San Francisco

What fun! We had a great week in San Francisco staying first with our friends Chris and El, then with Marian's cousin Jonathan and his wife Carol. The locations were very central for visiting the city. We had great visits to nearby neighbourhoods and attractions and also did a few day trips outside the city. Our weather was surprisingly good, given San Francisco's famously cold and foggy summers. Here are some pics...

The Transamercia Building was built in 1972 and was controversial at the time for being outside the then downtown core. It has become an icon of the city and after a recent renovation is looking fantastic. There is a great little museum on the ground floor about the construction and 1970's office decor (lots of dark wood veneer and orange furniture). Adjacent was a large display of original Eames furniture...

I didn't know autonomous cars worked yet. But they do! In San Francisco (and a few other cities) Waymo taxis are everywhere (about 400 ply the streets - by far the most common taxi in San Francisco). They are all white Jaguar iPace (electric) cars, with NO driver (they function like an Uber through an app). The sensors on the roof and corners are spinning all the time (lidar) and there are cameras as well. They navigate the city and manage pedestrians perfectly. They are not allowed on the freeways (yet)....

Alcatraz looking down from Nob Hill (near where we stayed with Chris and El). The cloud (fog) layer is normal...

The topography is very steep on many streets, which makes for very interesting street views with staggered buildings. The old timber Victorian and Edwardian houses are spectacular and all over the city (many escaped the 1906 earthquake and fire which destroyed a lot of the central city)....

We enjoyed walking around the Castro district. It is a gay stronghold with great character and a lively Main Street. This is a garage down a side street....

The Golden Gate Bridge is mostly in fog! It rushes in from the ocean when cold, moist air meets hotter air on the other side of the coastal hills. It is quite spectacular rolling into the bay over the bridge, or over the hills adjacent. Sometimes the bridge is clear, but most of the time the top of it is fog. Sometimes the whole thing is covered in a thick fog white-out....

We drove up to the Sonoma valley and had lunch at Francis Ford Coppola's winery. He's owned it for 50 years and it is a huge facility. There is a museum of his films which was really interesting...

Chinatown in San Francisco is huge and very interesting. It is also remarkably authentic, having a scale that sustains it well beyond (and despite) any tourist function...

The tramway museum is fantastic. It is the home of all cables and machinery which drive the San Francisco cable cars. There are four routes (in different directions from this building), and each is powered here. The video below shows the machines in motion (note the four cable lines)...

El took us on a excellent curated walking tour of buildings in the Downtown district. There are so many exceptional buildings of all ages. This one is from 1958 and is one of the first high rise modern buildings in the city. I thought it was brilliant, with a glass box floating underneath...

This is an example of many very fancy interiors from buildings constructed early in the 20th century...

Recently a very large transit centre was constructed and they built a park on the roof with a walking circuit around it. It is a bit like a botanic garden and is very well used - very impressive...

A post office from the 1930's is down near the Embarcadero (servicing the piers to the harbour). It is a fantastic Art Deco building. The interior has many large murals from 1948 depicting the history of San Francisco, particularly as it related to the working person. This one relates to the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge...

Pier 39 is famous for the many sea lions that congregate there. No one is sure why. After a large earthquake, a lone male arrived in December 1989 and soon after there were hundreds. They've been there ever since. Their manners aren't very good - they keep trying to push each other off the rafts...

We went to a jazz bar near where we were staying and listened to the 'jam session' on Monday night. The players were fantastic....

Bison in Golden Gate Park...really....

The house band at a nearby bar where Chris often joins in on Tuesday nights. Chris and I played a few songs which was heaps of fun...

We visited Alcatraz - which we really enjoyed. So interesting, both inside the prison cells and outside walking around the island. There is a huge cormorant colony on the island which is pretty spectacular. This is the view back to the city...

Notice the bridge - without fog...

Three prisoners escaped in 1962. They were never found (it is uncertain whether they perished or survived). They used spoons to open up the air vent in the concrete (below the sink) and made pretend heads (in situ) to avoid alarm during the night (which worked). The hole opened to the services shaft which allowed them to shimmy up to the roof then down to the water. A Popular Mechanics magazine from the prison library gave them an idea on how to fashion an inflatable raft...

Notice how fog has now covered the Golden Gate Bridge on the way back to the city on our boat...

Coffee on a great day out with Jon and Carol, heading up to the north-east coast...

Lunch view with sea lion lounging on pier...

At the beach with Jon and Carol...

Muir Woods National Park is fantastic. The trees are so huge and attractive, with rough bark and great character. It's difficult to show the scale with photos...

On the way to Coppola's winery I noticed a huge blue roof off to the side of the highway and worked out it was a Frank Lloyd Wright building called the Marin County Civic Centre (government offices; courts and library). It was one of his last buildings. We later went back on a guided tour which was great....

We all went for a day out including a walk along the coastal cliffs near the bridge (south side). The views were fantastic...

Driving around the city there are very impressive buildings from different eras, particularly when you look up ...

