Photo essay: Random San Francisco

I love walking around San Francisco with a camera on my days off.  
These excursions tend to be spontaneous. I wake up, it's gorgeous outside, I have no pressing deadlines, I map a route in my mind and head out. 

Once in a blue moon, I post the photos the same day, or get some shots that I know will be a good fit for a future photo essay, but it's usually a one-off experience. I return home after the sun sets, delete duplicates, and upload the rest to my computer, where they take up space.

Until now. 

For this post, I'm raiding the vaults to rescue 46 photos for public consumption.

Click on any image to enlarge it and get a better sense of what I saw through the lens. (To skip the text, click on the image above, and scroll through the photos with your arrow keys.)

***

The opening photo was taken on Mission Street, early in the morning. I like the messiness of this shot, which has a smorgasbord of signs and colors crammed into a small frame. The man with slicked back hair is setting the backpack on one in a series of hooks that hang over the storefront entry. Bernal Heights Hill looms in the upper-left corner, just beneath the streetlamp. 

Here's the view from Bernal Heights Hill, looking on the Mission District.

Several hundred murals are on display throughout the Mission. 

The mural below graces the corner building at 25th and Bryant.

"BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD"

A few blocks away is "Amor Indo." 

San Francisco's population is a multi-ethnic stew. 

"El Inmigrante" reflects the Latino flavor of the Mission District.

Art fills a number of alleys in the Mission District. 
This photo was snapped in Clarion Alley, between Mission Street and Valencia.

Also in Clarion Alley is a mural of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Valencia Cyclery exhibited this mural for a brief time 

before mysteriously burying it under a coat of boring gray paint.

A flame continues to burn in this sidewalk stencil 
in the Valencia corridor, between 23rd and 24th.

A companion stencil on Bartlett, a block over.

One block west of Valencia is Lapidge Street, home to the Women's Building. 

Nobel winner Rigoberta Menchu's got the whole world in her hands.

A close-up.

Two blocks west of the Women's Building, a pair of parrots roost at the corner of 

Dolores and 18th while their color-coordinated friend sits inside the Dolores Park Cafe.

I'm not the only person getting in on this action.

Parallel jet streams trace the sky over Dolores Park.

Just up the street from Dolores Park, at 19th and Sanchez, are 
one of the many sets of stairs carved into sheer drop-offs in San Francisco.

Around the corner, in Eureka Valley, are the Cumberland Street stairs.

The long view.

A view from the stairs.

Cars pass, and sometimes people. 

Bikes are scarce. 

The 17th Street hill, about half a mile north, is even steeper 
(steep enough to warrant its own gradient sign).

Looking down 17th Street.

Just past 17th Street is the Haight-Ashbury District, which
has a number of homes with gingerbread trim.

The Haight is chock-full of Victorian architecture, 
including these fine turreted specimens on Center Avenue.

The Haight feeds into the vast playground of Golden Gate Park. 
Here, some Russian men play checkers at Spreckles Lake.

West of them is a trail that runs along the northern edge of the park, through the woods.

Behind them, off JFK Drive, are a bison enclosure

  
and serene casting pools.

Down the road from the casting pools is Ocean Beach. 
This concrete wall separates the beach from the boardwalk.

An important message.

A coastline, saturated in blue.

***

All the way across town from the ocean, on the bay, is a plaza behind the Ferry Building, a San Francisco monument. The Bay Bridge is in the background.

Inside the Ferry Building.

The Ferry Building is near the foot of Broadway Street, which takes us to North Beach, best known for the Beats. This photo of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac was in the display case at City Lights Bookstore, the heart of North Beach.

Vesuvio's is a bar (across Jack Kerouac Alley from City Lights) 

with literary cred, a quality jazz soundtrack, and this mural along its side.

Overlooking North Beach is Coit Tower, which has a panoramic view of the bay. 

Here's a glance up at Coit Tower from the wooden stairs that climb Telegraph Hill, 

where "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" was filmed.

