San Francisco – Noe Valley, the Mission District, and Mission Dolores Basilica: 11 July 2017

  Here is a view of Noe Valley as seen from Twenty-seventh Street at Castro Street. This view is looking north. 

The distance traveled was approximately 6.9 miles (11 kilometers). The cumulative elevation gain was about 995 feet (303 meters). Mile markers are displayed on the GPS-generated track. 

The rocky and partially tree-covered Duncan & Castro Open Space is located in Upper Noe Valley. 

Here is a view from the summit of Corona Heights Hill. The vista is looking northeast. 

The 500 Club is a quintessential San Francisco dive bar. It is located in the Mission District on the southwest corner of Guerrero Street and Seventeenth Street. Yes, that is Donna, across the street.

NOW  Mission San Francisco de Asis was founded in 1776. This structure is the oldest intact building in San Francisco. 

THEN  This picture of Mission San Francisco de Asis is circa 1890. A portion of its cemetery is visible; it is the only cemetery still sited in the City and County of San Francisco. The view is looking west. 

Glen Canyon Park. The view is looking northwest. 

NOW  The New Mission Theater. The theater was built in 1916 and was updated in 1932. The theater closed in 1993 and was converted to a furniture store. After many bizarre twists and turns, the theater was renovated and reopened in 2015. The view is looking northwest. 

THEN  This photo was taken in 1943. The theater was designed by the Reid Brothers. The Nasser brothers, who owned the theater, commissioned architect Timothy Pflueger to update the theater in the early 1930s. Image courtesy of Jack Tillmany.

THEN The New Mission Theater in 1935. The theater is on the west side of Mission Street, between Twenty-first Street and Twenty-second Street. Visible on the east side of Mission Street is the New Rialto Theater. It opened in 1916, and through 1987, a period of over ninety years, the building was occupied by numerous theaters. The building then remained vacant for twenty-two years until 2009, when it reopened as a Billiard Palace and amusement arcade. 

This graph shows the elevation changes encountered in this ramble. 

"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera." Dorothea Lange 

"Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important." Henri Carter-Bresson

"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." Ansel Adams

"The important thing is not the camera but the eye." Alfred Eisenstaedt

The first volume of the San Francisco Bay Area Photo Blog contains galleries of photographs posted on the Internet between 2002 and 2011. Click Here to view these photo galleries.

A Sony RX-100 camera was used to take these photographs.

Question or comment? I may be reached at neil@mishalov.com.

Tilden Park to San Pablo Reservoir. Included are views of Nike Missile Batteries SL-08 & SL-09: 1 July 2017

This ramble started in Berkeley at the Little Farm in Tilden Park. We climbed to the summit of Wildcat Peak and then strolled past the site of Nike Missile Launch Battery SL-08L and Nike Missile Launch Battery SL-09L. This was an unusual dual battery configuration. The location housed two missile-launching batteries, each of which had three missile launchers. Each missile launcher could launch four missiles simultaneously, if necessary. This dual missile battery site, therefore, had the ability to launch twenty-four missiles within a very short timeframe. 

We then descended the east side of the Berkeley Hills and passed by San Pablo Reservoir. After which, there was a steep ascent of the east side of the Berkeley Hills to Inspiration Point and then, finally, back down to the Little Farm.

 San Pablo Reservoir. The view is looking east. 


Nike Missile Launching Stations SF-08L and SF-09L

The route: The distance traveled was approximately 10.6 miles (17 kilometers). The cumulative elevation gain was about 1,705 feet (520 meters). Mile markers are displayed on the GPS generated track.

 Another scene of San Pablo Reservoir looking east. 

 NOW  This is a view of the former location of Nike Missile Launching Stations SF-08L and SF-09L. The view is looking northeast. 

THEN  This photograph of Nike Missile Launching Stations SF-08L and SF-09L was taken from the cockpit of a small single-engine military reconnaissance plane. The airspace above this area was off-limits to all civilian aircraft. A partial view of Missile site SF-09L is barely visible at the upper left side of the photo. This view looks northeast and is circa 1959. 

NOW  Nike Missile Radar Station SF-09C was located on the top of this hill. The view is looking north. 

THEN  This photograph of Nike Missile Radar Station SF-09C was taken from the cockpit of a small single-engine military reconnaissance plane. The airspace above this area was off-limits to all civilian aircraft. This view looks northeast and is circa 1959.

 Mount Vollmer, at 1,905 feet (535 meters), is shrouded in fog and is not entirely visible. The summit of Mount Vollmer was the location of Nike Missile Radar Station SF-08C. A segment of Nimitz Way is visible in the lower portion of this image. This view looks south. 

This graph shows the elevation changes encountered in this ramble. 

"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.” Dorothea Lange 

"Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important." Henri Carter-Bresson

"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." Ansel Adams

"The important thing is not the camera but the eye." Alfred Eisenstaedt

The first volume of the San Francisco Bay Area Photo Blog contains galleries of photographs that were posted on the Internet between 2002 and 2011. Click Here to view these photo galleries.

