Where I Live

[melody1181]

Just a few pictures taken from my backyard.





My grandpa in our front yard yesterday.

[frisco-kid]

Okay, Bill. Some SF architeture as promised. Kath and I drove around several neighborhoods for these.

[frisco-kid]

5th and Howard, south of Market. Don't ask. I have no idea. I just know it's been there for many years.

[frisco-kid]

Powell and Market. Probably the most famous intersection in The City. It's where the turntable for the Powell Street and Powell/Mason cable cars is located. Millions of tourists each year stand in line here to ride the cable car out to Fisherman's Wharf. When I was a kid the bottom floor was what was probably the biggest Woolworth's store on the west coast. The cable car cost $.15 and there was no line. The passengers would help turn the car around before boarding. Now it's about $7.00 and you stand in line for an hour.

[frisco-kid]

Looking east down Market Street to the Ferry Building, another famous landmark in SF. Market Street is the main drag through San Francisco's downtown.

[frisco-kid]

The Ferry Building survived the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. It is a reminder of the days gone by when dozens of passenger ferryboats plied the San Francisco Bay. Now it is home to dozens of little shops and eateries, and a local farmer's market on weekends.

This and the Golden Gate Bridge were often the last stateside landmarks that thousands of American Soldiers, sailors, and Marines saw as they shoved off for the island hopping war in the Pacific Theater.

[frisco-kid]

Looking west up California St. to Nob Hill. The name "Nob Hill" dates back to the Gold Rush days because many of The City's ultra-rich, "The Hob Nobs," built their estates for obscene amounts of money, trying to out do each other. In the end, none of it mattered. They were all leveled by the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.

[frisco-kid]

The California St. cable car is the only one [of 3 lines] that runs east and west and in a straight line, staying on the one street.

The pagoda on the left is where Grant Ave. crosses California Street.

[frisco-kid]

When you turn right onto Grant from California St, you're in the heart of SF's famous Chinatown.

[frisco-kid]

Chinatown was, and still is, the largest population of chinese outside of China. They came here, like everyone else in the world, to look for gold during the Gold Rush. And then in the 1860's they were brought here by the thousands to build the western leg of the trans-continental rairoad through the Sierras and across NV, to Promontory Point, UT. Most of them stayed when it was completed.