Reconnaissance Flight
The LaLeAeReFo (La Lenguan Aerospace Reconnaissance Forces) recently undertook an early morning recce flight to check La Lenguan defensive assets positioned against the Bernalian hegemony.
The EaBuRaGu (Eastern Burrito Railgun) is fully operational. (Note the dramatic shadow.)
Presuming you can cross your eyes and do that three dimensional thing, here are the slopes of Bernal. (Here’s a wigglegram if your eyes aren’t so inclined.)
(Note the rolling hills of Precitaville, which I predict will be the next Breakaway Bernal Republic.)
Some fine shots of Sutro looking over the ocean, scanning the horizon endlessly.
Sutro to GGB, and Candlestick:
Sutro rests upon its pillow of @KarltheFog:
(Click for wigglegram)
And a look back upon the Bernal Cut. The Spanish rode through here 236 years ago. The railway came through 151 years ago, and 83 years ago the cut was widened to what we know now.
1905, 1889, and Rock-N-Rolling with Broke-Ass
Behold Broke-ass Stuart’s latest extravaganza, Thursday at 8PM, 161 Erie St (& Mission).
Wait, Erie Street? There’s an Erie Street in SF? Huh, by that full circle 101 onramp.
Hey, look, 161 Erie St in 1905, before the earthquake and fire! Howard is now Van Ness. Mission St is to the left. 13th St up top. (Click to zoom.)
And here it is in BURRITOVISION.
Quite the place — bowling, dancing AND laundry next door, right next to today’s Public Works. (And “pork packing” around the corner (green building).)
Looking in the 1905 SF City Directory, I couldn’t find anyone who lived at 161 Erie, the current address of Public Works, but I did find Ferdinand Beck at 159. He had lots to walk to.
Anyway, the color Sanborns are at available via David Rumsey.
But wait! Less than 20 years earlier, the blocks on either side of Mission between 13th and 14th were home to Woodward’s Gardens. Lions! Tigers! Bears! Literally!
In 1889, the dance hall / beer hall / bowling alley was still there (or whatever word you use for “still” when you regress chronologically…)
Lots of pix of Woodward’s gardens over on Old SF.
The nearby beer halls seemed to be a bit of a rough place however.
1884:
So think of this stuff while you rock out with Stuart.
Blue Angels, International Orange Angels
Unlike last year, @karlthefog stayed away from Fleet Week. I was lucky enough to be invited to a Pac Heights roof deck.
I do love me some Photojojo iPhone telephoto lens.
I of course was one of the few looking to the south, where I spied our cherty neighbor in the distance.
Sutro is happy to see you
Sutro sure is happy to see Karl the Fog come back home.
TK, not so much:
TK also raises this salient point on the fog and rent:
No Eels on This Hovercraft
The US Navy landed a hovercraft (LCAC) on Ocean Beach today.
(Sorry it gets wobbly half way through, I was holding two cameras and a cup of coffee.)
I just missed it coming ashore (see coffee), but luckily Ed Rabbit caught that part.
http://twitter.com/edrabbit/status/253553123333898240
And a still shot I managed to get (while videoing in the other hand, thank you very much):
As the LCC departs, we see the Navy celebrating DADT and the conjunction of Fleet Week with the Castro Street Fair:
If Red Dawn had taken place in San Francisco, it would have looked something like this:
(Though to be honest, hovercrafts are pretty damn loud and aren’t going to be sneaking up on anyone.)
Also, this dog was not particularly concerned with the security perimeter (nor camouflage, for that matter).
SF Isotherm
Quick and dirty SF isotherm map.
Base map via the always wonderful SF Climate app.
Am completely guessing on how to draw isotherms, assume you do it the same way as a topographic contour line. But hey, color! (But someone please automate this so we can animate it, thanks.)
I’m a little suspicious of some of the values though — doubt those home weather stations are well calibrated. Still, 7×7 microclimates.
We need to cross-reference this with a IPA / PBR consumption map.
“Fog is San Francisco’s greatest asset.”
@colettemarie found this 1912 book in the USF Gleeson Library:
“Fog is San Francisco’s greatest asset.” So says Alexander McAdie, and we wholeheartedly agree.
I have long held fog is an excellent personality test:
Or as Karl puts it:
And I still think the San Francisco Bulls should have been called the Fogeaters.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Dogpatch Howler notes that the book is available on the Internet Archive.