A Sony RX-100 camera was used to take these photographs.

Question or comment? I may be reached at neil@mishalov.com

The Symbionese Liberation Army: June 2017

This is how the FBI describes the moment when Patty Hearst lost her anonymity forever:

"Around 9 o’clock in the evening on February 4, 1974, there was a knock on the door of apartment #4 at 2603 Benvenue Avenue in Berkeley, California. In burst a group of men and women with their guns drawn. They grabbed a surprised 19-year-old college student named Patty Hearst, beat up her fiancé, threw her in the trunk of their car and drove off. Thus began one of the strangest cases in FBI history." 

Strange, indeed. Hearst’s kidnappers were part of a small group of self-styled revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army. The group distinguished itself with slogans like “death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.”

But the group was no joke. In November 1973, members had ambushed and murdered Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster, the district’s first African-American school superintendent. Foster’s “crime”? The SLA branded him fascist because it mistakenly believed he had backed a plan to require ID cards for all Oakland high school students.

Three days after the kidnapping, the SLA  announced that they were keeping Hearst as a “prisoner of war.” They imprisoned her in a small studio apartment at 1827 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco.

The Hearst kidnapping transfixed the nation as it took one strange, scarcely believable turn after another. Shortly after Hearst’s disappearance, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family undertake a massive food distribution program throughout California as a condition for the release of the kidnapped heiress. The Hearst family agreed with the demand and put together an effort that by 22 February made its first food distribution within San Francisco.

It was a disorganized disaster. Scores of people were injured as panicked workers threw boxes of food off moving trucks as huge crowds of people unexpectedly showed up for the food. The SLA issued a "Communique" the next day demanding that a community coalition is put in charge of the effort.

Patty Hearst issued a series of tape-recorded verbal messages over a period of a few weeks. Among other things, she criticized her family’s poor response to the food distribution demand, and eventually declared she had joined the revolution and that “I would never choose to live the rest of my life surrounded by pigs like the Hearsts.” 

  The first time Patty Hearst was seen by the public after being kidnapped was 15 April 1974, when she was visible on bank surveillance cameras. She was armed with an M-1 carbine rifle, holding up the Sunset branch of the Hibernia Bank along with several members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. The robbers shot two people in the bank and stole more than $10,000.

THEN  This photo of the Hibernia Bank was taken in 1976. The bank was located on Noriega Street at Twenty-second Avenue. (Image courtesy of Western Neighborhoods Project.) Click on the image to see the full-size photograph.

In this picture from left to right are Nancy Ling Perry, Donald DeFreeze, and Patty Hearst. They are running out of the bank and are jumping over one of the two people they shot during the robbery. Both people survived their gunshot wounds.

It was early February 1974, and it was dark outside as three people arrived at 2603 Benvenue Avenue in Berkeley. 2603 Benvenue Avenue was a 4-unit apartment building built-in 1967. To build the structure, the owner of the property had to demolish the old single-family house that formerly occupied the site. The City of Berkeley approved the request to demolish, and two separate buildings were constructed on the site. The front building, shown above, contains two apartments: #1 and #2. Behind the front building is a second building which also includes two apartments: #3 and #4

Patty Hearst was a 19-year-old heiress to the Hearst family fortune. She and her boyfriend, Steven Weed, were Cal students and they rented the 2 bedrooms, one bath,1,024 sq ft apartment #4 at 2603 Benvenue Avenue because it was within 4 blocks of the Cal campus. On that February evening, three men walked up the walkway to the rear building; they knocked on the sliding glass door of apartment #4. The door was opened, and Patty Hearst was kidnapped by 3 members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. The ransom demand was 70 million dollars.

2603 Benvenue Avenue, Berkeley

19 April 1974

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"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera." Dorothea Lange 

"Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important." Henri Carter-Bresson

"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." Ansel Adams

"The important thing is not the camera but the eye." Alfred Eisenstaedt

The first volume of the San Francisco Bay Area Photo Blog contains galleries of photographs posted on the Internet between 2002 and 2011. Click Here to view these photo galleries.

Question or comment? I may be reached at neil@mishalov.com 

San Francisco's Sunset District, Then & Now - part two: 10 June 2017

This is part two of a gallery of "then & now" photographs of the Sunset District of San Francisco. Part one may be viewed here.

Click on an image to view the full-size photograph.

NOW  The West Portal Station was reconfigured in the 1970s to accommodate a new streetcar system in use today. The view is looking north. 

THEN  This is the West Portal Station of Twin Peaks Tunnel. The tunnel, 2.27 miles in length, became operational on 3 February 1918. This photo was taken in 1922.

