hey self defeater

17 Reasons Why, 2102 Mission Street, (Lost) San Francisco (via...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:58:37 -0700

17 Reasons Why, 2102 Mission Street, (Lost) San Francisco

(via Scott Peterson)

Photo

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:58:33 -0700

Elizabeth Wurtzel is depressing

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:48:36 -0700

Elizabeth Wurtzel is depressing:

It had all gone wrong. At long last, I had found myself vulnerable to the worst of New York City, because at 44 my life was not so different from the way it was at 24. Stubbornly and proudly, emphatically and pathetically, I had refused to grow up, and so I was becoming one of those people who refuses to grow up—one of the city’s Lost Boys. I was still subletting in Greenwich Village, instead of owning in Brooklyn Heights. I had loved everything about Yale Law School—especially the part where I graduated at 40—but I spent my life savings on an abiding interest, which is a lot to invest in curiosity. By never marrying, I ended up never divorcing, but I also failed to accumulate that brocade of civility and padlock of security—kids you do or don’t want, Tiffany silver you never use—that makes life complete. Convention serves a purpose: It gives life meaning, and without it, one is in a constant existential crisis. If you don’t have the imposition of family to remind you of what is at stake, something else will. I was alone in a lonely apartment with only a stalker to show for my accomplishments and my years.

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Sutro Baths, Feb. 6, 1966 On March 14, 1896, the Sutro Baths...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:48:32 -0700

Sutro Baths, Feb. 6, 1966

On March 14, 1896, the Sutro Baths were opened to the public as the world’s largest indoor swimming pool establishment. The baths were built on the sleepy western side of San Francisco by wealthy entrepreneur and former mayor of San Francisco (1894–1896), Adolph Sutro. The vast glass, iron, wood, and reinforced concrete structure was mostly hidden, and filled a small beach inlet below the Cliff House, also owned by Adolph Sutro at the time. The baths struggled for years, mostly due to the very high operating and maintenance costs. Shortly after closing, a fire in 1966 destroyed the building while it was in the process of being demolished. All that remains of the site are concrete walls, blocked off stairs and passageways, and a tunnel with a deep crevice in the middle. The Sutro Bath ruins are open to the public, but a warning sign advises strict caution, stating “People have been swept from the rocks and drowned.” Both the Cliff House and the former baths site are now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and operated by the United States National Park Service.

(via San Francisco Public Library)

Originally a tidal slough, Lake Merritt is a brackish watery...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:39:08 -0700

Originally a tidal slough, Lake Merritt is a brackish watery intersection where numerous streams meet a channel to the San Francisco Bay. By 1853, Oakland’s first mayor, the shrewd scoundrel Horace Carpentier, charged a toll to cross the outlet channel at 12th Street. He had realized that people would pay to cross at this constricted point, although in 1857 the Alameda Board of Supervisors opted to provide a free public bridge across the slough at 7th Street, circumventing Carpentier’s controversial crossing. The 12th Street bridge later went on to become the 12th Street Dam, thereby creating Lake Merritt.

Over the next century, Oakland’s population boomed; by the end of WWII, traffic jams at the bottleneck between eastern Oakland and downtown were becoming more frequent and, the Chamber of Commerce felt, threatening downtown business. In creating a twelve-lane-wide roadway across the 12th Street dam and its parkland, City Engineer Walter Frickstad solved the problem with an up-to-date proto-freeway of sweeping curves, automotive and pedestrian tunnels, a mid-roadway bus island, and exciting lane merges.

Finished in 1950, the Frickstad Viaduct quickly lost importance as freeways 880 and 580 were completed, in 1958 and 1964. The worn concrete structure crumbled, the bus island became a strange mid-urban wasteland, its tunnels graffitied and the margins weedy.

Today, the estuary channels have been reopened to reunite Lake Merritt with the bay, and a new pedestrian bridge and waterside park have been installed. The city’s 12th Street Project aims to re-invigorate Lake Merritt’s south end and complete a circle of park improvements around the lake.

Photo

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:28:15 -0700

Photo

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:22:00 -0700

Inaugural picture of the Great China Theatre on Jackson Street...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:17:00 -0700

Inaugural picture of the Great China Theatre on Jackson Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1925

(Digital Archive of Chinese Theater in California via University of California)

"You never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people’s lives."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:57:00 -0700

“You never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people’s lives.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night

A visual history of Pier 70 and Dogpatch, by Wendy MacNaughton

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:02:00 -0700

A visual history of Pier 70 and Dogpatch, by Wendy MacNaughton

adventures-of-the-blackgang: WW2 1940’s TIKI HUT Arcade Photo...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:00:40 -0700

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

WW2 1940’s TIKI HUT Arcade Photo American Sailors & Hawaiian Hula Girl

on ebay

I would like to recreate this, mustache and all

Photo

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:42:53 -0700

Perfect. I want to live on this scale.

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:19:50 -0800

Perfect. I want to live on this scale.

SF from space

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:19:09 -0800

SF from space

wildandpeaceful: (via Drew Tyndell)

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:16:37 -0800

wildandpeaceful:

(via Drew Tyndell)

saabsage: howwayleadson: Custom emblem for my 1988 #saab900...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:12:16 -0800

saabsage:

howwayleadson:

Custom emblem for my 1988 #saab900 #saab homage to the airplane roots.

love it!!

to be like Steinbeck?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:08:00 -0800

to be like Steinbeck?

~ Under My Eyes - Will Sprott (of The Mumblers)

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 07:23:00 -0800

~ Under My Eyes - Will Sprott (of The Mumblers)

Frank Lloyd Wright’s proposed Butterfly Bridge across San...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 07:20:00 -0800

Frank Lloyd Wright’s proposed Butterfly Bridge across San Francisco Bay

742 Valencia Street is located in a part of the Mission that...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 07:15:00 -0800

742 Valencia Street is located in a part of the Mission that was, prior to development by Spanish colonists in the late 18th Century, a body of water. A lake in the rainy season and marshland when it was dry, the colonists dubbed it “Laguna de Los Dolores.” Landfill began in the 1860’s and the Valencia Hotel was built in the 1880’s. When the 1906 earthquake occurred, the hotel crumbled and sunk into the Laguna. These photos are courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. The first, from 1898, with the hotel still standing, and the other from the day after the quake in 1906.