Neighborhood - Blue Collar

Lock and Key

Here is the last picture in my neighborhood series, I promise. :-)
This is a photo of the old Schlage lock factory that used to be headquartered in this neighborhood. It has been closed for many years now and there are always occasional meetings held about how to use this land. It would be great if it could be turned into a nice area for shopping and relaxing like the Ferry Building. Perhaps that is expecting too much.

By the way, I went to Banana Republic today to see what type of clothes they were selling this fall season and I was not impressed. The clothes were all 70's inspired silky thingies that are supposed to pass for professional tops. If there's one thing I don't like, then it's silky tops! Since when did it become appropriate to wear shiny and shimmery clothes out? It reminds me more of underwear and intimate wear. In addition to the silky tops, I saw some of the sweaters with big plastic buttons on them that just looked incredibly cheap. The only thing I saw in the store that was decent was a pair of trousers, but I didn't buy anything today. Maybe I will have more luck at J. Crew.

Actually, I don't like shopping much. I only go shopping if I have specific purchases in mind. Acquiring material things don't make us any happier. Let's just face the facts. It may make us happier for a brief moment when we have new shiny baubles and toys to play with, but this type of happiness is fleeting. Accomplishing goals that you've worked hard towards, learning something new or having a good conversation with friends is much more rewarding in my humble opinion. But all of these things take time that we are all short on, so we substitute this with shopping. It's quick and provides instant, albeit brief gratification. It's all about instant gratification these days, unfortunately. Similar to the slow food movement, I propose that we all start and support the delayed gratification movement.

Neighborhood - Diversity

Caterwauling

This is a picture of a street fair in Leland Street, which serves as a sort of downtown for this neighborhood. You can visit the library here, buy some groceries from a Latino owned store, grab a cup of tea, buy some Chinese pastries or a Chinese language newspaper.

The people you see above are singing Cantonese opera. If any of you have heard Chinese opera, you'll know that the singing is horrid and usually very high pitched. Anyway, this is what they were performing.

Speaking of Chinese people, have you heard about the whole tainted milk story in China? Apparently some companies that process milk put some weird chemicals into the milk and some babies died. I think that is the only way to get the Chinese to pay attention to the quality of their products. Unfortunately they are too profit driven and often have no morals when it's about making more money. I don't trust Chinese food products. They probably put lead into it or something else quite nasty.

Neighborhood - Bird's Eye View

From Above

This is a picture of my neighborhood from up above.

What do I have to report today? Nothing earth-shattering. The weather has started to cool down so that we have a brisk little breeze every morning. It's the mark of the coming autumn.

Okay, enough philosophizing. I've gotta work some overtime.

Welcome to my 'hood

Street sign

For my photography class, I need to shoot pictures of a neighborhood. It doesn't necessarily need to be my own, so I could've chosen neighborhoods that are easy to photograph like Chinatown, Nob Hill or the Haight. However, I chose to challenge myself by taking pictures of my own little neighborhood.

Over the next few days you will see a number of photos that feature scenes around the neighborhood. It will be accompanied by my witty commentary as always. ;-)

First let me start by saying that most people who have lived in San Francisco for a long time have never heard of my neighborhood. It's largely residential and the people who live here come from very diverse backgrounds. You have Asians, African Americans, Latinos, Filipinos, etc. all coexisting here. Caucasians are minorities in this part of town. This is one of the reasons that this part of the city has a rough reputation. Of the few people who have heard of this neighborhood, they think it's very dangerous with gangbangers on every corner. Actually I've lived here almost all of my life and it's not THAT bad.

P.S. - For all you political junkies out there who missed Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, check it out here on Salon.com > Click here. It's quite funny and she is a deadringer.