California

Spring: More than a feeling

Standard

How amazing that, hovering right over our heads on the side of a busy street, spring is making magic? For all the glorious architectural creations of bygone generations and other beautiful manmade wonders, I still think the blooming of a flower is the most amazing thing.

Snapped the photo above after taking a walking tour of my neighborhood with SF City Guides. I’ve lived in Noe Valley for less than a year, but I’ve been coming to visit for almost a decade and figured it was time to learn about the truth behind its many charms.

You can see more photos from my tour on Flickr.

Once again, I am part of a gentrifying sweep, moving an old working-class neighborhood with an appealing low skyline into the ranks of the less affordable. This reminds me of my old Brooklyn neighborhood, Cobble Hill; so do all the cute boutiques, eateries and baby strollers.

But … It was great to have my eyes opened to all the architectural details they would normally gloss over. And now I can proudly distinguish a Stick House from a Queen Anne or an Edwardian. One sad note is that Nelly Street was once Orient Street, but they changed the name during World War II. People are silly, aren’t they? But whoever Nelly was, I am sure she was happy to get her own street.

Tours by SF City Guides are free and happening all the time, all around the city (schedule). And you can catch the latest buzz about lovely Noe Valley on this fun local blog, noevalleysf.blogspot.com.

It’s sealed: Welcome, New Year

Standard

It’s become an annual pilgrimage, the mating of the elephant seals. For the second year in a row, my dear friend Tony and I have followed a guide around the dunes of Ano Nuevo State Park and marveled at the sights and sounds of these wild, cumbersome and bizarrely shaped creatures.

I am enamored of any mammal that can plumb the depths of the sea. (Jealous might be a better word for it.) I can only go to a hundred forty or so feet, and these days I rarely go near that deep.

These Northern Elephant seals spend all but a few months of the year far out in the ocean, never sleeping, and diving hour after hour from the surface of the waves to beyond the reach of the light. Down, down, down they go, thousands of feet, to feast in the darkness below, the depths to which you or I could never go .. At once a nightmare and a dream.

A Northern Elephant seal sunbathes solo on the beach.