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Luba Muzichenko San Francisco Real Estate

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SF Realtor Photo Friday

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – Barbary Coast (1913)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

It’s been a busy busy week!  And it’s going to be a busy busy weekend!  I’ve been hustling to get several listings ready for market and helping several buyers on deadlines to buy homes in San Francisco.  So being that I need a little break, this week’s Photo Friday post is all about trying to break out of the daily grind have a good time.

Back in 1913, the Barbary Coast had calmed down a bit from it’s earlier days of gambling, prostitution and crime.  But it hadn’t calmed down THAT much:

NEWSCOPY:  “Such goings on! Deah, Deah! Good folks talked about the old Barbary Coast in the same way they do today, and with better reason. This is a busy street scene east of Kearny st., on Pacific, with the sin and gin mills going full blast to make the ‘hot spot of the world’ a bit hotter and more worldly.”

Even if you can’t get your hands on a Schlitz for a nickel, you can get out there and have a good time this weekend.  You can always find something to do in the City!  Be safe and have fun and have a happy Friday!

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – Ocean Beach Cleanup (1948)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

The word around the weather channels is that this weekend is going to be NICE in the City!  Today, the weather is supposed to hit the mid 80’s in parts of SF.

And when the weather heats up around SF,  people in flock to Ocean Beach to cool down.  Unfortunately, these same beachgoers bring with them trash, bottles, cigarette butts and general filth.  A photo I took with my cameraphone on a hot April day gives you an idea of the aftermath. 

And apparently, people have been trashing the beach since long before I was born. 

Today’s Photo Friday shows the “Sand Cleanup Machine!”  The newscopy that went with the photo in 1948:

“BEACH CLEANUP STARTS-There shouldn’t be any broken glass, cigaret [sic] butts or other annoying refuse in the sands of Ocean Beach any more, now that the city’s new sifting and cleaning machine is in action. The device, which cost $9433, went to work yesterday afternoon. It will take a month to go through all the sand from the zoo to the Cliff House.”

Hmmm… I’m not sure how well the machine really worked, but if people trashed the beach then like they do now, I’m guessing that machine wore out after just a few days of cleaning. 

Anyhow – it’s too nice outside to be writing long blog posts, so this about wraps things up for the day.  Get out there and enjoy the nice weather!

Oh, and please, if you do come to the beach to escape from the heat in the rest of the City, please – be coureous and take your trash with you when you leave. 

Thanks and Happy Friday! 🙂

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – West Portal Tunnel (1920)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

I swear – it seems that more and more often, idiots people are driving their cars right into the MUNI tunnel at West Portal Station.  In fact, there was ald 87 year old woman who did it yesterday, there was a drunk guy that did it a few months ago. 

The tunnel was built in 1918, and contrary to what it seems is becoming popular belief, it was always meant for streetcars. 

Over the years, the West Portal area, like most of San Francisco, has gone through a major transformation.  When this photo was taken, the area was just starting to be developed by local self-made developer Fernando Nelson.  By the 1930’s, West Portal Avenue had come to look similar to the way it looks today, with little shops that line the avenue.  By the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was determined that San Francisco needed to improve its public transportation (as if that still isn’t the case today) and so the old West Portal tunnel was demolished and in 1976, a new one was built in its place, along with the surrounding metro station. 

And it’s been there ever since.  The tunnel, people, is just for streetcars.  Please, please, please stop trying to drive through it! 

Have a good weekend, and if you’re driving, please, try to remember to stay on the road and out of MUNI tunnels. 

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – SF's First Parking Meter (1947)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

I frickin hate parking meters.  Seriously.  I get a few tickets a month at minimum.  I have a budget for the tickets – which is kind of a ridiculous notion.  And I get so many of them that I fantasize about writing them off as an expense on my taxes.  In fact, parking meters are sort of my nemesis

So why the hell am I posting a photo of the very first parking meter in San Francisco? 

(By the way, that’s Mayor Roger Lapham testing the “First Gadget Installed at Bush and Polk Streets” in 1947!)

Recently, a few things have come along that made me hate parking meters just a smidge less. 

First, came the SFMTA pre-paid parking card.  These things are pretty convenient for the most part.  They come in $20 and $50 amounts, and they’re much lighter than carrying $20 or $50 worth of change with you everywhere you go. 

There are some drawbacks to the cards though – they don’t always work, in which case, you’d better STILL have some change with you, and you have to remember to buy them when you the cards run out of money.  They’re also not rechargeable, which means the card ends up being waste (I thought we are working on being the greenest City ever???  Step it up SFMTA!) 

I still get more than my fair share of parking tickets, even with this card in my wallet – but that’s because my meter usually runs out while I’m in the middle of a meeting, or showing a property, and I don’t make it back in time to the meter to feed it. 

Thursday though - Thursday was different.  Thursday, while I was at West Portal grabbing some lunch at Fuji Restaurant, I set on my eyes on this! 

I was so struck by this special parking meter that I quickly snapped up a pic to post on www.sfcameraphone.com. 

