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Collections – A Salute to the Branch Library
They sit quietly on tree-lined neighborhood streets. Often surrounded by single family homes , small apartment buildings and bits of retail, the branch library tucks itself gently into these neighborhoods, elegant public buildings at home in these more modest settings. San Francisco and The Bay Area are blessed with many…
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“The Doom Loop “- Walking Through Downtown San Francisco
Downtown San Francisco, we are told, is in a “doom loop”. You probably have heard. Everyday, the San Francisco Chronicle, publishes the latest report on employers leaving downtown, retailers closing their doors, wasted public money on poorly managed programs (2 million dollar toilets!), the latest staggering statistics on homelessness, and…
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Neighborhood Stories- 3 Houses
At some point every day, I go for a walk in my neighborhood in Berkeley. It is a modest neighborhood of mostly one-story bungalows , an occasional apartment building, and a scrappy commercial district . But every few blocks, there is a larger house or building that isn’t part of…
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100 Years of Houses- Walking Panoramic Hill
One of the conundrums of life during the pandemic has been getting meaningful exercise, something more than a neighborhood walk. Fortunately, in Berkeley, there are some very steep hills, and these walks have provided the necessary heart rate elevation. In fact, one in particular, at Claremont Canyon, is so steep…
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The Green Seam- My Pandemic Therapist
If one were to draw a cross section through the cities east of San Francisco Bay it might look like this. First of course, there would be the Bay itself. Then to the east, the gradual rise of the “flats”, peppered with modest bungalows and apartments, then the sharp climb…
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Cruising The Avenue
10 years ago, after many years residing in San Francisco, we moved to Berkeley, across the Bay. After years of regarding Berkeley and the East Bay as being closer to Europe than just across the bridge, we quickly changed our tune as we discovered the joys of the place. Berkeley…
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Walking Across Berkeley- 12 Stops During A Pandemic
For some time, I wanted to write a post about walking all the way across Berkeley. Essentially, the walk would be a cross section, starting at the Bay , winding through our flatland neighborhoods, and then on up to the campus and the hills. And I finally got around to…
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Dogpatch and Mission Bay
Tucked all around San Francisco Bay are curious little villages that surround old industrial centers. You can find these surviving villages in places like Point Richmond, ,Alviso, and Crockett. And in San Francisco, there is the old Dogpatch neighborhood centered along Third Street near 20th. I had always been intrigued…