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

Burning Man Subverts The Mission?

August 30, 2010

Many of you have seen the awesome BBC Dimensions website that lets you overlay all sorts of historical and cultural events and geographic things over any zip/postal code. My favorites are the takeoff distance of a WWII Spitfire, the size of the Great Pyramids at Giza and the size of ancient Rome.

Another tremendously historic and cultural reference they include is Burning Man. Each year, the Mission depopulates and seeks the sun on the playa. Here is the camp’s relative size superimposed over the 94110:

Here’s a 2006 satellite photo of the camp itself that I cropped and masked:

(underlying satellite photo via culturalvision.net via spaceimaging.com)

Of course, with everyone out of town, the Mission kind of feels like this:

(via Ulrich Munstermann /Flickr )

or this:

(Bonus points if you figure out the underwater canyon.)

The population shift means lines for these are very short:

(mimosas via Flickr/Joe Shlabotnik)

However, given the recent fire at Boogaloos, I strongly suspect sabotage by those currently at Burning Man in an effort to maintain long brunch lines in the Mission in their absence. (We will retaliate by dramatically lowering water pressure upon your return.)

Anyone more creative than me who wants to superimpose your own dramatic image over the Mission (hmm, subimpose, I suppose?) feel free to use this tranparent PNG in your image editor of choice. If it’s particularly clever we can upload it here.

See also: Insert Nero Joke Here.

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

Muni is the Heart of San Francisco

July 28, 2010

Speechless. All hail our new data visualization god Eric Fischer!

Muni movements, June 1st, 2010:

All of June, 2010:

Anyone want to come up with a soundtrack? (Not Air though.)

Fans of Tufte: 14L (red) vs 14 black): Time is the x-axis, stops are the Y.  The steeper the slope, the faster the bus.

This was basically Armand’s 24 hours. (His day-long McDonald’s chart would be much less interesting.)

Also see the 1-California and 38-Geary (including inbound and outbound only).

Muni vs BART from Daly City to Downtown would be a fun chart.

4 Comments | mission, transportation, travel | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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Viva La Lengua, Viva La Lengua Libre!

July 27, 2010

The La Lengua Revolutionary Army (LaLeRa) has noted the unprovoked acts of aggression on the part of the San Francisco Association of Realtors to subsume the chosen land of La Lengua into Bernal Heights from the Mission.

(base map courtesy Mission Local & tanks here)

This travesty shall not stand! Please consider these facts:

1) Bernal “Heights”.  Heights. (Bernalians, we know this is not of your doing — you are entitled to safe passage.)

2) “Mission” St.

LaLeRa suggests La Lengüense adopt one of these two battle flags to be deployed on sight against any realtor found within our borders:

Or our new standard:

(snake via photobucket)

Viva La Lengua Libre!  For Great Justice!  La Lengüense, Unite!

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Mission in Motion

July 23, 2010

The Mission in motion, as seen by moving Flickr photographers:

Better yet, watch it grow dynamically (requires a web browser that supports HTML 5 canvas — if you’re using IE, don’t bother.)

In dots aren’t your thing, you can watch the vectors.

SF Bay:

(SF Bay vectors.)

Burrito Justice reader Concerned Guajolote was kind enough to write a script to parse Eric Fischer’s geotagged photo data, details here. CG made indexes for the top 100 cities in Eric Fischer’s geotagged atlas, so if you are handy with both the latitude and longitude, you can see your city in motion using this URL syntax.

Added bonus — Active Pass, on the ferry route between Victoria and Vancouver where several hard turns are made between narrow island straights.

(Click on image to see dots in motion, or here for vectors.) For some perspective, here’s a map, as well as some aerial shots on Flickr. And a couple of representitive shots (links in images). It’s pretty narrow:

The ferries pass close enough for people to wave at each other.

This is looking to the east.

Zoom on the pass itself (click to see dots in motion, or the vector version)

I don’t think I can embed HTML 5 frames, so here’s a slowed down video version:

Thanks to Concerned Guajolote once again for the post-processing.

Definitely worth taking the ferry in the summer – it’s rather glorious. But do call ahead and get a reservation (or take the bus onto the ferry) or you’ll easily have a 2 or even 3 ferry wait at either end.

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3C Moon

March 28, 2010

Click through for a wider view. One in a series.

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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
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There Goes The Sun

February 23, 2010

For all of you bummed out about the rainy grey, it’s much nicer 10,000 feet up.

And loyal reader Bernal Jim reminds us of the view of Mission/Noe/Twin Peaks/Sutro looks like at sunrise. (This apparently is an orange-tinged moment in time when the sun rises above the horizon, a mystery to me regardless of weather as I am not particularly conscious at that time of day).

Bernal Jim also provides us with an epic blue-sky-over-former-farmland to hold us over for better weather – click to zoom:

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“The Mission Has Always Been The Home of Baseball”

February 17, 2010

“The Mission has always been the home of baseball.” So said Anita Day Hubbard in 1924.

Here we see some rather mind bending perspective:

  • a 1920s patron of Recreation Park on 14th and Valencia (enjoying whiskey and chicken specials)…
  • looking forward to a “splendid” new venue to be built in the 1930s (that we once knew as Seals Stadium)…
  • that will be built a block from the site of the first baseball game to be played in California in the 1850s…
  • and looking back on their previous baseball park from the 1870s, Recreation Grounds, at 25th & Folsom.

