One city, two faces

Someone recently asked me what I liked least about living in San Francisco. My mind went immediately to what I like least about San Francisco. Full stop.

Of course, my thoughts on the matter could probably be applied to other prosperous cities around No. America like Vancouver, Toronto, Boston, New York City...

I began my answer with this wee story:

I remember meeting a friend and her friend for lunch downtown. It was probably 1990. The friend of a friend was wearing a vintage, haute couture (her words) Chanel jacket. We complimented her on her coveted piece. ‘Thanks, it was my Grandmother’s. She was from San Francisco, afterall’. My response was something like: By the time I knew my Grandmother, she’d graduated to wearing elastic-waistband, polyester slacks and she was from San Francisco, too! (I laughed as I said this; the other two didn't.)

At the risk of sounding dense, meeting the 'haute couture' girl was truly the first time I had thought about the pockets of great wealth that have always existed in this city. In the 1950s, my Uncle Buddy had worked for a time as a chauffeur for prominent San Francisco families, but I hadn't really thought about the sorts of people who might have employed him. By the time I had come into the world, my Uncle and his partner were living in a lovely flat atop Nob Hill. They seemed to me to have had money, but I now realize that one could rent a nice place in SF in the 1950s and still be of modest means. Rent control meant that Lee and Buddy could continue to afford living in their cozy digs as the cost of living steadily climbed throughout the ensuing decades.

The red 'X' marks the spot, approximately, where Buddy and his partner, Lee, lived together for almost 50 years. They weren't living high on the hog, but they were definitely 'wealth adjacent'.

Nob Hill: Grace Cathedral in the center of the shot.

I asked my mom, recently, if she knew who Buddy had chauffeured for and she told me that he'd driven around members of the Spreckels family, heirs to the Spreckels Sugar Company fortune. Everyone in my family of that generation save my mother is deceased, so the story can't be corroborated, but it does make for a good yarn.

Below is an image of the Spreckels family mansion--

The novelist Danielle Steel now owns this architectural wonder. 

As you might have guessed, I come from working-class San Francisco stock and my people were bus drivers, bartenders, pizza-makers, firemen, foster mothers, floorers, cannery workers, cleaners, longshoremen, etc. As a result of my upbringing, I had tended to regard SF as a working class town. By the mid-20th century, the majority of working class areas of SF were geographically removed from the very monied areas. If found yourself in the SE and SW districts of San Francisco back in the 1950s, then you were in blue collar territory as far as the eye could see.

The numbers of working-class (and middle-class) residents have been shrinking at a fairly rapid clip since the last decades of the 20th century. Housing costs have far outpaced wages. Folk from lower socio-economic strata can no longer afford to move here. I live in a former working-class area of SF. In fact, the original owner of the house (built ca. 1940) we are renting was a postman. The houses in this area are modest. Most were built with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. These same homes now regularly sell for over a million dollars. The 'family car' of newly minted residents seems to be a Porsche Cayenne or one of the other plentiful European SUVs on the market.

Buddy's father, my Grandpa Frank, was a streetcar* conductor. Were my Grandpa alive and working the same job today, would he not only not be able to afford to buy the house he did back in the 1940s in Visitation Valley, but he’d probably be renting out in the Central Valley some 80 plus miles away and commuting in hours a day to work as a city bus driver.

The 22 Fillmore (now a bus route) was my Grandpa's line.

The 22 Fillmore, coming and going.

I don't really have anything against people who can affored fancy clothes from France. But, frankly, this city is now almost exclusively geared toward those with shed loads of disposable income. And, as I told the person who asked me, I dislike that fact the most.

*busses have largely replaced streetcars

Neighbor cat?

View from the back deck.

I spied this lil' guy on one of my first ventures out since hurting my foot a month ago. He saw me and froze. We sort of sat across from each other, I on the deck and he on the fence, in a stand-off. I began calling to him in an effort to thaw him out, but got no love. Eventually, I was distracted by something and he took that opportunity to slink away. I'm not sure which house he's attached to, but I welcome his presence as maybe he'll make for a good rat repellent. Actual rat repellent seems to have no effect.

