Somehow, despite paying the lowest possible rate, I have a nice view:
San Francisco
by DougJ| 89 Comments
This post is in: Good News For Conservatives, Outrage
by DougJ| 89 Comments
This post is in: Good News For Conservatives, Outrage
Comments are closed.
General Winfield Stuck
That picture ain’t big enough.
John Cole
What kind of camera is that? A funhouse mirror?
John Cole
I fixed it.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
Time for some photo upload training fu for a certain someone.
Doctorpanto
Isn’t that one at the bottom Ironside’s old HQ?
Colette
I know where you are.
Across the street from my dentist, that’s where.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
I got a good belly laugh out of it. Thank you Dougj.
Mike P
It’s a nasty day here…at least the rain stopped. It’s been nice, if a bit cold, the last few days.
AhabTRuler
Weird, it’s very blurry in the post, but if you click thru, it’s fine.
Somebody needs to turn off the softcore filter.
JeremyH
San Francisco is just stuffed with great views, they’re around every corner. Nowhere else like it for that, really.
Have a great time there, it’s an awesome town!
jeffreyw
Looks like they saved big money on widow glass by using tallow soaked paper.
Midnight Marauder
Who are you and why are you posting during John Cole’s “I’m On Break, But Only So I Can Do More Work To Necessity Another Break, Which Will Also Require An Equal Amount of Work And Another Subsequent Break” Extravaganza?
arguingwithsignposts
Enjoy the view.
Here’s a little Smudge. (per AsiangrrlMN’s request) More to come later.
goblue72
As a San Franciscan, I am embarrassed that I can’t quite figure out where this is taken from. I see Twin Peaks in the distance, City Hall in front of that, and then maybe even some of the Nob Hill/FiDi highrises???
Sheesh, this is embarassing.
Tom Hilton
San Francisco is lousy with views. The view from our offices (not my own office, which is interior, but the conference rooms) is pretty spectacular.
Blue Raven
As a happy commuter into the SF Financial District for nearly four years, I do love seeing others enjoying the views here.
SiubhanDuinne
DougJ? DougJ? What the hell is going on here? What happened to John Cole as a front-pager?
Tom Hilton
@goblue72: Union Square-ish, looks like to me (like around Geary & Mason or so). If I had time I’d figure it out with Google Streetview.
Edit: of course, the GWSF people could figure it out in a heartbeat.
SiubhanDuinne
@arguingwithsignposts: Oooh oooh oooh, those glowing eyes and those pink ears and that PINK NOSE which I just want to kiss!
DougJ
Time for some photo upload training fu for a certain someone.
My wireless went out mid-edit.
slag
But are you getting free cookies: http://www.tonic.com/article/travel-industry-courts-customers-with-cookies/?
handy
For some reason, I find the Mt. Sutro radio tower in the background of that photo as iconic a part of The City™ as the more famous landmarks like ferry building or Golden Gate bridge. An add thing to associate, I know, but I guess one of my oddities.
Bill E Pilgrim
Everybody at this blog is from my home town?
I had no idea.
Bought my ticket home this morning.
jeffreyw
@arguingwithsignposts: Yay Smudge!
Bill E Pilgrim
@Tom Hilton: Looks like convention centerish. Ish.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ:
okay :-)
Joshua Norton
It’s got to be from Moscone. Straight ahead you can see a church on Mission St., the Russ Building, then kind of a little off to the left is Fox Plaza and 100 Van Ness. It looks like it’s a block or 2 south from Market Street.
cyntax
I’d go with SOMA not Union Square since City Hall is on the right side of Twin Peaks.
Colette
@handy:
À chacun son goût, I suppose. I think of it as Shelob-by-the-Bay.
MikeJ
@Tom Hilton: I had guessed the Hyatt, which is nice. I once got put, against my will, in the shithole Best Western or some such on Union Sq. The only upside was the plaque in my room saying that in the room, Billie Holiday had been arrested for heroin possession. But the room looked as if people were often busted.
