Insert Nero Joke Here

August 31, 2010

Ancient Rome under Augustus is nearly the same size as Burning Man at Black Rock:

(Dear BBC — subjunctive tense, please.  “If Burning Man WERE staged at…”)

Now before you conservatives get too excited, we’ve got a ways to go before you can make your ancient Rome/SF parallels:

27 BC – 14 AD: Augustus
14 AD – 37 AD: Tiberius
37 AD – 41 AD: Caligula
41 AD – 54 AD: Claudius
54 AD – 68 AD: Nero

And we’ve already had our fires (other than 1906 and 1989):

1849: Dec 24
1850: May 4
1850: Jun 14
1850: Sep 17
1851: May 3
1851: Jun 22

(Note to SF, watch out for May and June.)

Telstar Logisitics has more on how these events relate to our city seal:

(At least there’s no fiddle.)

See also: Burning Man Subverts The Mission

8 Comments | historical, map, mission | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Fols-om Nom Nom Nom

August 21, 2010

This year’s SF Street Food Fest — crowded, yes, but much smoother than last year. The lines were long but they went rather quickly. (Hey guy wearing the AWESOME Mission Reds baseball t-shirt — where the hell did you get that?!?! Jealous as hell.)

And the obligatory 180 panorama (click to zoom):

Hmm, these houses look familiar. Like they are historical or something.

Wait a minute:

Oh, that’s right, it was next to the old Recreation Park baseball grounds from 1880. Looking west from what’s now Treat, between 25th and 26th. I am officially naming these houses “The Folsom Ladies”.

You were eating on the GHOSTS OF BASEBALL PAST! (But that’s cool, given they were eating and drinking on that spot before your great-great grandparents were born.)

If this intrigues you, please do click on this post.

4 Comments | historical | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Veo 218 Vara

August 20, 2010

A photography project focusing on
San Francisco neighborhoods
200 yards at a time.

The first installment of 200 Yards — Valencia & 24th — last Wednesday at Heart, was packed.

Behold our 218 vara circle of interest:

The exhibit is up at Heart until September 20th, so go buy some scallops and a jar of red and stare at the wall for a while (or better yet buy something).

In the meantime, look upon my panoramas, ye mighty, and despair!

Click to zoom – Armand‘s are the 4 black & white shots in the center. As for the others, I lost my photo list so I sadly have no idea who took which photos.

I liked the set of street signs, though the standard curved panorama didn’t do them justice:

So I deployed my advanced and ever subtle shift-sideways panorama technique (note my multiple shadows). Once again, click to zoom for 2800 pixel wide madness.

And for some historical perspective:

The US Coast Survey Map near what will be 24th and Valencia in 1859. Racetracks, a small settlement along the road to San Jose just north of Precita Creek and Serpentine Ave (anyone know the story on that one?) The Bernal Racho is just visible at the bottom).

…and 1869, roads in place, previous settlement gone. San Francisco and San Jose RR cuts through the hood.

1889 Sanborn map of the 200 Yard area (quick and dirty paste, not my best work, lots of alignment issues, sorry).

Here’s the block that Heart is on. Heart was an empty field, the gas station was a drug store and two saloons (surprise), there was a candy factory in the middle of the block.  There was a chinese laundry, a butcher and another saloon (surprise) on the corner of 23rd and Valencia.

(Google Earth’s image overlay is really starting to piss me off — how about some upgrades? Drag and drop of images? Better resolution?  Tiling tools?  Grrrr.) Anyway, the unlayered map.

Much more to discuss in the area, but that will have to wait for another time. And thus concludes your history lesson, enjoy the weekend.

3 Comments | art, historical, panorama, valencia | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Chalky History

July 23, 2010

This is awesome.  I’m flattered.

URLs are hard to write in chalk, so here’s the post they’re referencing.

Before:

After:

Details, more photos and maps here.

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Signs of Airlines Past

June 25, 2010

Mission travel agency signage = airline history.

50-50 odds, it seems.

Truly “imperial” travel would have been on BOAC, however. And it kills me that Aeroflot outlasted Pan Am.

I love the jaunty Valencia.

3 Comments | historical, travel | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Ciudad de México Has Been Sinking (Not Me)

May 25, 2010

Hey, look, Mexico City!

Oooh, pretty colors! What could they mean? Foilage? Population density? Availability of huarachas?

Um, no.  They indicate the rate at which Mexico City is sinking thanks to groundwater extraction.

Not entirely surprising given Ciudad de México (aka Tenochtitlan) was built on a lake. Here we see it in 1580.

Cool islands!

(Hey, that sure looks familiar.)

(Good thing we don’t impose Aztec handball consequences on the Giants or the Sharks.)

Anyway, you build on fill and your city sinks. We here are familiar with the concept.

So, back to this image taken by TerraSAR-X, a German radar satellite: green equals no change, while yellow and red indicate increasing subsidence for the city built upon the bed of a lake.

But how much change?

“…within this imaging period, the ground has sunk by as much as 10 centimetres in some places as a result of the water extraction”

Uh oh. 10 cm equals nearly 4 inches.

Over what period of time?

“…between 20 September 2009 and 30 January 2010″

Parts of Mexico city sunk FOUR INCHES in FOUR MONTHS. One inch. Per month.

“What is particularly noticeable even to anyone on a short visit is the subsidence in the city centre, where two of its most famous landmarks, the Bellas Artes Opera House and the cathedral in the main square, are sinking rapidly,” says Michael Schmidt, coordinator at Conobio, the National Commission for the Exploration and Use of Biodiversity, in Mexico City. “When you look at the cathedral from the front, you can immediately spot that it is leaning.”

