It is raining, and suddenly The City is old, showing every one of the 1001 nights of every year for a hundred and fifty-odd years.  Climbing hills, dining unreservedly, and ducking down alleys for a quick one — preferably after hours.

Rain, and The City huddles on its many corners, staring down at its reflection, reflecting on its yesterdays.  The City seems more itself in a downpour: not quite so boastful, not trying so hard to be as young as it never will be again.

The rain is warm.  It softens the outlines of buildings that are too new, too straight, too unnecessarily modern.  It is the old gray Standards — the St. Francis, the Ferry Building, the Flood Building, the City Hall — that look at home in a city that is essentially gray, gray as The Fog, The Rock, The Bay, and the hair of those who love it best.

Dark day becomes darker night; The Bridge is almost invisible in the haze, like a mirage or a wild dream. “No bridge will ever be built over that body of water,” they once said.  The time could be any time and you could almost swear that you just saw a ferryboat ducking around Goat Island toward Oakland.

Inspired by the Late, Great Herb Caen

You see, almost a year ago, we snapped this snapper of RMC Reality office in Noe Valley.  Little did we realize how literal this sign would become.

In hindsight, the image perfectly captures the reason why Plug1 & Plug2 are unable to get approved for a 2-BR starter home regardless of our sparkling credit, passion for living in The City, money earned and saved, tactful taste in interior design, minimal asset management, length of employment at current employers, desire to throw a house party for our Loyal Readers, etc., etc.

To whomever this image magnifies: We hate you, we hate you, we hate you.

542 Green Street

Bertolucci’s Ristorante in South San Francisco was founded in 1928.  A young Peter Sodini has early memories of Bertolucci’s.  Why?  Peter grew up slanging dough for his father’s bakery at Cuneo in North Beach .  During his primitive years he delivered bread to Bertolucci’s and was impressed with the store’s grandeur and level of service.

He eventually went on to start Golden Boy Pizza in 1978.  Over the next 30 years, Peter along with his father and own family, opened almost a dozen more Golden Boy Pizza restaurants throughout The City.  It’s a family business through and through.  Today, while Peter and Victoria are busy managing Sodini’s-Bertolucci’s, their sons pass time by flipping slices at Golden Boy Pizza.

Stop parking here — you are upsetting the sign makers.

Upper Terrace

Dear Mr. Newcomer-

You once were a symbol of towering progress and all that lied ahead for our World Class skyline.

Currently rumors crash and boom and bang into the cool, gray skies around whether or not your sibling will ever rise on its own two feet.

Please advise and thanks,

Plug1

ps: “Ionic Breeze, Ionic Breeze, Ionic Breeze”.

7th Avenue at California

13th & Harrison

Rodgers & Folsom

7th & Irving

Three sightings of the nowhere-but-everywhere at once Girafa resurrects triplicate sightings of Musk as well.  The dynamic duo are seen above claiming All-City status.

Have you spotted a Girafa or Mummy on the loose??  Drop the cross-streets in the comments section or submit them directly via the Girafa sighting tip-line.

See 39 additional Girafa’s here.

8th & Irving

Orlando Cepeda was known to many as “The Baby Bull” and “Cha Cha” during his major league career, but known to locals as “Peruchin”.

Cepeda’s major league career included nine 300+ seasons, and eight seasons of 25 or more home runs.  In 1958, Cepeda joined The Mighty San Francisco Giants, earing the title of NL MVP in the same year.   Orlando Cepeda retired from playing baseball in 1975, finishing his major league career by coaching the Chicago White Sox in 1980.

Cepeda lived and played ball in a time when the US was at a crossroads of social change and racial disharmony.  He was often the target of racial slurs, but Cepeda always managed to take the higher road and keep his cool.

Cepeda’s baseball career and professional achievements have always been haunted by an incident in which Cepeda was arrested at San Juan airport after trying to pick up an excess of 150 lb of marijuana.  Oops.  Some say the marijuana was actually being sent to his brother, who had a dubious criminal past, but Cepeda never blamed anybody else.  As a result, he served 10 months in a state prison.

That being said, Cepeda joined the Hall of Fame in 1999, becoming the second native Puerto Rican to join the Baseball HOF.  During his induction, Cepeda said: “I’m proud to be a Puerto Rican and I will be a role model to the people of my country”.

[source:wiki]

Last year, we saw OBEY GIANT wrecking things in the SOMA sector. 12 months later we go All-City…

17th & Bryant

3rd & 16th

Market & Buchanan (w/ Kaws)

Van Ness & Washington

16th & DeHaro

Washington & Van Ness

We just saw motorized cable cars cruising the streets, so why not 3 350 pd, 10-ft tall Doggie Diner Heads?