Just down the hill from Coit Tower, on the other side, is the Saints Peter and Paul Church.

North Beach is next door to Chinatown. 

In this photo, men play Chinese checkers at Portsmouth Square.

Chinatown abuts the Tenderloin, one of San Francisco's most colorful neighborhoods. 

This is the last block of Golden Gate Avenue before Market Street.

The Tenderloin has a lot of multi-story brick buildings like this one.

Entry gates are prominent,

as are catwalks which remind me of Little Italy.

The Tenderloin is Grand Central for pigeons. 

Here's a bird's eye view of the waterfalls at the U.N. Plaza.

A stone's throw from the waterfalls is the Orpheum Theater, 

which recently got a new paint job.

"WORLD CLASS THEATER THAT DAZZLES AND TRANSFORMS US THROUGH MUSIC, DRAMA, AND JOY, SHOWING US THE WORLD THROUGH FRESH EYES."

Also in the Tenderloin is my friend Judy, 

another long-term resident of this rich tapestry called San Francisco,

land of pink sunset skies.

Other "Truth and Beauty" photo essays:

"Gone but not Forgotten" is a tribute to a friend who left this world all too soon 

                                 "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" is a multi-neighborhood trek 

                                                         through San Francisco on September 9, 2013

"A Sunny* Monday in San Francisco" is a day tour of the city, 

from Mission Street to the Pacific Ocean

"California in November" captures deep fall natural splendor

"The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the Marin Headlands" 

                 "Vintage Cars" is an evening tour of old automobiles in the Mission District 

"Fifteen Minutes," the freewrite

Ten years ago, a roommate who knew my penchant for obsessive editing and polishing said he'd like to see one of my first drafts. 

Phil, this one's for you.

Last Saturday I hunkered down at a library to critique my workshop partners' submissions. 

When the critiques were done, I had fifteen minutes to kill before leaving for the workshop, so I cranked out this run-and-gun freewrite. 

The text shape is a one-page paragraph in my notebook, but I'm breaking it into verse here to convey the accents, the music, the way the piece is meant to be heard.

Fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes to pull back the veil
look into your soul 
and dump everything out.
Good, bad, indifferent,
onto the floor
over the carpet
a mosaic,
stand back and stare,
weigh, 
assess,
a lifetime's worth of ups and downs
and over-arounds,
sideways,
end-over-end,
a forward roll
back on your feet
stand up straight
rest your head on your neck
take a deep breath
air in,
out,
raise your arms overhead
smack your palms together
bring 'em to your heart's center
look at a spot on the wall
a white wall
no spots,
smooth as a glassy lake
plunge in and break the surface
ripples break all around
your hair flies back 
as you swim to the bottom
touch the wet sand
dig your hand in
scoop up a handful 
then plant your feet on the bottom
bend your knees
launch up to the top
like a torpedo,
straight up, 
break the surface again
the sun is in your face
presiding over all,
above,
yellow,
radiant,
raining down love and happiness 
as you swim to shore and towel off,
a clean white and not starchy or stiff towel,
a towel that soaks up the wetness of your torso 
then is slung over your shoulder 
as you walk down the beach,
down the coastline,
a dot,
an ant,
as seen from far away,
far above,
a man in the seat of an air balloon
some hundreds of feet above the ocean
eyes running along the sand because
he can't look down into the deep blue
too scary,
a friend talked him into this
he didn't really want to go 
but here he is, 
actually enjoying it,
with this one modification; 
we all gotta start somewhere.

"Searching for Sugar Man"

What happens to gifted artists who slip through the cracks?

"Searching for Sugar Man" takes us on an 85-minute journey to answer this question. We begin in the backseat of a convertible driving along a winding mountain highway, with the ocean on the right. The setting:  South Africa, where Mexican-American musician Sixto Rodriguez has a huge cult following. The narrator is in search of Rodriguez, but doesn't know if he's among the living, having heard that Rodriguez burned himself alive on stage. 

