Twelve Mile Circle traveled to San Francisco, California this week. I don’t have much time to enjoy many of the sites, thought. Unfortunately the sun sets early this time of year. That gives me maybe a half-hour each afternoon after a full day stuck in an office building.
My touring record isn’t very good on this trip even within those constraints. Work completely took over any opportunities to explore. Today it was already nearly dark when I trudged from the office, snapping cellphone photographs along the way. That explains the poor quality and lighting on the images below.
Cable Cars
What would San Francisco be without its famous cable cars? Well, lots of things actually. But surely these endearing throwbacks to a bygone era come to mind as iconic images of this city. These particular cars queue up at the base of Powell & Market. In this image they prepare to enter a turntable so they can head back uphill. The spot where this happens appears as the circular feature in the middle of the road in this satellite image.
Cable cars in San Francisco date back to the 1870’s. Here they form part of the last manually-operated system in existence anywhere. It’s quite fascinating. Cables running under the street pull the cars. This means that they operate almost silently so I’m being extra careful when I cross the streets.
The gripman moves a lever that grabs the underground cable when it’s time to move along the route. Then they unhook from the cable when it’s time to stop. I guess I should be grateful that a cable car line runs right by my hotel. Otherwise I might not get to see anything touristy on this trip. I know, quit whining.
Union Square
Union Square is a couple of blocks further up Powell Street. Sunset rapidly approached by the time I arrived so I snapped this photo without delay. It’s not yet Thanksgiving which means it’s time to put up the Christmas tree. I guess I shouldn’t complain — most of the stores back home put up Christmas decorations even before Halloween this year.
Actually I rather enjoyed this. Nothing says Christmas quite like palm trees and a giant conifer. A temporary outdoor ice skating rink sat on the other side of the park, just outside of this photo. I kid you not. It got well up into the 50’s today. Yet they have ice skating like we’re in New England or something. Contradictions like these put a smile on my face.
This is how it would look in daylight on a normal day.
A Call to Action
I’m possibly going to have a couple of hours to wander around on Thursday. I need your help. I’m having a tough time finding appropriate geo-oddities and the search engines are failing me. Attempting to search of phrases like Weird Places in San Francisco provides decidedly different results than normally expected in other cities. San Francisco is noted for weird people (and I say that in an endearing, complimentary way). So that’s what I’m getting back in my results.
Please feel free to add a comment or send me an email if you know of odd geography in San Francisco. Otherwise you’ll get things like Fisherman’s Wharf in my next posting. Oh, you might also get that crazy squiggly section of Lombard Street too. I guess that counts as weird geography… and I kind of want to see it anyway.
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