The trio of dachshunds was seen tonight outside of The Roxie Theater off 16th, celebrating the opening night of the Laughing Squid produced documentary, “Head Trip.”

Brilliant YouTubage here and here.

[source/photo: Jef Leppard]

In no man’s land behind CCA lives an entire fleet of Cable Car flavored party trolleys.  The size of the fleet is overwhelming.  The majority of them are new-ish, with a few vintage trolleys hiding in the corners.

The Fleet Maintenance Manager was cool enough to let us walk around and aim wanderously — so we are going to plug shamelessly and ask you to go to Classic Cable Car the next time you need to rent a party train.

A new mural has appeared out of nowhere on Mississippi Street, two doors down from the SFBG HQ.

A new mural which begs the following questions:

• Does the Guardian own the lot containing the mural?
• Is it also by Brian Barneclo?
• When will the mural be complete?
• Can someone pls let me get to the other side of that fence so I can get a better shot?

If you know the answers to any or all of these questions, leave the info in the comments or email me directly.

2550 Mission Street circa 1996

Seen above is City Landmark #245: The New Mission Theater b/t 21st and 22nd in The Dirty 30.

The “new theater” was formerly The Premium Theater and is considered by many to be San Francisco’s first movie house built exclusively to show motion pictures.

The 2500+ seat theater was re-designed in 1916 by The Reid Brothers, with later updates by Transbay Terminal architect Timothy Pflueger.  Renamed the “New Mission” by the new proprietors, the theater re-opened its doors with a 12-piece orchestra, a pipe organ, smoking rooms, and “free childcare in the adjoining garden playground.”

The theater closed its doors in the late 1980’s and sold out to CCSF, who never actually used the space.  In 2003, developer Gus Murad bought the property with plans of converting the space into 100+ condos on top of a shiny-shirt type nite club.

Unable to leap thru Planning Commission hoops, the only action this movie house has seen in the past 20 years was a rave in 2006.  Read a very thourough timeline of the landmark’s rough-and-rugged past — and uncertain future — here and here.

Seen on 18th at Missouri — Acme Bee(r) sign

Another day, and another Girafa is found lurking in our inbox.  Seen above leering out at The Great Pacific from Fort Funston — submitted by Loyal Reader USF Don.

Check out more wandering Long-Necker’s in the shooting gallery here.

Have you spotted a Girafa on the loose??  Drop the cross-streets in the comments section or submit them directly via the Girafa sighting tip-line.

6th & Folsom circa 1999

When I took the above photo almost a decade ago, I had no idea of the importance of the writing on this wall.

Foremost, it is a tribute to OG NYC graff king, Vaughn Bode aka The Cheech Wizard.  But more importantly, it serves as a virtual who’s who of San Francisco graffiti pioneers.

Editor’s Note: Our favorite Bay Area Graff blog recently revamped and relaunched — and is KILLING IT with some amazing photography chronicling the work of local living legends.

Take a trip in the wayback machine and check out SF Graf here.

The Tipline has experienced great success of late with yet another Girafa arriving in our inbox.  Loyal Reader Melmelish sent in the above Long-Necker, found lurking in The Fog along The Great Highway.  Check out more wandering Camel-Leopard’s in the shooting gallery here.

Have you spotted a Girafa on the loose??  Drop the cross-streets in the comments section or submit them directly via the aforementioned Girafa sighting tip-line.

I spent the last 30 minutes of the workday shaking and quaking on 72hours.org while taking the aptly titled Quake Quiz.  It seems that I am ill prepared to endure through anything higher than a 3.1 - thus my score was a pathetic 2.0 on the Readiness Quotient meter.

That said, this site is full of wonderfully frightening illustrations — including this one showing terrified passengers traveling inside of a trembling MUNI a la The Big One.

I’m not sure what happened since the last time we saw our friend Frank Chu — but the numerical galaxy count has entirely vanished from the second row of his sign??

The whole metronomic/zenotronic system of conspiracy theories is seemingly breaking down.

A hate-filled “Cool Gray City of Love” is an obvious anomaly.  This beautiful, intelligent, intimate, forgiving, and famous city is being stolen from the law-abiding, piece by piece.  Newcomers may scoff, but within the lifetime of many of us, it was literally safe to go anywhere in San Francisco.  We walked the night streets without looking back over our shoulders.  In a way that rings false today, but was true back then, we felt there was a true community among us — and had reason to believe the sentiment was returned.

Now there are sections of The City that are off-limits to those of the wrong color, age, style.  At sundown, it is high noon on The Streets of San Francisco.  The parts that were once our glory are now places to avoid.  You “enjoy” the view from certain sector’s vistas at your own risk.  Life is lived behind locked gates and barred windows.

