We spent four hours or so yesterday perched at a table in front of Rogue Ale at Powell and Union, with a stack full of flyers for the San Francisco Climate Challenge and coupons for inexpensive cf lightbulbs for people who sign up for the Challenge. Most of the people we talked to were ineligible for the Challenge, being new to their digs (you have to have lived where you're living last year in October) or being tourists.

Lots of tourists.

We wound up answering questions from, f'rex, a pair of Englishwomen of a certain age who were looking for the Abercrombie and Fitch store.

"Not here," we said. "Up and over that hill."

"This isn't Union Square?" they asked.

"No, this is Washington Square Park, on Union Street. Union Square is blocks and blocks that way and nowhere near Union Street."

So we wrote out where the A&F store was (at Powell and Market) and his nibs walked them up to the corner of Columbus and pointed out where they could catch the 30 and take a ride through Chinatown ("Oh! Chinatown!") and on to the Westfield Shopping Centre on Market Street.

Another question came from a harried father who asked if we knew where there was decent Italian food that was kid-friendly. We looked at his kids, three boys between the ages of nine and fifteen, and pointed him to North Beach Pizza, a few blocks up Union at the corner of Grant. "Good pizza," we told him, plus there'd be an assortment of Italian food that he might like if he wasn't into pizza.

And so it went. We had nice conversations with a lot of people, including a woman with her camera who was on a fieldtrip to San Francisco with her photography class at West Valley College. She began to explain where WVC was and we told her we used to live less than a mile from the college before we pulled up stakes and moved up to this little 7x7 town.

We also spent time talking with each other, noshing down on one of Rogue's delish Reuben sandwiches and swilling some delish beers, enjoying the fresh air and the passing scene.

I also watched the clouds come and go and come and go again and noticed something interesting.

Watch this!

Exhibit One: a view (shoddy picture, sorry. taken with my cell) looking west from our table perch up Union Street toward Russian Hill. Note the cloud cover scudding toward us -- big huge thick clouds, pouring over the top of Russian Hill.

 

Exhibit Two: a view (another shoddy picture) looking east from our table up Union Street on the other side, toward Telegraph Hill.

 

Blue skies, eh?

The clouds would come barreling down off Russian Hill and reach the small flat space between the hills, away from the cool ocean breezes and warm up and d-i-s-a-p-p-e-a-r.

Fascinating to watch.

The microclimates of our fair ville are an endless surprise to visitors and to locals who don't get out much.

Heading down to another microclimate down at Potrero Point to sort through the tale end of the SFF collection, removing duplicates and alphabetizing by author/title. So far I have nine boxes of duplicate SFF titles set aside.

I'm all the way up to "R" with only two bookcases and not enough room to shelve the rest of the collection. Back into boxes for the excess. Question is, should I keep going and stop mid-letter (at "Scheckley," for example) or should I start working back from "Zelazny" and just box up all the R's and S's and T's.

Decisions, decisions.

Labels: books, life, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:30 PM|| |