April 25, 2008
San Francisco walks, 7.
Today is the last day here in San Francisco for a few months. Just enough time left to go down to my favourite newspaper shop and get tuesday’s edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The coffee house opposite offers free internet, monday through friday. As I went in to get a coffee, I counted 12 people in there, each one in front of a computer. I couldn’t really take a proper photo without it being embarrassing for myself or the guests, so I just shot one from the hip without looking at the camera or the subjects. It shows five people and five computers on one side of the room.
Starbucks across the street also has online access, but only if you have a T-online account. The city of San Francisco plans to have free online access across the city very soon, so people can once again pick a café for the quality of the food and drink offered.
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San Francisco walks, 6.
There are a lot of places in California named after saints. And since the Spanish missionaries were here well before any English-speaking Americans (or the Russians, who came down from Alaska and left their mark on place-names like Russian River), these towns start with San or Santa, depending on the saint’s gender. As in San Jose, Santa Barbara, San Rafael, Santa Clara, and, of course San Francisco. This one I found on a shop sign near Washington Square.
Never heard of that Saint.
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San Francisco walks, 5.
Today was a pink day.
San Francisco walks, 4.
One thing that never fails to amaze me on the streets in California are the classic European cars that are around – not in showrooms, but driving around or parked on the streets. Like this ca. 1969 Mercedes 280SE with a 4.5 l engine. Those cars were hardly ever sold in Europe, because we have always paid more for petrol than here in the US. You can buy one of these classic cars for less than $5000 here, because with gas at $4 in San Francisco, some of the original owners are beginning to feel the disadvantage of these fantastic, powerful, indestructible, thirsty engines.
April 22, 2008
San Francisco walks, 3.
Amongst the things threatened with extinction for a long time has been the apostrophe. Not a big loss for mankind probably, but too bad for the typographically educated amongst us. The apostrophe is neither a foot mark nor a sharp (as in acute) accent. It is shaped like a comma, but raised to the top of the cap height. Very simple.
I’m happy to report that my favourite ice cream shop in San Francisco also has good typographic taste. The fact that the apostrophe in Swensen’s is not only typographically correct and good-looking is, unfortunately, due to the fact that it was put up there by a signwriter a long time ago, when craftsmen still had to learn a trade in order to practise it.
April 20, 2008
Gutenberg, the movie
The BBC movie by Stephen Fry has finally arrived on YouTube. It was broadcast last week but is only available online in the UK. This is the link to the first part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91smRXrEPRs
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