Back in the Day
With such glorious weather bound to attract people in droves to Ocean Beach this weekend, be sure to excercise caution and be on the lookout for roving gangs of martial artist criminals. Richmond SF Blog recently featured one such cautionary tale; the 1974 film Slaughter in San Francisco.
[h/t N Judah]
Previously on Uptown Almanac
Today is the 106th anniversary of the earthquake that put the badgering fear of god in every San Francisco transplant's parent's eyes and mouths. And on this most holy of historic days, SFMTA's Photo Archives has once again released some new scans of old 1906 earthquake photos.
Take this scene at the intersection of Market and Valencia. A chimney is all that stands in tact at the site of an old powerhouse, horses and grass and debris everywhere. And the worst thing? Martuni's is still not built yet.
I'm practicing my earthquake drills already.
Anyway, this year's dump isn't quite as extensive as last year's, so be sure to check out 2011's as well.
[Photo by SFMTA Photo Archives | via Haighteration]
Previously on Uptown Almanac
Oakland Local's Justin Gilmore is over the Mission and wants to tell you about it:
San Francisco is a place that offers at least a semblance of social life in the streets and has a mass-transit system that, being at least semi-functional, can get you home even after chasing large doses of MDMA with multiple Irish carbombs, resulting in an uncontrollable throwing up of copious amounts of last nights frozen pizza onto strangers who you had drunkenly mistook for childhood friends. Who doesn’t want to live in a place where you can simply exit your apartment, walk a few blocks, and end up at a bar filled to the brim with a battalion of apparently creative, interesting patrons? Or, at least, so went my daydreams.
As it stands, the reality is much different. Upon exiting BART and walking down the streets of the Mission, it becomes apparent that San Francisco has transformed in ways that I cannot appreciate. Newly Ipe-planked luxury condominiums with fancy, all glass, automatic underground garage doors, and heated post-industrial concrete polished floors, sit adjacent to coffee shops whose patrons sip on $6-7 dollar coffee while they guiltily donate some small, insignificant pittance towards “saving the third world” on their new high-end Mac gadgets.
In fact, it’s almost as though yuppies had gotten bored of the suburbs and decided to move to the city, only to bring with them the worst parts of the place that they now claim to loathe. Walking down almost any SF sidewalk, you can see what is in fact the real blight: the late-thirty-something upper-management Google/Wells Fargo employee who, armed with a six-plus digit salary and a lengthy history of family money, recently demolished some jenky apartment building in order to have it reconstructed as a suburban home disguised as an edgy urban loft. [Read on]
My daydreams also involve not having to ride BART after multiple Irish carbombs, so I totally get where this guy is coming from. So, what are we going to do about the yuppies?
[Photo by ClockworkGrue | via MissionMission]
Previously on Uptown Almanac
Readers of Uptown Almanac, distinguished guests, and fellow San Franciscans:
Today, I went to Dolores Park and welcomed the sight of hunky Jesuses. Together with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, they offered a proud salute to the holiday under which more than a million of our fellow citizens observe - and several thousands instead celebrate in the park in blasphemous fashion.
At a time when too many sunbathers' pants legs stay rolled down and shirts scrunched up, Hunky Jesuses exceeded all expectations.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the San Francisco within our reach: A city that leads the world in roasting sacred cows. A city that is truly free, and a city that once again sunbathes in Dolores Park with gusto and aplomb.
We can do this. I know we can, because we've done it before. At the end of World War II, when another generation of hedonists returned home from combat, they achieved some of the best tans the world has ever known. My grandfather was named Mr. March at a time when male pinup calendars were sold in hushed tones and whispers. My grandmother, who worked indoors, was part of a workforce that later mastered some of the best sunbathing since ancient Egypt.
The two of them shared the optimism of a City that had triumphed over fog and clothing. They understood they were part of something larger; that they were contributing to a story of success that every San Franciscan had a chance to share - the basic San Francisco promise that if you disregarded hard work, you could still do well enough to get tan, rent a crumbling studio, write a blog, and put a little away for beer.
The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a city where a shrinking number of people get very tan, while a growing number of San Franciscans barely disrobe in the sun. Or we can restore a PMA where everyone strips down, lies in the sun, and is evenly warmed by rays of vitamin D with nary a care in the world. What's at stake are not Hedonistic values or Traditional values, but San Francisco values. We have to reclaim them.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless San Francisco.
