Bye bye, Bay Area… part 1…

Posted on June 5, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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There I am, with San Francisco over my shoulder, on the morning I left my mom’s house… which was like three or four days ago now. No, I didn’t take that at my favorite dog park down by the bay, where I took the photos in the last few posts. I decided to ignore my ‘fastest route’ option in the Google maps, and have an adventure.

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I was heading for Santa Cruz, to see my cousins, and decided to drive the coast route, which I haven’t done in years. So I swung onto the Oakland Bay Bridge, heading for the city, and stopped off in the middle of the bay, on Treasure Island… where they filmed the Myth Busters TV show. The bridge  which you can see to the left, actually passes though a tunnel cut into the the island.

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There is the other end, connecting to Oakland. That part is new, and it was a huge boondoggle, costing the locals way too much, and built with steel from China. You should Google that story.

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But it was a beautiful morning. That, right over there, is the waterfront that I walked along at the start of my big adventure day in the city, that ended up with me and my friend hopping from dive-bar to dive-bar.

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The Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

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I love boats, have I mentioned that before?

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A good shot of Alcatraz Island, and the old prison, thanks to my trusty telephoto lens.

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Okay, we are ready to hit the road.

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The many moods of San Francisco… the final chapter…

Posted on June 5, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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All things considered, my experiment with taking pictures of San Francisco with a big zoom lens, while using a tripod, worked fairly well.

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I just wanted some photos of the city lit up at night, without the bouncing effect that I usually get when I hold the camera, but the darkness keeps the shutter open for longer. As you can see, it is an improvement, but gusty winds still produced some movement.

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The ones where I wasn’t zoomed in so tight were better.

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What I really need to do is stop being lazy, and learn how to adjust the shutter speed myself, instead of using the automatic settings.

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But I am lazy, and if I learn something new, and don’t do it very often, I forget how.

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Oh well.

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I still had fun, and that is a good photo of a garbage can.

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Well, that is pretty much it for my latest adventures in the Bay Area. Next, we say goodbye to the City by the Bay, and I start driving South. Don’t worry, I did some new stuff and some cool stuff. I drove different routes, saw cute kids, met a cool dog, and got diverted because of a huge landslide and a big fire.

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The many moods of San Francisco… part 4…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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So, yeah, using the tripod to shoot pictures of San Francisco from way over across the bay worked out pretty well.

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There were a few problems. It looked dark to me, but the camera still picked up light from the recently-set sun.

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And visibility, as is usual in the Bay Area, was not optimal.

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But I had fun.

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And at least there wasn’t a thick fog covering the bay.

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It was really a beautiful night.

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Maybe if I wait just a while longer…

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Okay, one more post of these, and then, I begin my adventure back to San Diego.

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The many moods of San Francisco… part 3…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Okay, so there was a reason I went down to the bay on my last night in the Bay Area, to that beach where I usually take the pictures of all the dogs… and to pet them when I miss my dog.

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I was playing with my telephoto… zoom… lens, as you might have been able to tell from the first picture.

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Look, you can actually see the old civil war-era fort, under the big arch at the South (left) end of the Golden Gate Bridge.

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But I also went down there to play with something else. No… not that… why you gotta be like that?

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I found a tripod at a rummage sale… four dollars… and I wanted to try taking pictures of San Francisco as the lights were coming on. I had mixed results, as you will see from upcoming posts. It turns out that, if you have a big telephoto lens, and zoom way in on a distant object, any small wind is enough to blur the picture… but not as much as some of those dancing-light-ball pictures I have shared before.

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It worked great for most of the shots I took.

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And the sunset was pretty.

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Well, you will see what I mean tomorrow. Here is one last photo that came out pretty good, especially when you think back to the post I did where I tried to take photos of the lunar eclipse. Holding the camera in my hand, it felt steady. I just got those crazy photos of multiple moons dragging trails across the sky. But check this one out…

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That is the moon. I think the light side was too bright for a good picture, unless I was better with the camera and knew how to set the exposure… because at night, in the dark, the shutter wants to stay open a long time, and the camera can’t move at all. But if you look at the middle of the moon, you can actually see craters. How cool is that?

 

 

 

 

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The many moods of San Francisco… part 2…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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I went down to the bay on my last night in the Bay Area, for a specific purpose…

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But I can explain what that was in another post, because I have at least two more posts worth of pictures from that night.

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So for now, just enjoy the pictures.

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This is another mood of San Francisco.

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The quiet of nightfall without any fog.

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That mountain is called ‘the sleeping maiden’, and has been since the time of the Native American tribes in the Bay Area.

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A large boat leaving the bay under the Golden Gate.

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Shifting colors.

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The setting sun hitting the buildings on the sides of San Francisco’s many hills.

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The many moods of San Francisco… part 1…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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We are reaching the end… well, I say that, but I still have a lot of photos to post before the end actually happens… of my latest adventure in the Bay Area. And then, I had a lot of adventures on the way back to San Diego, so I am going to be posting a lot over the next few days. Just look at the stuff that interests you, and don’t worry about the rest. Or don’t read the words. It’s all good.

There is San Francisco… in the far distance, over my right shoulder… at her sunny, brightest best. I took the selfie with my phone, on the way to take my mom shopping for shoes, which took us over the hills above Berkeley. This was the day after my drinking adventure over in the city, and I was pretty hung over. Ha!

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Even when the city is basking in the sun, the fog still waits beyond, to come creeping in.

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Okay, that picture, and the next few, are just the last sunset photos I took from my mom’s deck, and don’t really relate to San Francisco directly.

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Except maybe for the fact that the fog you see, both below and above the mountains in the distance, which are just North of the Golden Gate bridge on the far side from the city, have already blanketed the city by the bay. And also due to the fact that when I took these, I was still hung over from the day before, when I was in the city.