Kristine
@arguingwithsignposts:
Smudge! Now with cool gold eyes!
Sean
Tom – killer photos. Thanks for sharing.
goblue72 – you are looking over the Tenderloin from barely on Nob Hill.
DougJ – you are probably walking distance from Shalimar, which is some good, cheap Indian food. Super casual, solid food. I bet I can guess the hotel….
Tom Hilton
@Joshua Norton: Not the Russ Building–it’s a building that looks a lot like the Russ Building.
I think it’s actually taken from north of Market. The streets in the foreground are on the NSEW grid–you can see Market angling off on the left (note the triangular building center-left).
Linkmeister
Y’all are pretty upscale. The first time I stayed in SF it was in the Star Motel, just off the Golden Gate bridge on the main drag into town. US 50, maybe?
slashdotcom
Yeah, there are just no bad views in San Francisco, which is why it’s not Real Murika. Real Murika is loaded with horrible horrible boring shit, as I can attest to since I drove across it in September and October.
Except for Montana, which is both Real Murika and beautiful. (Okay, fuck it, Wyoming and Idaho were nice, too.)
Bill E Pilgrim
Sodden memory:
Walking out of the Ferry Building after getting off a boat, into a crowd I didn’t expect right in front of the terminal which turned out to be watching Joan Baez singing at Herb Caen’s open air memorial.
Tom Hilton
@Sean: Thanks! Glad you enjoyed them.
I am incredibly lucky to see that view every day…
Tom Hilton
@Linkmeister: I know that one. It’s on Lombard (the straight part), which is Highway 101 at that point.
MobiusKlein
@handy: we always called Sutro Tower “Devil’s Tower” since on a foggy evening, it looks like devil horns poking out over the fog.
Joshua Norton
@Joshua Norton: I take that back. Now it looks like it a little north of Market. That building with the white dome looks like the Golden Gate Theater. So it has to be someplace between Powell and Civic Center. The dreaded Mid-Market area.
Joshua Norton
@Tom Hilton: Yeah, I caught that after I put my glasses on.
AhabTRuler
Now the photo is fixed, but is instead poorly formatted?
It’s WordPress BINGO!
BethanyAnne
Sigh. I’m in exile in Texas, as I got poor last year. Seeing that photo made me homesick. Must… find… way… back!
handy
@Colette:
Heh. Now that you mention it, it does look rather arthropodic.
Peter J
What kind of countertops does the hotel have?
Colette
@Peter J:
Black marble – at least when I stayed there quite a few years ago. The bathrooms seemed palatial to me. They were about the same size as the rooms, and featured two phones.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Linkmeister: Well yeah but you were basically in the Marina, pretty damn upscale yourself.
Not that it seems much like it at that motel I realize, but we’re talking about some of the most expensive real estate in the country, just a block away.
Llelldorin
Cool! You’re looking right at me!
(I’m sitting beyond those hills in a Starbucks in Linda Mar, at the south end of Pacifica. If I’m looking at your image right, at the extreme right of your picture you can see the Sunset, the location of SFSU, where I got my MA before heading to Berkeley.)
Joshua Norton
Here’s the view from the other direction. So your hotel should be somewhere in the background.
Linkmeister
@Tom Hilton, @Bill E Pilgrim:
True enough. It was about $50/night at the time (1985, maybe? Sounds right.) And yeah, now that Tom mentions it, it was 101, because I came down from the north where I’d been cruising the Oregon Coast for ten days. Crossed that bridge in San Rafael or somewhere which is an upside-down “U;” you can’t see the downside as you’re driving up. My vertigo did not approve of that bridge.
JK
San Franciscan Nights – The Animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u7q81Krih0
goblue72
I swear I’ve walked by that L-shaped red masonry building in the foreground countless times and I can’t put my finger on what corner its near.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Linkmeister: Looks at Tom Hilton and blinks.