Previously on Uptown Almanac
Ever wonder how Muni used to clean buses before they stopped giving a shit? This right here is the 'Cyclone' Coach Cleaner, a 1958 bus/Burning Man Art Car that used to act as a giant vacuum:
This modified Motor Coach was used as an enormous vacuum cleaner to rid buses of litter left on board. Pulled along side another bus, the accordion-like seal was extended to the door and a powerful blast of air turned the bus interior into a literal cyclone of flying debris, saving hours of hand sweeping.
Uhhhhhh... rad.
If you nerds haven't already heard, Google's big April Fool's joke was to make their maps all 8-bit NES like. And they totally pranked me; I woke up this morning terrified I entered into some sort of Hot Tub Time Machine situation after attending a questionable hot tub party at Jello Biafra's condo.
Turns out everything is cool--good on you Google (and bad on you, Jello Biafra--everyone agreed the "you"-themed Jell-O shots were in bad taste!). Even Google's directions still work:
So if you need me, my bros and I will be at my house trading Pogs.
Previously on Uptown Almanac
I'm not sure what amuses me more about this: that a band called "Cocksparrer" is performing next to a bunch of look-don't-touch strip clubs, or that Rancid is still a band.
SF Lowrider documentary that you can watch on IMDB (don't ask me why they don't allow embedding so just click the image, it's only like 25 minutes long anyways nevermind found it on youtube). A bunch of footage from the 70's and 80's about what car culture in this city use to be like. Something this town has traded for bullshit like standing in lines for mediocre brunch and soggy cups of dirty water and liquor that taste like old trees. Car Culture in the bay is shitty in general, stuck hanging on the fringe. Do kids even get drivers licenses in this town before they are 30? Even if it's some dumb shit like wings on a front wheel drive, primered out everything, rattling plates, or even rainbow tint. It would be better than nothing. Whatever, it's not like I'm copping triple gold d's anytime soon either but I put in my time at lowrider shows. Yes I was in a lowrider bike club, spent years collecting issues of all kinds of mags, sported atzlan tshirts and all that. Even when I was driving around in a crx with a b18 I still had a soft spot in my heart for a dumped caprice with 4 15's in the trunk.
Parts 2 & 3:
Prior to walking into Mission Hill Saloon for the first time, I didn't even know you could buy The Binge Drinker's Light Beer in the Mission. And at two bucks a can, it's certainly more expensive than I remember. But if you have a thirst for the swill you drank behind the 7/11 dumpster when you were 15, MHS has you covered.
(Oh, and their bathroom works of art are mightly nice too)
One of my map-obsessed friends recently pointed me in the direction of David Rumsey's collection of aerial photography of San Francisco taken in 1938. As Rumsey's blog points out, most of the photography is of such quality that you can actually see stripping on basketball courts and rails embedded in the streets. In some instances, the resolution and quality of the imagery is better than what we're subjected to with modern Google Maps. What the photography shows is pretty incredible:
Not only is it Seals Stadium (which sat at the corner of 16th and Bryant until the late-50s; currently home to Safeway), where the Giants played their first two seasons prior to moving to Candlestick, but there's actually a game in play. If you zoom in real close, you can see the players on the field:
Crossing the Mission is the tracks of the long-since abandoned Southern Pacific Railway (which provides a fine name for the new brewery on the site of the old tracks).
There it is crossing 24th at Capp St (the ghost of those tracks can still be seen at the ZipCar parking lot on the northeast corner of the intersection). And, of course, BART was still decades away, so all four corners of 24th and Mission have reasonably tall buildings.
And here's the old rail bridge crossing Dolores (seen from the ground here and here).
Speaking of Dolores, Dolores Park pretty much looked the same as it does today, albeit with a bigger playground and a second bathroom building at the corner of 19th and Dolores. Also, there's only a few people hanging out.
But, for the best stuff, you have to leave the Mission and head out to the outskirts of the city. As seen here, the Sunset was still predominately sand dunes awaiting boring stucco housing.
And then there's Playland at the Beach, the old amusement park that sat between Ocean Beach and the Richmond. Should you zoom in far enough, you can feast your eyes on the old coaster:
It's good to know Toxic Beach was also a trash-filled shithole some 70 years ago.
Finally, should you care to really nerd out, David Rumsey took the time to overlay the 1938 maps over Google Earth so you can match up the maps up to their current aerial view.
With that, have fun squandering the rest of your vacation on this stuff.
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