The past seven days have been a digital disaster here at WHAT IM SEEING…

1. Blogger decided to quit with no explanation
   
2. The Blackberry’s trackball stopped tracking (that’s the fifth in 60 days)
3. Digital camera was dismembered (that’s the fourth in 18 months)

Fear not readers — after a nightmarish week — things are starting to fall back into place. We have a new look, a new camera, and tomorrow: a new phone.

Stay tuned as we finish off the final tweaks on our new aesthetic and are able to start publishing subprime content to you, once again.

Please update your RSS feeds here.

Blogger has expired in its effectiveness as an HTML editor. WordPress seemed a good alternative — am in the middle of migration as I type this “test” post…

UPDATE: Migration is complete, sort of. I have noticed many of the image paths for the posts are broken. And of course all template customization has been lost. I am working diligently to get things back to the way they were early last week — but I’m not all that savvy at HTML/CSS.

UPDATE #2: New template is up with fill-in header. Now for the sidebar…

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FINAL UDATE: WHAT IM SEEING is back up and throttling at 95%. Small tweaks to follow, but feel like we are in a good place. Thus far, WordPress rocks!! Now let’s get a preliminary post up…

Seen at the corner of 17th and Potrero, 1/2 of a Girafa.

Seen a Girafa on the loose?? Drop the cross-streets in the comments section or hit us up on the Girafa sighting tip-line.

Shooting gallery here.

Last week your editor — by no fault of his own — found the telescopic lens permanently disconnected from the body of the camera it was formerly affixed to.

Fortunately he had the foresight to predict his own irresponsibility with the care and protection of previous point-n-clicks. Meaning that he had purchased “no questions asked” insurance from the dealer one year prior.

Long story short, he replaced the former with this fellow, at no extra cost. Loverly. And it has a 28mm lens, which means he is now able to provide his loyal readers with an extra 7mm of crap-tastic photography.

The Oval

In 1891, Stanford University opened its doors following 6 years of construction and a $20 million grant. The campus was gift to the city of Palo Alto from railroad magnate Leland Stanford and his wife Jane in honor of their son Leeland, Jr. who died at the age of 15.

Tresidder Memorial Union

One of eight children, Leland Stanford, Sr. was born in 1924 in Albany, New York. After a brief career in law, Stanford caught Gold Rush Fever and headed west to mythical San Francisco to start a mercantile business.

Passage near Memorial Court

As one of “The Big Four”, he co-founded and became president of the Central Pacific Railroad Co., amassed unheard of wealth, and later was voted in as the first Republican Governor of California.

The Memorial Church

In 1868, the Stanford’s gave birth to Leland Jr., their first child. Young Leland was well traveled and became fascinated with fine art. After his death, the filthy rich Stanford’s decided to build a university in his honor on farmland they owned in Palo Alto. The school was to be all inclusive, regardless of sex, race, or religious preference. Until 1920 the institution was tuition-free.

Interior of Memorial Church

The campus was designed by Frederick Olmstead, the famed landscape architect responsible for NYCs Central Park. The design of the buildings is a blend of Romanesque and Mission Revival styles — unusual for 19th-century architecture.

Hoover Tower

In its first semester, the student body of 427 students was ready to attend class in 19 departments. The first year was full of hiccups such as difficulties recruiting professors, inadequate housing, and a shortage of books for the students.

Centennial Fountain

But the troubles didn’t end there. 2 years after opening its doors, founder Leeland Stanford died in his sleep. After his death, his $1 billion empire went into probate between the family estate and the US Government due to outstanding railroad construction loans.

Herbert Hoover Memorial Pavilion

3 years later in 1896, the Supreme Court rejected The Government’s claims and class was back in session. As her financial worries lessened, Jane Stanford decided to construct The Memorial Church in honor of her dead, philanthropic husband. She choose the center of the campus for its location, stating that, “A spiritual understanding through education was the highest wisdom a person could find in life.” In hopes of celebrating the true meaning of “community,” Mrs. Stanford declared that the church be non-sectarian and never to be affiliated with a particular denomination.

