Space Mission
Orion from my backyard (not tonight, obviously)
No, not the iPhone, but rather the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5. 15 second exposure, rather surprised it came out this well — only slightly adjusted the white and black levels on this one.
The Lumix has a 10x optical zoom which I quite like, but it proved next to useless with my amateur astronomy efforts to capture the Pleiades:
Oh damn you, rotating Earth! Same for anything longer than a 15 second exposure.
Now, our neighbors down at the Lick Observatory in the hills above San Jose, THEY have some serious zoom:
That’s the International Space Station transiting the moon. It crossed the disk of the moon in just half a second — now there’s some good timing.
And here’s a picture of the ISS along with the Space Shuttle Atlantis in front of the Sun:
Rails on Wheels
This would seriously help my commute.
(Southbound 280 by Woodside — I see this a couple of times a year, this one taken in Oct 2004 thus the unusually well done rezless composition.)
But Is there a bar car?
Valencia Street’s Got Nothing on L.A.
From the most excellent Los Angeles blog “i can has downtown” — things are scary down there. I have yet to determine if this is because of or in response to it being American Apparel ground zero.
Iconic Hipster or Ironic Hipster?
Viva El Tonayense Libre! Time to Circle the Taco Trucks
Benjamin Santana, El Capitan of our favorite taco truck, El Tonayense, is supposed to have his appeal hearing on Wednesday, Feb 4th to see if he can stay at 19th and Harrison. More here at Eater and Mission Loc@l.
Can anyone confirm if this is still on? Where is it being held? I’m coming up with bupkis on sfgov.gov other than a PDF of the appeal paperwork.
UPDATE — El Tonaynese Appeal Delayed Again Until March 11. (Thank you Adam at MenuPages SF)
Tragically I am in LA that day (especially ironic as this issue is pretty much what started this blog — I suck.) Can ‘civilians’ give testimony? Kind of a friend of the court (or more specifically ‘friend of the truck’?) If anyone wants to go and question the fundamental basis of this ruling I will buy you tacos and a jarrito. I’m a little concerned that El Tonayense’s “grandfather defense” will get steamrolled by the “The Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee” (aka SNPAC, a wholly owned division of SEIU).
To maintain burrito justice, feel free to raise the following issues.
1) Why go after a truck that most of the students can’t even go to, and those few who could, don’t? The principal and vice-principal don’t have an issue with it, and you’d think they have the students’ interests in mind.
2) Why is there a regulation banning food trucks near schools in the first place? Students can buy whatever they want at ‘stationary’ stores on Folsom. If SNPAC’s intent truly is to preserve the school lunch system, then why can any student leave campus? And do they inspect the lunches that students bring to school?
3) Why isn’t SNPAC concerned with the ice cream trucks that flock around schools (especially elementary schools)? To me this is the most hypocritical aspect of the whole thing. To quote Dana Woldow, “That’s a separate battle someone else will have to fight.” Nice, Dana. You are the epitome of consistency.
As I’ve said several times, let El Tonayense stay if he commits to not selling to minors from 7 am to 5 pm, the time indicated in the regulation.
But let’s face it, his food is healthier than the alternatives on Folsom, and he got a restaurant inspection score of 100 (yes, one HUNDRED). Why punish Santana and the taco lovers? While a move is not the end of the world, it’s the principle that matters here.
(Note — in order to defeat SNPAC, we should form the “Serious Mission A-burrito Confusion Kommittee — SMACK! Otherwise we will all end up like this — we cannot haz that. That, or rename them the “Student Physical Activity and Nutritional Kommittee…)
But Does It Vibrate?
Seen in Baja Noe (ok, ok, Church St…) Posssibly the coolest lazyboy ever — AM, FM *and* tape. Yes kids, this is what we did before iPods.
Red Bernal, Blue Sky
No retouching. Vertical Panorama = Poor Man’s HDR.
I’ll Meet you at Valencia and Falcon
Mission Mission points us to the most excellent 1861 Langley map of San Francisco, with great detail around the Mission.
It shows the planned street grid with many proposed names that didn’t quite make it when they extended the numbered street grid past Market (or they never made the street at all). Though I really like “Falcon” between 17th/18th and “Eagle” between 18th and 19th!
South is up to make the street names easier to read.
And it looks that was Mr. Treat’s place right by Precita Creek (north is up):
Notice Mr. Bernal’s house in the bottom left corner. I guess the trick to getting something named after you is to live there before anyone else (or make the map yourself…)
I hereby rename Army/Cesar Chavez “Burrito Justice Avenue!!” And we have to starting calling Mission St “Mission Mission.” Any other suggestions?
Also another big creek along Cesar Chavez/Army (though south of Valencia it the road was named “Serpentine Avenue” until they straightened it out in the 1880s):
This branch of Islais Creek left it at a point where what is now Evans Avenue intersects Army Street and proceeded in a winding westerly, southerly and northwesterly course crossing Army Street three times between Vermont and Utah Streets, its channel being in what is now Army Street from Potrero Avenue to San Jose Avenue. Though the channel itself was not very wide after crossing Potrero Avenue, the marshes, according to William J. Lewis, to whom we shall refer in a subsequent chapter, were from six hundred to eight hundred feet wide. From Potrero Avenue southwesterly to San Jose Avenue it was paralleled on the north by what was known as Serpentine Avenue and on the south by Precita Avenue, the latter, however, extending to Mission Street. The creek was probably fresh water from San Jose Avenue for some distance easterly.