But I didn’t have time to call the magic number to find out about the mysterious “Pay by Cell” message till much later in the day (well after I got a parking ticket while parked in Pacific Heights… grrrr.) 

When I finally got to call the magical number, its magical voice told me to visit www.cell-parking.com for more information.  (It also told me that it recognized me as a new user and asked if I wanted a free use of the system – to which I yelled “hell yeah” but it didn’t hear me – so I think I’ll have to call back again to get information on the free use thing.) 

Once I visited www.cell-parking.com, I tried to sign up for the service, until I realized that I don’t have my license plate number memorized, and that it was too damn windy for me to go outside and look at the plates on my car tonight. 

But I do plan on registering for the service tomorrow.  And I do plan on using it and seeing how it works.  And if this magical “Pay by Cell” thing isn’t new to you, and you happen to know all about it and have used it before, feel free to leave a comment here to let other readers know how you like it. 

And let me know whether you think it will help me to stop having to shell out big bucks for parking tickets every month at expired meters across the City. 

Oh, and until parking meters are able to wash my car for me while it’s parked, this probably is the first and last time a parking meter will ever excite me. 

Happy Friday!  May the meter fairy take good care of you!

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – The National Guard Armory (1912)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

I was catching up on the local San Francisco blogs and ran across a post on SFist about an event that was held at the San Francisco Armory titled the Mission Bazaar (a craft and performance expo).

You might remember the Armory in the news recently when it was purchased by kink.com for $14.5M in order to use the building as a porn studio. But apparently, there’s room there for more than just porn, and the owners want to share the building with the public by opening it up for more events than just the recent Mission Bazaar.

But the building had a story long before kink.com put it into the news.

According to Wikipedia:

The building was constructed as an armory and arsenal for the United States National Guard in 1912–1914 and designed with a castle like appearance in a Moorish Revival style. The structure was built as a replacement for the old San Francisco Armory in the Western Addition, which had been destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. In addition to its role as an armory and arsenal, during the 1920s, it served as a venue for sporting events, such as prizefights. The Armory served as a stronghold and rallying point for the National Guard in their suppression of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike (an event known as “Bloody Thursday”)The building closed as an armory in 1976, when the National Guard moved its facilities to Fort Funston.
After 1976, the building was largely unused for the next 30 years, though in 1978 the building was registered as a Class 2 historical landmark in the National Register of Historic Places. Several spaceship-interior scenes in the movie Star Wars were filmed there, and the San Francisco Opera used the large inner court of The Armory for set construction and rehearsals until the mid-1990s. By this time, The Armory was in a heavy state of disrepair. Various uses of the building were proposed from 1996–2006, including self storage units, a rehabilitation clinic, a gym with a rock wall, a dot-com office park, a telecommunications switching center luxury housing, and low-income housing. Many of these proposals were marked by acrimonious debates between various community interests. Concerns over gentrification, social and environmental impact or the unsuitability of the structure for various uses resulted in none of the various plans for the structure reaching fruition. The building eventually came to be described, variously, as “a herd of white elephants“,”cursed”, and “not a friendly building”.

Frankly, I think the kink.com purchase of the building was likely the best thing that’s happened to the historic landmark in years. The graffitti has been removed, broken windows have been fixed and the building from the outside looks clean and respectable these days – and the new owners are even kind enough to open the landmark to the public for events like the Mission Bazaar. Pretty cool.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s little look back on a slice of the City’s past.
Have a good weekend and don’t forget to pull out your umbrellas – rumor has it that there’s a chance of rain.

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – Golden Gate Bridge Toll (1955)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

So I have been keeping up with the news about the Golden Gate Bridge toll increases, and thought I’d see if I could find some fun photos of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Lo and behold – I found a photo of from September of 1955 when the toll was actually decreased to $0.25!

The newscopy read:

“HERE’S GOOD NEWS FOR MOTORISTS–Gale Bei points to new toll which goes into effect on the Golden Gate bridge at 11 o’clock tonight.”

When the bridge first opened for transit in 1937, toll was 50 cents each way, $1 roundtrip, with a 5 cent charge if more than three passengers.  Over the next several years, toll slowly decreased until it had dropped to a mere $0.25 in each direction! 

Remarkably, that low toll was in place for 13 years until the policy was changed to $0.50, but that was just Southbound (like it is today).  It remained at that low price for another 6 years, until 1974 when toll started to creep upward ever faster. 

Today – the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District is moving towards a plan that will (they say) decrease traffic during peak times and encourage people to either go to work earlier or later, or to take public transportation. 

However, with bus fares and ferry fares not exactly being dirt cheap, I don’t forsee North Bay dwellers giving up the convenience of their vehicles to avoid paying the increase in toll and riding taking public transit instead.  (Although I can think of lots of other reasons to take public transit, especially with the reduced impact on the environment public transport can have, the high gas prices and  the fact that the ferry is just plain fun!)

For now though, frequent bridge crossers need not worry.  The increase isn’t scheduled to kick in until September 1st, so for now, you’re free to cross for the bargain price of $5. 

