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Friday Slide Show: Mission Bay
23 August 2019
The first time we presented Mission Bay, we focused on the University of California at San Francisco's new campus. A year later, we showed you the Chase Center under construction there. Today we're taking a broader look at the area from UCSF to the about-to-open Chase Center to the Bay Trail to the ballpark and along the Embarcadero.
That may seem like a lot to bite off but it gave us something to chew on every now and then as we wandered up from our annual wellness visit at Kaiser to catch a streetcar home by Pier 24.
We did all our "chewing" with the Olympus E-PL1 and the Olympus 12-100mm f4 Pro zoom with a circular polarizer. And we processed this selection of the images in the new Lightroom Classic, which has finally admitted our GPU is not supported. Not that we can tell.
There is a theme that runs through this slide show but it isn't one we consciously constructed. It's more something we noticed after doing our edits.
There is a theme that runs through this slide show but it isn't one we consciously constructed.
And that would be the cycle of life. Construction, decay, reuse. There is something of that in every one of these images.
The construction stairway that begins the slideshow itself rises imposingly next to the elevator. But it is, itself, temporary.
The strange succulents are from another place, tourists posed in front of grasses that are merely decorative. Neither a permanent exhibit.
The ramp railing is embedded with sea shells. A blossom on a climbing vine unfolding on the old Memorial Stadium seat slats that now form the exterior wall of Mission Rock Restaurant. The new Chase Center glass lobby reflects on itself.
Even the banner celebrating Splash Brother Klay Thompson hints at renewal as he recovers from knee surgery.
One of our favorite compositions in the area are the old pilings left standing in the calm bay waters. But the piers that remain often amuse as well.
When we got to the ballpark, the views were no less dramatic. The statue of Willie McCovey caught our attention, of course. But we angled for a view of his hands releasing the bat, a moment of transition itself.
We couldn't resist a shot of the bronze plaque honoring the 1962 Giants, the first San Francisco team to make it to the World Series. Or to shoot the giant "SF" on the new scoreboard before the Giants hosted the A's that afternoon.
But, in the end, we came back to the water. A sailboat glides into its slip over the mirror-like green water and a broken down old pier falls into the choppy blue bay.
Birth, growth, age, decay, renewal, death. Play it again, Sam. Our doctor says we can handle another turn on the dance floor where the music, at least, never stops.