We visited a very large exhibition of photos by Paul McCartney which weaved together the story of The Beatles in the important early years of 1963/4. I really enjoyed it...

San Francisco (Downtown) in 1846-7. I thought it was interesting that the size of the town looks similar to images around the same time of Brisbane and Melbourne. Although, with the gold rush of 1949, it grew very quickly (as did Melbourne after the 1851 gold rush)....

New York City Pt 7

This is the last post from NYC. We are heading off today to San Francisco. We're busy packing so here are some pics....

We visited the NYC Botanical Garden at the Bronx. Unfortunately it was a wet day, so we didn't really do it justice. But we did have a good look in the fabulous conservatory, which had an artists display of Van Gogh sculptures that reflected particular paintings. That was fun. We also had a fantastic Nachos at a Mexican run diner just outside the entry - yum!....

On the way back we stopped at the Yankee Stadium to have a peek. We were thinking of going to a game this day, but went to the gardens instead....

This is the Brooklyn Museum, a huge building with very interesting things inside...

Like this amazing bike frame from the mid-20th century- why don't people make 'em nowadays....

Or these 8 huge Assyrian frieze panels, bought by an American in 1855 from the British Museum as they didn't have enough room for them ...

Next door is the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which was excellent, with a very nice Japanese garden...

Next to that, is Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It is huge and built at the same time, by the same designers, as Central Park. It's a bit shabbier....

We visited Williamsburg in Brooklyn and really enjoyed it, having a different more low scale feel to Manhattan. It was noticeably full of younger people - it's a pretty groovy area. There are industrial remnants converted to parks and other uses down on the waterfront looking over to Manhattan....

We went on a Saturday when they have the Smorgasbord, which has over 100 food vendors in a park by the river...

This is the low scale, but still quite historic with weatherboard buildings too...

The Skyscraper Museum is situated downtown and was interesting. I thought these two photos were particularly interesting, the first one pre-World Trade Centre (showing where the river/wharves were) and the second post World Trade Centre, showing how they reclaimed the river with the spoil from the World Trade Centre site. That reclaimed area is now Battery Park City with lots of mixed use and parks along the new river edge....

On that new river edge is a particular park with heaps of bronze figures doing playful things - big and small. Here are some small ones on a chess table....

We did a bird walk in Central Park which was really good. Quite a few punters...

At Inwood Park near the top of Manhattan, some of the only original forest remaining on the island. (to the left on photo). But it's got a highway cutting through it and over this two storey bridge!...

Shade and power - interesting...

The Cooper Hewitt Museum on 5th Avenue (just up from the Guggenheim) is a design museum, but was formerly the home of Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest chaps in the world at the time. It was very interesting but the design installations were a bit hit and miss...

We did a walking tour (from one of my books) from Fort Tyron Park (near to the Cloisters Museum) down to West Harlem. It was great. The first photo is one geezers driveway to his house, which is now part of the park. The second is the George Washington Bridge - the first bridge over the Hudson River and longest bridge in the world until the Golden Gate was built not long after... 

This is one of 5 remaining Lowe Picture Palaces, all built around 1930 as Art Deco extravaganzas and still standing. They are now entertainment spaces; churches or shops...

We were surprised to find the 'High Bridge' over the Harlem River (which is the small river across the top of Manhattan between the Hudson and East Rivers). The bridge was built in 1840's to bring the new water supply from the Catskill Mountains down into Manhattan (to the reservoir in Central Park)....

It is a very unappealing part of the city! This view is looking south from the High Bridge and might as well be of Shanghai circa 1990!...

The Morris-Jumel Mansion is the oldest home on Manhattan (1765). It has all sorts of history tied to it and is sited in its own park, in West Harlem in a location known as Sugar Hill...

Adjacent is a historic row of houses in timber from the 1800's, all fully restored with Federal funds in the 1980's...

We went to see the (old) musical 'Gypsy'. It was very good (a couple of standing ovations), but it had aspects that irked me a bit. Americans are very odd theatre goers - they are rowdy - whooping and cheering throughout - quite odd - and no theatres have ice creams at the interval - very uncivilised....

Not far north from here is another historic house. This one was built by Alexander Hamilton (of the musical 'Hamilton' fame), but he only lived here for 2 years before he died in a duel. The internal design of the little house was fantastic...

Yesterday we did a tour of the Seventh Regiment Armoury building on Park Avenue. It's a significant and huge historic building from 1880. Whilst looking like a fortress from outside, it's quite sumptuous inside. This is the regiment that had as members the sons of all the Gilded Age families - so they had lots of money to contribute. Of particular note is a room (for veterans) designed by Tiffany (the son of the jeweller and known for the lamps), when he was a young man in 1880. It is an amazing space with phenomenal detail - very modern for the time!....

View of our street (between the church and the New York Historical society building), taken along Central Park West adjacent to Central Park. Our place is about 100m from this corner down West 76th street. The elaborate apartment building on the left is the Kenilworth Apartments (Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones lived in the penthouse until recently)...

I'll finish with some typical views of Central Park from yesterday afternoon...