Mostly out of shot in the foreground of the cat pic is one of two massive lemon trees that stand in the back garden. The landlord won't allow us to use this space because 'previous tenants smoked out there' or some such bull. Given that we've a nice deck off the bedroom, I initially really didn't care if we could use the yard or not. Save for the citrus, it's just a small patch of cement at the back of the house. -no great shakes. I was, however, sorry to not be able to pick lemons whenever I wanted, but the landlord will occasionally leave a bundle of citrus in the mailbox, so that's really nice. Not so nice, however, are the rats who LOVE to eat citrus. Who knew? I'll occasionally find half eaten lemons on the deck along with bits of rat poop. In my mind, if I could just pluck all the juicy lemons off the trees, then the rats would have no reason to visit. Of course, the rats would probably just bring goodies from other gardens to nosh on out back al fresco. Maybe instead of laying out rat repellent I should put out catnip?

The elements of good cooking

Calavera/sugar skull

The foot is slowly coming around, but I'm still spending a good deal of my days lounging on the sofa. Fortunately for me, Netflix is presently adding lots of new content to watch. I spent most of yesterday evening checking out a new series called Salt Fat Acid Heat hosted by a chef called Samin Nosrat. The show is based on Nosrat's well received cookbook of the same name. Each episode corresponds with one of the four elements of good cooking. The Salt episode is shot primarily in Japan. Fat is shot in Italy. Acid takes us down to Mexico. And, finally, Heat sees Samin back on her hometurf of Berkeley.

(Side note: Both she and I worked at the same restaurant in Berkeley for a time back in the mid-2000s. I don't remember much from that experience save for a chance meeting with Bill Niman--then still of Niman Ranch--when he dropped by to chat sausage with the restaurant owner.)

In her show, Samin takes the viewer on a 'salt, fat, acid, heat' journey to experience the elements of good cooking and proper food preparation. Aside from feeling like I should really try more when making a meal, what really struck me when watching the show was Samin's absolute enthusiasm for simple food prepared well. She smiles easily and laughs a lot. During the episode shot in Italy, we see Samin buying a proscuitto sandwich at an open air market. She bites into the sandwich and immediately gushes. She loves it. In that moment, I wanted to be right there with her, eating a proscuitto sandwich squealing, no pun intended, with delight.

PS: The sugar skull sketch above was done while watching the episode shot in Mexico.

Bird of prey

Cooper's Hawk

Are you all sick of the bird drawings yet? :D

Since the cortisone injection last Wednesday, the swelling in my foot seems to have gone down a bit. The doc told me that I should starting feeling its effects 'come the weekend'. Well, I didn't, to be honest. But, now, one week later, I think something good is happening in the foot. Woohoo.

Having been cooped up inside the house since mid September, I'm really ready to get out and just take a walk around the block. Hopefully, that will happen soon.

As one can imagine, sitting on the sofa for hours on end ain't all that grand. Fortunately, drawing has helped me get out of my head a bit these past few days and for that I'm grateful. Above is a another fave bird of mine: the Cooper's Hawk. I got a bit tired of drawing wee cute birds & decided to give this one a go. This guy is my first attempt. He looks a bit lumpy, but I'm digging it.

Extremities

Pink robin with a bit of bedding in beak.

If you can nail rendering hands, feet, or in this case, wee bird feet, then you're winning in my book. I have never been particularly good at drawing extremities. Once, way back in the 90s, when I was drawing a lot, I did get close to drawing realistic, human hands. It felt like an accomplishment.

I took a basic drawing course when I was still living in Zurich. The instructor was a local woman with talent to spare. Evey session, she'd bring in art texts from the local library relevant to the task at hand. One of our assignments was to draw a self-portrait. On that day she had brought in books showing how 'the greats' had rendered heads. I remember thumbing through a text filled with images of various human heads drawn by da Vinci. I had never thought about the size of heads before that exercise. One thing to keep in mind, she told us, was that our craniums are larger than we think they are. When creating a forehead, for example, we weren't to be shy. Also, placing the eyes nearly half-way down the face was key.

I like the results of my self-portrait even though the eyes have a bit of a 'manga' quality about them. When you think about it, the distance from the top of my head down to the bottom bit of my eye balls isn't scant. It would seem that I have a big old head and probably so do you!

