Market Street Photo Tour - A Local's Guide To Visiting or Moving To San Francisco

	Market Street
	Diagonal artery from the Ferry Building into the heart of SF

Flying over Market Street
(Looking NorthEast)

This great view really shows you what's going on. To the left (north of diagonal Market Street) you see the traditional finaancial district, complete with the two tallest buildings (Bank of America, the dark monolith) and the Transamerica Pyramid, which a local comedian called a "ring toss for aliens". To the right, South of Market Street (SOMA) you see how the skyscrapers have hopped Market street and are invading a formerly seedy and sketchy area that still houses the city jail and criminal courts, but now also boasts a huge mall with an IMAX theatre, the Modern Art Museum, and a major convention venue, the Moscone Center. At the top you see the Oakland Bay Bridge shooting towards Yerba Buena Island and thence to Oakland. At the very foot of Market Street you can see a little white spire, that's the clock tower for the Ferry Building.

Picture credit: Unknown pilot. I was getting some film developed and the clerk had a bunch of these pictures on the counter. He said that a customer who was a pilot had given them away, and that I was welcome to have one.

On the no-longer-existing freeway
(Looking NorthEast)

There used to be a freeway that overpassed Market street. I was riding as a passenger when I took this shot for you. The freeway was right over the boundary between downtown and The Castro. Not visible way at the end of Market Street is the Ferry Building, site of a farmer's market and New Year's celebrations.

On Market near Montgomery
(Looking North)

See the center building with the rooftop park next to it? The whole thing is called the "Crocker Galleria". Do you see the vertical at extreme right that I clipped off? It will be in our next picture. Let's go to that rooftop park, lean over the edge and look left, middle and right.

Atop Crocker Galleria rooftop park
(Man Looking SouthEast)

Now we're on the rooftop park. We point the camera to our left. See the vertical tube with the fancy top next to the yellow cab? That's what I clipped off in the previous picture. I was standing under the sunny trees in the background. The yellow cab is on Market street itself. From here you can really see how diagonal Market street is. The street with the arrow is Montgomery, and the sunny trees are where 2nd Street begins. Most of Market Street's sidewalks are paved with brick, and in just that little wedge-shaped corner you can see a flower stand, a statue, and the escalator down to the MUNI underground trolleys that feed people to and from the suburbian-like neighborhoods on the Western half of the city. Next picture, from the same spot, we point the camera to the center.

Atop Crocker Galleria rooftop park
(Looking South)

At the extreme left you can see the corner of the wedge-shaped sidewalk as Montgomery hits Market. The bus, yellow van, and ambulance are all on Market Street. Behind them begins New Montgomery Street, and the building with many windows is a fancy hotel. The Bank of America branch has very nice sculpted ceilings, and the bank itself of course had its beginnings in the California Gold Rush when A. P. Giannini decided to create a bank for the small people to stash their meager savings. It was originally named "The Bank of Italy".

Atop Crocker Galleria rooftop park
(Looking SouthWest)

You can see the continuation of the fancy hotel as we pan right. The hexagonal depression is another entrance into the underground MUNI railway. It is lined by little sandwich shops and the like, which commuters can patronize before emerging onto Market street. I fondly remember sitting and holding hands on the steps you see surrounding the depression with this woman I wanted to make my girlfriend.

On Market Street
(Looking NorthEast)

Sorry, I'm not sure of the precise intersecton. A wintery you-are-there shot of the throngs making their way to and from work on a rainy afternoon, with another escalator bringing people up from the underground MUNI stations. If you look carefully you'll see a homeless person sitting by the entrance holding a cardboard sign. Before the Reagan era, homeless people were basically unknown in San Francisco.

X
(Looking up)

The play of light between new and old. You can see the sunlight from many windows reflected onto the gracious old building, with yet another couple of skyscrapers behind it. I believe that's the Wells-Fargo building.

At Montgomery and Market
(Looking NorthEast)

Now I'm standing kinda beneath the rooftop park, looking down Market street. I wanted to show you the old-timey streetcars that run on the surface of Market street, largely as a decorative sight although of course they're usable and ridable. The real lion's share of the commuters are carried by the underground system.

Market Street and New Montgomery
(Looking SouthWest)

Now I'm standing next to the hexagonal depression, looking towards the heart of the city, towards The Castro and Twin Peaks, whose hills you can kind of make out. The fancy hotel is to the left. What's important about this picture is it shows how the skyscrapers dwindle down until the very last one, where the freeway from the first picture used to run. Everything after that is the low-rise and more neighborhood-friendly Castro area, which has a photo tour page of its own. This part of Market street is pretty congested most of the day, with lots of complications from snail-slow MUNI trolleys like the ones pictured above, double-parked delivery trucks, and just lots of commute traffic.

At night Market street attracts nightlife lovers to movie theatres, live theatres, music shows and (well, I try to give the full picture) street prostitutes and the recreational drug market. Even then there's a lot of foot traffic and despite the availability of illegal fun, it's still pretty safe but of course take precautions. I wouldn't recommend it as a residential area unless you really like that inner city feeling. On New Year's eve huge crowds throng into the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street as our poor man's version of Times Square and celebrate the end of the year.

Pacific Shore - Alfredo's San Francisco Guide

Return to my "San Francisco Guide" main page.

Do you like my web site? Please link to it! That
way, Google will rank it higher and other
people will find it.