The remains of the once impressive Sutro Baths. All that stands are ruins, but it’s pretty impressive to compare what once was to the current state of the place looking out over the ocean.
Category: California
Road Work
Summer is the season of endless construction in Berkeley.
Pelican
Statue located outside the graduate assembly on UC Berkeley’s campus.
Trickle
One of the forks of Strawberry Creek running through UC Berkeley’s campus.
Football Man
A statue of legendary Cal football coach Pappy Waldorf on Cal’s campus.
Berkeley Jungle
An example of Berkeley’s lush suburban vegetation.
Reflected Rings
Sculpture installation in the reflecting pool on the Hearst mining circle on UC Berkeley’s campus.
Football Superiority
Berkeley, despite have very little success in the sport of football, has more than one monument to the sport. The sport as it is played at Berkeley is a little sad but the statues are pretty interesting to look at.
Redwood Creek Is Calm on a Rainy Morning
Yet another image from Muir Woods: when you’re faced with such beauty, how do you say something that hasn’t been said before? Maybe some pictures don’t need text accompaniment.
Berkeley Still Life
Berkeley is a pretty surreal place; as I process that, I thought my 400th post on Decaseconds might be a great time to really show it. The yellows of the birch tree are so sharp on a foggy fall morning, amid the hard, stained concrete of the past and the high-tech Li Ka Shing Building (one of my first-ever posts) materials. Visual contrast, both literal and metaphorical, align with the conceptual contrast of a place that prides itself on being countercultural while also being the birthplace of many of the technologies and ideas that make our modern culture possible.
Muir Woods Has Wood Pathways
I may continue to bemoan the theme-park-like atmosphere of Muir Woods by midday on Saturday, but in the very early morning, with dawnlight scattering through the marine layer, it’s easy to forget about all that. There are no words to describe the place without resorting to cliché. Even so, the echoes of “Six Flags: Muir Woods” still exist, like these wood pathways designed to lessen the destruction that would be caused by enormous numbers of visitors on dirt paths.
Girl with Pony in the Ring
While the early-morning pony divisions begin, the marine layer swathing the San Francisco Peninsula is still burning. I took this image almost exactly two years ago, and didn’t think much of it, but I viewed it today and found it an interesting study. The casual pose of the rider, one arm back, feet in motion, conveys a kind of confident swagger and nonchalance that matches the gentle stepping of the pony. The impact of her garb, a 1/2-scale version of the careful, quasi-historical hunter uniform, only adds to the effect. In reality, though, competition is never that simple or easy—and I think her face conveys that.
Golden Gate and Bay in the Rain
I sometimes sift through the RAW files I took long in the past, searching for meaning in images I captured long ago. In the case of this particular photograph, there’s more to the image than just my favorite Bay Area gradient of differing environments (e.g. Oakland and San Francisco and Alcatraz and two different enormous bridges and so on): there’s also a feeling of place and moment. The dramatic clouds and the grasses and the hint of the Golden Gate’s span are all spectacular, but the optics of a raindrop spattered across the lens add just as much to the image. You can practically smell the petrichor in the air.
Berkeley Basement Window
A “random weekend shot:” from the strange little corners of UC Berkeley’s campus comes this shot of a basement window at night. The interplay between soft, smooth, diffuse colors from the frosted glass and the rough, inhomogeneous surfaces of concrete is so mysterious.
Old Modern Shapes
At the dawn of the twentieth century, all was hopeful and “excellent.” When the Bay Bridge opened in 1936, human ingenuity could solve any problem, bridges replaced ferries, cars replaced horses, aircraft would soon replace trains. Now we’re orphans of the future, living in a world when “modernity” is in the past, and epic symbols of the era and its architecture are quickly becoming relics. Though I have no nostalgia for much of the social/cultural mores of the time period, I do find it fascinating to look upon the structures built “for the future” from the standpoint of that future. Perhaps it makes me wonder, just a bit, what we build for our own future now.