The legislature in 1878 authorized the board of supervisors to construct a sewer in the channel of the creek and to abandon all of Serpentine Avenue. Pursuant to this, Army Street was extended westerly over the former channel of the creek, the course of which is indicated by Army Street as it now exists.
I think Cesar Chavez would be far more entertaining if it had all those crazy-ass turns (basically like Precita is now). You can see the last of Serpentine Ave where Capp makes that bizarre intersection with Mission and Cesar Chavez, right by the Palace Steak House.
Orange is Serpentine Ave, blue is the creek, red is the Pioneer Race Track:
Lots more interesting creek and water related history on the SF Museum site. It is pretty astounding what they filled in and paved over.
Mission History as Revealed By Creeks, Streams, Lakes and Lagoons
Allan over at Mission Mission and Telstar Logistics are investigating hidden ponds and creeks of the Mission. Thankfully the all-powerful David Rumsey has given us a gift of kick-ass digitized historic maps, and it gets even better as he has taken full advantage of Google Earth. Combined with the old Coast Survey maps of San Francisco, it makes for an excellent creek detector.
Last month I asked David to add my favorite map of the Mission to his Google Earth collection, the 1859 US Coast Survey Map of San Francisco (which actually shows the state of the city in 1857). While there are several other maps available in Google Earth (specifically the 1869 Coast Survey and the 1915 map), they all show the street grid we know and love today, or like the 1853 Coast Survey, don’t go further south than the Mission Dolores itself. The glorious 1859 map shows open fields, streams and lakes in the Mission we inhabit today.
Anyway, the 1859 map is sweet — click on this link and then open it up in Google Earth (or navigate there via the Gallery Layer). Here’s a closeup, with today’s streets as an overlay. Click to zoom.
Using the map, I traced the creek that ran near 18th St. Below are views looking west from Google Earth.
Old 18th St Creek, Castro to Dolores Park
It eventually fed into Mission Creek.
Old 18th St Creek, Dolores Park to Treat
Ever wonder why Treat is on that funny angle? Now you know – it ran along the edge of Mission Creek!
Here’s the .kml file if you want to download and use it as a layer in Google Earth. Brown is marsh on the 1859 map, and blue is the Mission Creek. The green area was “The Willows Pleasure Gardens” – possibly a beer garden! Click to zoom…
The Willows, 18th and Valencia
(There’s no date on this photo, but check out the flag — the middle row of stars looks shorter than the others, so I think this is from before there were 35 states (7×5) though how many I can’t quite tell. And the star field orientation is flipped — 7 rows, not 7 columns as was typical in that era. While it could be the 31 star flag for California’s entry, that was from 1851-1858 and was pretty asymmetric. 32 (1858-1859), 33 (1859-1861), or 34 (1861-1863) are more likely, but I digress…)
You can see that The Willows is in quite a low area, right where there was once a lake. Mission Dolores was build a few blocks from the edge of a lake that was gone by the time of the 1859 map. Laguna de los Dolores, amongst other names, seems to have filled itself in after the time the Mission was established — it went from about 15th to 20th, from Valencia to Howard (here’s a higher rez version of the map Telestar provide to Mission Mission). This soft ground accounted for the Hotel Valencia at 19th sinking in the 1906 quake.
Where was this picture taken? Since it looks like Mission Dolores is to the left of the flag, above the fence, I strongly suspect it was taken from the edge of the Union Race Course. If so, then here’s the point of view:
WHAT
Race courses in the Mission? Plural? Yup, two — the Union, roughly bounded by 19th to 23rd, and Capp to Harrison:
and the Pioneer Race Course, between 24th to 26th, and Mission to Bryant.
The all-knowing BobbyO helped me find this advertisement for the Pioneer Course from 1853.
What’s interesting is the relative position of these two racetracks — they seem to have affected the layout of the San Francisco-San Jose railway that cut through the Mission! Construction began in 1861 between downtown and the Mission in 1860 and the line started operating in 1863/1864.
.kml for the Pioneer and Union racetracks for you personal Google Earth viewing pleasure.
If you look at the 1869 Coast Survey map, you first see the railway. But in just 6 years after the completion of the SFJSRR, the city had already built around the tracks.
The train set a speed record:
The first full-sized steam locomotive produced in the state of California, an American 4-4-0, was built for the SF&SJRR by the Union Iron Works in San Francisco. It was appropriately named the “California”. Its inaugural run was August 30, 1865, during which it set a speed record of 67 mph (107 km/h).
Today, 144 years later, Caltrain’s top speed today is just 79 mph. That’s just sad.
Russian Street Art
From St. Petersburg. No Girafa, but some good stuff here.
Space Frogs (but not quite PlanTrees). StalinFrog on the right is giving quite the speech. I like how the middle one is calmly carrying his red attaché while slowly edging away.
Whatever document StrideFrog is carrying to AttacheFrog, he gets a thumbs up.
Took me a second: |
 I fucking love Putin? I love to hate Putin? I love fucking Putin? |
Burrito Justice 
