Larry Hosken: New: Tag: pedestrian

Crossing Golden Gate Park on my way to get a COVID vax, I saw some new-to-me art on the Golden Mile. I ?think? it's Fnnch's Solar Bridge (which doesn't look so exciting in daylight, but glows at night).

an arch in the middle of a road. also, a hose which I suppose was rinsing playa dust off of the solar panels?

Seen this morning at the Waller Street Skate Park: an in-real-life Cons pair:

pair of Converse shoes, branded "Cons"

I looked around and saw a car but no obvious cdr, so perhaps this was a list of length one. (Sorry if this sounds confusing, but I hope it amused both LISP programmers in my audience.)

Rescuing a couple of photos from my camera roll:

🐶 A coyote in Golden Gate Park around sunrise. This coyote lay down on some lawn; in the low light, some joggers went past without noticing. That coyote just looked like an unruly hank of grass. I didn't get a photo of that, but did snap a pic of that fur blending into some wood chips.

🏠 "Elizabeth" house on Belvedere St. I dunno who Elizabeth is, but I guess she got inspired by that tiger-jungle mural at the top of her street and went all out decorating her own house.

coyote trotting along in search of breakfast

old (Edwardian?) house with a fancy mural painted on the front: plants, animals and a big all-caps "Elizabeth"

Book Report: Alta California

It's a journey through space and time. In 1769, the Spaniards of Portolá expedition walked from San Diego to San Francisco Bay; a couple of people on the expedition took pretty good notes. Some time passed. A few years ago, author Nick Neely walked from San Diego to Palo Alto by San Francisco Bay, at the same time of year, keeping to Portolá's route and pace, mostly. In this book, he writes about his walk; but he also writes about layers of intervening history. The result is a report that swings wildly through time, moving steadily through space.

What do I mean by swinging through time? As the author tried to keep to Portolá's route, he relied on expeditioneers' notes about geological formations; those pretty much stayed the same. But plenty else had changed over the centuries. The author outpaced the expedition a few times. Where the expedition had to chop through undergrowth to clear a path for their pack animals, the author walked on a paved road. Where the expedition got bogged down in marshes, the author hiked across now-drained land. Where the expedition went slowly because of scurvy, the author didn't have scurvy because now we know better. The author got "separated" from the expedition a couple of times: Where the expedition kept to a straight course, the author went around USA military bases, because the expedition route is bombarded nowadays.

The author's hitch-y adherence to Portolá's timeline reminded me of my attempt to navigate SFMoMA's lobby for artist Janet Cardiff's video walk. In this immersive experience (he said, self-consciously), I carried around a little video player, watching a video shot by the artist making her way through the SFMoMA lobby. So I had to glance down at the video player to see where I should walk next; and I had to glance up to make sure that I didn't crash into any other present-day museum visitors. And more than once I caught myself instead dodging around recorded museum visitors, nearly crashing into present-day folks. So, I wasn't dodging military ordinance, I operated on a much smaller scale, but yeah, I get it, I kinda understand the dissonance.

Speaking of my challenges being much smaller scale than the author's: Yeah, I walked around SF Bay and I'm proud of that, but I'm not going to pooh-pooh the author's stunt of this long walk in California. Walking around SF Bay, I was never more than a half-day's walk from a motel. This book's author tromped through wilderness, tourist-resistant housing developments, farmland… He camped a lot; he trespassed and camped a lot, not because he's some raving scofflaw, but because plenty of nights he didn't have choices. Maybe my SF-Bay walks made me more impressed with his stunt? Uhm, I used to make fun of people who ate at Taco Bell while in California, a region with much better Mexican food available. But I notice in my around-SF-Bay walks, there's a Taco Bell in South San Mateo I stop at. The cuisine is nothing special; but I hit that spot at the end of a long day of walking. My brain exhorts if we just walk a little further, we can have much tastier food, but my legs say yeah, no, that "little further" is not happening today. So I eat Taco Bell burritos and check into a motel and go to bed and rest my poor, tired legs. Anyhow, the author gets food from gas stations, convenience stores, from Taco Bell; and I get it, I sympathize.

Speaking of recognizing that one's chosen challenge is much punier than that taken on by others: The author enountered some people on a Peace and Dignity run, Native Americans relay-running from Fairbanks Alaska to Panama: waaaaay further than a piddly half-the-length-of-California 650 mile stroll. At Panama, those runners would meet another group that had run up from Tierra del Fuego. Hoo boy. Anyhow. Anyhow.

