June 2022 Vacation Day 12, San Francisco · · PAGE 32.

June 3, 2022:  The city streets of San Francisco will reveal some of the things I have seen here in my past business trips and some things Linda has never seen.  This is the front of the Exposition Center Auditorium located at 99 Grove Street across the street from City Hall.  This place was built in 1915 as described in this Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Graham_Civic_Auditorium  Today it is known as the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Why am I showing this place I visited on behalf of Holiday Inns of America in the 1980's?  The sidewalk was cleared out for me on that day to set up a 5-meter satellite receiving antenna like the model we sold to Holiday Inn Network for HBO at their motels and for teleconference usage.  Holiday Inn was having a franchise holder convention at this location. I came here to show them the antenna.  Hi-Net management from their Memphis, Tennessee HQ wanted them to join the Holiday Inn  Network (HI-NET).

Getting back to our 2022 vacation for my self and Linda, this was the first place we stopped about one block from US 101 and Van Ness Avenue on Grove Street.  Here is the big picture of the building where the event took place with the satellite dish.

Here is the FRONT street level view of San Francisco City Hall after I digitally removed two cars from the foreground in this image.

This aerial view of the San Francisco City Hall puts the neighborhood in perspective.  That street with the orange paint seen behind city hall is US 101 that runs north and south on Van Ness Avenue.

McAllister Street is the first street to take us WEST back to US 101.

That building across the street is the State of California Public Utilities Commission.  The little green sign over there indicates this is Van Ness Avenue.  We are turning right here as this is also US 101 going north through San Francisco.

I was cruising up US 101 on Van Ness Avenue when this image from July 2009 appeared.  The trees in the middle of the street have been removed since then.

This image from May 2021 shows the current status of the street.  We actually drove up this street until we turned right on Lombard Street on June 3, 2022.

This view is from US 101, Van Ness Avenue looking EAST up Lombard Street at a 27% grade going up this hill.  All the cars parked on this street are facing the curb so they cannon roll down the hill if a parking brake is not set.

This is Lombard Street one block up the hill from Van Ness Avenue and US 101 at Polk Street.  We continued up Lombard Street all the way to Coit Tower on June 3, 2022.

The second intersection up the hill on Lombard Street is Larkin Street.  

When we reached this high point on our route, the intersection was full of people.  I had to blow the horn to get them to let us through to continue across Hyde Street with its cable car tracks.

This is the famous part of Lombard Street where the flower gardens bloom.  This image begins at the top of the hill and shows the bottom of the hill where Lombard Street continues East toward Coit Tower and San Francisco Bay.

There is a side street named MONTCLAIR STREET going LEFT from this point on Lombard Street that is not a through street.  There area several homes down that side street.  The other thing seen here is how the homes have underground garages accessed from the end of each curve.

This aerial view shows how the garage connections are placed.  There are also pedestrian walkways down both sides of Lombard Street.  All the remaining space is planted with shrubs as seen in the two images above and down below on this page.

This Google Earth Image from 2011 drew bystanders attention to the camera vehicle with the post topped by the ball with multiple cameras 10 feet above ground level.

This image below looking down the hill was taken from the same location as the image above.

This image was taken from the curve in the road seen in the image above.  The Volvo parked in the driveway in this image is also seen in the image above.

A number of years ago when I used a 35 mm film camera, I stopped at the bottom the "S" curves of Lombard Street to take a telephoto image of a black cat sitting in an open bay window marked with the YELLOW CAT letters on that building.  I need to look through my old pictures to see if I could paste it here.  This image below also shows the end of Lombard Street where there is access to Coit Tower.  We went up there today, June 3, 2022.

Coit tower is located near the EAST end of Lombard Street.  Today was the first time I had seen a self-cleaning rest room.  I just checked Google to learn there are 49 of these free rest rooms currently in operation in San Francisco.  I watched the information panel beside the door after it was vacated by a patron.  It indicated the door was locked during the self-cleaning cycle.  When that was complete, the information screen indicated the unit was ready for use.  You push the open door button and it lets you inside.  Linda tried it and said is was very clean to use.  The Google Earth image below was captured in March 2022.

Here is the view from Coit Tower of the high point of Lombard Street where the S-Curves are located among the flower beds.

After seeing the view from Coit Tower, we headed back down Lombard Street to make the turn onto Columbus Avenue.  We were going to see the end of the cable car line where they turn them around to climb the hills again.  The two overhead wires are for electric busses that also use this route.  The slot in the street centered between the rails has a cable under the street that is gripped by an arm from the bottom of the cable car to pull the cable car along each street where the cable cars operate.

This is the view of the Taylor Street cable car turntable seen from Bay Street.  This allows the cable car to go in the opposite direction as this is the end of the cable car line on Taylor Street.  The turntable allows cable cars to reverse their direction in a smaller space.

The Fisherman's Wharf cable car turn around is not far from the one that ends on Taylor Street.  Since there is more space available here, parallel switch tracks are used here to reverse direction at the end of the line.

San Francisco is the home town for Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.  They occupy one block of Beach Street all the way up to the CVS Drug Store seen near the left edge of this Google Earth image captured in March 2022.

This Google Earth aerial view shows the North Shore tourist areas all the way to Coit Tower at the right side of the image.

Linda took Chase out to the water to see his reaction to it with no luck on his bladder break.

We had parked near the trash can to let Chase get bladder relief.  When he came back to the field of Grass, he got full relief.  While we were over on that side of the parking lot, a man about 50 yards away had a dog that saw Chase and came running without a leash.  Both dogs were cordial.  After the doggie greeting and smelling of scents, the other dog ran back to his master immediately when called.  Chase was limited to his 20-foot leash.  We got back in Linda's car and continued toward the Golden Gate Bridge.  This area is known as "The Marina Green" which was an air strip from 1920 to 1944 known as Montgomery Airfield.

I took this picture of Alcatraz Island with Google Earth and my digital camera with 10-power magnification.  My camera image was not as crisp and clear, but it was probably the difference in the morning fog when we were here.

Google Earth had the advantage of waiting for no FOG to get this image.  We came too early in the day and we could not see the towers and support cables of the bridge when we drove across the bridge going from left to right in this image to the north end of the bridge in Marin County.

This Google Earth aerial view of the Golden Gate Bridge shows the approach to the bridge at the south end.  There are many walking and bike paths in this area.  The Torpedo Wharf dates from the 1890's when underwater mines were loaded and placed off shore.  My initial thoughts about this wharf were related to World War II, but this was here much earlier, probably related to the Spanish American war.

We took the short cut to the top of the hill and turned left here to get to the intersection of US 101 and California Route 1 at the northbound entrance to the bridge.

I cropped the image below to indicate how the FOG had cut off the view of the towers as we approached them.

This image shows how the fog can obscure the towers that support the bridge.  When we passed this way, only the bottom opening in the tower was visible.

I never paid much attention to these tunnels a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.  The name for the tunnel got my attention.  Here is some data from Google:  Sausalito, California, U.S. A tunnel officially known as the Robin Williams Tunnel (previously and informally referred to as the Waldo Tunnel) is located at the highest elevation on US 101/SR 1 along the Waldo Grade. The first bore of the tunnel was completed in 1937 and the second in 1954.

I had picked this Union 76 gas station before we started our trip using the web site GAS BUDDY.  I was looking for a place north of San Francisco with a "reasonable" price per gallon of gas.  The fuel I purchased here will take us up to Oregon where the prices are much better than California prices.  It was 12:21 PM when we left here to get back on US 101 North.