In the first weekend of April 2021, Mary Ann and myself, went down to San Francisco for a quick post Covid lockdown getaway. We drove down to our hotel, the Petite Auberge on Bush Street near Union Square, parked the car and set off to explore on foot. We had booked a 2:30 entry into the De Young Museum so that was our ultimate destination. On the way we walked over to Union Square and down Maiden Lane to see the Frank Lloyd Wright building there, the V.C. Morris Gift Shop. Unfortunately the building was closed so we could not see the interior which apparently is impressive and it was a prototype for the curving staircase in his later Guggenheim Museum in New York.
 |
| Frank Lloyd Wright's Maiden Lane building |
Walking the streets of San Francisco that Sunday afternoon we immediately noticed a two things; one that the streets were not at all busy - where there would normally be throngs of tourists, today there were hardly any; the other that lots of businesses were closed - with all the tourists staying away and with many office workers working from home it has been difficult for many businesses to stay alive and one wonders how many will reopen when this pandemic is over. In some ways that made it nice to be around when there weren’t many people, but then on the other hand it was quite sad to see what a toll the pandemic had taken in the city.
We walked in the general direction of the De Young and went through the Tenderloin District. At the best of times this is a pretty sketchy area but right now it looked particularly bad. There are just so many people having a hard time these days and they are accumulating on the streets, particularly in the Tenderloin. It was almost a third world-ish scene plus there was plenty of evidence of drug usage too - culminating in one guy injecting himself, between the toes, in an alleyway off the main street in the middle of the day. It was not a comfortable walk.
We grabbed a bite to eat at one of the few places open, Max’s Opera Cafe. It was a mediocre lunch in a place where I had previously had decent food. We then Ubered over to the Golden Gate Park and the De Young. The park was more crowded with people out and about enjoying the fine Spring afternoon. People were wearing masks too. That message had obviously gotten across to everyone. I can’t say the same has happened in Sacramento.
The exhibit at the De Young was a combination Picasso and Alexander Calder exhibit. I had only been aware of Calder as a maker of intricate mobiles but he was much more - a painter and a sculpture and a talented bender of wire. I liked the wire sculptures the best - from lengths of wire he formed shapes that were so expressive. Viewed from different angles and with carefully lighted projections of their shadows on the gallery walls they took on remarkable form. Picasso, of course, dabbled in everything, including sculptures and mobiles and his work is always enjoyable.
 |
| Calder Mobile |
 |
| Picasso - Portrait of a Young Girl |
After the main exhibit we went into an AI exhibit that should have been more interesting to me, but I think by then I had had my fill of gallery viewing.
From the gallery we walked back towards the hotel through Golden Gate Park and then down onto Market Street before getting an Uber back to the hotel. At the hotel wine and cheese were awaiting. For dinner in the evening, we got take out food (paella) and ate it in our hotel room - that’s a common way to do it these days.
In the morning after breakfast we set off to view some of the more obscure highlights of the city.
 |
| Isadora Duncan birthplace |
We started with the building where Isadora Duncan, the dancer, was born. A plaque commemorates the place and an alley has been named after her.
 |
| The Bohemian Club |
Then it was on to the Bohemian Club, the boys club for the wealthy and the powerful of this world. A nice enough building with nothing to identify it as explicitly the Bohemian Club. There is a plaque on the outside with a line from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream - “weaving spiders come not here”, implying that concerns from the outside should not be brought inside the building.
 |
| Greta T. |
On the way over to our next location there was a mural of Greta Thunberg. Not a very flattering mural but nonetheless there she is on the side of a building in San Francisco near Union Square. She has certainly made an impact on all of us.
 |
| 450 Sutter Street Entry |
 |
| 450 Sutter Street |
Next was a quick look at the building at 450 Sutter Street. This is a high rise building (26 floors) designed by Timothy Pflueger. Its exterior is impressive but not the most impressive you will find in the city but the entry doors and the interior lobby are extravagantly wonderful. I guess the style is known as Neo-Mayan Art Deco. We were ushered into a lift and so off we went up a few floors but these upper floors are just unremarkable medical offices, it's the main lobby that makes it well worth the visit.
 |
| Maltese Falcon Plaque |
A few blocks away in a small alleyway called Burrit Street is a small plaque commemorating a fictional murder. In Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, Brigid O'Shaughnessy “did in” Sam Spade at this location. It is a pretty seedy location and one could well imagine that sort of thing happening.
 |
| Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires |
 |
| Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires |
We next stepped inside a nice little Catholic Church further down Bush Street - the Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires. A lovely church with some beautiful stained glass windows. The church was built by French Catholics in the late 1800’s, it was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906 and then rebuilt. It still offers French language services.
 |
| The Corporate Goddesses |
On California Street on the top of a high rise building designed by Phillip Johnson are a series of sinister draped figures. The artist that created them called them “Corporate Goddesses” but they look more like grim reapers.
 |
| The City Club/Stock Exchange |
At the City Club Building in what was once the Pacific Stock Exchange we tried to get in to see the first mural painted by Diego Rivera in the USA. Alas we were not allowed in. We will have to make an appointment to view it the next time.
We then walked over to the Ferry Building stopping at Blue Bottle Coffee, a mecca for coffee enthusiasts, on the way. We found the Ferry Building and the nearby Embarcadero Center to be almost deserted. What typically is a very busy tourist and workplace location is now very different. Many businesses are simply closed either temporarily or perhaps even permanently and there were relatively few people around.
 |
| Amazon Go Store |
There was one of the new Amazon Go stores around so we tried that out. You check in with your smartphone app and then just wander around picking up whatever you need. There is no check out but as you leave you are billed for whatever you pick up. The ceiling of the store has an array of cameras that are tracking your every move through the store and identifying whatever you pick up or replace. It is not done by bar codes or anything like that but perhaps by shelf location and some product packaging recognition. Is this the future? I don’t know but it was a fun experience.
 |
| Dennis Sullivan Memorial |
Back at our hotel to pick up our car we noticed a plaque on the building across the road. It was a memorial to Dennis Sullivan who was the Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department at the time of the 1906 earthquake. He and his wife were in bed at the time of the earthquake and they were buried in the rubble as buildings around them fell. As if that weren’t enough, poor Dennis was also badly scalded by a broken radiator that continued to pour out steam and hot water after the quake. He later passed away some 4 days later. This took place at a firehouse further down Bush Street but the memorial is here, across from the Petite Auberge in what also looks like an old firehouse.
 |
| Standard Gas Station |
In the car now, we drove over to Van Ness to see the one and only Standard Gas Station in California. This gas station is in almost every way a Chevron station but the signage shows Standard. It is maintained as such so that Chevron can have an active trademark of the Standard name. Standard Oil being the name of Rockefeller’s monopolist company that once controlled 90% of the US oil supply and that was divided up in 1911 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
 |
| Rincon Annex Post Office |
 |
| Rincon Mural |
After an abortive attempt to find the Defenestration Building which sadly has been demolished we moved on to the Rincon Post Office. This is a beautiful Streamline Moderne building once occupied by the U.S. Post Office. While the exterior is wonderful what is inside is even more wonderful. The building houses some 27 murals painted by a Russian artist, Anton Refregier, who won a contest to paint the murals sponsored by the US Government. The murals were controversial in that some of them portrayed events that some did not like to be reminded of (like labor unrest) and it was even discussed that they should be completely removed or destroyed. Fortunately they have survived and the most beautiful of post offices is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
 |
| Rincon Mural |
 |
| Interior Rincon Post Office Annex |
No comments:
Post a Comment