The Robert C Levy Tunnel, better known in San Francisco as the Broadway Tunnel, is some serious urban tunnel, a little spooky to walk through, and an art canvas.
“Reverse Graffiti” is done by selectively cleaning parts of a dirty area to show designs / patterns / art, whatever you want to call it. It’s credited to Paul “Moose” Curtis who did this little project at the entrance to the Broadway Tunnel.
Interestingly enough, since only cleaning is involved reverse graffiti is often legal where regular graffiti would be illegal. This has attracted the attention of advertisers and, though it is conveniently omitted from the YouTube video, this was commissioned by Clorox to promote their Green Works line of ‘green’ cleaning products.
Moose actually seems like an interesting guy and anyone who can get money from a major corporation to do stuff that’s cool has my respect.
Here’s a photo of the San Francisco Medical Examiner (not the coroner) contingent in the Pride Parade awhile back:
I like the skull and cross bones motif: it’s like they’re the pirates of pathology. They are, however, a tad touchy about the whole “we’re not coroners” thing, which seems a little elitist for egalitarian San Francisco. Here’s what the SFME has to say about it: “The Medical Examiner differs from the Coroner in that the latter is a lay office . . . is usually not a physician, is not trained in medicine, Forensic Pathology or Forensic Science.” Well la di da.
The SFME goes on to snootily remark that “It was the Coroner’s system that was first brought to the United States as a fledgling Country. The Medical Examiner System is a modern replacement.” I am sure this is news to the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. Our neighbors to the South are the equivalent of the SFME for Los Angeles and, while I’m not sure of their parading skills, they surpass San Francisco for sense of humor: you see the LA Coroner has a gift shop. Here’s an example of their work, a beach towel, one of the many items for sale at their Skeletons in the Closet store.
The SF Medical Examiner is not without a sense of humor entirely however. Their web site features this prominent warning:
“IF YOU ENCOUNTER SOMEONE WHO APPEARS TO BE DECEASED: CALL 911″
I met Dan on Market Street. You will note the sign, which explains that he needs money “four” a cat show entry fee and grooming (presumably for the cat). To his credit, Dan seems to be taking better care of Samantha than he is himself. She actually is well groomed and seemed like a happy cat. Plus Samantha just seems like a good name for a cat; it has that whole Bewitched angle going for it too.
Question: Why should anyone give you money? Answer: So I can get her to a cat show; got one coming up.
Q: Tell me something about yourself. A: I’m a nice guy.
Q: Where do you think you’ll be in 5 years? A: I hope in an established place; probably still here in California . . . be a lot better off than I am now. There’s a lot of organizations that say they’ll help but they don’t really help. I’ve got to do it myself.
Here’s a gratuitous shot of Samantha, just because she’s so cute:
I’m walking around Russian Hill with Amy, and this is before we spent all afternoon drinking, and two things jumped out as noteworthy.
There seem to be a lot of missing pet flyers up around town these days and . . .
The big set of paw prints we saw
We’re walking past a car when Amy stops and points at the car’s hood. You can see paw prints outlined in the dust and dirt and Amy, who has two cats, says “Those are way too big to be a cat’s prints.”
I lean over the hood and say, “But dogs don’t usually jump up on car hoods . . . ” and we look at the prints and then look at each other and say “Coyote.” Suddenly all those missing pet fliers made sense.
Coincidentally, I was in Texas later that week and saw a display on critter footprints out at McKinney Falls State Park. The coyote prints sure look like what I saw on the hood of that car. Hold on to your yip dogs Russian Hill: Wile E. is on the prowl and your dog is not nearly as fast as the Road Runner.
Picture credit is from emdot on Flickr under creative commons attribution copyright. No it was not taken in San Francisco and, like an idiot, I forgot to get pictures of the prints on the hood of the car.
San Francisco is a city with great history and historical characters but neither the history nor the characters are, shall we say, evenly distributed. Noe Valley, home of the door with this historic plaque, evidently prides itself of being a quiet neighborhood.
The Barbary Coast Ranger’s deadfall of the week is: Li Po.
Li Po is what a Chinatown bar should look and feel like, so it’s all the more amazing that it actually exists in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It’s a little seedy, a little exotic, and, even though half the juke box is Chinese songs, Patsy Cline was playing when sweetie and I walked in.
Li Po is actually the name of a famous Chinese Poet. I’m not sure if the bar is actually named after him, but it seems likely since Li Po was “. . . best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for liquor.” [Thanks Wikipedia!]
The interior is perfect: old Chinese themed murals, faded under a thick film of nicotine from the days before cancer scared us, huge lazy Chinese lantern lamp shades that look like hot air balloons that dropped in and have been promising to float away after ‘just one more beer’ for the last 30 years, and an impressive Buddha shrine in the corner. There’s an area of red vinyl booths in the back that give the area an incongruous look, like you’re in a swank, 1930’s Shanghai Denny’s.
You may walk in and find a tourist asleep with his head on the bar, as we did, but locals wander in too. Li Po is dark all the time and has a the required arcane path to the restroom that feels like they white washed the old route to the opium den downstairs.
San Francisco, which packages and sells its past with the best of them, conveniently omits the Barbary Coast from much of its history. An area world famous for drugs, prostitution, violence and liquor is commemorated with . . . a pastry shop that isn’t even in the Barbary Coast: instead it’s just off Union Square.
It’s tough to pick just one or two things to say about how the coast was, but Asbury once again rises to the challenge with this:
The crime and debauchery of the early days of the Barbary Coast was accompanied by the gurgle of enormous quantities of liquor . . .
He goes on to point out that, in 1890, there were 3,117 legal places selling beer, wine, and booze, one for every 96 residents of the city. There were an additional couple thousand unlicensed speakeasies bringing the number to one for every 60 people or so. Thirty years later, when prohibition went into effect and the city’s population had more than doubled, the number of licensed alcohol sellers still did not exceed 3000.
They were some drinking, whoring, violent fools back on the Barbary Coast and their bawdy history is commemorated with . . . a pastry and coffee shop. That’s just not right. On the upside, it is supposed to be a pretty good coffee shop though.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is both an aesthetic and engineering marvel, and is justifiably famous for these qualities. These same qualities, however, make it a mecca for jumpers. Walking across the bridge, one sees these signs at frequent intervals:
I’m a little ambivalent about suicides: the right to kill yourself is murky ground for libertarians. The tragedy of this plaque, on the North End of the bridge, is however unarguable:
Two year old Gauri Govil was walking across the bridge with her family in 1997 when she tripped and fell through a gap between the metal I beams that separated the sidewalk from the roadway. It appears that this had simply never happened before so the gap had not been regarded as a safety hazard. She didn’t fall into the water, she actually fell on to the ground, which brings up an interesting point:
You always think of jumpers going off the middle of the span into the water but, if you really want to kill yourself, it seems like you’d be much surer if you go off the bridge onto the rocks at either end:
I guess, however, that if you were willing to do this, you’d just as soon jump off a building onto concrete. There must be something about landing in water.
A lot of people do get talked down. I found out about this, and about one guy who did it over 30 times, through a previous blog posting.