THEN  This photo of West Portal Station was taken in 1935. This image is courtesy of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

THEN  This photo was taken in 1917. Twin Peaks Tunnel is still under construction, and the work is expected to conclude within a short period. This is part of a car convoy consisting of City of San Francisco employees and the people involved in constructing the tunnel. They have the opportunity of being driven through the tunnel before it goes into service. Image courtesy of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

THEN  The Parkside Theatre, located on Taraval Street near Nineteenth Avenue, opened in 1928. This photograph was taken in 1959. This image is courtesy of Tom Gray.

NOW  The theatre closed in 1988, and the building was converted into apartments and a preschool. Most of the buildings that surrounded the theatre are still standing. The view is looking southeast. 

THEN  This photo, circa 1940, shows some of the streetcar damage caused by two streetcars colliding at an intersection. The streetcar seen on the right is on the No. 17 line; it is stopped on Twentieth Avenue at Taraval Street. A Safeway market occupied a street front location in the corner building. This image is courtesy of Tom Grey.

NOW  The corner building has been demolished, and a bank now occupies a portion of the site. Most of the other buildings still remain. The view looks northwest. 

THEN  This picture is circa the 1940s; the view looks west, down Taraval Street. 

NOW  Most of the buildings are still standing. The location is Taraval Street at Twenty-first Avenue. The treed area on the right is a part of McCoppin Square. The Pacific Ocean is visible in the distance. 

THEN  This photograph was taken in 1915. The house is located on Seventeenth Avenue, near Rivera Street. The horse-drawn cart's purpose is identified by: the "Street Cleaning Department, Board of Public Works," which is painted on the side of the carriage. 

NOW  The house is standing amongst many homes on Seventeenth Avenue. The view is looking southeast. 

THEN  This photo was captured in 1898; it is a view of the Sunset District, looking northwest. This area was called the "Outside Lands." It consisted of barren sand dunes, and a chicken ranch is visible in the photo. This image is courtesy of Bancroft Library.

NOW  The sand dunes have been leveled, and the ground is now covered with housing. The western portion of Golden Gate Park can be seen on the right side of the image. The chicken ranch is now history. 

THEN  This photograph was taken in 1923. The view is looking southeast from Taraval Street at Twenty-seventh Avenue. 

NOW  The building seen in the above 1923 photo is visible. It is the fifth building from the corner. 

THEN  This building was constructed in the early Twentieth Century. The building is located on Taraval Street at Thirty-second Avenue, and this view looks south. This image is courtesy of the Chas and Ada Williams family.

NOW  This is the same building. It was remodeled and expanded in the 1920s. 

THEN  The Ocean Park Motor Court is located on Forty-sixth Avenue at Sloat Boulevard. It opened for business on 20 April 1937. This image is courtesy of Marc and Vicki Duffett.

NOW  The motel is still in business; it appears well maintained. The view is looking northeast. 

THEN  This is a view of Sloat Boulevard as seen from the Great Highway. In the distance is Mount Davidson. The photograph was taken in 1921. 

NOW  San Francisco Zoo is located in the treed area on the south side of Sloat Boulevard. The view is looking east. 

THEN  This picture was taken in 1927. The Chickery restaurant was located on the Great Highway at Vicente Street. This image is courtesy of Glenn D. Koch.

NOW  The building still stands, and it is currently being used as an apartment building. The view is looking east. 

THEN  This photo of Ring's Market was taken in 1951. The view is looking south from Taraval Street at Thirty-third Avenue. This image is courtesy of the Western Neighborhoods Project.

NOW  The building is still standing, minus the tower. 

THEN  This image is circa 1900. The view is looking south from within Golden Gate Park. Mount Sutro is ahead. In 1895 Affiliated Colleges of the University of California received a thirteen-acre building site donated by Adolph Sutro, then-mayor of San Francisco. The early buildings of the college are visible. This image is courtesy of Lorri Ungaretti.

NOW  The tennis courts are still busy, and the site of Affiliated Colleges is now occupied by the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. This photo was taken on 16 June 2017. The view is looking south.

THEN  This is the Taraval Police Station. The building was constructed in 1924; it is located on Twenty-fourth Avenue at Taraval Street. This image is courtesy of the San Francisco Police Department.

NOW  The Taraval Police Station was restored and renovated in 1996. This view looks southwest. 


The distance traveled was approximately 7.8 miles (12.5 kilometers). The cumulative elevation gain was about 718 feet (219 meters). Mile markers are displayed on the GPS-generated track. 


GO HERE to view part one of The Sunset District, Then & Now.

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"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera." Dorothea Lange 

"Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important." Henri Carter-Bresson

"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." Ansel Adams

"The important thing is not the camera but the eye." Alfred Eisenstaedt

San Francisco's Sunset District (Then and Now)  by Lorri Ungaretti was helpful in assembling this gallery of "Then and Now" photographs.

The first volume of the San Francisco Bay Area Photo Blog contains galleries of photographs posted on the Internet between 2002 and 2011. Click Here to view these photo galleries.

A Panasonic GX7 camera body mounted with an Olympus 17mm lens was used to take these photographs.

Question or comment? I may be reached at neil@mishalov.com.