San Francisco : North Shoreline : Presidio
jeudi 18 septembre 2008
mercredi 17 septembre 2008
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dimanche 14 septembre 2008
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Alamo Square
San Francisco : Alamo Square
The demographics of the neighborhood are characteristic of other urban neighborhoods that have undergone gentrification: many young people and upper-middle-class homeowners, in addition to a diverse older population. Divisadero Street, which divides Alamo Square from North Panhandle, is home to a number of small businesses including a growing collection of hip and popular restaurants and bars. Efforts on the part of Alamo Square and North Panhandle residents and merchants have led to restrictions on chain stores on the corridor. Relics of a less-prosperous recent history also remain on Divisadero, including a number of vacant storefronts (notably the Harding Theater, closed for many years but valued by its neighbors for its potential) and one of the city's few clusters of gas stations.
A number of movies, television shows and commercials have been filmed in or around Alamo Square[1]. The opening sequence of the American sitcom Full House (1987–1995) features a romp in Alamo Square Park with the famous row of Victorians in the background.
Neighborhood groups include the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association and the Haight-Divisadero Neighborhood Merchants Association
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lundi 8 septembre 2008
Alamo Square
San Francisco : Alamo Square
Alamo Square is a residential neighborhood and park in San Francisco, California. Both are located in the Western Addition, a part of the city's fifth Supervisorial district, and are served by several Muni bus lines including the 5, 21, 22, and 24.
Alamo Square Park consists of six city blocks at the top of a hill overlooking much of San Francisco, with a number of large and architecturally distinctive mansions along the perimeter. It is bordered by Hayes Street to the south, Fulton Street to the north, Scott Street to the west, and Steiner Street to the east. The park includes a playground and a tennis court, and is frequented by neighbors, tourists, and dog owners. A row of Victorian houses facing the park on Steiner Street, known as the painted ladies, are often shown in the foreground of panoramic pictures of the city's downtown area. On a clear day, the Transamerica Pyramid building and the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge can be seen from the park’s center. San Francisco’s City Hall can be seen directly down Fulton Street.
The part of the Western Addition surrounding the park is often referred to as the Alamo Square neighborhood. Its boundaries are not well-defined, but are generally considered to be Webster Street on the east, Golden Gate Avenue on the north, Divisadero Street on the west, and Oak Street on the south. It is characterized by Victorian architecture that was left largely untouched by the urban renewal projects in other parts of the Western Addition. The Alamo Square area contains the second largest concentration of large homes (over 10,000 square feet) in San Francisco, after the Pacific Heights neighborhood.
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dimanche 7 septembre 2008
samedi 6 septembre 2008
vendredi 5 septembre 2008
cathedral of st mary of the assumption
San Francisco : cathedral of st mary of the assumption
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, also known locally as Saint Mary's Cathedral, is the principal church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco in San Francisco, California. It is the mother church of the Catholic faithful in the California Counties of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo and is the metropolitan cathedral for the Ecclesiastical province of San Francisco. The rector of the cathedral is Father John Talesfore.
The cathedral is located in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption replaced two previous churches of the same name successively. The first original cathedral was built in 1854 and still stands today and is now known as Old Saint Mary's Church. In 1891, a second cathedral was constructed but was destroyed in a fire in 1962. The present-day cathedral was commissioned just as Vatican II was convening in Rome. Prescriptions of the historic church council allowed the Archdiocese of San Francisco to plan boldly in the building of its new cathedral. That resulted in the modern design of the present structure. The cornerstone was laid on December 13, 1967 and the cathedral was completed three years later. On May 5, 1971, the cathedral was blessed and on October 5, 1996 was formally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the name of Saint Mary of the Assumption. The first papal mass was celebrated by Pope John Paul II in the cathedral in 1987.
It ran the private all-female Cathedral High School, in a building ajoined to the present-day Cathedral itself. CHS merged with nearby all-male private Sacred Heart High School in 1987. St. Mary's Cathedral still has close ties to the resulting Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, which uses the Cathedral as its principal church for masses and other special events, such as graduation.
