Toronto has been called “San Francisco upside down” because where they have hills, we have ravines. Their Victorians are wooden, ours are brick. The city itself is walk-able, bike-able and cozy and urban, safe-seeming and friendly. Too friendly, maybe. Eye contact everywhere. Eye contact then smiles even, as people pass by. I tried to smile back but couldn’t do it fast enough due to the surprise, so I left a trail of unanswered smiles throughout the city. I thought walking around smiling constantly would avoid this, but it felt a little too weird and hippy-dippy Californian to do that. Even the angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night smiled as they passed by — they’re usually the least friendly people in any given city. American culture shock caused us to keep our eyes down, where we found some neat stuff.
On our 3 day extended walk, we found quite a range of stencil work — mostly in the Mission, Haight and Castro-ish neighbourhoods — but some in North Beach and on the various multi-million dollar hill neighbourhoods (Nob, Russian).
This stencil in the Mission was not true. We walked through groups of people smoking crack in little glass pipes, and combing the sidewalks for the bits they had dropped. In six years of walking through Toronto I’ve not come across people in public openly using crack pipes like this, but it’s routine in San Franciso (in the Mission and Tenderloin) and in Vancouver (Downtown East Side, Chinatown, the edges of Gastown). Must be a West Coast thing. At Castro and Market one night, a fellow offered us “very good crystal” and when we said no, he followed us for a block explaining why the particular meth batch he was selling was so good.
Most SF streets are marked with standard signs but also with imprints in the sidewalk, like Gough here found along a stretch of Market Street that has been streetscaped with red brick.
Most are just imprints in the pavement. I heard this was done because of the fog. Even if that’s not true, it’s nice to think about the city enveloped in fog so thick you can’t even see a sign on a pole when walking.
A plaque in the sidewalk in front of Harvey Milk’s former camera shop on Castro (currently empty and for lease — American history up for grabs).
A border made visible.
Good little racks, but not as pretty as our ring and post — and not as prolific. Toronto is way ahead of so many cities in providing places to lock up our rides.
You can see the cable car’s cable running through the slot. It makes a constant sound all along the cable car lines, and gives off a metal on metal smell-sound that hurt our teeth. Seems dangerous to have this much torque running along the streets. I imagined during an earthquake the cables snapping and flying out of the slot decapitating people. I think we thought about earthquakes too much while there. We would ask locals about living in the face of certain doom, but they didn’t seem so concerned.
Around where the Mission leads into the South of Market area, underneath highway’s 880 and 101 (a very Gardiner-like space) we found all these smashed petroleum jelly containers. I don’t think it was art, but it reminded us of the Matthew Barney exhibit “Drawing Restraint” we saw at the SFMoma the next day, where huge and massive sculpture works were made out of white petroleum jelly that looked good enough to eat. There’s also a very long film in the exhibit with his partner Bjork but we only watched a few minutes of it because there was still more city to see.
9 comments
Imoved to San Fran from Albany, NY six weeks ago and the smiling still catches me off guard!
Are you still in the city? Kevin and I are heading there tonight and can’t wait for the smiles!
Excellent photos, Shawn! Clean walls say nothing.
Nope — back in Toronto after 3 weeks of being american. Go to the SFMOMA though, for sure.
Nice shoes!
Thanks for sharing these wicked pics of the stencil work!
Odd. I’ve lived in the Castro for three years now and not once has someone tried to sell me crystal on the street corner (I did get offered herion, coke, crank and crack in the Tenderloin last week, but never in my own neighborhood)
As for the cables, their diameter is greater than the width of the slot so they can’t accidently come out. And given there are only three cable car lines (running on four cables) you are much more likely to get hurt or killed by a falling overhead trolley wire during a quake.
When you grow up here you just sort of know what’s most likely to kill you in a quake. When we do have small quakes, non-natives are sometimes shocked when we start trying to guess the magnitude and distance before it gets posted online or announced on the radio.
Maybe it was our lack of smiles that attracted the meth guy. It was on the North East corner — we walked towards Church Street as he followed.
You don’t understand, Jamison, when the quake hits, the slot will open wide enough for the cable to whip out. Now I’m thinking they might wrap around people and pull people into the slot.
Which line had two cables? How do they switch cables? The old fashioned engineering of it all was neat…the turning of the cars at the end of Powell, etc.
The Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason both share a cable on Powell Street before they split off onto separate Mason Street and Hyde Street cables.
At the last stop they both share on Powell, the conductor gets off and sets the switch and the car rolls down the hill to a small dip where the car grabs the other cable. The same thing happens at the turntables, where the cars are just pushed onto the turntable and then once they’ve turned it around, push it onto the pickup spot.
What you might find even more interesting is where Powell crosses California, the Powell cable run under California (I think it’s Powell that runs under California, I might have it backwards) and the Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason have to release the cable, then pick it up on the other side again.
There’s a lot more information about our cable cars and the historic trolleys too at streetcar.org.