One day a very old elm tree got sick of standing and decided to lay down and take a nap on this old Buick.

Later that day, a geyser erupted from the sidewalk at 2nd and Howard.

And God said “Go forth and sell Carlos Rossi, Newports, and Frito Lays.”

One of the first things an out-of-towner notices about SF is the high amount of homeless folks lurking in the streets. At the last census, there were more than 10,000 people living here without a home.

Im aware that beef comes from cows. But, when eating a tasty carne asada burrito from El Farolito, I never consider that at one point the meat took this form. When I first saw this, I stopped eating meat for a while.

On the south side of Potrero Hill lies the Yellow Cab lot. Yellow Cab happens to be the worst cab company in SF, the drivers suck and get into lots of accidents. Its like a grave yard for beat up, hooptie cabs down there. Its where cabs go to die.

We went down by Union Square to go window shopping and started looking up everywhere we went.

The new Westfield Center:

SF Shopping Center:

Neiman Markus:

My first job in SF was as a courier for a print shop. I used to walk by a spot called “The Wall” every day where all the bike messengers would hang out and eat lunch and get lifted. I met a lot of hard-working people there. Most of them are pretty scarred up, riding a bike in The City can be pretty dangerous at times.

Long before Willie Brown re-developed The Embarcadero and Grey Davis decided to rebuild The Bay Bridge, it was a nice and calm place to go eat lunch if you worked in the Financial District slangin faxes at a law firm like I did.

You can see Treasure Island in the background.

Drive west to the end of Geary Street and you will see Lands End, which has a cutty little bar with a nice view of the ocean. To the north are the Sutro Baths, and to the south is dirty Ocean Beach. Back in the day, there was a small amusement park there, the West Coast version of Coney Island.

My first job in The City was at 2nd and Market. It was a store front and I got to see a lot of crazed behavior by local lurkers every day. This particular nutcase used to walk by the shop 2x a week with a big green “G” painted on his chest and yell “The Pack is Back!!!” like we lived in Milwaukeee or something. One day I saw him walking down Sansome Street, angry as hell, waving this loaf of French bread talking much trash about ex-mayor Willie Brown.

Living in a big city, you are exposed to a wide variety of architecture — especially downtown.

The first foto is of the Citicorp building at Sansome and Sutter. The second is of Embarcadero Center #4.

I met this guy one day while eating my lunch downtown. I got to talking to him and found out his name is Kenny G.

Meet the real Kenny G:

This is the greatest place to live on planet Earth. Ironically, this foto was taken in the 510.

I took these fotos when I first moved here in ‘96. My boss let me borrow his pimpin-ass analog Canon on one condition: carry the camera with you for a month, everywhere you go and take as many pictures as possible. I did exactly that and here are 3 of my favs:

To me, this image is pure beauty. I love the Christmas lights up in June, the 1970s station wagon sitting on four flat tires, and the sagging porch and rusty railing. This is in one of the poorer parts of town and a lot of folks dont or wont travel down there.

Someone “adbustered” this sign at 14th and Mission right after Arnold got elected Governor the first time. I think this kind of thing is pretty funny.

One night last year, I was in the kitchen and heard a really loud crash noise. When I went outside to see what had happened, this is what I saw. Amazingly, no one was injured.

I went to Chevron one nite to get a Diet Coke and saw Barney cold passed out in a doorway with a bunch of empty McDonalds sugar packets. How tragic.

I went to Sneaker Pimps last year at Mighty and they had some really cool exhibits. Here are 3 of my favorites:

They could have used an AF1 instead of Phat Farm, dont you think?

This foto is rad for two reasons:

-Shes from the Midwest
-Her Dads name is RAM (Hes got a custom liscence plate)

I found this sticker on the side of a Chronicle newspaper box. I think its the greatest sticker ever made. My LA friend Brian Ewing created it, I have no ideas on how it made its way up here.

First: adidas is spelled with a lower-case “a”. Most people dont know that. Consider that and then consider this…….

When I was 14, I asked for a pair of blue and yellow adidas Superstars for Christmas. (I didnt get em, I think I got a CD player and a Souls of Mischief CD, but thats besides the point.) Fast forward twenty-some years and I stumble into Harputs on Fillmore with a hunger for them same shoes. Cot Damn!! The basic principle of this shop is the owner buys up a bunch of hot styles, puts em in storage for 20 years, then “re-releases” them to the public at a markup. He ages shoes like wine. Whatever, dude is sitting on HELLA dead stock.

Tip: Go in and ask for Bootsy.

Then later that day, I saw some eggs and they reminded me of the shoes.

Plug2 took these 2 fotos the same weekend she got her new digi. I really like them.

We walked down by Union Square today and tried our best to get our fash’ on. On the way, we saw some people inflating a giant Grover. I beleive when we took this pic, we caught him at an awkward moment, but oh well.

Later we made our way to The Gap, and as I was waiting for Plug2 to get out of the dressing room, I got bored and started posing the sock puppet animal things in some compromising positions. You know what they say about idle hands….

Sometimes when Im having a stressful day — sitting at the bus stop — waiting for MUNI to take me home — I look up. And I see these little birds just chillin. These birds dont worry about such things as money, girlfriends, bosses, having the freshest shoes, etc. They only worry about not falling off the wire. I envy them.

We went to visit Plug2’s brother in LA over the weekend. By far, our favorite part of the weekend was eating at Grub on Seward Street, which happens to serve the best bacon I have ever eaten in my life. While waiting for this super-bacon to arrive, we had some drinks and took some fotos of what we saw on the table.

This is by far my favorite foto I have ever taken. I took it in ‘99 while driving my cab. It was wheatpasted on a wall in the Tenderloin. A year later, I got a job at a Mom n Pop sign shop, where I printed the image on an 18×24 canvas.

I moved here in August of ‘96. In September of of ‘96, I met Jose. Jose was a bike messenger, which is a gnarly-ass job. A year later he got hit by a car and was destined to walk with a cane for the rest of his days. I gotta say, the car broke his body, but not his spirit. I see him from time to time on Upper Haight hes always in a good mood. I havent seen him in about 9 months, I hope hes doing alright.

Meet Jose:

Welcome to our blog. We are gonna post up some fotos of people/places/things we see around The City day to day, making it up as we go along.

The screen-shot below is what this site looked like before I spent 3 days getting my HTML freak on.

We hope you enjoy our site.

When we met, we soon realized that we both liked taking pictures — but had no sort of photography background. One day, bored on an airplane, we got Hyphy off Diet Coke and started brainstorming: