NASA just posted a photo from the last Space Shuttle flight. It’s big, like 4000 pixels.
Here are some annotations. (The white line is the mighty San Andreas fault.)
Click to expand.“This image featuring the San Francisco Bay area was recorded with a still camera using a 180-mm lens by one of the Expedition 26 crew members aboard the International Space Station, flying 220 miles above Earth.”
And here’s the plain version at 1800 pixels:
Surf’s up.
See?
(Looks like something a cult would build…)
This thing is huge. Look for it in the southwest corner of the park:
Click to expand
Views From The Thicket has the deets.
Will this work be completed by the end of summer?
Will the Murphy Windmill eventually become a restaurant?
We’ll see.
Oh, and here’s the view from inside from a half-decade back. Spooky.
Bon Courage, Moulin à Vent du Murphy!
Sunday Streets Great Highway 2011 II on July 10 worked out all right, with generally sunny skies in the east and generally cloudy skies in the west.
Although some, like The Tender found today’s event in the West Bay sad:
“Sunday Streets at Golden Gate Park & the Great Highway was a bit sad – foggy, windy, not many people… Also: http://t.co/aCWQhit“
Didn’t seem like a whole bunch of people this go around, but oh well.
Dog #1:
Dog #2:
Dancing – Lindy in the Park:
David #1, Chiu to be precise – he’s running for Mayor or something. (D.C. won the Mayoral race today, Sundays Streetswise. Saw some people from the Dennis Herrera and John Avalos campaigns as well.) That’s famous Public Bikes Founder Dan Nguyen-Tan‘s famous orange Funcycle in there – it seats seven:
David #2, Onek to be precise – he’s running for District Attorney or something:
Dude #1, It’s Mark Lukach (plus Dog #3) repping the always-reliable Ocean Beach Bulletin. OBB in the Hizzy:
And Dude #2, piloting the Famous 415 Quadricycle:
Dune Rolling:
AT&T sent its youngest employees to hand out shopping bags. They were gathering pro-utility box petitions for U-Verse / LightSpeed, I think:
But life went on in the West Bay regardless. So the Beach Chalet was serving a full house:
And the surfers were surfing. “00:43:17 Look at that. Breaks both ways. Watch. Watch. 00:43:20 Look! Good six-
And the Segwayers were Segwaying:
Hurray!
See?
The Beach Chalet / Park Chalet parking lot in the foreground and the Ocean Beach parking lot in the background with the Great Highway inbetwixt, as seen over the Fourth of the July weekend, 2011:
Click to expand
Oh, there were a few people at the beach as well:
See you next year!
So why did we give land to the Feds for them to take care of if we don’t want them to take care of it?
What makes us special that we need an exemption from federal rules, an exemption that nobody in America outside of the bay area expects?
That’s the Question of the Day.
A snowy plover on Ocean Beach _not_ being harassed by a dog:
Now, Ocean Beach Dog, ooh, somebody over there got an off-leash ticket from the Feds a looooong time ago. (Can you guess what year by looking at the website design? Sure you can.) Oh well. Well, the Feds don’t like Ocean Beach Dog and people what behave like Ocean Beach Dog. The Feds consider us Whacko City, USA because of outfits like OBD, oh well.
Most dogs don’t bother the boids, of course. Can you see the snowy plover?
But some dogs do harass the birds. (These aren’t actually snowy plovers near Lawton and the Great Highway but the dogs don’t know or care about that.)
(Get those Ocean Beach birds, good boy!)
And here’s the sitch up in Crissy Field:
See the birds, see the unleashed dog?
Is is surprising to you that an unleashed dog could find and chase these plovers?
Oh well.
On It Goes
But look out for them tankers and container ships…
Click to expand
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management is up early today, concerned about a possible small tsunami hitting San Francisco due to the recent 8.9 earthquake near Sendai, Japan.
Per Capt. Richard Corriea of Richmond Station:
“Officers have closed the Great Highway to vehicle traffic between Balboa and Skyline Blvd. Please avoid the area.”
And Mayor Edwin Lee will be at our Emergency Operations Center bright and early this A.M. as well.
Deets below.
This went out at 6:17 AM today:
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, March 11, 2011
Contact: Department of Emergency Management
*** PRESS RELEASE ***
SAN FRANCISCO CONTINUES TO MONITOR TSUNAMI WARNING
Precautionary Closure of Beaches and Great Highway
San Francisco, CA – The City and County of San Francisco continues to monitor the Tsunami warning issued this morning and is assessing risks to California Coastal areas. As a precaution, the Police Department has closed the upper and lower Great Highway and the National Park Service has closed Ocean Beach, Baker Beach, China Beach, and Fort Funston.
This is in response to the 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan, which caused a tsunami warning to be issued for the US West Coast, the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management (DEM) has activated the City’s Emergency Operations Center. DEM is currently in contact with the California Emergency Management Agency.
The City has not ordered an evacuation. Residents are advised to monitor local media for information updates.”
UPDATE: And here’s his statement:
Mayor Edwin M. Lee today issued the following statement regarding the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan:
“On behalf of the residents of the City and County of San Francisco, I extend our deepest condolences to the people of Japan and to the families and friends of those affected by the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck there today.
Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives have been impacted by this tragedy. I have contacted the Counsel General of Japan in San Francisco with our expression of sympathy and our willingness to join any international assistance effort.
We will continue to monitor the tsunami warnings that have been issued for the California coastal regions and act accordingly. This is a stark reminder to our City that we must always be prepared for the next disaster to ensure our families are safe.”
Actually, I think that’s the problem, outfits like SFDog are worried that people will start to get (more) tickets for walking doggies off-leash on federal land.
A snowy plover on Ocean Beach not being harassed by a dog:
Now, Ocean Beach Dog, ooh, somebody over there got an off-leash ticket from the Feds a looooong time ago. (Can you guess what year by looking at the website design? Sure you can.) Oh well.
Most dogs don’t bother the boids, of course:
But some do. (These aren’t actually snowy plovers near Lawton and the Great Highway but the dogs don’t know or care about that.)
(Get those Ocean Beach birds, good boy!)
So why did we give land to the Feds for them to take care of if we don’t want them to take care of it?
What makes us special that we need an exemption from federal rules, an exemption that nobody outside of the bay area expects?
That’s the question of the day.
UPDATE: Here’s more from up in the Crissy Field area and here’s the recent bit from the Chronicle that has more details
Or maybe it’s just the Outer Sunset, the Outset, that’s “bleak?”
The view from Golden Gate Heights, more or less, after rain clears. Basically, it’s the Inner Sunset
Click to expand
Sugarloaf is whiter, so it shows up better than Southeast Farallon proper.
That big underwater nuclear waste dump is just to left of Southeast Farallon, the Big Island. From Hunters Point with love:
But we haven’t dumped 55 gallon drums there since 1970, so that’s good, right?
Anyway, at least the air is clean…
Here it is, a small, locally-sourced photo essay from photographer Lianne Milton at NYT.com. There it is in the TRAVEL section right next to A Weekend in Cambridge, England:
“In San Francisco, a Bleak Neighborhood Is Revived” by Rachel Levin
(They could have said “once-bleak” I suppose. Anyway…)
Get all the deets at the Bay Area Observer.
And they have a woodshop out there too?
“The Outer Sunset: It’s Not Just Halfway, Grow, and Cat Houses Anymore!”