In 1905, Mrs. Stanford died while on vacation in Hawaii. Shortly before she passed, she told the Board of Trustees, “Let us not be afraid to outgrow old thoughts and ways, and dare to think on new lines as to the future of the work under our care.”

J. Henry Meyer Library

Over the next 100 years, these words came to define the university’s purpose, underlying goals, and $50k annual tuition.

George Segal’s “Gay Liberation”

List of famous alumni here.
Flickr set here.

Skrach-n-Sniff Banana spotted by reader Tomatoe Farcie on Kearny in the Chinatown sector.

Seen some low hanging fruit lurking in an area near you? Drop the cross-streets off in the comments section or hit us up on the tipline.

Summer Solstice, Dolores Park style.

Activities included hipsters drinking beer, cardboard tube fighting, hipsters drinking beer, Critical Mass, hipsters drinking beer, a Flash Mob swing band, hipsters drinking beer, and pleasant weather.

Safety Requires Avoiding Unnecessary Conversation…

Loyal reader Zack submitted these MUNI carnage pics via the tipline last week.

Seen near 3rd and Channle St: the crippled N-Judah which was head butted by cousin T-Third last weekend near Pac Bell Park.

12 passengers were dropped off at SFGH due to excessive speeds most likely caused by a distracted conductor talking on his/her cellular phone.

Photo by Plug2

Amongst my most prized possessions is a piece of the original door handle from The Most Famous Martini Bar in The City – The Mark Hopkins on California at Mason. My souvenir is beveled bronze and in the shape of a blueberry and lends itself handy for cracking heads, but ideally for the mixing of a perfect martini — the formula being “gin to the chin” and “vermouth to the tooth.”

The foregoing leads us to two provocative martini-angled ads running in several travel publications today. The first, devised by the Convention and Visitors Bureau asks: “When you come to San Francisco, why drink the water?” and goes on to state that “this is the birthplace of the martini.” The second shows a perfect martini with a bleeding olive, resting on the 3-Dot Bar at The Mark. “It’s hard to get a bad martini in San Francisco,” reads the copy, because “the martini was invented there.”

There meaning Here, of course.

Maybe I should mention that I’m all for the idea of the martini having been invented here; it’s just that in 13 years of research, I’ve uncovered no hard evidence. That said, a California researcher Peter Tamony tells the unlikely tale that the martini was invented around 1860 by the famous bartender Jerry Thomas at the 100+ years defunct Occidental Hotel on The Monkey Block. I won’t bore you with the details, but supposedly a customer asked for “a special drink for my hangover” one foggy morning, and Jerry came up with something he had named “The Martinez” because that’s where the customer was bound for.

I find this tall tale to be ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous are the ingredients, which Professor Thomas listed as “1 dash bitters, 2 dashes maraschino, 1 pony Old Tom Gin, 1 wineglass vermouth (!?!), 2 small lumps ice.”

Phooey on that — if the drink were indeed named in honor of Martinez, wouldn’t that town have a statue of Jerry Thomas in the civic square? If there could be any other possible reason for Martinez to be famous, pls let me know.

Well, no need to stagger on. Maybe “martini” simply came from the Martini & Ross vermouth, since the early cocktail was made with Italian, rather than French, vermouth. The point, if any, is that these latter-day attempts to establish San Francisco as the martini’s birthplace go along with our (and sometimes my) reputation for constant inebriation — stumbling at best.

As 2Pac once said, “I always carry a supply of stimulants in case I see a snake, and since you brought it up, I got one of those, too.”

FYI: the rumors that Mr. Pac is alive and drunk in Oakland may now be laid to rest.

Photo by Plug2

Inspired by the Late, Great Herb Caen

Seen (or scene) on 21st near Sanchez in the Noe Valley sector.