If you’re reading this and dreaming about the weekend – we won’t be having record breaking temperatures, but the forecast calls for sunshine and temperatures in the low to mid 60’s, which is still nice enough to back away from the computer and get outside and play! 🙂  Have a great weekend!

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – Steinhart Aquarium (1925)

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Visitors to Golden Gate Park Looking at the Seal Pool at the Steinhart Aquarium

Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

I have got to say, I have been jonesing for the grand re-opening of the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  I miss the Academy of Sciences.  The photo above shows the Steinhart Aquarium in 1925 with the former seal pool that used to be outside the entrance – and yes, there really were actual seals in there! 

Long after the seal pool was gone, and the Academy of Sciences had a facelift (in the late 1960’s) it became one of the many San Francisco backdrops for my childhood experiences.

Back when the world felt really big and I felt really small, the giant dinosaur would greet me inside the front entrance.  I’d wander around touching giant crystals and spying from a distance into the alligator pool.  I remember being in awe at the animal exhibits (I didn’t realize that they were stuffed dead animals at the time) and remember watching the sea mammals in their tank for what seemed like hours at a time.   It was a world of discovery for me!

As I got older though, the Academy of Sciences and the Steinhart Aquarium changed for me.  The dinosaur that used to greet me disappeared, the stuffed dead animals gave me the heeby-jeebies, the alligators didn’t look so scary.  And the sea mammals – well, I just felt sad when I realized how tiny their enclosure really was!  I had gotten bigger, and the Academy of Sciences must have gotten smaller along with the rest of the world around me.  I stopped going there all together except for an occasional show at the Laserium. 

Then in 2005, when I realized the place was going to get a complete overhaul, I knew I had to go and say goodbye to the place in my memories.  It was great for a nostalgic trip down memory lane, but I didn’t feel the least bit sad that the place was going to look nothing like my old memories.  Times had changed, science had changed, and it was time for the Academy of Sciences to change too.

And now, the grand-reopening of the Academy of Sciences is right around the corner!  This fall, the doors will open, and I will be there to make sure that I collect a whole new set of memories there!  And in the meantime, I’ll have to find other ways to keep myself entertained in San Francisco. 

If my nostalgic little trip wasn’t enough of a history lesson for you, Wikipedia has a pretty decent background on the Academy of Science’s history for you. 

For now – I’ll be crossing off the days until the Academy of Sciences finally opens!

Open Shutter to the Past: San Francisco in Pictures – Tax Collector's Office Force at the New City Hall (1887)

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Welcome back to Photo Friday – my little way of taking a break from San Francisco Real Estate and instead blogging about our great City’s past instead. All photos are published with permission from the San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Public Library.

Postings have been light this week because I have procrastinated and waited till the very last possible minutes to take care of my taxes.  I had good reasons to procrastinate – my clients needed me.  A few want to buy a home and a few want to sell a home, and they all need fairly urgent assistance.  So, my taxes have gone untouched and my 2007 receipts are still stuffed into a giant manila envelope that exploded on my desk when I finally opened it. 

So, while I hide in in my cave and take care of the stuff that Uncle Sam needs from me this year – I give some thought to those people/machines at the IRS that are eagerly awaiting my 2007 tax return.  I don’t imagine any of them are very nice, or very pleasant and today’s Photo Friday picture seems to confirm my suspicions – people that work as Tax Collector’s just aren’t happy. 

The caption on the photo reads:

“TAX COLLECTOR’S OFFICE FORCE AT THE NEW CITY HALL, MCALLISTER AND LARKIN STREETS IN 1887; MR. TIM O’BRIEN, COLLECTOR. Back row, Left to Right: 1-W.D. Kane, 2.-Police Officer Sullivan, 3-H. Curran, 4-Unknown outsider, 5-R. Jackson 6-John Boyle, 7-M. Burk, 8-S. Neil, 9-Wm. Jones, 10-Wm. Gallatin, 11-P. Holland 12-Wm. Harrington, 13-T. Wilson, 14-Jake Rudolph. Front Row, Left to Right: 1-Reardon, 2-P Krause, 3-D. Levy, 4-Tim O’Brien, the Collector, 5-Chris Buckley, the Blind Boss, 6-S. Strause, 7-Lin Guion, 8-M. Fallon. The man with the beard in the background is Supervisor J. McDonald.”

Just take a look at this photo and tell me if there’s even one smiling face?!?!?!?  I see what looks like a smirk in the bottom left corner, but the rest almost seem like scowls.  I feel like they are all looking at me and silently thinking that there’s no way in hell I’ll get all of my receipts organized and my tax return submitting in time, less than 4 days from now. 

But they’re wrong!  I’ll make it.  I’ll get my receipts added up, and while I might not get much blogging done in the meantime (or much sleeping for that matter), I WILL get my tax return filed on time and nothing can stop me!

I hope you all aren’t in the same time crunch as I am in – but if you are – get to work, none of us procrastinators have any right to be enjoying this weekend!  We have tax forms to fill out!

To the rest of you – enjoy the sunshine, it’s finally feeling a bit like spring in San Francisco!