Monthly Archives: March 2017
I’ve been seeing red
I don’t know what it is, but the past several days I’ve been noticing people who are dressed in red. It’s pleasing, but odd, as I typically never consciously emphasize any particular color when a scene has caught my eye and I decide it’s worth a photograph. Perhaps it’s my subconscious manifesting the abundant anger I’ve been feeling about my wife’s recent medical traumas and the death of my cat, among other things.
Nevertheless, I take photographs to celebrate moments in life that appeal to me and that you might also cherish, or at least find interesting. So here’s some glorious red, though the color is not so glorious as the people wearing it…
A woman crossing Webster Street while Fell Street traffic zooms by in San Francisco on March 28th.
An stylish youth in Geneva Avenue traffic near Mission Street in San Francisco on March 29th.
At a Safeway in South San Francisco on March 31st.
(San Francisco and South San Francisco, California 2017)
Destination suggested but still unknown
At an on-ramp leading to The 101 on Airport Boulevard in South San Francisco…
(South San Francisco, California 2017)
Kung-fu Spring
I was in San Francisco the other day, in front of the Goodwill Store on Clement Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. It was a warmer day than usual for early March, but even so it was surprising to see this guy with his shirt off in the middle of the day. He was unleashing a series of martial arts kicks upon an unresponsive parking meter…
He didn’t appear to actually be kicking the meter, just feathering his foot close enough to show the meter he meant business in case things got ugly…
Things didn’t get ugly, though, and when the man realized he was being photographed he was pretty cool about it. San Francisco’s a great town for observing people doing weird but benign things…
(Clement Street between 9th and 19th Avenues, San Francisco, California 2017)
A scooter at midnight during the war
Down in San Bruno, California
there are renegades and vampires
running gun and overrunning every street.
There are always women in the crosswalks
shepherding their invisible children
to non-existent schools.
These women drink hard liquor for no pay,
because that’s their little piece
of The American Way.
Their husbands and wives are all off at war,
there is always a war,
and they never know where the war is,
who the war is against,
or if their husbands or wives will ever come home.
This just in:
The Defense Department and Bar and Grill
just announced nobody from San Bruno, California
is on active duty in the war.
They lied to their wives and went drinking
in the next town over for several months
because their invisible children
are easy prey for vampires,
make too much noise when they die,
and they couldn’t face it.
San Mateo Avenue, San Bruno, California 2017
Waiting at the Mark Hopkins
Yesterday I photographed a luncheon for a San Francisco lawyers’ group in the Peacock Court at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. During a down moment I noticed this food server at the ready and looking completely patient, professional, but also a bit procedurally weary. I admired the combination of those three elements in him, and wanted to honor the man by preserving the moment…
(Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco 2017)