Sights in San Francisco
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Ruth Asawa Fountains
Sit inside the fountain, splash around and stay awhile: celebrated sculptor and former WWII internee Ruth Asawa designed these fountains to be lived in, not observed from a polite distance. Bronze origami dandelions sprout from polished-pebble pools, with benches built right in for bento-box picnics. On rare warm days along this wind-tunnel pedestrian block, kids frolic and weary shoppers enjoy footbaths under the dandelions.
reviewed
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SF Camerawork
Since 1974 this nonprofit organization has explored the experimental world of photo-based imagery beyond vintage black and white, including rotating exhibits such as Binh Danh’s ethereal portraits developed directly on leaves, Lars Laumann’s conspiracy-theory video collage of Morrissey from the Smiths apparently predicting Princess Diana’s death, and Matthew Geiger’s composite photos capturing commuter tide patterns in subways.
reviewed
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Mission High School
San Francisco’s most spectacular bell tower is the churrigueresque tiled tower of Mission High, built in the mission revival style from 1925 to 1927. This is one place where you might actually want to see a high-school musical – the theater has a glorious gold-leafed dome with deco chandeliers. The multiculti student body here is mostly African American and Latino, and its famous alumni include Maya Angelou and Carlos Santana.
reviewed
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Audium
Sit in total darkness as Stan Shaff plays his hour-plus compositions of sounds emitted by his sound chamber, which sometimes degenerate into 1970s sci-fi sound effects before resolving into oddly endearing Moog synthesizer wheezes. The Audium was specifically sculpted in 1962 to produce bizarre acoustic effects and eerie soundscapes that only a true stoner could enjoy for two solid hours.
reviewed
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Eleanor Harwood Gallery
Hidden on a residential Mission side street is this treasure-box showcase for Bay Area talents, including Francesca Pastine, who creates haunting drawings by blacking out newspaper column inches like a censor, leaving only the margins. The gallery's breakthrough stars include US Venice Biennale artist Emily Prince, whose daily drawings form poignantly personal catalogs: all the hats in her house, say, or all the US soldiers killed in Iraq.
reviewed
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Peace Pagoda
When San Francisco's sister city of Osaka, Japan, made a gift of Yoshiro Taniguchi's five-tiered concrete stupa to the people of San Francisco in 1968, the city seemed stupefied about what to do with the minimalist monument, and kept clustering boxed shrubs around its stark nakedness. But with some well-placed cherry trees and low, hewn-rock benches in the plaza, the pagoda is finally in its element, au naturel.
reviewed
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Harvey Milk Plaza
The first thing you’ll notice as you emerge from the Castro St Muni station is a huge, irrepressibly cheerful rainbow flag. Gay kids too young for the bars sit on the wall beneath; look closer and you’ll notice a plaque honoring the man whose lasting legacy to the Castro is civic pride and political clout. The ugly plaza may soon be redesigned to give Harvey more of a starring role.
reviewed
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Ferry Building
Hedonism is alive and well at this transit hub turned gourmet empor-ium, where foodies happily miss their ferries slurping local oysters and bubbly. Star chefs are frequently spotted at the farmers market that wraps around the building year-round.
reviewed
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United Nations Plaza
This vast brick-paved triangle commemorates the signing of the UN charter in San Francisco. It offers a clear view of City Hall, sundry Scientologists drumming up converts and the odd drug deal in progress. Thankfully, the wonderful Heart of the City Farmers Market provides a fresher perspective on the Tenderloin.
reviewed
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Embarcadero Center
If this really is San Francisco’s answer to Lincoln Center, that’s one round for New York. These skyscrapers joined by an overhead walkway form an urban sprawl of a mall, and the upper office floors have nothing to recommend them beyond the crowd-pleasing Embarcadero Center Cinema, the indie movie multiplex whose concessions counter is consistently rated the city’s best.
reviewed
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Electric Works
In the gallery/printmaking studio that calls itself 'The Land of Yes,' anything is possible – including David Byrne's diagrams revealing the overlap between hairstyles and long division, Talia Greene's portraits of Victorians with beards of swarming bees and Sandow Birk's modern take on Dante's Inferno, starring traffic-jammed LA as hell and San Francisco as a foggy purgatory. The small but select gallery store is what museum stores ought to be, with arty must-haves like beeswax crayons, Klein bottles, vintage Chinese toys dating from the Cultural Revolution and sculpted marble soda cans; the sale of some artist books and print editions benefit nonprofits.
