San Francisco in Ruins (1906)

(Hat tip: @brainpicker)

Using kites, photographer George Lawrence snapped an aerial photo of San Francisco just six weeks after the 1906 earthquake. (Quite a feat, considering the handbuilt panoramic camera weighed 49 pounds!) The photo, “San Francisco in Ruins” is housed at the Library of Congress.



The USGS has a zoomable high resolution version here.

For comparison, here's a modern day photo of the SF skyline from close to the same location:
Scott Haefner's site.

Stunning San Francisco time-lapse

Photographer Ben Wiggins likes to shoot time-lapse videos of cloud formations with his digital SLR camera. He also likes to photograph the transition from day to night. After dark he likes to shoot the flow of traffic, the glint of moonlight off the fog, and the dance of airplanes landing on and leaving the runway--like tiny fireflies in rhythmic formation.

Here Wiggins stitches together several sequences he shot in and around San Francisco this summer. It's awesome.

Click the four-arrow icon in the lower right corner to watch this fullscreen.

Another Cloud Reel... from Delrious on Vimeo.

Wiggins has other videos from the Fourth of July, the San Mateo County Fair midway at night, and underwater.

[via Laughing Squid]

Typographic City Posters

Chicago designer Jenny Beorkrem at Ork Posters creates boldly graphic maps breaking cities up into their component neighborhoods using only boundary lines and all-caps typography (DIN 1451, for those who care about these kinds of things). Each map is available in either poster or screen print editions, in a variety of colors.

Right now the choices are limited to Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Manhattan, and San Francisco, but apparently Beorkrem's initial run was successful enough that she's quit her day job to focus on this full time.

Of course in musing about what an Ork-style Oakland might look like, I found this map (commissioned by the city in 1982) that the Oakland Museum uses to catalog its collection.

Link

Via Brooklyn Based.

DAve's Street Styles

[via Wooster Collective]

Local street sticker artist DAve launches an after-school arts workshop for middle-school and high school students in San Francisco.

Tax-deductible donations accepted through fiscal sponsor Youth Speaks.

San Francisco Solar Bond Sales to Date: 0

(via San Francisco Business Journal, which shuts off public access to their articles on July 24)

In 2001, San Francisco voters passed Measure B, allowing the city to sell $100 million in bonds to install solar panels on city-owned rooftops. With the blackouts of 2000 on their minds, and the prospect of becoming the nation's first "solar city," the measure passed with 73% in favor.

To date, the city of San Francisco has sold exactly zero bonds.

By law, the San Francisco bonds can only be sold to finance a solar project if the cost is cheaper than the price to generate power using traditional electric systems. Since the price of solar panels and related technology tends to exceed the price of fossil fuel-generated electricity, San Francisco hasn't sold any of the bonds.

I checked some other Web sites monitoring the state of the solar energy industry, and they all expect the price of solar energy systems that interconnect to the grid to become competitive "soon," with the most hyped coming from entrepreneurs with new companys and venture capital funding. But "competitive" means solar averages $3 per watt compared to a regular utitily's $1 per watt. No one is making predictions about solar ever becoming "cheaper" than traditional systems (except for off-the-grid remote systems, say, in rural Africa, where it soon will be cheaper).

San Francisco has been forging ahead with its commitment to solar anyway. The 60,000 square feet of photovoltaic panels on the roof of Moscone Center, for example, generates 65kW (the equivalent energy to power approximately 8,500 homes) is the larged municipally owned solar facility in the U.S. But it wasn't funded from the bond measure. The project, like projects at SF General, the airport, and Pier 96, are paid for out of Willie Brown's Mayor's Energy Conservation Account from PUC revenues.

So what's the statute of limitations on a bond sale? I'm thinking that by 2020, the cost of solar could drop to the threshhold to trigger the sale, but by then, SF may already filled its rooftops with PV panels.

SF CITYSCAPE: Democracy Inaction

A reflection on when "the community" might not mean "the community", in particular as it relates to urban planning.

But then last night, we were watching The Daily Show when Jon Stewart made this comment, one we found relevant to the matter at hand: Extremists get their way, he said, "because moderates have shit to do."

Only in San Francisco

DSC03928
Originally uploaded by DrBrian.

I don't know who organized "Bring Your Own Big Wheel," but looking at the 450+ pictures on Flickr of these grownups racing down Lombard Street, many of whom wore bunny costumes, I have to say it sounds like a lot of fun. In theory. Looks like the rain made the bricks fairly slick.

Liam wants to know why there are no kids in these pictures.

And why people are racing down Lombard Street in big wheels.

Check out all photos here.

NBC to get San Francisco tower up and running

Well, we might finally be able to get NBC on a non-rainy day for the first time in three years.

Too bad there's absolutely nothing on NBC worth watching anymore.

Burritoeater

"It was inevitable. Some nutcase would eventually create a comprehensive online directory of San Francisco taquerias.

It would feature a wealth of information on over 150 local (SF only) burrito shops and trucks.

Its listings would be sortable by name, neighborhood, how it had fared at the hands of a ruthless 12-category rating system, and the number of times it had undergone this terrible onslaught of scrutiny.

Each taqueria would have its own page on the site, complete with an original, subjective description. It would note any pertinent issues regarding its appearance and clientele (if any), whether it’s take-out only, whether their menu features breakfast items, whether they’re open late (or real late), whether there’s a gumball machine on the premises, and whether there’s some dude behind the counter making a racket with a meat cleaver on a giant cutting board.

These pages would also include a street address, telephone number, pricing information, and photograph for each taqueria, as well as links to both a Google map and the SF Department of Public Health’s page for the burritoeatery in question...."

The Web = San Francisco circa 2001

A rumination on why dotcoms failed, and on what the future might bring.

Here was a city cross-hatched by freeways that each felt just a little too dangerous to walk under. Coupled with a lack of decent public transportation, it meant there were loads of communities slightly too small to support really big stores or specialist shops. I was seeing, in short, a city in which home delivery made a ton of sense: pet supplies, groceries, late night snacks...