The City’s REAL Mayor, The Mighty San Quinn…

Back in 1980, 3-year old Quincy Brooks IV moved from the depressing streets of The Town to the grimey streets of The Fillmoe sector — home of living legends such as Rappin 4-Tay, JT the Bigga Figga, Hugh-E-MC, Messy Marv, and Dre Dog. Young Quincy quickly turned a blind eye to petty crime and focused on writing and rapping to prevent trouble from knocking down his front door.

San Quinn — named after the notorious San Quentin North Bay prison — made his first Hip-Hop appearance opening for 2Pac and the Digital Underground at the diplomatic age of 12. By age 14, he had recorded his first single, “SFC,” with the Get Low Playas and RBL Posse. At age 15, freshman Quincy released his first album, “Don’t Cross Me.” By age 21, The Mighty San Quinn had broken the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Singles Appeared on by a Solo Artist” — 350 (!!!)

In 1998, The Quinn formed Done Deal Entertainment staying true to the Bay Area way of getting paid independently. The label started putting out mixtapes and collabo albums to build artist hype and assist in selling and smashing more and more and even more records.

Says Quinn, “I think that folkers sleep on The Bay. They need to open up their ears and eyes to us cause in The Bay we do got our flavor up here. I feel like they sleep on us, you know, just like George Bush and all of America sleeps. They was asleep on checking people’s luggage before 9/11 and then once them planes hit they woke up on it. So don’t get no rude awakening sleeping on The Bay.”

Word up.

The video “SF Anthem” feat. Big Rich & Boo Banga:

Original video here.
Discography here.

City Hall, like most San Franciscans — was/were glowing last nite as history was made beneath her dome.

One of our favorite things about the quiet and underhyped Bernal Heights sector is its weekly Sunday Swap Meets. Time is of the essence at this parking lot sized garage sale, opening each sabbath day at 6 am running into the mid-afternoon. Best to get here early, before the pack-rats and hoarders have thinned out the worthwhile finds.

It is the perfect place to find cell phone chargers, boxing gloves, coin collections, Tony Robbins book sets, vintage vinyl, tools, Bobble Heads, lunch boxes, replicas of The Maltese Falcon, prescription eye wear, Bollywood DVDs, antique AV equipment, fake Mag Lites, shot glasses, velvet furniture, antique cameras, baseball cards, 8-track tapes, funky ashtrays, spectrometers, oscillating fans, pencil sharpeners, track bikes, VCRs, 80s jewelry and all kinds of other junk treasures that you never knew you needed.

The Alemany Flea Market is located at 100 Alemany near the intersection of 280 and 101.

Seen on 22nd St in The Dirty 30.

The Selective Eye blocks out the blunt buildings with their shiny blue-ish glass and squared-off tops — uninspiring, literally — that desecrate one of the worlds great cityscapes. They rise without soaring. They lack that certain grace. They scrape the morning sky and leave it raw.

Thru the open wound and filling the air is the snoring of a down-and-outer, sleeping at the foot of “progress.”

Inspired by the Late, Great Herb Caen

Opening a window to the past, looking at The City That Was…

Anyone other than my my Grandma can send an email. But it takes a certain someone to send one to us, especially when they are promising to send free stuff and that free stuff consists of a bound copy chock full of very old photographs of The City.

“We’d love to send you a complimentary copy for possible review consideration on your blog of this book, the Historic Photos of San Francisco.”

Ohhh-kay.

What arrived in our mailbox was a one-way ticket to board The Delorean and travel way, way back into a much, much better different time…

Ferry Building (1886) - Originally called Union Depot, after that The Ferry House.

16th & Folsom (1905) - Cable Cars wade thru a flooded Folsom St.

Crocker Building (1905) - Market & Post, now the Montgomery BART station.

Location Unknown (1906) - Readers, where is this??

City Hall (1906) - Corrupted Mayor Eugene Schmitz burst into tears.

Barbary Coast (1909) - Seedy Pacific Avenue Street on Jackson Square.

Ferry Building (1934) - The B-Geary St Trolley picks up passengers in front of The Grandfather Clock of Market Street.

The Fairmont (1945) - Survived, yet gutted by The FireQuake of 1906.

Market Street (1958) - Goodbye Seals, Hello Giants.