“Upside down U”? San Rafael?
Okay this is going to drive me nuts.
Okay, driving from Oregon to San Francisco……
Tom Hilton
@Bill E Pilgrim:
@Linkmeister:
There’s a bridge like that on 37 just off 101, in Novato…could it be that one?
Edit: not sure why you’d have been on 37, but it’s the only one I can think of.
Comrade Mary
@arguingwithsignposts: Every view of Smudge is pretty. Especially that one.
Colette
@goblue72: It’s the Ambassador Hotel at the corner of Mason and Eddy.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Tom Hilton: Ah perhaps. Sears Point Road. Well, you could wind your way down from… hmm, not sure either. But who knows.
Funny you forget how many bridges in the whole area, ones you never see, haven’t seen in ages, etc.
Bill E Pilgrim
That would be kind of a fun thread, post a picture of something, somewhere, and see who can track down where it is in the world.
handy
@Colette:
Uh oh, you’ve just tipped off all DougJ’s SF bay area groupies.
Bill E Pilgrim
Nowhere near the Bay Area, myself….
The rest of you– go get him!
Colette
@handy: He must have known what he was risking by posting that picture. Now if he were actually staying at the Ambassador, I’d be worried for him (it’s an SRO/low-income housing building).
Origuy
@Linkmeister: When you said US 50, I thought that must have been a long time ago, because it’s ended in Sacramento since 1964. Before that, it ran down what is now I-5, across the Altamont Pass, and up what is now I-580.
I can’t think where that bridge might be. There’s a few pretty steep overpasses, but nothing like that. Maybe on a side road? Could you have been on US 1?
Tom Hilton
Off the top, the only other bridge I can think of like that is the Antioch Bridge. But that’s quite a distance from San Rafael.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
You are apparently staying in the Tenderloin, aka skid row.
Nice view, though. However, it could just as easily be Waterbury, CT as San Francisco.
Tom Hilton
@Colette: so I was a couple-three blocks north on my first guess. Not too bad.
Todd
I know I’m late to this thread but did no one notice the truck on the roof of the building?
Edit: It says parking outside, it’s probably a parking garage. I wish it weren’t…
Colette
@Todd: You’ve never heard of the famous San Francisco trucklecopters? Yeesh, what a provincial. We use them for earthquake rescues.
Tim in SF
Help!
I have a friend coming into SF tomorrow and he asked me for recommendations on hotels. I have no idea what to tell him!
His two qualifications were inexpensive but not so much that one would be afraid to walk around barefoot.
Origuy
Are there other Bay Area Juicers that do the Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt? I’ve done this for several years with the same group. They give you a map, a street index, and a list of clues to locations in the downtown/Chinatown/North Beach area. You have to figure out where the clues refer to, go to each of those places, and solve more clues that you can only understand when you get there. If you get to the right place, you can answer a question such as the year a certain plaque was installed. Oh, and you do this while the Chinese New Year Parade is going on.
keestadoll
@Tim in SF:
San Francisco Central Travelodge
1707 Market Street
Market St. & Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94103 US
Phone: 415-621-6775
I cannot think of anyplace centrally located and relatively inexpensive that a person could walk barefoot, but I’ve stayed there and it’s nice.
Origuy
It’s not centrally located, but the Presidio Travelodge is on the edge of Presidio National Park; he could go barefoot in the park.
Travelodge at the Presidio of San Francisco
2755 Lombard Street
San Francisco, California 94123
Phone: (415) 931-8581
Margarita
The tallest building in the shot (from that perspective) — the one with the flag on top — is McAllister Tower on McAllister and Leavenworth. I can see my old apartment, where I rode out the ’89 earthquake on the 13th floor. That church with the pink roof in front of it rang bells, lots of bells.
goblue72
@Colette: Oh dear god yes it is. I thought that photo looked Tenderloin-y.
And I work one block from there and walk down Eddy Street past it. Every. Fricking. Day.