Hey, I have an idea — stop pumping so much water.

Even if pumping stopped and the sedimentary layers absorbed moisture again, they would not return to their original thickness,” says geologist Christian Minet of the DLR Institute for Remote Sensing Methodology.

Oh dear.

“Instead, steep and deep groundwater funnels would be formed in the Mexican capital – with the result that various districts in the city would subside. This means that at its front, over the fine-grained marine sediment, the cathedral is sinking, but, on the other hand, the rear part is standing on parts of a former Aztec temple.”

Plan B: build everything on top of former Aztec temples.

5 Comments | historical, science | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Name Space

March 23, 2010

Remember Weather Sealed’s crayola color history?

His data-slicing color ebullience strikes once more, but this time with historical names of humans, based on Social Security Administration data.

The SSA data and the dynamic charts were remarkable in their own right. But WS shows sheer and utter brilliance in how he sorted it:

From the SSA data, we extracted the historically most-often-bestowed first names, one-hundred-and-fifteen per gender, and then charted their relative ratios by year, arranged with the older towards top and bottom and newer in the middle.

Head immediately to Weather Sealed to escape the bounds of my narrow blog to see the data in its full resolution glory.

1 Comment | historical | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Capp Street On High

March 15, 2010

Eric Fischer brings us scans of a 1930 plans for an elevated rapid transit line through the Mission running above Capp St.

The line would also have gone above Mission St downtown, and would have continued along the Southern Pacific rail spur through Noe through the Bernal Cut to Daly city.

This looks to be a part of a larger plan with rather extensive rapid transit, also scanned by Eric, with both subways (thick solid lines ) and elevated (thick dashed lines). I took the liberty of highlighting the interesting suggested routes.  Sorry about the teal and magenta, but 1930 optimism caused me to run out of colors. (The thinner black lines are streetcars.) Click to zoom, and lots of interesting details on the full sized version (including a downtown train station on 7th and a proposed highway along what’s now 280 in Daly City).

I especially like the green line running along 17th St, and of course the century-long tease of a Geary line. (Sadly no sign of my favorite idea, the Fillmore / Castro / Noe / 29th line… And you’d think a line under California/Sacramento would be appealing, no?)

Of course, the downside to the Capp line would have been a looming 25 foot hulk over our heads:

Another minor issue would have been its 300 foot right of way (yes, 100 yards, as in a football field). Streetcars underneath, and roads on the side. (Click to zoom.)

This basically would have taken out all the buildings facing Capp, with the backs of those on Mission and South Van Ness facing new Cappistan.

So say we had our Elevated Capp Line. There are several alternate histories possible here:

a) After a few decades of decay in the 60s and 70s, it would have been torn down in the 80s (a la the Boston Orange line):

(Image via AloneArt)

Given what we did with Embarcadero and Hayes Valley, we’d probably have built a nice park.

2) It would have become a beloved part of the city and hundreds of Japanese noodle shops (a la Shimbashi station) would have opened up under the arches, giving us the udon, soba, katsu and okonomiyaki we so richly deserve.

(Image via Luke Robinson/Flickr.)

7 Comments | food, historical, mission, transportation | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

1959 Giants Opening Day In Color

March 12, 2010

Giants opening day, 1959, first regular season game in SF.

You can’t see it, but judging from the position of the batter and the pitcher the ball must be between the mound and the plate.

Man, do I want to drink a beer in the sun right now.

Well worth clicking on the image to see the whole thing, a wonderful view of SOMA / South of the Slot and the Bay Bridge.

More baseball posts for the record:

Via Google via Life via mightyflynn via The Tens via troymcluresf (and yes, the thought of a “Burrito Justice History of San Francisco” hardcover edition is intriguing.  Any publishers reading?)

(Apologizes to Edward Gibbon.)

p.s. I’m not a auto guy, but is that yellow car at the intersection a Volvo P1800?

Even if not, I do love this ad:

UPDATE: astute reader (and La Lengua resident) aiden notes that our yellow car is most likely a 1955 Ford Thunderbird:

This makes sense since the prototypes for the P1800 didn’t come out until 1959/1960 and I really doubt one would have been cruising around the Mission as a sales campaign, entertaining as the thought is.

On the topic of yellow cars, the front of the Thunderbird reminded me a little of the front of an El Camino. So much so that I proceeded down this particular path of image hackery, the El Camino Corto!

10 Comments | historical | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

Fire Away

March 8, 2010

How do you defend the Bay?

Late 19th/early 20th century – forts with big guns:

1942 – minefields:

1950s-70s: Nike Missiles.

Good fences may not make good neighbors, but rings of supersonic steel vs Soviet bombers are another matter entirely.

Control centers  are squares and launch sites are dots, KML from here. Circles are the Nike’s 25 original mile radius. (Drew them myself, here’s my KMZ. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to generate circles in Google Earth? Come on, Mountain View — they’re freakin’ circles.)

Nike Missiles on Angel Island (SF-91L).  Other launch sites included the Presidio and Ft. Funston, and radar control centers (C on the map above) included Mt. Sutro just about every sizable peak in the area.

And of course there’s the restored Nike missile site in Marin, SF-88L:

So what will we have to defend against in the future? My bet is GIANT ANIMALS.

Sadly I still haven’t seen this one.  Oh, giant shark, can’t you just leave us be?

And I bet the sea lions left Fisherman’s Wharf to start planning with these guys:

As it endlessly scans the horizon for threats to our fair city, I hope our hilltop savior has secret lasers it can deploy.

6 Comments | historical, infrastructure | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

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