Chinatown (1964) - Vote Yes on Props 15, 16, & 17.

Upper Haight Street (1967) - The Summer of Love.

Flickr set here.
More reviews here and here.

Author Rebecca Schall will be signing copies tomorrow, June 14th at the Fisherman’s Wharf Barnes & Noble.

Seen on UCSF’s Mission Bay campus.

“Anima” by Jim Sanborn

Located on the southern end of The Dirty 30, Mitchell’s has been slangin’ scoops and cones for 55 years. In 1953 the brothers Mitchell opened for business on San Jose at 29th St. No strangers to lactose delight — their family had owned and operated a small dairy farm since the late 1800s.

The shop began as a neighborhood ice creamery, but it wasn’t long before other restos began requesting the good stuff for their own menus.

Over the years Mitchell’s has become famous for making exotic tropical flavors, including: avocado, buko (baby coconut), guava, langka, macapuno (sweet coconut), mango, pineapple and ube.

Pioneers of health and good taste, Mitchell’s is churned daily and with just a 16% butterfat base. Conversely, the vanilla ice cream is made with pure Bourbon.

It’s a celebration!!

• Voted “Best Ice Cream Parlor” by the SF Bay Guardian, 1996 - 2008.
• Voted “Best Ice Cream” by the SF Weekly, 2001 - 2008.
• Received 50 gold, silver and bronze ribbons at The California State Fair.
• Featured on Travel Magazine’s “Ice Cream Palaces” show in 2004 and on the Food Network’s “Roker On The Road” show in 2003.

You’ve seen it happen on a wall near you.

A building gets a fresh coat of paint, which in turn is viewed by the graffito as a blank canvas. The tug-of-war begins over private space and public expression.

The graffito makes his mark. And another. And another. The City views this as blight and issues the property owner a notice threatening to clean up the space — or suffer a fine.

Grey seems to be the cover-up pigment color of choice. The patchwork begins. Over time these blocks of color covering up the lettering of others form a pattern — or quilted sum — of its parts.

Here we have a definition of “The Urban Quilt.”

Word: urban
Annunciation: ur·ban
Pronunciation: \ˈər-bən\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin urbanus, from urbs city
Date: 1619
Definition: of, relating to, characteristic of, or constituting a city

Word: quilt
Annunciation: quilt
Pronunciation: \ˈkwilt\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English quilte mattress, quilt, from Anglo-French coilte, from Latin culcita mattress
Date: 14th century
Definition: small pieces of fabric stitched together to form something larger

So what say you, loyal readers? Which is the lesser of inherit evils? A spray painted treatment by a local artist, or a contracted painter creating mismatched panels of greyscale?

Flickr set here.

Graffitist?? Does not compute. Seen in the North Beach sector.

The classic battle over public space vs. public urination wages on, this time on Bryant near 19th.

It goes without saying that the utmost respect for our friend Frank Chu has always lived within these pages.

That said, I had no idea how much The Most Famous of Signs actually weighed until I walked 1/10 mile carrying it to this, the mecca of photographic opportunities in our Baghdad-by-The-Bay.

It’s heavy, loyal reader…it’s heavy.

We take a look inside Willie Brown’s Party Palace — aka City Hall…

Original City Hall, completed in 1915

“You have in San Francisco this magnificent Civic Center crowned
by a City Hall which I have never seen anywhere equaled.” - Joseph Strauss

Your Editor recently found himself down at City Hall ready to legally change his name to Plug1 resolve some civic business.

With an hour to kill, due diligence required me escorting myself on a self-guided tour thru Our City’s headquarters…

This place is HUGE — the building encompasses two full city blocks. The dome is the 5th largest in the world and coated in $400k of gold paint. But it wasn’t always this over-the-top.

In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake brought City Hall to its knees. In 1996, the voters brought Willie Brown to City Hall. The 1915-cast foundation had been shaken and stirred; and City Officials then Mayor Brown vowed to restore our his civic palace into a historic, yet modern structure that would please the eye and serve its citizens well.

