The Streets of SF... interesting sites, sounds and, er us, smells...

[Gee3]

I was just thinking back to Sept of 2006 when we moved back to the Bay Area after living in the burb's of Dallas for 5 years.

I remember coming out of the Montgomery BART station to the streets and taking in the lovely smell of urine! I totally forgot about that! I guess Dallas is a bit cleaner. Although, downtown Dallas on a weekday would seem like downtown SF on the weekend. This is a town where my friend was walking one day and a guy pulled over to ask if his car broke down!! People just don't walk in Dallas! haha!

But back to the City I grew up in... the other day while walking to the Performance bike shop on Brannan from 2nd and Harrison I saw at least 4 places where folks and animals alike decided the sidewalk was good enough to poop on! Doh! Another trip I saw a nice big dead rat! We're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy!

I also remember a couple of weeks ago I was walking with my friend to the back up to Market Street when I saw a homeless woman walk in the cross walk on a yellow light and puke in front of a car. I was thinking she was spilling something... she was but not from a cup! Eeewww!!

I also remember walking up 2nd to the BART station and on the corner next to the Mei Sing restaurant I saw a lady crouching down. No big deal, she's just sitting on the corner resting. That is until I noticed a stream of fluid sliding down the sidewalk and her butt hanging out! OMG!! She's peeing in the street at about 5:05pm while everyone is also going to the BART station!

But alas, all's not lost. I see several cyclists everyday commuting to work. And the fresh baked muffins from George and Josie at the 303 2nd St. Bldg are wonderful and aromatic in the morning. And only $1.50! All this fun stuff in my little piece of the world in the SOMA district working for the guv'ment!

Why am I telling you this... because I'm bored.

Now share your sights, sounds, smells of the City you work or live in. :)

Thanks for sharing!

[taxi777]

Now share your sights, sounds, smells of the City you work or live in. :)

Thanks for sharing!

That's why I ride with the BF'rs and do hundreds of miles of Century/Double centurys. That's equal to thousands of miles of the smells of nature. Trees, Cow poop (instead of dog and human) Ox blood fertilizer (not rotten garbage) Salty sea mist (not diesel fumes). I think riding the bike keeps me sane after what I have to put up with from day to day living in the city. The only thing is I would be become bored, and suicidal in the country. I need everything coming at me all at once to feel like I'm moving through life, but I just need a break from it from time to time. It's all about being balanced and taking the good with the bad. Yin & Yang. I think I'm getting closer to it as I get older. I love the City and the countryside. San Francisco is a nice in between. 20 mins in any direction and you find peace.
PF in SF

[jonathanb715]

I'll put a different spin on this, 'cause San Ramon just isn't that interesting. So here's a few from my past:

Let's see - I lived in NYC for about 6 years. I was working at a client, in a basement office, and someone asked if it was raining out. Nope - a homeless guy was peeing against the street-level window. Good thing it didn't leak! This was right out of college, so I really don't remember much else...except the Seaport on Fridays, the Limelight whenever and the Baja Club for a fun place to hang out without the usual club hassles. edit - and how could I forget jumping on a subway to see the US Open or a Yankee or Mets game? Or hanging out at the NYU library after work, trying to get a paper done for grad school? Or Central Park in the summer? Or the windtunnel effect the downtown canyons could have (a 10 mph breeze could knock you over sometimes in those canyons). Or how the Citicorp building had to have structural supports added because the counterweight system to counteract high winds didn't work as designed (discovered after a much-weakened hurricane hit Manhattan in the '80s)? Or that unique smell of the subway stations (I think the components have already been identified)? Or a bagel & cream cheese & the NY Times on a Sunday morning? I liked NY.

Next came Warsaw (as in Poland). Fun, Fun place - every smart, young Polish person was moving to Warsaw after the wall came down to take advantage of all the foreign businesses hiring at high salaries. High energy in all the good ways. Ugly city though - most of it was rebuilt by the communists after WWII in concrete blocks. In the winter, sunset came about 3:30, earlier if the weather was lousy. Sunrise was supposed to be around 8, but I swear it was after 9. Public urinals in older parts were just a low wall built along the sidewalk, and a steel grate leading into the storm drain. Even the old town isn't that old - it's a replica of what existed before WWII. The cars were out of a cartoon - little air-cooled rear engined Fiats based on a pre-WWII design. Plus, the best Thai food I've ever had (a Thai woman married a Polish guy and opened a restaurant). My oldest son was born there.

