Listen up, taggers. Here’s one of the vehicles they send to censor all your public art. This thing must be loaded up with every color of paint imaginable - it’s huge.
Now, wouldn’t it be a score for you to tag this giant rolling canvas - you know, poetic justice and all?
This thing is your white whale – keep an eye out:
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And look what they do with that truck – they paint over your scribblings just as soon as you put them up, leaving only a ”wet paint” sign. Thusly:
Courage.
Like these guys.
It would take forever to make it up the stairs to the top of controversial landmark Sutro Tower, so a swaying elevator car is the preferred method.
Click to expand to get a closer look at a sunnier, more colorful San Francisco:
Take the tour.
This is how the Holiday Tree in front of San Francisco City Hall was lit at night last year:
Via Steve Rhodes, who, like Visa, is Everywhere You Want To Be.
But all that color in Civic Center offended certain WASP-y type people. People like Thurston Howell III et ux Lovey:
So here are the expensive new lights for 2009, or some of them anyway. These colorless lights cost $13,500, per City Insder Rachel Gordon.
That ought to placate the richers for a while.
But couldn’t Rec and Park have put this matter to a vote, maybe online using that social media and whatnot? A penniless blogger could throw up a voting system in about five minutes – can’t Rec and Park do the same? This isn’t a matter of health or safety, right? So it seems appropriate that the Gilligans, Professors and the Mary Anns should have a say as well. Why do we seem to only listen to the Howells?
Oh well.
For 2009 anyway, enjoy your boring, WASPy-white, star-free Christmas Tree, San Francisco. But don’t give up Hope for Change (is that a “traditional” train ’round the tree R&P?) next year.
I don’t know, these polar bears at first looked to be part of some art installation, but it turns out that that’s just the way the managers of the buildings at 555 and 575 Market Street decorate for Our Winter Holiday.
O.K. fine. But Chevron’s an oil company, right? Most of the employees shipped out to San Ramon a while back, but are there a few left up there?
Oh well. Presenting the Bear of the Decade and Symbol of Global Warming, Ursus maritimus:
This one looks a bit weasly (or ferret-ty), huh?
Enjoy your polar bears, workers at Chevron Towers….
I don’t know, I think this bunny is up to something:
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Not that you’d really be able to tell, though. Sutro Tower Inc. has just finished a project that had some of the digital TV broadcast antennas (not “antennae” – that plural term is only used for bugs in our silly English language) gaining a higher altitude.
Not much howver, maybe a seven-percent increase, max. Does that make a big difference? No, not for most people, but at least STI is trying.
Here’s the antenna of KPIX-TV (OMG, that’s the home of Eye on Blogs – big ups, Brittney Gilbert!) a way up top, like 1700 feet above sea level. Now Channel 5 is as high as possible:
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The Future is Now, and what’s labeled “CURRENT” is history:
From this:
To this:
Well, they were still wrapping the KPIX, KRON, KTVU antenna assembly, but you get the idea.
So it looks like we’re all set with the Great Digital TV Conversion of 2009. As long as Sutro Tower doesn’t get hit by a shooting star….
…we’ll be all right.
Phone books – they’re useless, right? What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. I’ll say it again. Hooot! Absolutely nothing.
So let’s hear it for Dr. Leland Yee, Ph.D, Assistant Senate President pro Tempore Extraordinaire, the fightingest Senator in California, as he takes on the Telephone Book Industry on behalf of The People.
A brief wait on the doorstep for a few days until someone puts all these things into the recycling:
Your days are numbered, you mandatory telephone books.
Read all about it:
San Mateo County Leaders and Environmental Advocates Call for Consumer Choice on White Pages
Yee and Papan: Mandatory delivery of white pages wastes paper, energy, and scarce local government resources
SACRAMENTO – Following the successful efforts of Cleveland, Ohio and Miami, Florida, California could become the largest jurisdiction to give telephone customers a choice in receiving the white pages directory. Today, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) and Millbrae Councilwoman Gina Papan announced they will pursue state legislation to prohibit telephone companies from delivering the white pages unless the customer opts-in to receiving it.
