It’s hard to tell why this Ferris wheel was on Treasure Island recently – it was either for the Treasure Island Music Festival or Oracle OpenWorld 2009.
Or maybe it was for both.
T.I. in the foreground and distant Berkeley in the background:
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Tonight’s Fourth of July fireworks show had a fairly high fog ceiling, so it would have to rate as better than average. Better than last year anyway, but not as good as 2007.
Here’s an excellent eight-second exposure of the northern waterfront show from Lafayette Park in Specific Whites Pacific Heights. Click to expand:
And here’s a real-time shot of the same show from Twin Peaks:
Everything is done double – that’s the way they do it. Here’s a double double:
But this is what happens when the fireworks get too high – you can only see the bottom halves sometimes due to the fog:
Let’s look across the Bay over at Sausalito. That’s USF in the foreground:
Now here are some illegal explosions in San Francisco. This was an impressive burst above the northern Mission district:
And here’s Mission Bay / Dogpatch with Alameda / Oakland in the background – very nice:
The Mission and points south all had lots of illegal fireworks booming:
Oh noes, it’s a flare, shooting high above Twin Peaks…
…and then landing somewhere in the Castro District:
And there you have it.
When they tell you “Fog could shroud S.F. fireworks“ up in Fishermans Wharf at 9:30 PM on the Fourth of July 2009, what they really mean is Fog WILL shroud S.F. fireworks, barring some Act of God, or Gaia, or Whomever.
Sometimes the weather is good, sometimes not. This year, not.
Check it out from 2008. Click to expand:
This is by no means the worst case scenario. So when they talk about special low-level fireworks and let’s cross our fingers, they’re spinning. And spinning is just the polite term for lying. So, what do you do? Head on over to the Mission District, where they’ll have oodles of Yelp-rated, illegal, illicit, MUY PRO HI BI DA DO (now I say that in Spanish because that’s how exotic and not allowed it is) fireworks, fog-free, for free. Just check out this screen saver album from 2007.
Of course, you can always go with the flow and follow the madding crowd northward into la niebla, le brouillard. And who knows, maybe it will be clear the way it was in 2007. Thusly:
This is the view you had from Crissy Field on 7-4-2007 – those lights at the bottom have something to do with Fishermans Wharf.
But dude, don’t drive up there. Even if they didn’t block off the streets and you already had a parking space waiting for you, you’d still have to drive out of there in a traffic jam when the show’s over at 10:00 PM. Of course, you could always hang out at all the places that will be open up in the Wharf after the show, but maybe you’d be better off driving into the City with your bikes in tow and parking South of the 101 near the Giants’ AT&T Park. Then you could ride up the flat, flat Embarcadero (on the sidewalk – it’s legal) back and forth.
Can you dig the colors, man?
But if that doesn’t pan out, you could follow the cable cars on Hyde (that’s the one north-south street they don’t block off, in my experience) and drop off the brood. Whatever you do, stay off of Van Ness. Or you could BART it to the Embarcadero Station and then hoof it up to Pier 39. But forget about MUNI, ’cause walking would be faster.
And most likely it will be foggy anyway, you’ve been warned.
Dress warm. Panthers out.
Fourth of July Waterfront Celebration
Saturday, July 4, 2009
1:00 PM to 9:30 PM
“PIER 39 invites you to enjoy a fun-filled Independence Day celebration. Rock out with ‘Take 2′ from 1-4pm followed by San Francisco’s favorite 80’s cover band, ‘Tainted Love’ from 6-9:30pm. Immediately after the entertainment look to the sky as the City of San Francisco lights up the night with it’s Firework’s Spectacular, accompanied by a musical simulcast from KISS FM 98.1. PIER 39 has the best viewing area on the bay! In addition, 39 of PIER 39’s businesses will remain open after the fireworks so that guests can miss the traffic, enjoy the PIER, have a drink, get a bite to eat, and shop. Click here for the list of locations open after the fireworks. Sponsored by Crystal Geyser ALPINE SPRING WATER, DeLoach Vineyards, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, The San Francisco Examiner, Tawain Tourism and Asus.”
Well here she is, straight outta Fort Lauderdale, Florida via the Panama Canal, “steeped with prestige and elegance,” it’s 965 foot long Celebrity Infinity. Now you’d think that it’d have been nice for her to have stopped at Huatulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico as originally planned, but worries over the Swine Flu (2500 Americans alone, and counting) put the kibosh on that. Oh well.
Welcome passengers! Please empty your pockets and leave, as so many have done before you. (I keed. I keed because I love.) But seriously, stay as long as you’d like – go AWOL if you want. Just stay away from those darn exploding canisters. And stay away from the Internet that costs 50 cents per minute. Ouch.
A big boat that’s almost too much for our little city to handle:
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San Francisco’s Coit Tower is just like the Statue of Liberty, in the sense that you can get up top and look through the windows. You see? They have the same shape
This is the view that you’ll get from the top.
The people up there look like little ants scrambling around, huh? Click to expand:
Get up there soon as famous Action Consumer Troubleshooter (and Harvard-grad) Bill O’Reilly wants it to be blown up, apparently.
Wouldn’t that be FOXtastic?
You can thank the New Deal for the Coit Tower Murals on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The Marriott hotel chain thinks these images are worth a look, so check them out next time you’re in the area.
Worthy of note is this section from Coit Tower’s first floor shown below. Click to expand:
See how respectful everybody is of the paparazzi (Italian for “photojournalists”) rushing in avec tripod to make a little money off tragedy? That’s quite different from these days, when you can get Bjorked for simply saying hello.
Nowadays, if you point a camera at Seal (Mr. Heidi Klum) and try to greet him, he might ask why he would “shake hands with scum.” Ouch.
And whatever you do, don’t try snapping photos of Matthew McConaughey while he surfs down in Malibu. Cause the Malibu Pump House Gang just might mass up and take you out. (And let’s not even talk about Barbra Streisand’s place down there. By all means, shutterbugs, stay out of Malibu!)
Old Matt McC. must really hate the paps, as he cameo’ed in the dreadful Mel Gibson movie Paparazzi (directed by Mel’s hairstylist from Lethal Weapon!) back in ought-four. In fact, lots of stars must hate the paps, given the large number of famous people who appeared in this “amazingly arrogant, immoral film.”
But some of the less famous actually dream about being followed around by a paparazzo. So much so, that they even pay for the privilege. And you can do it also now that Celeb For A Day has a San Francisco office. It’s only $500 for half hour of snapping, so sign up today and bring back the happy times when everybody got along with the paparazzi. Hurray!
Some people think of Sausalito as a Portuguese fishing village and that’s kind of credible.
This atypical view of San Francisico with Sausalito in the background makes S.F. look a little like a village as well – evidence of Manhattanization is to the left, so all you see is basically the same as what you would have seen in the 1930’s.
Some people would like to construct tall buildings on the waterfront, but there’ll be a lot of fighting before that happens.
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