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The Mission (Eastern Half) |
| The right half of the area in red |
South Van Ness Avenue
(Near 24th Street)
This is an interesting three-layered picture. At the very rear is a tall, 8 or 9 story building in the middle of this low-income area containing mostly three-story victorians and moderns. The green apartment building suggests the former glory of this area; in its day it was probably surrounded by equally graceful private homes. Rudy has left his mark here, and he is now world-famous. The empty lot suggests decay and depression, but that's only on the surface. The lot is clean, surrounded by an unbroken fence, and it's not full of drug dealers or corpses or needles. In other words, it's not New York. Actually, this is a four-layer picture if you count my artfully-positioned finger in the lower left corner. This was the first time I'd taken my new digital camera out for a walk and didn't quite see the finger in time, sorry. :)
South Van Ness Near 25th Street
(Looking South at Bernal Heights)
Here, I am standing near the same empty lot as in the picture above, about half a block away. This picture shows both the busy thoroughfare aspects of South Van Ness, a major artery in the East Mission, as well as the tightly-packed middle-low-income residential housing here. The weather is usually great; it's usually sunny when the western half of the city is fogged in, and it's usually warmer too. There is no greatly evident street crime, I was standing peacefully in an empty street with a couple of friends and an expensive camera in my hands. It's just a neighborhood of regular people, families and so on. In the distance, you can see Bernal Heights, which affords fantastic views of the city and the peninsula. It's surrounded by a neighborhood with is slightly more dangerous, but I remember when I was in college taking a romantic walk up that hill with a woman I hoped would become my girlfriend - she didn't :( But the views were great, and we were left in complete peace. I think the nature of "danger" in San Francisco is very different than in, say, New York. In New York, trouble actively comes looking for you. In San Francisco, you pretty much have to be actively looking for trouble.
South Van Ness (Near 20th street)
A couple of blocks away, a surprise! A wonderfully-restored victorian. I have a very artistic picture of a closeup of the very weird flowers that grow from the bushes in front of this house, but the picture shows more bush than house so I showed you this picture instead. There are many wonderfully kept up victorians in this area, some of them breath-takingly beautiful. I took about five pictures of several homes like this along this particular stretch of South Van Ness. But, again, the neighborhood is neither mostly empty lots, nor is it mostly Victorians. As seen in the second picture, it's mostly unremarkable three-story buildings with two flats on the top two floors and a garage on the bottom.
South Van Ness Avenue and 24th Street
I think this is a humorous picture, in a way, sort of a visual pun; cars stopping for the House of Brakes. Actually, we're all stopped at a streetlight. Look, no one's being carjacked! :) (Sorry, couldn't resist) I'm stopped at the light, too; I took this picture from the driver's seat. I wanted to show you the Hispanic influence in the neighborhood, as expressed in many murals of this type. This influence is also mixed in with light industry businesses like the car shop, and lots of other regular businesses like grocery stores, El Salvadoran specialty shops, Central American pastries, and anything else you'd expect to find in a busy commercial/residential district.
Guerrero Street near 18th street (Approximate)
(Looking North towards the edge of downtown)
This street is parallel to South Van Ness, about two blocks over. We are walking westward, towards the big thoroughfare that is Mission street itself. This is a very typical view of the construction of liveable, decent housing.during different eras and housing styles. Adding interest to this picture is that about a mile to the north, we see the first tall building that marks the boundaries of downtown.
Capp and 24th streets (Approximate)
This picture is taken from the same general area as the one above, but it is facing south. This view shows the older housing that survives from old San Francisco. In the background you see the building that overshadows the empty lot. Behind that, is the very top of Bernal Heights. Some of those things atop the hill are not trees - they are large microwave antennae.