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Gallery Paule Anglim
Here you’ll find marquee names like Tony Oursler, whose video projections of distorted faces grumble and squeak in the corner. But works by local upstarts threaten to steal the show, including Ala Ebtekar’s paintings of soldiers and storm clouds gathering on ancient Iranian prayer scriptures, and Bull Miletic’s video views of San Francisco from the perspective of a flitting butterfly.
reviewed
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Haas-Lilienthal House
A grand Queen Anne–style Victorian with its original period splendor c 1882, this family mansion looks like a Cluedo game come to life – Colonel Mustard could definitely have committed murder with a rope in the dark-wood ballroom, or Miss Scarlet with a candlestick in the red-velvet parlor. One-hour tours are led by volunteer docents devoted to Victoriana.
reviewed
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Arts Commission Gallery
Get in on the next art movement at this lobby-level public gallery featuring international perspectives and local talents. You never know what you might find. As well as hanging shows and hosting receptions in its gallery, the commission also sponsors wide-ranging works in the rotunda of City Hall.
reviewed
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Good Luck Parking Garage
Each parking spot at this garage comes with fortune-cookie wisdom stenciled onto the asphalt: 'The time is right to make new friends' or 'Stop searching forever – happiness is right next to you.' These omens are brought to you by artist Harrell Fletcher and co-conspirator Jon Rubin, who also gathered the vintage photographs of the Chinese and Italian ancestors of local residents that grace the entry tiles like heraldic emblems.
reviewed
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Justin Herman Plaza
The plaza across from the Ferry Building may not be much to look at – what’s Vaillancourt Fountain supposed to be, anyway, a cubist large intestine? – but for years Justin Herman has been popular with lunchtime concert-goers, Critical Mass protesters, ice-skaters at the outdoor rink in winter, and internet daters screening their dates from behind the fountain’s wall of water.
reviewed
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Church of St Mary the Virgin
You might expect to see this rustic arts and crafts building on the slopes of Tahoe instead of Pacific Heights, but this episcopal church is full of surprises. The structure dates from 1891, but the church has kept pace with its progressive-minded parish, with homeless community outreach and 'Unplugged' all-acoustic Sunday services led by hip young reverend Jennifer Hornbeck.
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Aquatic Park
Eccentricity along Fisherman’s Wharf is mostly staged, but here it’s the real deal: extreme swimmers dive from the concrete beachfront into the blood-curdling waters of the bay in winter, weirdos mumble conspiracy theories on the grassy knoll of panoramic Victoria Park, and wistful tycoons stare off into the distance and contemplate sailing far away from their Blackberries.
reviewed
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Cable Car Museum
Grips, engines, braking mechanisms…if terms like these warm your gearhead heart, you will be completely besotted with the Cable Car Museum, housed in the city's still-functioning cable car barn. See three original 1870s cable cars and watch as cables glide over huge bull wheels – as awesome a feat of physics now as when the mechanism was invented by Andrew Hallidie in 1873.
reviewed
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Cottage Row
Take a detour to days of yore, when San Francisco was a sleepy seaside fishing village and before houses got all uptight, upright and Victorian. Easygoing 19th-century California clapboard cottages hang back along a brick-paved pedestrian promenade and let plum trees and bonsai take center stage. The homes are private, but the minipark is public, ideal for a sushi picnic.
reviewed
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Creativity Explored
Brave new worlds are captured in celebrated artworks that have appeared in museum retrospectives, in major collections from New York to New Zealand and even on Marc Jacobs handbags – all by the local developmentally disabled artists who create at this nonprofit center. Intriguing themes range from superheroes to architecture, and openings are joyous celebrations with the artists, their families and rock-star fan base.
reviewed
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Beniamino Bufano's St Francis Statue
A winsome statue of SF’s favorite saint by its favorite sculptor – so what’s it doing in a parking lot? Technically this was only a model for Bufano’s massive black granite St Francis in Grace Cathedral, but there’s something so SF about this version with exposed toes hanging ten like a surfer. When looking for wharfside parking, divine guidance is mighty handy.
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Xanadu Gallery: Folk Art International
Shrink the Guggenheim and plop it inside a brick box with a sunken Romanesque archway, and there you have Frank Lloyd Wright's 1949 Circle Gallery Building, which since 1979 has been the home of Xanadu Gallery. The nautilus shell ramp in the atrium leads you on a world tour of high-end folk art, from Fijian war clubs to mounted nose ornaments from the Andes.
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Camera Obscura
Behind Cliff House is Camera Obscura , built in 1948-49 as part of the Playland at the Beach amusement area. The small building is decorated to look like a giant 35mm camera with its lens pointing to the sky. Inside, the Victorian invention (based on a 15th century design by Leonardo da Vinci) produces 360 degree 'projections' of the Seal Rock Area.
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Jack Kerouac Alley
Fans of On the Road and Dharma Bums will appreciate how fitting it is that Kerouac's namesake alleyway offers a poetic and slightly seedy shortcut between Chinatown and North Beach via favorite Kerouac haunts, City Lights bookstore and Vesuvio – Kerouac took his books, Buddhism and drink to heart.
reviewed