Joy Unconfined

A trip to SF, twice in one month.

Photos from trip #1

Views at Cable Car Coffee cafe.

Street performer, tapping away.

The wild ride up the crazy fast elevator of the Westin St. Francis. (Note the smiley face reflected in the first photo. Cheap exhilaration… just get in the elevator.)

The back of the heart sculpture near Union Square. The front has a scene painted on it. I like the back better. I tend to appreciate pure hearts, rather than complicated and corrupted ones.

Beautiful.

Isn’t she? The next five years could REALLY be trouble.

Big boat framed by big arch. Crappy phone photo of it.

Threatening to send the podling to Alcatraz. She was bored by the idea.

Musee Mechanique. We found fun things, and blew $5 in quarters. I SHOULD have taken photos of our favorite old arcade machines… the English Execution and the French Execution. Like mother, like daughter. We dig the macabre, even when it’s 100 years old and pretty tame by today’s standards. But these machines were cool, too. Imagine seeing all the moving parts of this mechanical horse at the turn of the 20th century. It might have seemed nearly miraculous.

And the principles of early animation and moving pictures. A flip-book on wheel.

We called him the tinsel man. Shiny and holographic, he had a voice changer/amplifier on his belt. He danced to the music of the thumpy car stereo driving by.

Photos from trip #2

I got to see the Chihuly art glass exhibit at the de Young. Crappy iphone photos don’t do it justice, so I didn’t take many. And there were too many people there for me to be able to really enjoy the art as I’d have liked. I did stand directly beneath the chandeliers and stare straight up so they filled my entire field of vision. Better perspective. I wanted to lay on the floor in the room where all the pieces were in the ceiling. I enjoy best when I’m overwhelmed. But everywhere you looked there was a shadowy body in the way, people rudely pushing past to get in front of you, blank stares and wide-eyed obliviousness to anyone but themselves. At least they were enjoying it. Then, when we got outside, no one was looking at the lighted sculpture in the Pool of Enchantment. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t realize it, too, was by the artist, or perhaps they’d had enough brightly colored glass for the evening.

It was still quite lovely, and I appreciate the opportunity I was given to see it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 7:27 pm and is filed under miscellanea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.