Next was Ra'anana, a town in Israel, near Tel Aviv. Great experience, learned a huge amount about a part of the world that I hadn't really thought much about. Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Herzylia are all in wonderfully picturesque locations, right on the Mediterranean. Sadly, Tel Aviv doesn't have that much to recommend it IMHO- it doesn't have a lot of interesting architecture. The neighborhoods and people, though, still make it a fun place. The rest of Israel (and the west bank - this was when the peace process was working,and as an American I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted) was completely fascinating - both learning about the people and the history. Interestingly, you couldn't get a decent bagel anywhere. And to get calamari (we were on the Med., for goodness sakes!) you had to go to an Arabic village or Jaffa (lots of Israeli Arabs live there) - squid just isn't kosher. Jaffa is very picturesque, with crusader era fortifications around the harbor and town. Great seafood, too. My 2nd son was born in Netanya.

Oh, wait - I forgot that when I was in high school I was an exchange student and spent a few months in Quito, Ecuador. Spectacular! More than 11,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains (why anyone would put a city there is something I never did figure out, though). Taking a train from Guayaquil, on the coast, up to Quito was a unique experience. Think cable cars going for hundreds of miles. Some pretty interesting buildings left over from the days of colonization, too. Most people lived in abject poverty, though (this was the early 1980's) - very sad and eye-opening for a middle class kid.

JB

[uspspro]

I'll put a different spin on this, 'cause San Ramon just isn't that interesting. So here's a few from my past:

Let's see - I lived in NYC...

Next came Warsaw (as in Poland)....

Next was Ra'anana, a town in Israel, near Tel Aviv....

... spent a few months in Quito, Ecuador....
JB

I'm jealous ;)

[Gee3]

I'm jealous ;)

Me too!! I'd love to really see NYC one day again. i trainer in Edison, NJ in 2001 and took a train from Newark to the Twin Towers in August of 2001 to go to an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Although it looked more Chinese than Italian near Canal Street. hehe!

That was my only taste of NYC, a couple hours one evening after work.

[jonathanb715]

Me too!! I'd love to really see NYC one day again. i trainer in Edison, NJ in 2001 and took a train from Newark to the Twin Towers in August of 2001 to go to an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Although it looked more Chinese than Italian near Canal Street. hehe!

That was my only taste of NYC, a couple hours one evening after work.

I've been lucky - my old job took me all over the world. And as for Little Italy - Chinatown has long since swallowed that up. Only the tourist restaurants and shops remain. For a taste of what Little Italy used to be like, you have to go up to the Bronx these days - and even there it will be mostly 2nd and 3rd generation removed from the immigrants. One of the neat things about NY (and SF) is the way the character of the city changes and evolves with each wave of immigration. In my experience, only London has anything close (I'd imagine Toronto, Vancouver, other Canadian cities and probably Australian cities are similar, too).

JB

[mtnwalker]

Not too lucky here.

I used to work in Newark as a computer instructor and I have to go through Milpitas everyday. If you people did not know, Milpitas has a certain aroma that can penetrate your car's filtering system. The stench of garbage is in the air because of the landfills. Its especially aromatic after it rained and the sun came out to bake the goodness.

I thought I have escaped all that after finding a job in Palo Alto as a PACS administrator. But, as luck would have it, the same aromatic stench of garbage is now present in the Palo Alto area as you near 101. Yum.

Nothing beats the smell of garbage in the morning and the afternoon while breathing hard and taking up more air than usual. Invigorating.

[t4mv]

... And as for Little Italy - Chinatown has long since swallowed that up. Only the tourist restaurants and shops remain. ... One of the neat things about NY (and SF) is the way the character of the city changes and evolves with each wave of immigration.


A co-worker and I walked from Wall Street up to Grand Central Stn on one of our trips out to NYC and I recommend everyone try it (walking a city, not necessarily NYC) sometime; it's really fascinating how neighborhoods can change from block to block, as described earlier. The other thing that struck me was the relative age of the people on the streets, I swear it seemed like everyone was in their 20s-30s, to the point I asked if all the blue hairs had run off to FLA, or something, lol.