Arrgh, head hurts. Someone get me some chicken and whiskey.

Oh, and for those of you asking, nope – Recreation Park ≠ Recreation Grounds. Yes, I am going to tell you about ANOTHER epic baseball stadium in the Mission.

In 1924, Anita Day Hubbard wrote an epic series of articles in the SF Call Bulletin on the history of the city and the Mission which contain a staggering (wait, let me reformat that) — <blink><a href=”www.holycrap.com”>STAGGERING</a></blink> — amount of historical detail.  But since we’re talking baseball let’s stick to that otherwise my head might explode.

The first baseball game in the city and the state was held at 16th and Harrison 151 years ago.

Drama in the Mission! Red Rovers refuse to finish the game! Eagles win!

So where was the game? Hard to say, but given the location of Mission Creek my best guess is the northwest corner of 16th (i.e. Center) and Harrison (as I doubt they played ON the bridge). While our favorite 1860s Calisphere view sadly does not capture anyone playing baseball (just slacker proto-hipsters), the field of baseball through time and space is captured quite nicely (click to zoom).

Here’s the 1859 US Coast Survey map, with red showing my wag at the location of the 1st game, and green the future diamond of Seats Stadium.

In the 1860s games were played behind the old Mission church, and by 1868, dedicated baseball grounds were built at Folsom and 25th.

Once again the Mission keeps Oakland down. But the Eagles were soon to feel the same fate.

The Cincinnati Red Stockings were the baseball team of the day.  In September 1869, they took one of the first transcontinental train to battle their western foes. At Folsom and 25th, they proceeded to blow out our Eagles 35-4 on the 25th.  The Eagles dusted off and… lost again.  Even more badly, 58-4.

The Eagles, not to be deterred, played Cincinnati yet again. And were crushed yet again, 66-4.  The Eagles local rivals, the Pacifics, got spanked 54-4, and the Atlantics’ attempt at coastal deception failed miserably, 76-5.  The “San Francisco Pickled Nine” made a respectable offensive effort by only losing 46-14.

Thankfully for the San Francisco fans, I have evidence of a SALOON on site.

I suspect Mr Donnelly made a lot of money that week.

We’re lucky enough to have pictures of Recreation Grounds via the SFPL as well as the Online Archive of California.  This OAC view is looking to the northwest from around 26th and Harrison, with Twin Peaks in the background. (Click to zoom.)

Crop on the players with my guesses on the positions.

Another view from around 25th and Harrison looing to the SW.  (Bernal is in the left.) Click to zoom. SFPL dates this view as 1875, and I am pretty sure this and the above photo were taken on the same day.

Note the fans sitting on the edge of the outfield. We’re just about looking down the 3rd baseline and I believe the gaggle of players on the right are behind home plate.

Naturally, I’ve been trying to figure out where the baseball diamond was.  Unfortunately the Sanborn maps don’t start up until after Recreation Grounds were built over, and none of the Library of Congress birds eye maps from the 1870 show anything.

But a very interesting point of reference is the row houses behind the grandstands that I’ve numbered 1-7.

All seven houses on the 2900 block of Folsom are still there today!

And the 1889 Sanborn map of Folsom at 25th lines up perfectly with Google Earth. (West is up.)

Using this a point of reference along with my lettered trees, guesses as to the depth of the grandstands (red) and some burrito parallax, I figure that that first baseline could very well have run down Lucky St, with home plate about 6 houses south of 25th.

Looking south, from home plate down the first baseline (sorry, no blue tape).

And north from 1st back to home:

Granted I could be off by a dozen feet to the east or west, but a lot more fun to think of it in the alley than a yard (unless it were your yard, I suppose…) Any and all feedback/suggestion/criticism welcome.

And what was there before Recreation Grounds? We have to remember that in 1868 it was built smack in the middle of the old Pioneer Race Course owned by George Treat (yes, that Treat), just above the stone wall marking the northern border of Bernal’s rancho (yes, that Bernal).

One last note — these guys from 1875-77 could very well be the ones playing in the pictures of Recreation Grounds above.

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

Armand + Julie + Silvi at Secession Tonight

February 12, 2010

Secession (between 29th and 30th, across from Safeway) proves its reputation as La Lengua’s premier art gallery with its new show that opens this evening.

Silvi from the Poetry Store is a featured artist — not only will she will be crafting poems live, but on display is her collaboration with local talent Armand Emamdjomeh of Mission Loc@l and i live here: SF / CALIBER SF‘s Julie Michelle.

Armand’s shots focus (unsurprisingly) on the Mission — here are a few overlaid with Silvi’s work:

So go to Secession tonight (Fri Feb 12th), 6:30-9:30, 3361 Mission, across from Safeway. Shop locally and support Streetside Stories: Literacy for k-8 graders.

(And slacker hipster guys in your 20′s — I know you are on the verge of panic as to what to do about Sunday. I have been in your shoes, but do note that a poem makes for a cool Valentine’s day present.)

3 Comments | art, mission | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Burrito Justice

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