only thing that it’s not connected to is the Muni/BART station a block or so away, a real lost opportunity if you’re trying to make a Grand Central of the West.
I visited the Transbay Terminal/Salesforce Transit Center a few times, both on my own and on a tour through Greenbuild which was fantastic. Unlike AIA Conferences, Greenbuild offers far fewer tours, but the tours they offer are very high quality. The Greenbuild tour not only explained the building and public art (including an awesome rooftop fountain that follows movements of buses below), but it also took us deep, deep underground to the train shed box where CalTrain and California High Speed Rail will eventually take passengers down to Los Angeles and San Diego. The train box included two levels. The first picture is of the track level, where six tracks and three platforms will be located. The level above that is the future rail concourse level, which features natural light that floods in from the main atrium above.
For no legitimate reason whatsoever, I like to keep a list of my top five favorite art museums in my head, even though that list changes all the time. Number one on that list has to be the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has a collection that is impossible to beat. Also on that list is the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (which I do not nearly go back to enough), the Tate Modern, the Pompidou and then for number five we have a rotating list of museums that usually just represent the last museum I’ve been to. Maybe it’s Louisiana or ARoS in Denmark, or maybe it’s the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Broad in Los Angeles, or, if I’m in San Francisco, SFMOMA.
SFMOMA has a strong collection, (usually) solid temporary exhibitions and an interesting building- a mash up of a Mario Botta building and an addition by Snohetta. The Botta building is out front, hard to miss and in your face (although the renovated entry is still pretty spectacular- see pictures above). The Snohetta addition sneaks up on you both figuratively and literally, hiding behind the building with outdoor terraces and a completely different feel. Often these mash ups just don’t work, but I would argue that SFMOMA is an exception to that. Even though you’re in two very different buildings at times, the in between spaces mesh so well that it’s somehow still good.
If you are a long time reader of these slideshows, you probably already know that Olafur Eliasson is my favorite living artist. There’s certainly no escaping some of his art on these pages and I was happy to see that SFMOMA had its own Olafur Eliasson installation as part of their Contemporary Optics show. Taking over the bridge that crosses the entry atrium was One-way Colour Tunnel 2007, which, like a lot of Olafur Eliasson’s works, is very well named.
We’re still at SFMOMA where they seemed to know that I was coming. In addition to the Olafur Eliasson installation, there was also a big Diego Rivera show.
On the last day that I was New York before the pandemic, the same day that I was also at opening day of the Edge observation deck, I also walked the High Line and visited the Whitney Museum, specifically to see Vida Americana, an exhibition that featured a full size print of Man, Controller of the Universe, a version of the mural that John D Rockefeller had destroyed in the lobby of 30 Rock when he saw that it wasn’t capitalist enough for a Rockefeller. What really struck me at the time was a study of the mural, and I used a picture I took of it as my iPhone background starting that day at the museum and looked at it every single day of the pandemic. Man, Controller of the Universe felt so appropriate for a time when man was no longer in real control (an argument could be made that man was never in control in the first place, which is also why I liked that image as my iPhone background). I finally switched it off in September 2022 when iOS 16 came out, since then I have been using the live weather background which still impresses me more than it probably should. So in many ways, as I walked through the Diego Rivera exhibit and saw again the same gorgeous study of Man, Controller of the Universe that I had seen in March 2020 in New York, it felt to me that (for me at least) the pandemic was finally, finally over.
So after all that you might expect to see a picture of that study of Man, Controller of the Universe that I just rambled on incessantly about. I’ll spare you that and instead give you Pan American Unity, a completely different Diego Rivera mural, in a temporary home at SFMOMA before returning back to its home at the City College of San Francisco.
Despite all these pictures, I really did not have all that much free time in San Francisco. I was there for Greenbuild, and Greenbuild took almost all of my time. Still, I did have enough time to attempt a lazy version of the Golden Gate Bridge walk. I took a Lyft to Vista Point and walked back toward San Francisco, along Crissy Field, past the marina and Fort Mason and over to Fisherman’s Wharf where I took the historic streetcar line back to my hotel. A decent walk but nowhere near my legendary full circle walk from Union Square (Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach, Sea Cliffs, Golden Gate Bridge, Crissy Field, Fisherman’s Wharf and back), but I didn’t have all day this time and I just didn’t want my legs to be in immeasurable pain again for days and days afterwards like last time.
I am usually not too disturbed if there is bad weather when I visit somewhere. Sure, a nice blue sky with great lighting is always awesome, but sometimes bad weather makes for better experiences, like this one. I will probably never take a better picture of the Golden Gate Bridge than this one, no matter how perfect the weather may be.
