architecture (573)

I’m doing slide show and talk about homes this Friday in San Francisco

June 15, 2010 at 1:28 am

Gravel and Gold is a shop in the heart of SF’s Mission district. It’s called a “Magical Outpost in the Mission” by SF Station, which writes it’s “…where a hand-selected mix of artists and makers exhibit their crafts. You can find just about everything here from things to wear, to write or to work for your home.” Someone on Yelp says: “The clothing is really eclectic — natural fabrics, interesting patterns and designs, local artists.”

I’m going to show slides from Builders of the Pacific Coast and can talk about mini-homesteads and show some slides from our forthcoming book on tiny houses.

It’s at 8PM thus Friday, June 18th at 3266 21st Street, San Francisco.

For Gravel & Gold’s writeup of the event, click here.

Tags: , ,
Post a comment

My trip to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge

June 9, 2010 at 8:47 am

Ten years ago, Lew’s girlfriend Krystal asked if I wanted to go to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Did I! I had connections. First, I was born in San Francisco; second, my dad had walked out to the south tower on a wooden walkway above the net when the bridge was under construction in 1934. Krystal knew the bridge’s resident architect, and she and Lew had been to the top already. In mid-September I got a call and took off to meet Krystal and Bob in the parking lot on the San Francisco side. We rode in a little electric vehicle out to the south tower, and inside ascended in a tiny elevator, three of us crammed in, to the bottom plate of the top horizontal strut of the tower. From there it was a metal ladder to the top and Bob let me go first. I pushed open the hatch, climbed out, and was stunned. I was 700 feet above my hometown, seeing it from the top of this beautiful structure built 65 years earlier. It was a warm night, and we hung around up there for about 45 minutes, until the sun went down. It was surprisingly comfortable, at that height. The only scary part was when I walked out on an open-mesh metal walkway and looked down through my feet at cars 300 feet below.

Every single time I go over the bridge, or see it from the city, I think of that night.

This was the very first time I used a digital camera.

The panorama/collage is actually a 360, with Marin on the left, SF on the right. (Panoramas are way easier to do now, 10 years later.)

Tags: ,
Post a comment

Our home on CBS Sunday Morning show, May 23, 2010

June 2, 2010 at 11:54 pm

I was contacted a week before I left for NYC about being part of a story on the CBS Morning Show, which airs Sunday mornings at 9 PM eastern time. The particular segment was to be titled “America’s Dream Homes.” When I heard it included the Hearst Castle, and a multi-million dollar home in Big Sur, I had my trepidations. When the reporter and photographer got here, they seemed pretty savvy, and I told them, “This is a home built out of used lumber and windows from chicken coops, it’s pretty different from these other places you’re covering.” They said no, this was another aspect of “dream homes,” so we walked around the homestead. I showed them the outdoor solar shower, our chicken flock, the compost bins, and inside our house, and they seemed to get it.

I thought it would end up on the cutting room floor, but lo and behold, our handbuilt homestead made an appearance. Here’s the piece:

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6541104n&tag=cbsnewsVideoArea.0

The segment concluded with a poem:

Be it ever so grand (shot of multi-million dollar cliffside home in Big Sur),

Or ever so humble (shot of house built out of corrugated steel grain silos),

Home is where dreams live (shot looking in gate at our home).

What do you know?

Tags: ,
Post a comment (3 comments)

Flatiron building and street art

June 2, 2010 at 12:09 am

My last afternoon in the city, I went down to the new skate park that just got built at Chelsea Piers. My friends, twin brothers Shelter and Ivory Serra, who grew up in Bolinas and now live in NYC, were going there to skate and I met them there and shot some movies of them skating the bowl. I marvel at the grace and skill (and guts) of all these guys that skate these steep bowls.

Here are a couple of photos from earlier that afternoon. What caught my eye at the top left side of the Flatiron Building was what looked to be a person standing, looking down (barely visible here). Turns out it’s a fiberglass statue of a person by British artist Antony Gormely.

I’ve got an overwhelming amount of photos and experiences from the last week. but also a ton of stuff to do now that I’m back home. I’ll post stuff when I get the time.

Tags: ,
Post a comment