Welcome to City College of San Francisco. I was getting my brakes looked at in a nearby shop, and I remembered that now and again I would get emails asking about education in San Francisco, so I decided to use the time to take a walk and get you some shots.. I was there in a lonely, chilly, wind-swept late afternoon around 5 or 6, when most students were long gone. I love this shot, it has a Tolkien-like quality to it. I don't mean to mislead you though, this may look like a very Ivy League shot, but CCSF is a 2-year college attended mostly by people who need to raise their GPA so they can get into a 4-year University, or those who do want to pursue a 2-year degree required for some professions. It does have a respected curriculum in restaurant and hotel management. Some people drift into it as a continuation of High School, and they call it a "High School with ashtrays". But like my Sensei said, "It's not the teacher - it's the student." There's no reason you couldn't use a lot of initiative, research, extra studying, and so on, to get yourself a really high-quality education here. Maybe 20 years ago it used to be completely free to attend City, but I hear that now there are tuition fees, though nominal ones, making it still a very good bargain. Personally I think it's really cool that the city spends this much money and effort in educating its citizens. I will have a link to City's web site in my "What's shaking" page. This is picture C in the diagram below.

Sorry about that, I really tried for about a minute, but I couldn't get my own shadow out of the shot..The magenta dots shows the path I took in my little campus walk. The very tip of each arrow show approximately where I was standing, and in what direction the camera was pointing. This will also tell you how little of City I am actually showing you! If I were to give you a real photo tour, it would probably be about a hundred pictures. All I really did was take a stroll around Cloud Circle, the arching lane between the two big buildings up atop the hill in the center, and the football fields below. The two big buildings are probably the oldest, the Science Building and Cloud Hall. Yes, there is a room number 9 there, so you could be told to go to Cloud 9. Look carefully at the "brackets" at the rear of the Science building. You'll see them in photos later. There aren't many pictures between B and C because that corner is just a construction site right now. There used to be bungalows and a parking lot, it looks like they're putting up a whole new building there. If you look very carefully, letter B is pointing to a dark red bull's eye. That's exactly where I'm standing. The campus cops were not happy about me spray-painting their map. :) The next picture is number 1.

You could consider this the main driving entrance of the school. On the right, behind the speed limit sign, is the school theatre which is attached to Conlan Hall. Movie appreciation classes meet there. Way in the background, behind the trees, atop the central hill, is Science Hall, the one with the "brackets" at the rear. A very late-departing student waits in the cool breeze for a bus. This is picture number 1 in the diagram.

This is the administration building. It's where student orientation takes place and where counselors meet with students. There's a (maybe) 20-foot-tall red-orange wooden statue of a ram, the school's mascot, and also some Diego Rivera-style paintings. If you go inside and take a right, you would be in the theatre we saw in the previous picture. This is picture number 2 in the diagram.

Here you see the "brackets" at the rear of the Science building. Not pictured, facing those brackets, is the angled shape of Cloud Hall. This hillside is dotted with people on a sunny day. This is picture number 3 in the diagram.

The Sudent Union
(Facing South)

A little overpass leads you into the colorfully-painted Student Union. This is picture number 4 in the diagram.

The rear of Cloud Hall
(Facing North)

I'm standing on the Eastern side of the big central hill. To the left is the rear of Cloud Hall. Way over to the right you can see a tiny sliver of Cloud Circle, the driveable lane (for staff only, no student parking) that circumscribes the big central hill. Way in the back, between Cloud Hall and the sliver of Cloud Circle, you see the cement bunker-like Batmale Hall. That's where we're headed next. This is picture number 5 in the diagram. 

Batmale Hall with "The Ashtray" in the foreground.
(Facing NorthEast)

I don't know if 'ashtray' is what the students call it, it's just what it seemed like to me. Batmale Hall is where the faculty offices are, along with classrooms and the computer center. The hill severely slopes away, so even though it appears we're on the ground floor this is actually the fourth floor. I thought this shot would give you a sense of the space around Batmale. This is picture number 6 in the diagram.

The "Ashtray" with Batmale Hall
(Facing NorthEast)

I included two similar pictures because I really wanted to give you a sense of the space around the building, and yet also give you a glimpse of how they have tried to place cool spaces aroundthe school. There are cement forms inside that really curve to the shape of your body so they're comfortable to sit in. The angled walls give you a certain privacy, so this is a nice outdoor space to hang out. You can't see them in this picture but they also have bowl-like cement depressions in the floor where you can curl up as if in a bean bag. This is picture number 7 in the diagram.

