Another long time between updates. Life has been busy, in a good way. Living in San Francisco still rocks. At least once a day there's something I see or do that makes me feel so lucky to call this city home. I'm usually carrying my camera around in my bag everyday. Never know when I'll be out doing a site visit on the waterfront for work, if there will be an amazing sunset that I see on my way home, or if there'll be some movie I'll be an extra in... ;) So, on to the photos:
Between some pretty intense January storms, we had a beautiful set of days. On January 13 my friend Ian and I walked from Noe Valley, to the Castro, up to Corona Heights and down into the Lower Haight. Here's a view of USF from Corona Heights with the Marine Headlands on the horizon.
The View of Downtown San Francisco from Corona Heights.
Here's a view of the Mission. The green in the middle is Dolores Park, I live a few blocks to the left of the park.
On the day of the Primary Election, my primary mode of transit to work, the J-Church Metro Line, had a big stall so I got off on Market and Church and walked to work. Every intersection had people holding signs for Obama or Clinton. It was pretty exciting. Hillary had some slick signs.
But the grassroots nature of Obama's campaign won over San Francisco.
One of my main projects is working as the Lead Urban Designer on a new Public Realm Plan for Fisherman's Wharf. Had an early morning meeting at the Cannery one day and got a nice shadow shot of the sign.
Like many San Franciscans and Bay Area natives, I always kind of felt that Fisherman's Wharf didn't offer much to non-tourists. But the more time I spend there, the more amazed I am by what a great little piece of the City it is - if only for its amazing setting. The Hyde Street Pier is a hidden gem - you can walk out on the pier and see all the historic boats - including this old auto ferry from the pre-bridge era when the Pier was *part* of Highway 101 (notice the sign).
From the Hyde Street Pier you can get a cool view of Downtown's skyline.
And I nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge too!
The restored marquee of the Castro Theatre marquee - looking pretty for its Hollywood debut.The past month Gus Van Sant has been filming a new movie starring Sean Penn on the life of Harvey Milk - the first openly gay person to be elected to a major political office. Milk was the unofficial "Mayor of Castro Street" in the 1970s and was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1978. His life was tragically cut short when he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by fellow Supervisor, Dan White.
If the film is as good as the effort the crew put in turning Castro Street back to the way it looked in the 1970s, then we're in for something good. On Monday, February 4, they asked the community to help them recreate a few major marches that occurred in the mid 1970s. In exchange, we got a free screening of the Oscar-winning documentary on Milk, complete with speeches by various directors, James Franco, Emile Hirsch (both in the upcoming movie), friends of Milk who are still kickin, and a performance by the Gay Men's Chorus. I couldn't get any friends to come with me and almost didn't go, luckily I bit the bullet and went alone. It was awesome.
The film crew set up lights and cameras on the roofs of the Castro Street buildings where they took shots of the crowd (numbering in the thousands) that gathered in 70s outfits to recreate two marches. One was lead by Milk (played by Penn) and the other by friend and fellow activist Cleve Jones (played by Into the Wild's Emile Hirsch) You can see some of the era-appropriate signs that were floating around in the crowd, likely held by the paid extras.
Towards the end of the night's filming, I got hungry and tired and was hanging out toward the back of the crowd outside the filming area eating a pizza. Then one of the directors popped up and told everyone to gather around for a special surprise. Carrie Fisher then popped out of the Muni Station to thank us all for being there by giving a parody of her Obi Won Kenobi speech from Star Wars....went something along the lines of "Help Me, Gay Men...."With that odd end to the evening, I called it a night and walked home. I'm going to write a separate post to talk about the next night of filming for ease of navigation!
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