San Francisco
Sunrise the other day:
Like most of North America, San Francisco has been a lot warmer than usual this week. Tonight the fog machine kicked in and started cooling things down. It comes over the hills from the ocean side, eventually closing in the downtown area:
A closeup of the fog rolling over Alamo Square and in to Hayes Valley:
And passing around San Francisco City Hall:
The three “fog shots” were taken on the opposite side of the building from my apartment.
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Tomorrow is another Spare the Air day, so transit here in the Bay Area, inlcuding BART, will be free.
I haven’t owned a car for a few years now, though I did have a motorcycle up until a bit less than a year ago. At that time I made a conscious choice that my transit needs were going to be met through walking, pubic transit, bicycling and occasionally renting a car, in that order. I wanted to make some changes in my life to benefit my health; making walking my primary mode of transportation has been a big part of that and I feel great for it.
Each morning I jump on a BART train to go to work and each evening I do the same to get home. Perhaps one of these days I’ll change jobs to work within walking distance of my home here in San Francisco. I work on the other side of the bay from SF, which is a less common commute than the other way around. But for now I use the time on the train to read, listen to music or just zone out or nap.
I’ve been a member of one of the car sharing services here for awhile now. These services, which include City Car Share, ZipCar and FlexCar, are membership based and allow folks to use cars by the hour or by the day for a fixed price that includes gas, insurance, parking and maintenance. It’s just pay and go with real time reservations online and an electronic card key to open the car. The rate is about $9.50 an hour. I like that I can just figure an all-inclusive cost for a car — when I need it — instead of all of those “variable costs” of actually owning a vehicle. Living in The City, it’s convenient for those occasional times when I need to pick up something too big to carry home on foot — like to buy a bookcase or something like that.
I really believe that these kinds of solutions allow us to make better choices when it comes to saving energy, reducing polution and saving space. I know this is the most cliche thing ever, but I believe that if everyone did a little it would make a huge difference.
On a slightly more personal level, tonight I did my grocery shopping, got everything put away, did the dishes, vacuumed (yes I have some carpet at home, even though I prefer the hardwood floors!), recycled the latest pile of magazines, looked over some bills and generally just cleaned my apartment. I like to start out my week with things organized and tidy; it makes me feel sort of relaxed and ready to take on the new week.
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I’m always amazed by the muted roar, for lack of a better term, that comes up from the street during parades. And of all the parades in San Francisco each year, Pride has to be the biggest.
I’ve been going back and forth from the street to home; seeing the parade in person and watching on TV as it streams past outside my window. I think it’s great to see families with their kids, police and government, media, corporations, medical organizations, religious groups and regular people from different places and walks of life celebrating diversity and love and hope. That is what progress is about, in my opinion!
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Tomorrow has been declared the first Spare the Air Day of 2006. 25 bay area transit agencies will be free all day. This includes Muni, BART, AC Transit, Caltrain, SamTrans, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and Golden Gate Transit busses and ferries.
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One of my favorite unique music sources is SomaFM (somafm.org), which describes itself as, “Listener-supported, commercial-free, underground/alternative radio broadcasting from San Francisco.” It’s run by Rusty, a guy I worked with back in the “tech TV” days; they play about ten streaming electronic music stations, including three new offerings. I’m sure my attempts at description won’t do it justice, especially since I’m not really dialed in to all the different electronic music genres. I just know that I like more ambient, reflective, dark, middle-of-the-night-when-the-city-is-quiet types of selections. Whatever that means.
I’m currently listening to one of the new streams, called “Space Station Soma.”
My friend Ryan runs a show at 9pm on Monday nights via 90hz.org. 90hz is not on the air full time like SOMAFM; they offer scheduled programming run by, as far as I can tell, a volunteer crew.
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