Day 47: An Outlet Mall Off 101
Day 47: February 16, 2014: An Outlet Mall off 101 in Petaluma
Sooo, it looks like I only took one photo this day. Here it is, in all of it’s glory. This was, I believe, taken on a quick stop in Petaluma after our tour de brews continued to Lagunitas this afternoon. I can’t vouch for the quality of the outlet mall mexican food, though.
(Arista EDU 400 black and white film in Canon Sureshot A1 SLC P22)
Day 46: Pliny the Younger!
Day 46: February 15, 2014: Santa Rosa
Pliny the Younger day!
After unsuccessfully chasing Pliny around SF this week (and discovering many other tasty tasty beers in the process), we opted for the journey up to Santa Rosa to the Russian River Brewery this weekend, to get in line early for the sure thing. I snapped this one a bit before 7 am, while dropping off the car in a quiet parking garage downtown. The streets were deserted, apart from the growing line stretching from the brewery down the block.
OK, so maybe camping out on the sidewalk for 3+ hours to taste a limited beer is a bit unorthodox, but it was worth the journey just to have done it once. The atmosphere was jovial as we all waited for the 11am opening, playing games, and making journeys off to the coffee shops and such in the vicinity. We even had a visit for an entrepreneurial Girl Scout peddling cookies to the captive audience. When the doors opened at 11am, we were among the last to make it in the first group before the brewery was full.
All in all, the Pliny was good, but I don’t know if it quite lived up to the hype. Though I’m not sure anything could have lived up to the hype that surrounds Pliny the Younger these days. It wasn’t my favorite beer ever, and wasn’t actually even my favorite beer in the Russian River sampler. I was definitely feeling their sours even more than the IPAs. Definitely worth a journey, though, and I’m glad we made it in the end. Give them a try if you’re in the area. Even outside of Pliny time, there’s much to be enjoyed. 🙂
That was a really nice day. A wonderful weekend, actually. I love the days when this project brings back the flood of lovely memories, even if the photo is just a parking lot.
(Canon 650 with Portra 400)
Day 45: Hilltop Wandering
Day 45: February 14, 2014: Twin Peaks-ish
Today’s film didn’t cooperate as well as I would have liked. The view was nice with the bridge poking out of the fog, but I wasn’t quite in the position I would have liked, and I seem to have underexposed it a bit. Then I came across a lovely moonrise on my way home, but didn’t have the tripod or anything to get a steady shot. So, it is what it is.
At the bottom, I’ve added a shot from the digital camera looking out over downtown, because that one came out a bit nicer, and just because I liked it. 🙂
Not too much time for photos today, though: After snapping these, it was off to Santa Rosa to seek out Pliny the Younger in the morning!
(Portra 400 in the Canon 650)
Day 44: Oyster Point Fog
Day 44: February 13, 2014: Oyster Point, South San Francisco
Today was a strange weather day down in South San Francisco. Normally, we get pretty consistent clear skies during the day, with the wind picking up quite a bit in the afternoon. However, today it was warm, with a weird shallow fog rolling in off the bay, probably 40-50 feet thick at most.
I took the opportunity for a little walk down the bay trail to see what I could see and test out my new borrowed Yashicaflex medium format TLR. It’s been well used, with some missing pieces and a few dents, but the important bits seem to be working fine, so I set out to see what it could do. Turns out I had a bit of difficulty keeping it closed on this roll, giving me the leaky haze around the bottom of the photo at right. I think I’ve figured that part out now, and I have a ton of expired 120 film left, so I’ll keep on carrying on with it. It certainly gets attention when I’m out walking around with it…
All of these shots were taken at the Oyster Point Pier, with the other two on 35mm. I was digging the way it faded off into the fog, with only faint glimpses of the fishermen at the end coming through the fog, so this seemed like the best place for a few shots. That, and this was about as far as I could walk before it was time to get back and finish my work.
(Expired Kodak Portra 400 120 film in a well worn borrowed Yashicaflex C TLR and fresh 35mm Portra 400 in the thrift shop Canon 650)
Day 43: Post-Apocalyptic Charms
Day 43: February 12, 2014: Cathedral Hill
The Cathedral Hill Hotel has certainly seen better days. I was drawn out here after being told of it’s post-apocalyptic qualities, and it did not disappoint. Skin removed and partially torn down to make way for a new medical center, the former hotel was left looking like it was dropped here straight out of a war zone.
This is how it ends for the hotel, built in 1960, it opened as the epitome of modern and modernist, with a unique design and such amenities as a pool, rooftop ice rink, parking(!), and new fangled air conditioning in every room. Modern times weren’t so kind to the hotel, however, and the location has been closed to guests (apart from a brief infiltration by a crowd of Occupy protestors) since 2009. The future has come for the hotel, and the end is here.
I have very few memories of the hotel itself: Just a few fleeting memories of the Video Only store and glimpses of the closed off parking lot.