UPDATED UPDATE:
@rabjot found a color scan, which makes it much easier to see the photographs.
Sir Francis Drake and the crew of the Golden Hinde hated our fog. They spent a month at Point Reyes in 1579, and “the mildest terms used in describing the fog were…
“Most vile, thick & unpenetrable.”
This “vile” fog kept them from discovering San Francisco Bay — Drake may have sailed within 20 miles of it, 190 years before the Spanish finally (and accidentally) “discovered” it in 1769.
What if the fog *had* let Drake discover our Bay in 1579? Keep in mind Boston wasn’t founded until 1630, Jamestown in 1607, and Roanoke Island (i.e. “CROATOAN”) was 1585. I totally would have sailed around the horn to not have to be in Boston for the winter or Virginia in summer.
But if the British *had* settled here, California certainly wouldn’t be called California, San Francisco would probably be called something like “New Worcestershire” and more importantly, we probably wouldn’t have burritos, instead relegated to soggy pot pies filled with boiled beef and cabbage.
“If some prophetic dreamer in the crew told had told these rough men that in eight generations men of flesh and blood like themselves, speaking the same mother tongue, were to sail these waters in iron ships, by harnessing the expansive power of water vapor…”
The nice thing about the color scan of the book are the pictures — today, Alexander McAdie would totally have a blog and would be instagramming the hell out of fog photos.
Alexander was a total data nerd too. He made some pretty impressive rainfall and fog charts.
For the benefit of @40goingon28, here’s the percentage of time the sun was visible, over a period of 18 years, from 1893-1911.
And so concludes today’s reading of The Book of Fogs.
Bernal Gets Curiouser
So I was browsing through Mars Curiosity’s raw image uplink looking for more eclipse photos, and I noticed something odd:
Oh, BASA. Your vector antipixelation is less than algorithmic.
BASA claims to be a civilian space agency, but La Lengua operatives have uncovered clear evidence of Bernal deception and aggression. In a preemptive strike this weekend, commando squad “Zapata” scaled the cherty massif and penetrated the secret Bernalwood command bunker underneath Sutrito.
We were shocked to find weapons system actively targeting La Lengua.
Yet another futile attempt by Bernalwood to to penetrate the Wall of Salsa. Though this does explain the repeated EM pulses detected by La Lengua sensors over the past few months.
Normally our commandos would call upon the LaLeReAiDeCo (La Lenguan Revolutionary Air Defense Council) to energize the burrito railgun and immediately neutralize this clear and present threat to La Lenguan autonomy with a rain of al pastor.
Unfortunately this was not possible today, as the cooling system is being upgraded (under the guise of “sewer improvements“) and the burrito railgun can only be operated in temperatures under 65ºF.
Planning for the defense of La Lengua is serious business, as Bernal never sleeps. The LeLaStMiCo (La Lenguan Strategic Missile Command) has treaties with other neighborhoods threatened by the Bernalgemony. Under the pretense of “radiation cleanup”, the Hunters Point Security Collective has been constructing the city’s second burrito railgun. Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational burrito station!
Fret not, San Francisco, the reign of Pax Burriticus is upon us!
Deimos Transit
Looks like Curiosity caught another eclipse transit, this time of Deimos, Mars’ smaller moon. (Assuming these are upscaled framing shots.)
There were some frames in there for the transit of Deimos, but they were pretty dark. Here’s what a better resolution shot looks like:
Looking forward to the pictures of Earth. Wonder if Curiosity will be able to see our moon too?
Good Night, Sweet Prince
Behold Endeavour. Never again will a Space Shuttle be airborne.
Taquita Justice and I ventured over to Treasure Island to watch the funeral marchflyover.
Anthony Brown, penguinologist, captured this flyby atop Bernal.
Endeavour about to fly behind Sutro (via @jetdillo):
And the reverse angle, via David McSpadden:
Via the Marin Headlands by Murphlabs aka @obeyken (bonus: Golden Gate Bridge!)
I tried to get a Sutro-Endeavour shot on the second pass with the real camera, but autofocus lag and the Transamerica Pyramid betrayed me. But thankfully, SomaFM must have been standing
ridiculously close to me, rescuing the day with this glorious photo:
And Richard Mlynarik got this shot atop Hawk Hill:
Even more over at Bernalwood and SFist.
Burrito Justice 