C'est moi

Hot pink pencil

I have been checking out 'robins of Australia' on the internet recently and found scads of images of this little guy. You might not be able to tell by the drawing above, but the male pink robin, actually has a HOT PINK breast. I didn't have a hot pink pencil, so I used just regular old pink and a bit of red pencils instead. I'd love to visit Tasmania in order to see this bird up close and personal. I wonder if he's people-shy?

Bored doodle

I've been laid up with a bum foot for the duration. The doc says I have capsulitis. How fun. In the past week or so I've watched ALL of the Netflix. ALL OF IT. I'm so bored.

Today, I remembered that I like to doodle and I have the most of tools with which to do it! For the past hour I've been drawing my favorite bird, the European Robin. I write 'European' because our No. American variant is basically a Black Bird with a red breast. -very different.

Here's my doodle of the dear Euro-Robin: (please, bear in mind that I neither have a decent eraser nor do I have every colored pencil under the sun, so my robin looks a bit blue tit in hue)

We had a robin who visited us regularly in the garden when we lived in Greenwich. He would usually come to greet us when we dined outside. Crumbs always came his way. He was no dummy. American robins, by contrast, are not interested in humans or their food at all. They'd rather be out on a lawn pulling up worms.

Feininger

When I lived in London, I spent a good deal of time in Hampstead Heath. After my Heath walks, I'd usually go for a potter around the High Street, grab a crepe at that crepe stall that always has a super long wait, and nose around the Oxfam shop. The Oxfam shop in Hampstead, as one might imagine, was usually filled with stuff from posh people's homes. I went there a lot.

I remember that on my penultimate visit to the shop, I tried to convince a worker that she could probably sell a really lovely tea pot from the GDR (it had a maker's mark) for more than £3.99. She actually couldn't understand what I was saying (Excuse me? What do you mean?) because English wasn't her first language, and I'll bet my mumbly Californian accent threw her off. Continuing on as only a pushy American could, I busted out some ancient-old high school Spanish that equally tanked: Um, como se dice...?  El Pais...no mas existe.  (My attempt was "que lame".)

Then I found a photograph bearing the name of Eleonore "Lore" Feininger, daughter of Lyonel Feininger, on its matting. The black and white picture was either signed by Lore, who had been a photographer, or it was a photo of Lore by someone whose name remains unknown. The image shows a happy, smiling, young woman with large, light-colored eyes. She's wearing a slim wedding ring and has her hair in a bob. I'd date the picture from the 20s. The matting and frame were not top quality, but they seemed period; the picture was compelling, but, without knowing if Lore is the subject or the photographer (or both) it's hard to know what the 5"x7" portrait is worth. I am a huge fan of Lyonel Feininger's art, so, to me, the picture is invaluable.
-probably sounds silly, but that's how I feel.

Apparently, no one at Oxfam had 'googled' Lore Feininger, so only priced the portrait at £8.99. At the time, I neither bought the photo nor tried to talk the English-challenged shop worker into putting the portrait aside and contacting an auction house. (Also, that would have been BIG ask.)

I can imagine that someone in the Feininger family must have, at some point, lived in or around Hampstead. I'm guessing there must have been a spring cleaning and the photograph was given away to the charity shop.

Anyway, a couple of days later, I went back up to Hampstead and bought the photo. The internet searches that the hubs and I engaged in continued to turn up nothing. Online, there are only a handful of pictures with Lore Feininger's name attached, and, of them, only two readily viewable. Apparently, Lore had photographed other photographers of renown--T. Lux Feininger, her brother, and Erich Salomon and those pictures have sold quite well at auction.

So, is what I have an image taken by Lore? And, if so, who is the subject? My plan was to write to the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, send them a copy of the photo, and see what they can tell me about its provenance. Given that both Lore's dad and brother were instructors at Bauhaus, I'd imagine the archive could shed a little light on the subject. Now, some years later, I still haven't gotten around to figuring out the photo's origin story. Alas...

Below is a work by Lyonel Feininger, Lore's papa.

Gelmeroda by L. Feininger