The cathedral is located in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption replaced two previous churches of the same name successively. The first original cathedral was built in 1854 and still stands today and is now known as Old Saint Mary's Church. In 1891, a second cathedral was constructed but was destroyed in a fire in 1962. The present-day cathedral was commissioned just as Vatican II was convening in Rome. Prescriptions of the historic church council allowed the Archdiocese of San Francisco to plan boldly in the building of its new cathedral. That resulted in the modern design of the present structure. The cornerstone was laid on December 13, 1967 and the cathedral was completed three years later. On May 5, 1971, the cathedral was blessed and on October 5, 1996 was formally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the name of Saint Mary of the Assumption. The first papal mass was celebrated by Pope John Paul II in the cathedral in 1987.
It ran the private all-female Cathedral High School, in a building ajoined to the present-day Cathedral itself. CHS merged with nearby all-male private Sacred Heart High School in 1987. St. Mary's Cathedral still has close ties to the resulting Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, which uses the Cathedral as its principal church for masses and other special events, such as graduation.
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jeudi 4 septembre 2008
mercredi 3 septembre 2008
mardi 2 septembre 2008
Japan Town : Japan Center
San Francisco : Japan Town : Japan Center
San Francisco's Japantown is the largest and oldest such enclave in the United States. However, it is only a shadow of what it once was before World War II. Presently there are only two other Japantowns in the United States.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government took Japanese Americans into custody and interned them in concentration camps, while many large sections of the neighborhood remained vacant. The void was quickly filled by thousands of African Americans who had left the South to find wartime industrial jobs in California. Following the war, some Japanese Americans returned, followed by new Japanese immigrants as well as investment from the Japanese Government and Japanese companies.
The city made efforts to rejuvenate the neighborhood; as a result of the massive redevelopment initiated by Justin Herman in the Western Addition in the 1960s through the 1980s, large numbers of African Americans were pushed west towards the Fillmore District, east towards the Tenderloin, or south towards Hunters Point where the majority of the city's African-American population resides today.
In 1957, San Francisco entered in a sister city relationship with the city of Osaka, hence the nickname "Little Osaka". Osaka is San Francisco's oldest sister city. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of this relationship, one block of Buchanan Street, in Japantown, was renamed Osaka Way on 8 September 2007.
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lundi 1 septembre 2008
Japan Town : Japan Center
san francisco : Japan Town : Japan Center
Japantown (also known as "Nihonmachi" (ja: 日本町), "Little Osaka," and "J Town") comprises about six square city blocks in the Western Addition of San Francisco. The area is home to a large number of Japanese (and some Korean and Chinese) restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks and other shops, including one of the few U.S. branches of the large Kinokuniya bookstore chain. The main thoroughfare is Post Street. Its focal point is the Japan Center (opened in 1968), the site of three Japanese-oriented shopping centers and the Peace Pagoda, a five-tiered concrete stupa designed by Japanese architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan
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dimanche 31 août 2008
samedi 30 août 2008
vendredi 29 août 2008
Oceanfront : cliff house
Oceanfront : cliff house
Cliff House has had five major incarnations since its beginnings in 1858. That year, Samuel Brannan, a prosperous ex-Mormon elder from Maine, bought for $1,500 the lumber salvaged from a ship that foundered on the basalt cliffs below. With this material he built the first Cliff House. The second Cliff house was built for Captain Junius G. Foster, but it was a long trek from the city and hosted mostly horseback riders, small game hunters or picnickers on day outings. With the opening of the Point Lobos toll road a year later, the Cliff House became successful with the Carriage trade for Sunday travel. The builders of the toll road constructed a two mile speedway beside it where well-to-do San Franciscans raced their horses along the way. On weekends, there was little room at the Cliff House hitching racks for tethering the horses for the thousands of rigs. Soon, omnibus railways and streetcar lines made it to near Lone Mountain where passengers transferred to stagecoach lines to the beach. The growth of Golden Gate Park attracted beach travelers in search of meals and a look at the Sea Lions sunning themselves on Seal Rock, just off the cliffs to visit the area.
In 1877, the toll road, now Geary Boulevard, was purchased by the City for around $25,000. In 1883, after a few years of downturn, the Cliff House was bought by Adolph Sutro who had solved the problems of ventilating and draining the mines of the Comstock Lode and become a multimillionaire. After a few years of quiet management by J.M. Wilkens, the Cliff House was severely damaged by an explosion of the schooner, Parallel, that went aground under the reasons of dynamite. The blast was heard a hundred miles away and demolished the entire north wing of the tavern. Seven years later, on Christmas 1894 the patched and repaired old building burned down. Wilkens was unable to save the guest register, which included the signatures of three Presidents and dozens of illustrious world-famous visitors.
