Post-impressions
I haven't been in love with San Francisco for a very long time. Perhaps love for a city cannot survive long when one is relentlessly faced with the sort of street life for which our neighborhood has become infamous.

But in my new spirit of attempting to focus on the positive, today I decided to try to seek out some of the City's redeeming features as I walked nine blocks of Post Street, from a block from where I live, to the foot of Post, at Market Street.

Traversing the Tenderloin/Nob Hill border, passing through Union Square (and past Prada, Tiffany, Cartier, etc.) and ending up in the Financial District -- all in just nine blocks -- gives one a sense of how extremely compact San Francisco is.

the Warrington Apartments building, with some fine detailing and a graceful circular staircase




above my dry cleaners, these astonishing figures that I had never noticed during my ten years of patronage

on the side of the Bohemian Club, a bronze bas-relief bears these rather graceless yet intriguing figures (part of a larger grouping)

one of San Francisco's unknown treasures, this large and wonderful painting by Arthur Matthews from about 1915 is hidden inside of a narrow office entryway (note the roof of the Palace of Fine Arts in the lower-right corner)

high over Union Square, Timothy Pflueger and Robert Aitkin's Dewey Monument (modeled for by the 18 year-old Alma de Bretteville), aligned here with one of the very few open sight-lines that remain around the Square

Shreve's windows are disappointing compared to last year's exceptional displays; this was the best of the 13

another Arthur Matthews, this is one of his largest and most ambitious paintings, from about 1907, in the entry of The Mechanics' Institute (which I half-jokingly refer to as "my gentlemen's club here)

the temple of money: the expansive, lavishly coffered ceiling of the 1908 Wells Fargo building at the foot of Post Street

walking back home in the dark a few hours later, windows reveal the second floor of the Mechanics' Institute

one of those art galleries that tends to look better at night, and even then, mostly because of the dramatic lighting

an interesting handmade jacket in the window of an atelier

the window of couturier Joseph Domingo's workshop

...and right next-door: the excellent Kayo Books, with stacks of smutty vintage pulps spread out on the counter, waiting to be priced

and now, a block from home -- the former apartment of Dashiell Hammett (top floor, corner), where he wrote "The Maltese Falcon" and other classics


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While I may never manage to reclaim my original infatuation with San Francisco, I often find myself surprised by how many overlooked treasures it contains. Until I'm able to move to Tokyo/Périgord/Moonbase One, I might as well try to appreciate what I have.