Cut.  

Detroit. Some time in the mid-to-late '60s. A foggy night. 

"Here's this voice," says the speaker, who followed his ears into a dark, smoky bar, where he saw just a shadow in the back of the room. Moving closer, he noticed a singer hunched over an acoustic guitar, with his back turned to the crowd. Who was this man? 

One local who had bumped into Rodriguez in different areas of Detroit describes him as a "wandering spirit around the city," and concludes "I thought he was a drifter." A session musician who discovered Rodriguez and later co-produced his first album had no idea where Rodriguez lived at the time; he always asked to meet at a corner, then seemed to appear out of nowhere. 

What we do know is that Rodriguez was a no-nonsense street poet who channeled his hard surroundings in Detroit, called "the city of small hopes" by one of his daughters. 

Rodriguez's first release, "Cold Fact" (1970), was a mix of blues, Dylanesque protest folk, singer-songwriter pop, and straight-up rock. Rodriguez's voice and acoustic guitar drive the sound, while his co-arrangers add flute, horns, strings, and assorted psychedelia.  

Cut. 

Palm Springs, CA. Steve Rowland, the producer of Rodriguez's second album, "Coming from Reality" (1971), pulls out a book of photos he hasn't looked at in 35 years, the last time he saw Rodriguez. As always, Rodriguez is hidden behind sunglasses in all of the photographs.  

At the time Rowland produced "Reality," he thought Rodriguez might be destined to fame and fortune, but the album went nowhere in the U.S. 

Rodriguez was dropped from his label two weeks before Christmas, and disappeared. 

Back to South Africa. Cape Town in the early '70s. The country is  led by an oppressive, reactionary government that outlaws television, allows no independent media, and censors albums. Civil servants listen to records before they hit the racks, and scratch the grooves of any songs deemed offensive to make them unlistenable.

"Cold Fact" finds its way into South Africa via bootlegs and spreads like wildfire. Its messages of freedom and dissent appeal to young people bridling under a closed society which is isolated by government controls and external sanctions against a brutal Apartheid regime.

One of the kids liberated by "Cold Fact" is Stephen Segerman, who goes on a search for Rodriguez in the '90s. 

There are few concrete, cold facts about the artist known as Rodriguez. The songwriting credits on his debut album list three different names; album jacket photos from more than two decades earlier are all Segerman has to go on. In the liner notes to a South African label's re-release of "Cold Fact," Segerman asks if there are "any musicologist detectives out there?" who can help him in his quest.

Music journalist Craig Bartholomew Strydom finds out about the hunt and joins forces with Segerman, though he has heard a rumor that Rodriguez had fatally shot himself onstage after being booed.

Strydom follows the money, the route the royalties from Rodriguez's platinum album sales in South Africa have traveled. He interviews Clarence Avant, the head of Rodriguez's Sussex label. Avant praises Rodriguez's work, but has no insight into why he flopped in his native country while his Detroit contemporaries (Grand Funk Railroad, Ted Nugent, Iggy Pop, Bob Seger) went on to successful careers. Avant has no answers about the royalties or Rodriguez's fate after being dumped from the label.

In 1997, Segerman and Strydom set up a website dedicated to Rodriguez which solicits leads on the musician's whereabouts.

A year later, they find a post from one Eva Rodriguez, who says she has information they might want. But she warns that "Sometimes the fantasy is best left alone." 

Segerman thought the story was over soon after finding this post, but it was just beginning. The last third of "Sugar Man" carries a number of surprises that I won't reveal; do yourself a favor and see this movie.

Narrative arc aside, the heart of "Searching for Sugar Man" is a meditation on the power of art to transform and transcend reality. 

As a co-worker points out, Rodriguez elevated the prosaic and the mundane, and turned the raw material of life into art, not unlike a silkworm. The interviewee then asks the audience, "Have you done that?"

© Dan Benbow, 2013