Tiny Cat Warriors

Panorama of San Francisco Bay

SF Bay

Taken from the Golden Gate Bridge lookout on Wednesday night last week. Fog was rolling in from the Golden Gate & the sunset was reflected in the haze over the Berkeley hills.

Sonoma valley sunset

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Friday's sunset in Sonoma valley. The leaves on the trees are just barely beginning to turn.

Harvest 2010

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My apple harvest for this year - the trees are still pretty small, so all in all this wasn't a bad year. Almost enough to make a pie.

San Francisco Muni - why everyone hates them

OK, so the guy in the picture, Mr. Slingshot, has been driving this same truck and parking at the TransBay terminal for at least 4 or 5 years. I'm sure his job is somehow related to making sure the buses run on time & this is a good example of why Muni is so utterly fucked up.

Mr Slingshot used to park on the other side of the terminal, but after I started taking pictures of him, he moved to parking on the other side of TransBay. He sits in the truck pretty much all day. Sometimes with a clipboard, but often reading the sports pages, like he is here. Or sleeping, which he does a lot of.

He's probably some sort of supervisor, hence the clipboard. Which means that he's probably making low six figures, with a gold plated pension plan and a CA government medical plan. Plus the free parking, which in this neighborhood would run $300 a month or more.

Anyway, Muni employees are becoming the favorite whipping boys of San Francisco taxpayers. With good reason. I see this guy every day, but you can imagine what kind of deadwood exists at Muni. Their union contracts need to be renegotiated NOW.

Sunset on Sonoma Mountain 6/8/2010

Sunset reflected in the clouds over Sonoma Mountain. I missed getting a photo of the whole cloud being red by about a minute because I couldn't find a place to pull over, which shows the importance of right place, right time.

Sunset, Petaluma River 6/8/2010

I grabbed this photo with my iPhone last night around 8:30 right as the sun was going down.

"We regret the error"

Best correction notice at a news site in a long time. 

From The Department of Corrections

In our Saturday post about the California Democratic Party’s ad attacking Meg Whitman but masquerading as an “issues ad,” we described the abrupt ending to our conversation with CDP Chairman John Burton. Through his spokesman, Burton on Monday complained that he had been misquoted. Burton says he didn’t say “Fuck you.” His actual words were, “Go fuck yourself.”  Calbuzz regrets the error.

Of course, none of this changes the reality that John Burton is an unrepentant douchebag.

Banksy visits San Francisco?

There've been rumors that some new graffiti around San Francisco is the work of Banksy, the famous Brit street artist.  The pieces certainly look like his other work (search flickr for a wealth of photos of Banksy pieces).  I've got high rez versions of the photos below on my own flickr pages.

The rumors are that the Banksy pieces are in conjunction with the Bay area opening of the Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop.  Anyway, after seeing the mentions of the works here here and here, we spent yesterday (Saturday) visiting all of the ones we could find, 5 in all.  Here are the photos & a short description of each:

Valencia between 19th and 20th

Seems like this was the first one people noticed.  It's over a business, Little Otsu & across the street from the pirate store.  The text seems to reference the story about his recent piece in LA, which was supposedly taken down and will be or is for sale. 

Sycamore @ Mission (between 17th and 18th Streets)

This one's at ground level, it's visible from the sidewalk on the west side of Mission Street unless there's a car parked right in front of it. 

Here's some more detail on one part of the piece:

Belvedere Street @ Haight

Next up was a quick drive to the upper Haight - I wanted to get there fairly early in the morning (mid morning as it turned out), so we could get there before most of the skeezy sidewalk dwellers woke up. 

Took us a couple of minutes to notice the whole piece - the most visible part is a large rat holding a spray can of paint and that part is clearly visible from Haight as it's positioned right over the Villian's Vault storefront on Haight.  Look a few hundred feet up Belvedere and you'll notice the words "This is where I draw the line" scrawled on the side of an apartment building.  The red line ends next to the rat.  I'm guessing that this piece is probably best viewed from a rooftop on the west side of Belvedere at the corner at Haight.

Here's the whole piece:

Here's the text:

And here's the detail on the rat:

Chinatown - Commercial at Grant

Quick shot over to Chinatown was the next stop, actually, we ended up parking 6 or 8 blocks away (natch, since it's Chinatown and parking nearby is as fictional as unicorns) for the next piece.  This one's on street level on the south side of Commercial at the corner of Grant.  The locals seemed damned unhappy about the attention the Banksy was bringing to the neighborhood - an old guy sitting on the stoop across the street starting yelling at PM that we should be sure and warn Banksy that this guy'd be filing charges against Banksy for destruction of property.   Telling him that we didn't know Banksy only made him madder, so anyway, Banksy, consider yourself warned: peace and love isn't a message that's popular in Chinatown.

9th Street @ Howard

This one took a little looking because all I knew was Howard at 9th.  Actually, it's on 9th at Howard, on the west side, over the second building from the corner.  Another rat.  Was the basics of the stencil just a reversal of the rat on Belvedere?  Maybe.

We wrapped up about lunchtime & headed over to the Atlas Cafe at 20th and Alabama in the Mission for a great lunch.  Seen a couple of credible stories about some other Banksy pieces - the gold brick on Lexington seems pretty plausible & similar to some the stranger pieces that have been attributed to Banksy in the past.

Building sign in Chinatown

San Francisco has a lot of old signs painted on the sides of buildings.  I've meant to take some photos of them while they're still around - this one will disappear soon since the lot next door is about to be covered with a high rise.

 

Building sign in Chinatown

San Francisco April 24 2010 - -13

I saw this interesting sign today while we were scouting out the recent Banksy graffiti in San Francisco.