A Quick Update (SF Visit)

Just a quick update before I head out of town again--I flew back from the Bay Area on Sunday night, and I'm heading out tomorrow afternoon to Western Mass. The California trip was a work trip (although I did get to see some folks)--but this Western Mass trip is V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N. Man... I friggin' need it. I looked at my timesheets, and realized that I haven't taken a long weekend or any non-weekend day off since the beginning of the year. Ergh.

I managed to schedule dinners with two lovely and brilliant women during my trip out there: Tamarindo Antojeria Mexicana with Jess--small plate tapas-like Mexican in Oakland, followed by beer at The Trappist, as well as Moroccan Café Zitouna (Tenderloin-ish) with Paramecium Woman.


In addition, my work colleagues and I went to Camino in Oakland, near Piedmont--utterly fantastic. Fresh, local ingredients with a menu that changes every day, amazing decor, great drinks. The appetizer of fava beans with ricotta was lovely. The local colleague who recommended the place mixed and applied the earth plaster used on the walls--they paid him in restaurant gift certificates, and got him hooked.


Also had a few dinners with Perlick--hey, you can't win them all. Ouch! Sorry P. The selections were actually great--Tied House brewpub in the South Bay, and Eric's Chinese on Church in San Francisco.

Okay, well besides eating... I took a half day off on Friday to hang out in the city. First of all:


Excuse me... but this is May in the Bay Area. There's a reason why I left my raincoat behind at home. This is the month with an average rainfall of 0.54" in May. And it apparently decided to fall during my two days off in town. Ah well.

However, it didn't hamper my visit to the California Academy of Sciences--a Renzo Piano design, recently opened. A green building--lots of neat features, a few silly things, but overall a great experience. The New York Times architecture review is what popped it up on my radar to begin with; a slide show is available on that page. That trip warrants its own blog post, actually. Aesthetically, a pretty neat space--bare concrete walls with towering spaces, two spheres inside the main space, forming the planetarium, and the rain forest exhibit (i.e., climate controlled).


And of course, I go and check out things like the waterless urinal. But hey--check out the aiming point built in to the porcelain!


One wing was a global climate change exhibit. They had a pretty neat teaching tool--a literal "carbon balance"--they provide instructions on how to move the weights to account for your driving habits, use of public transportation, plane flights, and home energy use.


And a self-portrait in the Foucault pendulum:



Saturday, Perlick drove us out to the Hunters Point Artists Open Studio--it's an abandoned naval base in San Francisco that is rented out as cheap studio space for artists. Very neat art (for the brief time we managed to stay there)--painters, photographers, mixed media.. the whole bag. The atmosphere of the abandoned naval base was also quite memorable.


The images of the huge gantry crane got me hooked....


I ended up searching the web, and found this great Flickr page--by username Lost America, who seems to do a series of things like this:


In 2004, I was granted night access to the long forgotten and neglected, Hunters Point, Naval Shipyard. Over the course of 5 consecutive full moons I photographed in every corner of the nearly 500 acre facility. Originally opened as a commercial shipyard in 1870, the land was seized by the US military in 1942 and transformed into a vital repair base during WWII. The Navy closed the base in 1974 and most of the area has remained uninhabited ever since.

Stories of widespread radioactive contamination, it's location in one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in San Francisco and many locked and patroled gates have kept the base out of the public eye for decades. There are dozens of abandoned buildings. Warehouses, offices and drydock pumphouses, some dating all the way back to 1870. These are some of the oldest buildings in San Francisco, just abandoned and forgotten. Giant gantry cranes stand rusting alongside the broken and flooded drydocks. On the hill above the dockyards is a residential neighborhood. Built in the 1920s and 30s and seized by the Navy for officers housing, it has also been abandoned for 30 years. The streets look like a post apocalyptic movie set. The entire relic strewn base is just minutes from the downtown of one of the west coast's largest cities.

Worth a quick check if you had a moment.

But for those who I failed to see on this visit--I will be back out in the Bay Area around June 15th for work! Hope to see you then!

Anyway, like I said before, this trip out to Western MA is for a class on steam heating, checking out MassMoCA, and going hiking in around Mount Greylock. Actually, I don't think I've been this unprepared for a hiking trip ever... did a quick grocery run this evening after work. Stove has fuel, though. Maybe I'll come out of the woods, maybe I won't... check back on Sunday. ;)