This is on the other side of Batmale from The Ashtray. We're on the 4th floor, which is ground level on the Western side, and four floors up on the Eastern side. It's really worth noting the glass buildings at the other end of the track. There's a very new generation of new buildings being built at City. I didn't take you inside any of them (this time) so please do remember that this photo tour is not that representative. That glass building is, I believe, the new library. There's also a construction site where at bungalow parking lot between our pictures B and C. Please note that the picture above is impossible in one shot. If you expose for the ground, the sky would appear as a glaring white area. If you expose for the blue sky, the cement walkway below would be in black shadow. I used a technique called "High Dynamic Range Photography", where I carefully took three shots, one for the sky, one for the field, and one for the walkway. Then I carefully blended them together so you could see both the blue sky & white clouds, and also see the sidewalks below, just like your high-dynamic range human eye would see it if you were there. This is picture number 8 in the diagram.

Typical hall / lobby in Batmale Hall
(Facing West)

I didn't go into any of the other buildings, I didn't have much time (was waiting for my brakes, remember) so I had to balance my desire to show you the inside of some building with not having too many pictures so this page would be slow to load. The point is, this is just ONE building, looks like it was built in the '70s. Cloud and Science halls were probably the first, maybe the '40s, so they would look very very different. I find it odd that they placed a copier between the bathrooms, leading to a lot of "xeroxing your butt" jokes :), but I guess they ran out of space. If you took the hallway you see at the left edge and took the stairs up the hill you could pop out near the "ashtray". To the left of the copier is the entrance to the computer lab. This picture doesn't have a number because it's not an outdoor picture and it wouldn't make much sense to number it in the diagram.

L is for Batmale, I guess. I talked to the attendant at the desk, he said that 25 years ago they used to have Radio Shack TRS-80 computers that used cassette tape as the storage medium! And now look at them. These are Windows machines, the rooms to the left have Macs in them, to keep sectarian violence down to a minimum I guess. :)

Not sure why half of it is exposed cement. The staircases are like that too, 100% exposed cement except for the steel handrails.

Rear Courtyard
(Facing NorthEast)

The sculpture along the wall is of many little faces. This is picture number 9 in the diagram.

Finally we get away from the cement cleanliness of Batmale and we continue along Cloud Circle. This is the sculpture in front of the one-story Visual Arts building to the right . In the background you see the Creative Arts building. This is picture A in the diagram.

Bungalows at the North edge.
(Facing North)

Although they have moved and removed many bungalows for the construction mentioned at the diagram picture, they did leave one row of them as you exit the campus. See the people? See the bushes behind them? The campus map diagram is across from those bushes. City is a mixture of many building types from many different eras. It looks like a lot of old-school style from the '40s, cement buildings from the '70s, some cool new glass and steel structures from the '90s, and behind these bungalows they've cleared out a very large area, I'm not sure what's going in there.Boy I'm not sure when these bungalows are from but they look like they've been here a while. Twisted as I am, I kind of like their cozy and comfortable look more than the impersonal cement classrooms in Batmale. This is picture B in the diagram.

Science Hall looks out onto Phelan Avenue
(We are facing East)

This is picture D in the diagram. It's hard to make out, but the school motto is in relief letters atop the main building. It says, "The truth shall make you free". I always wondered about that. What if you said, "Yup - it was me. I killed him". That wouldn't seem to work very well, would it? :) The statue is, I think, of St. Francis after whom the city is named. The dome atop the building is actually an observatory! I have never been to it, which is strange given that I love love love astronomy.

I'm sorry if this is not a very thorough photo tour of CCSF, or if I spent too much time in Batmale. I'm not in this part of town too often and don't have a chance to take my time and get dozens of shots to choose from. I tried to squeeze in as much as possible in the time I had while they worked on my car. If you're moving here for college, you could also consider San Francisco State University (SFSU) in the Sunset, or the Jesuit-flavored University of San Francisco (USF) in the Richmond, or in the Inner Sunset the world-renowned University of California - San Francisco (UCSF) if you're a medical student.

Copyright 1996-2006 Alfredo Jacobo Perez Gomez. All rights reserved. Use entirely at own risk.