[DiabloScott]

Luckily, San Francisco is generally too cool for all that urine to go septic. On the rare hot day the stench can be really bad.

I went to a bar in Thailand where the urinal and the garbage pile was the same ... ummm, attraction.

I remember riding Amtrak in the 70's when the toilet "flushed" to the bare tracks below - you could watch the railroad ties zoom by through the bottom of the bowl!

I have squatted in some semi-outdoor "restrooms" (aka holes in the concrete) in Spain. I wanted to watch other people to see what they did with their pants during this procedure but thought that may have been taken as rude.

[redspoke]

I work in a hospital, still have a child in diapers, and my suburban nightmare house borders cow pastures. I don't think I've smelled anything but funk in years.

[subframe]

Not too much in the way of interesting smells for me, but that's okay considering the possibilities :P

Potrero Hill to Caltrain is pretty nondescript, except for hte mad diesel fumes from the UPS depot. On the other end, I get a nice ride through Mountain View and Cupertino, which involves very very little more than houses and sidewalks. There is one house on Grant in Mt. View, though, that ALWAYS smells like the best meat (pasta) sauce you can imagine. It's like that every single day. I don't know who is cooking what in there, but I want to meet them.

BTW, nice post Taxi. You summed up perfectly how I feel. I'm working on that balance, it's a hard one :)

[doughboy]

Oh yeah, the smells of SF. I took the BART to the Montgomery/Embarcadero exits everyday for years as my commute. After awhile, you get used to it, along with all the perculiar and at times, wondrous odors of the city. :lol: If you think it's bad, you should try walking under the overpasses in that area where the smell of waste matter builds up.

[jeph]

Me too!! I'd love to really see NYC one day again. i trainer in Edison, NJ in 2001 and took a train from Newark to the Twin Towers in August of 2001 to go to an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Although it looked more Chinese than Italian near Canal Street. hehe!

That was my only taste of NYC, a couple hours one evening after work.

Me three, pretty cool to live in other places not just visit.

My GF is from Long Island, and I have got to visit NYC. Fun place, but would be a bit crazy to live there. Her brother does the 5 boroughs bike ride. They close the roads and it's about 40 miles or so. I understand it doesn't spend much time in the Bronx. Also, David Byrne from the talking heads is a big bike advocate there and does the ride. Might have to do that some time.

Overall, we are pretty lucky here in No. Calif. I guess that's why real estate is so crazy.

Jeff

[zoltani]

While there are some people peeing in the street, some of the smell is attributed to the fact the SF has a combined sewer system in a large part of the downtown area. That's why the smell is worse on a hot day.

Riding from downtown through chinatown to north beach can really stimulate the nose. Around market you often smell the green herbs, chinatown the dried roots and fish, and north beach some fresh breads and stale beer. I like being able to experience so many different things within a 2 mile bike ride. How many places can you do that?

[Spiduhman]

Smells - yum and yuck; yuckyum!

Near Barrow, southwest England, the tides swings are enourmous. On the out tide, the drying flats were sickly salty sweet; mix that with the everpresent coal and coke smoke (we heated our always cold home with coal and coke, along with all the neighbors...), and that's one of my earliest memories. When the steam engines (yup, and not for tourists neither, honest to God steam locomotives! When we got back to the States, I didn't know what was wrong with the trains...) went by, and the wind was right, hot grease and oil, mixed with vapour and more coal! On Fawkes day, the humongous bonfire was built not thirty yards from our house, so once a year we smelled woodsmoke.

In Vercelli, Bella Italia, the deli around the corner was the source of one of my fondest olfactory memories; my brother and I would step in just for a whiff! Cured meats and cheeses hung everywhere, wood barrels of pickles, pigs feet, olives, and the like. The pizza place was a close second, right there with market day in the square, where the peanut roaster did a lively business, right downwind, usually, from the baker.

I'm hungry - later!

[damnpoor]

Overall, we are pretty lucky here in No. Calif. I guess that's why real estate is so crazy.

There aren't many places in the world where you can transition from seaside cliffs to rolling pastures to snowy peaks in less than 200 miles.