ME = Moran.
Turgidson
That photo kinda looks like an optical illusion to me. As a recent UC Hastings grad, I am very familiar with that beige tower with the flag on top (just to the left of the Mt. Sutro radio tower). I had classes there and a lot of Hastings students live in that building. It’s hard for me to visualize an angle from which the tower would be to the LEFT of the City Hall dome.
It’s obviously looking out to the west, but I just can’t quite pinpoint where that is, since City Hall is southwest of the Hastings tower, yet in this picture appears to be north of it. I’m really confused.
goblue72
@Colette: Which puts him up in the Parc 55 Hotel.
Nylund
I grew up south of the city. Every time I drive in, it absolutely shocks me how much it looks like a post card, especially when the skies are clear and blue. It looks too airbrushed and perfect to be real. That isn’t quite so true this time of year when things can be quite gloomy and grey.
I’ve been here for about 3 weeks dealing with family stuff but in a few days I must return back to my life in Texas. The thought of that is making me so incredibly depressed.
Turgidson
@Nylund:
Bummer. Hope the family stuff comes to a positive resolution. If you have some time to yourself before you go back, do some of your Bay area-specific things before you go. Eat some food you can get here but not in Texas, take in some of the scenery, whatever. Might cheer you up a little.
gbear
@DougJ:
Yeah, SF is kind of a low-tech town that way.
Joshua Norton
@gbear: Wrong! It’s definitely a WordPress “feature”. I’ve had picture uploads die on me using a T1 line.
Linkmeister
It was 25 years ago, so I don’t remember the bridge’s location all that well. It doesn’t have to be San Rafael.
I drove down 101 from the Oregon border; I was trying to stay off the Interstate. I was feeling romantic or sentimental because I wanted to be sure I found a way to come into the city over the GG bridge, so somewhere north of SF I came across that bridge. It’s what my grandmother used to call a “jumping off place” because you just went up one side, staring straight into the sky through the windshield, then finally hit the crest and started down.
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: SMUDGEY! YAY! So cute. Can’t wait to see more pics of her.
OK. I’m just going to say something and then flee the room: I prefer NYC to the SF. I’m leaving it there.
Flees the room.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Ahh my wifey the agent provocateur. FWIW I agree with you, only because SFO was nice but NYC affected me profoundly.
handy
I’m kind of a baby when it comes to heat so SF > NY humid summers. But otherwise both are great cities in their own way, NY definitely getting the edge just in its sheer energy.
Now Chicago OTOH–vastly overrated. Now it’s my turn to duck and run.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Linkmeister:
I think you just got confused and were already in San Francisco, driving for the first time on one of our lovely hills.
God knows that’s how it felt the first time I drove up some of those, and I grew up there.
Bill E Pilgrim
@asiangrrlMN: (Psst. Me too. Actually I prefer where I live now to both. Hands down)
justme
Heh. I had Eddy guessed from the pic pretty quick. It took a bit of google map to get Mason. Not quite in the Tenderknob, but close. Just across the street, really.
I’ve been here too long.
Nahhhh.
I love me some NY as well, but the weather is just so much better here, and the drive up the coast… oh my. The whole rocky, wild cliff thing is very nice. One of these days I might move back. I hear the call now and again. For now, I’ll take the foggy place.
ruemara
@asiangrrlMN: You would see me fleeing with you. I’m from NYC. I moved to SF and was amused to see the big city was so…small. I’ve grown to love parts of it-like Oakland and Alameda. :P
D. Aristophanes
Cool. I’m looking back atcha from right under Sutro Tower in lovely Cole Valley, or the Valley of 1,000 Prams, as we also call it.
sfHeath
@ Bill E Pilgrim:
Like going north over Divisadero at Broadway? I literally screamed when I did that the first time.
DougJ: The show I’m working on goes into previews on Friday at American Conservatory Theatre. Let me know if you want a comp!