“I see a functional facility designed for magnificent city and a magnificent collection of people,” said Mayor Willie Brown on opening day.

The dome, the fifth highest in the world, rises 307 ft into the sky, several ft higher than the U.S. Capitol.

Its a 3-in-1 design of dome-ness, the brainchild of Arthur Brown and John Bakewell. The upper dome consists of plaster which is supported by the lower two layers of limestone. During an earthquake this massive dome acts as a pendulum, whatever that means.

The resurrected city hall was officially re-opened on January 5th, 1999. While the the building was restored to its original beauty, and then some — the project wasn’t just a cosmetic face lift. To protect it from the destruction of The Next Big One, engineers installed 530 lead-rubber isolators underneath the building that act like huge shock absorbers, making our City Hall the world’s largest floating building.

Indiana Jones in The Temple of His Willy-ness

See City hall glowing orange and purple.
See the Flickr set here.

Seen (or scene) atop The Trans-Am on The Monkey Block.

Defending champ Leonard Oats hailed victorious in the battle for World Champion at the 46th annual Cable Car Bell Ringing Contest yesterday. Gripman banged the gong at high-noon in Union Square — the winner walking away with $1000 and bragging rights for the next 364 days.

The annual contest consists of two divisions — one for The Gripmen, and the other for local B-List Celebrities Presstitutes and Videots — who collectively banged away for cold, hard cash in the name of their favorite charities. Ringers were judged on rhythm, originality, and style.

1st Place Winner Leonard Oats

2nd Place Winner Ken Lunardi

Above, our 10th Loyal Reader gets the lunchtime crowd all fired up before the pizzicato percussion began.

Flickr set here.
More coverage and better pics here.

Located at the corner of 4th & Bryant is The Hotel Utah Saloon, one of The City’s oldest. The Utah has been getting folks drunk since 1908 — a true relic from the notorious Barbary Coast.

According to their website, early clientèle included, “gamblers, thieves, ladies up to no good, politicians, hustlers, friends of opium, gold seekers, god seekers, charlatans, corrupt police, and fancy miscreants.”

That crowd sounds much like our reader demographic.

Here’s a fun fact: shortly after the completion of The Bay Bridge, the saloon momentarily renamed itself “Al’s Transbay Tavern.” Owner/Bartender Al Opatz was quite a character, a San Francisco original. Story goes that he would cut your necktie off when you walked into the place and nail it up above the bar, so the place was wall-to-wall ties!!

For 100 years, The Hotel Utah Saloon has stood tall and proud, serving the folks living and working in the South of Market sector.

Back in February, we stumbled upon something beautiful being brought back to life in The Woods Division’s Cable Car carpentry shop.

Cable Car No. 25 was built 118 years ago, originally operating on the Sacramento & Clay lines. When the Great FireQuake of 1906 destroyed the entire Powell Cable Car fleet, the Sac-Clay trolleys were transferred to the hilly Powell-Mason line and have been running there ever since.

No. 25 is now brand spanking new, with very little of the original skeleton remaining. To celebrate its re-entry into the fleet, the exterior paint has been restored to the red and cream colorway that decorated the cable cars of the early 1900s.

The rehab was completed in early May by a crew of MTA special crafts workers. The fleet as a whole is the country’s only mobile National Landmark.

“The cable cars are the symbol of San Francisco around the world. They are ambassadors on wheels for our unique city,” said Nathaniel Ford, Executive Director/CEO of the SFMTA. “The skills demonstrated in the rebuilding of this cable car serve as the highest tribute to the quality of MUNI craftsworkers, who carry on a century-old tradition.”

Flickr set here.

20th & Connecticut

Nothing makes us happier than readers engaging with the Girafa hunting Tip-Line.

12th & Irving

Here we see 4 incidents of Girafa sightings, habitat identified by cross-street, and each reader submitted.

16th & Potrero

Seen a Girafa lurking in your sector? Leave the coordinates in the comment section or drop us an electronic mail — we will investigate and report back.

7th & Irving