The level of violence is rising everywhere, not just in San Francisco, but it is in This City that concerns us the most — of course.  Criminologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists, who have answers for everything, are hard pressed to explain it.  It is not hard for the average citizen to recognize the symptoms, however.  You can experience it daily: in public, in the streets.  It is now possible to imagine an angry citizen firing a gun, or at least pulling one, over a parking spot.  These days, anyone can find a gun — but no one can find parking.

In my lifetime, I’ve watched the level of violence rise from a shaken fist to a string of curse words, to the middle finger, to knives, to the use of semi-automatic weapons.  At 95 unsolved murders thus far this year, shooting amongst each other has become as natural as breathing.

As The Mayor says, “Life is cheap, and the price is going down.”

Where does this crazed philosophy come from??  Why was The City truly different only a comparatively short time ago?  Can it be something as simple as the carelessness of The SFPD (do they even care?), the random inanities of the mainstream media, or the cut budgets of our schools?  It is the tragedies of The War(s) Over There or the tragedy of Freddie and Fanny? Is it weak leadership, inflation, economic crisis, joblessness — and hopelessness?

I don’t know and don’t pretend to.  I’m likely more part of the problem than the solution.  My only advice: enjoy the day and fear the night, Loyal Readers.

Inspired by the Late, Great Herb Caen

Post & Fillmore

Loyal Reader EGW dropped this beauty off in the inbox yesterday — a rare species in the compare/contrast family of Girafas.

See more wandering long-neckers in the shooting gallery here.

Have you seen a Girafa on the loose??  Drop the cross-streets in the comments section or send it directly to the Girafa sighting tip-line.

USS Bonhomme Richard

Our knowledge of military ships extends not much further than late nite games of Battleship mixed with Chips Ahoy and Cap’n Crunch.  With that said, you can imagine our chagrin excitement when we learned that a really big, real life ship was parked on the end of Pier 32 and giving free lunch hour tours.

Flight Deck/Helicopter Landing Pad

The USS Bonhomme Richard is the great, great grandson of the 1776 wooden version of a ship known by the same name.  Pictured here is version LHD-6 (?!?), birthed over 200 years later in 1998.

Port Side Fork Lifts

This 1.1 billion dollar boat is 844 ft long, weighs 40.5k tons, cruises at speeds up to 20+ knots and is capable of carrying a crew of 1800.  The massive watercraft is an official fleet member of The US Marines.

Number Six

Based in San Diego, its primary mission is to embark, deploy, and land members of The Marine Landing Force in amphibious assault operations by helicopter or landing craft (read: much smaller boats).  But the primary goal of Bonnhomme Richard is to launch humanitarian efforts rather than offensive/defensive.

Petty Officer w/i Semi-Automatic Glaring at OAK

If ginormous waterbased military vehicles are your thing, you can find additional information/better photographs/sailing calendars here and here and here.

Flickr set here.

Seen near Tank Hill above Cole Valley

A quiet Friday night looking down from Hyde Street…

The Broadway Tunnel began construction on May 1, 1950 and officially opened on December 21, 1952.  It was built by the Morrison-Knudsen Construction Co. The twin bores extend from Powell to Larkin streets and the tunnel measures 1616 feet from portal to portal, at just over 11 feet wide.

Stray shots from 2008’s instance of Fleet Week, starring The Blue Angels…

Flickr set here.  LY’s coverage here and here.

More photos here and here and here and here and here and here.

Broken and dysfunctional signs of a broken and dysfunctional system…

“Ass OR $1.50″

“Sorry…Predictions not available.”

BART sans “a”

Previous broken MUNI signage here.

Waaay down at the bottom of the blackhole that has become our inbox was this oldie-but-goodie: a fresh Girafa lurking in the shadows of a warehouse on 3rd near 20th.

See more wandering long-neckers in the shooting gallery here.

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

Like us, The Star Princess — sister of The Sun Princess — is back in The Bay and very visible from: hills, freeways, Treasure Island, fishing docks, the T-Third, and numerous walkways along the eastern waterfront.

Word from our friends over at TelStar Logistics is she wont be here for long.  Catch her if you can — for the time being she’s lodging at the drydock down at  Potrero Point.

Seen in our front yard for the first time in almost a month.

The last in a series of posts from our recent travels thru the land of Spain…

[RSS click thru for picto-browser]

Seen above: graphic and graff-ic visuals noticed while photo-walking the century old streets of Barcelona.

We hope you found our detour to be as magical as we did.

And now…let’s get back to Bay Business. ¡Vale!