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Okay, that was a stretch.

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But bear with me.

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We can get through this.

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I went to visit my best friend’s memorial tree. I can’t believe the tiki-steak I carved for him is still there. I turned around and took these last two photos…

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Hey, that actually is a picture of San Francisco. You just can’t see it because of the fog, which is certainly one of San Francisco’s charming moods. You can see a little white blob in the bay, to the left of center. That is Alcatraz. The city is behind and to the left.

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And there, believe it or not, is the Golden Gate Bridge. Just behind that big ship.

 

 

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Bar hopping: The final chapter…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Well, there are Big Johnny and I, at the last bar we visited at the end of a very long day in San Francisco. Man, I was pretty toasted by that point.

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I think, by that point, I had walked about ten miles, if you include the walk to the BART station from my mom’s house, my long ramble along the bay front in San Francisco, our exploring the museum with the cool sixties exhibit, and then, after we were dropped off by John’s family, our long walk from Haight Ashbury all the way to downtown. So we hopped on Muni. I have never been on Muni… which is the municipal railway, which is almost like a small BART… (Bay Area Rapid Transit)…. train system.

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Why do you care? You probably don’t… but I was hammered, so I took pictures.

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Why does he keep making that face at me???

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We got off the little train right where my San Francisco adventure had begun… almost twelve hours before…

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Yes, by the Embarcadero BART station.

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Which was handy, because, after vising the last bar in the photo at the top, I had to get back on BART, travel back under the mud at the bottom of the bay, pass through Oakland and Berkeley and other places over on the East side of the water, and take a cab to my mom’s house. It was a long day.

Also, here is a hint. If you are very drunk, don’t bend over backwards to take photos of tall buildings in the dark. No, I didn’t fall over, but I am an awesome photographer and I can hold my liquor.

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A lonely cable car, on its way back to the barn for the night. See, even my drunk photos are good.

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Big Johnny waited patiently for me to take my pictures. Okay, that is it for that one day full of cute kids, good friends, sixties history, and dive-bar hopping.

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Bar hopping: In which I explain how a visit to a sixties exhibit at a museum ties in nicely with a long walk interspersed with much beer drinking… part 3…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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In spite of the title, I am not really going to explain why I was with Big Johnny, dive-bar hopping through the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, or who Big Johnny is, or how all this came about. You just need to read all the previous posts in this series. Or the whole blog.

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This brings us back full circle to the weird photo of the weird skull-bunny that I took in front of a Catholic church, and which, I think, I posted to start off the part of my latest Bay Area adventure that ended up with the two of us… I mean Big Johnny and me, not me and the skull-bunny… being more than a little drunk. And this is just one day on my week-long adventure.

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Notice that, even when snockered, I still paused between bars to take a few photos of pretty Victorian houses.

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I am that awesome.

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Big Johnny likes dogs too.

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No, that face isn’t because of the food or the beer, it was just for my benefit.

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Speaking of food, I think this place won the contest to be the best dive-bar in San Francisco. They didn’t serve food, but the little German place next door did, and you could bring the food into the bar. That is a German sausage on a roll, with grilled onions and peppers, and some potato salad. With German beer. Oh, yeah.

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I know it looks like he is flipping of the San Francisco Giants, but he is really, in an amusing way, pointing to the MIRV sticker. Because we know the guitar player in that band… an old high school friend of mine, who also plays with Les Claypool of Primus… whom I also know. Fun facts.

Okay, I am actually back in San Digeo now. I am days behind on this whole Bay Area adventure trip thing. There is one more post of our drunken wanderings, and then get ready for cute kids, sunsets, cute dogs, parts of California that even I have never seen before, and other stuff.

 

 

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Just a hint of the cuteness you have to look forward to…

Posted on June 3, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Yup, it’s my little cousins. I am, at this moment, in Santa Cruz, California. I stopped by on the way back from my mom’s house in the Bay Area, and spent the night. Today, we are doing fun stuff.

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No, I am not done with my crazy adventure in San Francisco, and the drinking part of the story. I am about four days behind on this whole Bay Area trip thing.

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So just bear with me. Man, it is hard to get both of those guys in focus. They never stop moving. Okay, I have to get ready for some kid fun, and then the long drive back to San Diego, so I probably won’t be posting again until tomorrow.

See ya!

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Bar hopping: In which I explain how a visit to a sixties exhibit at a museum ties in nicely with a long walk interspersed with much beer drinking… part 2… ***(Oh, and if you read all the posts about my adventure in San Francisco from the top down, the way the wordpress overlords have it set up, it will make even less sense than my blog usually does)***

Posted on June 2, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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The little postscript note in my title brings up an interesting problem we face as bloggers. If you do multiple posts about the same thing, the odds are that people will red them in the wrong order… a 2

Which means that you probably have no idea why you are looking at a pair of giant legs sticking out of a window… and I doubt my post title helped clear up any questions you might have. Even though I try to be helpful by numbering the posts in the titles… sometimes…

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So what do we do? Should I re-explain in every post how I ended up in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district?

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Should I explain again who this guy beside me is, and why we were doing a walking tour of the best dive bars in that district, starting at three in the afternoon?

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Should I retell the story about how a trip to a museum ties in with this drunken wandering?

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Or re-relate how I even ended up in San Francisco in the first place?

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Sure, I could do that each and every time… or…

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Or, you could just go back and read all the earlier posts… in order… and I don’t mean just the numbered ones, I mean all the ones from the start of my journey to the city. Hell, just go down and read my whole blog from the beginning. That will answer all your questions, and you will know me better than you know your spouse, lover, mother or kids. Because my whole life is down there.

I think the pictures in this post of me and Big Johnny are taken in only the second bar we visited… but I look pretty happy already.

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