The Happy Homo Homemaker

Photo of the Day - 25th Street

I know, I know... more clouds!  But the winter weather here in the Bay Area makes for such spectacular natural sights that I just can't help myself.

Photo of the Day - Clouds over the soon-to-be-closed Dolores Park

Can you tell I have a thing for clouds?

The relentless rain we've been getting pounded with lately has had at least one fabulous result: some utterly spectacular cloud formations floating over the city.

I took this yesterday from what is arguably the best view in all of San Francisco: from the top of Dolores Park, favorite sunning spot for the Castro gay boys, Mission hipsters and just about everyone in between. Gasps were heard 'round the city earlier this week when it was announced that the entire park would shut down for a year and a half for a major $12 million renovation.

They say it's because the irrigation system needs to be replaced and all the trails need to be redone. But I'm not buying it. I think they're afraid they might dig up some corpses left behind from the days the park was a cemetery.

Photo of the Day - Clouds Over Seal Rock

 

Photo of the Day - Walkin the dog

Walkin the dog
2/1/10

A gentleman and his dog on Ocean Beach, taken during a hike to our favoritest of places in San Francisco, the Sutro Baths and Sutro Heights Park.

Photo of the Day - Mini Castro

 
A mini Castro Theatre (complete with an actual recording of the mighty Wurlitzer playing "San Francisco") with the Transamerica Pyramid in the background -- two of the many miniature San Francisco landmarks seen in the Golden Gate Express Garden Railway at the Conservatory of Flowers through April 18, 2010.  

Pulgas Water Temple

Did you catch Ken Burns' marvelous documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea on PBS recently?  

If not, I command you to see it.  But that wasn't my point.

In episode two, "The Last Refuge," you learn that more than 20 years after Yosemite became a national park, its lands supposedly preserved and protected by the federal government, the big bad City of San Francisco throws its weight around and convinces Woodrow Wilson to allow it to dam the Tuolomne River in the middle of the park and flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley just so San Franciscans can have drinking water. Drinking water!? The nerve.

There was quite a bit of booing and hissing coming from our living room that evening, even as Tom and I sat there drinking the result of that appalling act.

Anyhoo, from the O'Shaughnessy Damn (spelling intentional) in Yosemite, the water makes a 160-mile journey across the state in the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, eventually emptying into the gorgeously scenic Crystal Springs Reservoir in San Mateo County just south of The City.  To mark the spot where the aqueduct ends, the City erected the Pulgas Water Temple, a pretty little classical stone monument, in 1938.  Side note: Pulgas is Spanish for 'fleas,' because apparently the Spanish settlers encountered them in the area. I wish I had known. I would have worn my flea collar.

Long story short (too late), Tom and I visited there today. Enjoy. 

Photo of the Day - Dahlia

Dahlia
10/16/09

You wouldn't know it was fall at the Dahlia Garden in Golden Gate Park! 

Presidio Pet Cemetery

One of the sadder discoveries during my hike yesterday was that the Presidio Pet Sematary Cemetery has been decimated.

I actually headed to the Presidio specifically to photograph and explore the quirky, only-in-SF landmark, which I had previously only glimpsed in passing. The graveyard houses the remains of dogs, cats, canaries, hamsters, lizards and assorted other household pets of military families who lived on the base in the 1950s through the laymen and women of today.  

When I arrived, I was shocked to find nothing but mud where there once was grass and short little stumps from which tall trees provided dappled shade on the graves below. 

From what I can tell, the cemetery fell victim to the "Doyle Drive Replacement Project." Apparently, "they" (not sure if it's the city, state or fed) are replacing Doyle Drive, the southeasterly approach to the Golden Gate Bridge with "Presidio Parkway," a road that's integrated with the surrounding topography through tunnels and ground level roadways. Basically, that means trees are being ripped out and the landscape graded to make way for a new highway to the Golden Gate.

From the looks of it, the parkway will clear the cemetery, but it's sad.  Why did they have to rip out every single tree from the site, and trample the sweet, old, homemade headstones in the process?

As little Gage might say, with scalpel in hand, "No fair!"