the Rose Garden at Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, California
San Francisco
Two More Weeks
The dining room.
“There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.” – Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
Ocean Beach: the Edge of the World
Ocean Beach, as seen from Sutro Heights
It’s exactly two miles from my house to Ocean Beach (my Strava app tells me so). Every weekend I make the short run, ending up at the north end of the Great Highway near the Cliff House (today I beat my record: 9-minute miles – hurray! A special thank-you to my running partners, stress and angst).
The wall, looking northeast.
The wall, looking northwest to the Cliff House.
Ocean Beach is not initially beautiful. At least it wasn’t to me, the girl who grew up in Hawaii. There’s a huge, graffiti-covered (only on one side, thankfully) concrete wall that spans the entire length of the beach. It’s supposed to keep sand dunes from piling up on the Great Highway. Still, every summer the highway shuts down for the annual sand removal, a project that moves approximately 7,000 to 10,000 cubic yards of sand (source: SFGate).
Another view of the Cliff House.
Even without the eyesore, there’s the weather. The beach is cloudy or foggy or cold or windy or all of the above 360 days of the year. But… like everything else in this town, it’s grown on me. I love how vast it feels, how uncrowded (when it’s a nice day, you know it. Everyone flocks to the beach), how rugged, even how grey (I mean, crashing waves at the edge of the world are pretty amazing, whether the sun is shining on them or not).
I’m beginning to think San Francisco can make anything beautiful. The old homeless man sitting on a park bench I passed this morning. The abandoned beer bottles I found last week. Maybe my stress level is so high that I’m not thinking clearly (I think I AM a tad delusional right now, let’s be honest). But I think more than that, I just want to love my town as much as I can in these last couple of weeks.
One of the lessons that San Francisco has taught me (and it’s taught me many) is to look beyond. To look beyond myself, to look beyond first impressions, beyond stereotypes, beyond the hype…to look beyond the concrete wall and the fog, to find the beautiful crashing waves of Ocean Beach.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside
Weekly Photo Challenge: Perspective
Okay, y’all. I’m doing it. The Weekly Photo Challenge. For those of my non-blogging Followers (and I have a bunch – love you guys!), the challenge is announced by WordPress (the host of my blog) each Friday. The purpose of the challenge is to spark creativity, but it also gives us the opportunity to see others’ interpretations of the theme.
SO… because I can’t help myself and because I have nothing better to do (like maybe pack up a house in less than a month and no, I haven’t started)…basically, because I am out of my mind crazy, I’ve decided to play. I’d never call myself a photographer and don’t have any other camera except my iPhone (wish), but what I love about this game is that there’s no right answer and anyone can play.
Above is a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. And below, the original photo. I took it several months ago while hanging out with the girls at San Francisco’s Baker Beach.
Homes on Laurel Heights
Laurel Heights is a small San Francisco neighborhood just south of the Presidio National Park. It’s one of the city’s wealthier areas, which means beautiful, well-maintained homes and impeccable landscaping.
I had some time between doctor appointments last week (most of Laurel Heights sits just above CPMC, one of the main hospitals in town, and several other medical buildings), so I went for a short run in the Presidio and then walked through the neighborhood (where I took these photos).
San Francisco buildings, especially the Victorian and Edwardian ones, are distinct, unique and quirky. And one of the things I’m going to miss the most.
Pointes of View 