In 1896, Adolph Sutro built a new Cliff House, a seven story Victorian Chateau, called by some "the Gingerbread Palace", below his estate on the bluffs of Sutro Heights. This was the same year work began on the famous Sutro Baths, which included six of the largest indoor swimming pools north of the Restaurant that included a museum, skating rink and other pleasure grounds. Great throngs of San Franciscans arrived on steam trains, bicycles, carts and horse wagons on Sunday excursions.
The Cliff House and Sutro Baths survived the 1906 earthquake with little damage but burned to the ground on the evening of September 7, 1907. Rebuilding of the restaurant was completed within two years and, with additions and modern restorations, is the one seen today.
Cliff House in background, past Sutro Bath Ruins, 2008.
The building was acquired by the National Park Service in 1977 and it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The site overlooks the Seal Rock and the former site of the Sutro Baths. More than thirty ships have been pounded to pieces on the southern shore of the Golden Gate below the Cliff House.
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jeudi 28 août 2008
Oceanfront : cliff house
Oceanfront : cliff house
The Cliff House is a restaurant perched on the headlands on the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach on the western side of San Francisco, California. It overlooks the site of the former Sutro Baths and is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, operated by the National Park Service.
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mercredi 27 août 2008
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Castro District : Castro Street - 24th street
Castro District : castro str -24th Sttr
Castro Street was named for José Castro (1808–1860), a leader of Mexican opposition to U.S. rule in California in the 19th century, and governor of Alta California from 1835-1836. The neighborhood now known as the Castro was born in 1887 when the Market Street Cable Railway built a line linking Eureka Valley to downtown.
From 1910 to 1920, the Castro was known as "Little Scandinavia" on account of the number of people of Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish ancestry who lived there. A Finnish bathhouse (Finilla's) dating from this period was located behind the Cafe Flore on Market Street until 1986. The Cove on Castro diner used to be called The Norse Cove. The Scandinavian Seamen's Union was near 15th Street and Market, just around the corner from the Swedish-American Hall which remains in the district. Scandinavian-style "half-timber" construction can still be seen in some of the buildings along Market Street between Castro and Church Streets.
The Castro became a working-class Irish neighborhood in the 1930s and remained so until the mid-1960s.
According to Morgan Spurlock, who filmed "Straight Man in a Gay World", a 2005 episode of his documentary TV series 30 Days in the Castro, the U.S. military offloaded thousands of gay servicemen in San Francisco during World War II after they were discharged for being homosexuals. Many settled in the Castro, and this began the influx of homosexuals to the Castro neighborhood.
The Castro came of age as a gay center following the controversial Summer of Love in the neighboring Haight-Ashbury district in 1967. The gathering brought tens of thousands of middle-class youth from all over the United States. The neighborhood, previously known as Eureka Valley, became known as the Castro, after the landmark theatre by that name near the corner of Castro and Market Streets.
By 1975, Harvey Milk had opened a camera store there, and began political involvement as a gay activist, further contributing to the notion of the Castro as a gay destination. Some of the culture of the late 1970s included what was termed the "Castro Clone," a mode of dress and personal grooming -- tight denim pants, black combat boots, tight T-shirt, possibly a red plaid flannel outer shirt, and usually sporting a mustache or full beard -- in vogue with the gay male population at the time, and which gave rise to the nickname "Clone Canyon" for the stretch of Castro Street between 18th and Market Streets. There were numerous famous watering holes in the area, contributing to the nightlife, including the Corner Grocery Bar, the Norse Cove, the Pendulum, the Midnight Sun, Twin Peaks, and the Elephant Walk. A typical daytime street scene of the period is perhaps best illustrated by mentioning the male belly dancers who could be found holding forth in good weather at the corner of 18th and Castro, on "Hibernia Beach," in front of the financial institution from which it drew its name. Then at night, after the bars closed at 2 AM, the men remaining at that hour often would line up along the sidewalk of 18th Street to indicate that they were still available to go home with someone.
The area was hit hard by the AIDS/HIV crisis of the 1980s. Beginning in 1984, city officials began a crackdown on bathhouses and launched initiatives that aimed to prevent the spread of AIDS. Kiosks lining Market Street and Castro Street now have posters promoting safe sex and testing right alongside those advertising online dating services.
Straight families are moving into the Castro at an accelerating pace
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