“The requirement that phone companies must deliver the white pages comes from an era before the internet and other means of obtaining phone numbers,” said Yee. “At a time when Californians are looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint, we should give them that choice, particularly when very few customers still use the white pages.”
“Ending the unnecessary distribution of the white pages is a step forward that we can take at the local level to address the global issue of climate change. I am proud to take the lead on this issue to help save the environment and reduce local recycling costs,” said Millbrae City Councilmember Gina Papan. “I would like to thank Senator Yee for his responsiveness in taking on this important legislation on our behalf.”
All the deets, after the jump
Well this is how some massive support columns are now decorated at the University of California, San Francisco medical school these days.
As seen from Parnassus Avenue:
It looks to be a collection of shots of students from over the past hundred years – could it be the Student Photo Project? Maybe, but the S.P.P. goes on about “the three primary colors*, red, yellow and blue” that they were going to use and this installation is just black and white.
Anyway, it looks great. Keep up the good work, students of UCSF.
Old school! The way it looked back in 1908:
*Yes, I remember first grade as well, but it was all a lie – red, yellow and blue are not “the” primary colors, they are just one group of primaries, and they aren’t so hot in that role, anyway. Or, as Wiki so diplomatically opines, the RYB color model “predates modern scientific theory.” Harsh. Harsh but fair.
[UPDATE: Just discovered that Mr. Greg Dewar posted about this very issue yesterday.]
Well of course the 17 photos used for this standard one-minute commercial on YouTube were PhotoShopped – I mean they’re all black-and-white, so most likely they were converted from color using Adobe’s awesome B&W converter, or something similar. Fine, lots of contrast there, so they look good. But what about the sign that says “Constitutional Convention!” that appears at around :27?
Was it there in real life, or was it added in after the fact, added in to reflect the focus of the TV spot - California’s nascent movement for a new constitutional convention. Or, as mattymatt asks:
“What’s with the Photoshopped sign at 0:25?”
Click to expand:
Look at Gallagher over there on the right, dude wearing the natty cap. He has two signs? What’s holding up his “Constitutional Convention!” sign? Would you hold two signs like that? Is the higher sign glued to his fingers or something? Why is Our Mayor in focus, along with the sign, but nothing else? Does Gallagher’s left thumb go through the lower sign?
Here’s a close-up view. Like, why is the lower right corner of the higher sign in sharp focus when the lower sign appears to be out of focus?
Now, if the person making this video spot diduse Photoshop and maybe made up a sign to fit the commercial, then s/he would have most likely have used the Horizontal Type Tool. Now isn’t it funny that some of the more recent versions of PhotoShop (like CS2 and CS3) use Myriad (out of scores of options), as the default font and Myriad is the very same font as in the sign?
Rather interesting, non? (And by the way, Dan, that Plastic Planes bit you had a couple years back about the “unsafe” composite Boeing 787 Dreamliner? You’re totally wrong on that one.) Anyway, my PS defaults to Myriad Pro, so this is what you get when you start typing away and then center the result:
I don’t know, maybe it’s a real sign that just happened to be created with Photoshop – that would go a long way to explaining part of the mystery.
In conclusion, that sign look’s a little funny to me, and it looks a little funny to people (who, unlike me, actually know how to use PhotoShop) on the YouTube.
But, as always, You Make The Call.
New San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón is becoming known for donning a suit more often than a uniform, per this bit from CW Nevius. Now the last time we had a chief like that was from 1975-1980, when “outsider” Charles Gain ran the SFPD.
Did Chief Gain really have all of San Francisco’s police cars painted soft pale blue and did he really replace the seven-pointed SFPD stars on the doors with the San Francisco Seal avec an encircling ”POLICE SERVICES” motif?
Yes, yes he did. How friendly!
Can you imagine?
Looks like the seven-pointed star made it onto the trunks, though. As seen in Milk:
Now what do you think the union thought about that? Not much.
Mayor Dianne Feinstein asked for his resignation in 1979 after the White Night Riots and he was replaced in 1980.
And now San Francisco’s “black-and-whites” are black and white again, with stars and everything.
Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