(Top photo is from the Canon 650 on Portra 400, which was not focusing so well in the low light. All of the others are a rare these days bit of digital)
Day 42: Civic Center and Rainbows
Day 42: February 11, 2014: Civic Center
City Hall wears many colors, but it sure looks good in rainbows.
Spend much time around Civic Center or on any of the surrounding hilltops at night, and you’ll quickly notice the ever-changing color scheme of City Hall. Some of those colors make sense: Orange for the Giants in the post-season, red and gold for the 49ers, blue and gold when trying to woo the Warriors to move over here, red and green during the holidays, etc. Some are less obvious: The colors of the Philippine flag in support of the nation after Typhoon Yolanda, a very pretty blue and green scheme that I still have no clue on, and other occasional colors in support of various charities. Some of the colors are just perplexing: That one time it was Twitter colors in honor of their holiday party, and the other time that it was blue as a smurfing promotional tie-in with the Smurfs Movie (seriously, that happened, I swear).
Considering City Hall’s cozy relationship with Twitter, perhaps it’s time for a Twitter account to let us know what the colors of the day mean?
This color scheme lasted a few weeks in February, seemingly for two reasons, based on the information I can find on the internets. Initially, this was to commemorate the 10th anniversary of “Winter of Love”, when the doors were opened for the first same sex marriages in San Francisco, kicking off many of the events that followed in the push for marriage equality that continues to make headway today. The lights were then left on through the end of the Sochi Olympics, presumably as a statement on Russia’s backwards anti-gay stance. Despite the setbacks that followed the first marriages in SF, I’m encouraged by the progress that has come in the past decade. As discriminatory laws in other states fall one by one, I have to say that I didn’t honestly expect to see this change come so quickly, if even in my lifetime. I couldn’t be happier to be wrong about that and to be here to see the tides changing. Equality is coming, let’s keep the progress coming.
(Kodak Portra 400 in the Canon 650, 1.5 stops overexposed)
Day 35: My Place in this World
Day 35: February 4, 2014: Kite Hill
Pondering my place in this world, in this city, this crazy expensive city. This city, in it’s constant state of change, despite its fight to never change.
We’re drawn here; we’re forced out.
We come in waves, following jobs, following our hearts, following that glimpse of something we’ve always hoped to find. We lose those jobs, we lose our homes, the city changes, rents keep rising, and we have to go. We flow out, replaced by the next incoming wave.
We denounce that new wave. They don’t belong here! They’re ruining the city!
But did we ever really belong here? Were we ourselves the ones who ruined San Francisco? Most of us moved here, surely ruining the city for someone else with our arrival. Some of us were born here: Born into a city pre-ruined by our ancestors.
Or maybe it isn’t ruined it all. Maybe this city is just changing; just as it always has been. Some bits positive, some bits negative. Do we choose the difficult path? Will we work together on real solutions? Or do we choose the lazy way out: Point our fingers and assign the blame?
Or perhaps we could just scream and vomit on each other, because that clearly seems to be working…
Random thoughts from a hilltop above this lovely city of ours.
(Kodak Portra 400 in the Canon 650)
Day 41: Another Day, Another Hilltop
Day 41: February 10: 2014: Kite Hill
The early part of this year got hard for me with the limited day light and long work hours. Many days, all I had time for after work was a quick shot somewhere, which tended to be a long exposure from a hilltop, mostly as a matter of convenience. Kite Hill is far from my favorite view of the skyline at night, but it is close to the place that I sleep, so it has that going for it.
I was hoping for some good rolling fog here, but it ended up fairly muddy. Can’t control the weather, I suppose.
(Kodak Portra 400 in the Canon 650, over-exposed to deal with the reciprocity failure)
Day 40: Getting Wet in Downtown SF
Day 40: February 9: 2014: Embarcadero
Honestly, I have no recollection of what I was doing this day. One of the fun things about the photo a day project is having this concrete record of where I was every day of the year. I can still go back to my 2011 project and find that a single photo brings back a day’s worth of memories that I might have otherwise forgotten. The film version is even more fun in a way, since I’m always a couple months behind with developing/scanning/posting, so every day when I post, I get to relive memories from a few months prior.
Except for today. These photos bring me nothing. That’s the first time this has happened, and it’s quite curious to me. Obviously, it was raining, and judging from my photos, I must have walked at least most of the way from Embarcadero to the Castro in the rain over the course of an hour and a half. Doesn’t leave too much time for dawdling, so I can only assume I was on a mission. Best guess: I wanted to go out for a photo walk with my waterproof cameras. Curious how the memories can fail.
(Canon Sureshot A1 SLC P22 with expired Arista EDU 400 black and white film)
Day 39: Crocker-Amazon by Night
Day 39: February 8, 2014: Crocker-Amazon
Well now, it won’t be winning any awards, but I’m pretty impressed how much detail came out in this shot, considering that it was taken on 400 speed film with a waterproof point and shoot camera after drinking wine for most of the afternoon. That’s about all I have to say about this one, taken while wandering Crocker-Amazon one Saturday night.
(Arista EDU 400 black and white film in the Canon Sureshot A1 SLC P22)
Follow