Anyhow, swinging through time; it's not just ping-ponging between Portolá's time and the present day. Some historical displays teach current Californians how folks lived before the Spanish showed up. We get a bit of the history of Los Angeles' water system. Fossils tell us about life long before those folks. Zebras near the central coast survive and remind us of Hearst's folly. I learned more than I expected to about connections between the Portolá expedition and the Ortega Chile Company. I got glimpses of the Spaniards' enslaving California natives; thankfully I didn't get so many glimpses of the USA's killing of more natives (which didn't happen so close to the expedition route). The author passed through areas hit by nearing-present-day forest fires. And there are plenty of present-day points of interest; the author visited a farmland produce warehouse; a freeze-drier who turns animals into displays for natural history museums; a baseball game. He talked with homeless folks and folks with homes. He navigates around that beach that Vinod Khosla is trying to forbid the public from visiting. (Advice to Khosla: let some branch of the USA military conduct live-ordnance-style actvity on your beach; they will definitely forbid visitors.)

I thought it was pretty interesting.

The Page Slow Street folks said they had a new street mural by Matley Hurd, the same artist who did that Lyon Street mural. The mural was close to me, at Page and Masonic. So I checked it out.

mysterious traffic cones atop a street mural

detail of a hummingbird from a street mural

view of most of the mural. I bet it would look better if a drone took an overhead pic tho

view of most of the mural; you can see Hurd's signature

I stumbled upon some new-to-me San Francisco street art today, a ground mural on Lyon between McAllister and Fulton.

When I was next to it, I thought I bet it looks better from an aerial view and when I searched teh internets and found Matley Hurd's (the artist's) instagram, I thought yep.

part of a big ground mural covering most of the width of a street; it shows the Golden Gate Bridge and a parrot

another part of a big ground mural covering most of the width of a street; another parrot and a dahlia

screen shot of Matley Hurd's instagram page; shows the whole mural, undistorted along with some commentary from fans

A specialized unit of distance for San Francisco in Fogust: That crane's swing arm is so long, its alpha channel goes from 80% to 5%.

construction site at Stanyan and Waller streets. Above it towers a crane, obscured by fog. If you're wondering why there are weird objects in the foreground, this pic was snapped from the Waller Street Skate Park, which has accumulated some weird objects for skating on

The view from foggy San Francisco's Grandview Park today:

in the foreground: some houses, somewhat grayed out by fog. in the background: just a gray wall of fog

Meanwhile, further north in California, the Park fire continues to burn mostly-out-of-control due to dry weather. So now I can't laugh at Grandview Park without looking like a jerk. Climate change: ruining lives, ruining jokes.

The dahlias by the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers are doing OK. (To my untrained eye, they're doing great. Then again, there's an official opening for the dahlias-on-the-hillside today at noon. And I thought that patch of dahlias was already looking great last year. But I guess the dahlia experts thought it wasn't yet worthy of an official opening. So maybe don't trust my untrained eye. Anyhow.)

dahlias

more dahlias

yet more dahlias; also gardeners, observers, and (in the background) the top of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

I recently passed a milestone: I've walked over 10 million steps while playing the game Pikmin Bloom. I didn't notice at the time; the app didn't pop up an achievement badge for 10 million like it did for previous round numbers.

You might think the app designers, by not handing me another achievement, missed an opportunity to keep me enthused about the app. Then again, Adrian Hon recently blogged about how game designers shouldn't over-rely on achievement badges to figure out how to "gamify" everything, e.g., how to gamify walking around. So I guess they're doing something right.

#SFHellscape statue of Eadward Muybridge at Letterman Arts

statue of Eadward Muybridge at Letterman Arts

Palace of Fine Arts

Fishing pier near the Crissy Field Warming Hut

Old houses on Mallorca Way

I feel like the back of this car is trying to tell me the owner's life story, but I can't quite grasp it.

photo of parked car, seen from the rear. It has a "R☤N" bumper sticker. The (California) vanity license plate reads "quietly". The car is a Tesla model X

photo of parked car, seen from the rear, zoomed in to the text-y parts. It has a "R☤N" bumper sticker. The (California) vanity license plate reads "quietly". The car is a Tesla model X

I saw it near UCSF Parnassus Hospital, where you might expect a medical professional to use a loading zone for something.

I didn't understand the artist's obsession until I saw the text. sidewalk chalk rendition of an artichoke

sidewalk chalk rendition of an artichoke

a different sidewalk chalk rendition of an artichoke

sidewalk chalk: text that says Artichalk

San Francisco, Hugo St near 7^th Ave

Lately, a hate group has been posting flyers in my neighborhood. I wanted to tear down the flyers to spare my neighbors some hatred. But I hesitated: at the bottom of each flyer was an official-looking notice about Removal of Notices in Compliance yadda yadda.

But then I checked the rules, and those flyers weren't complying; tearing them down was totally legal (and neighborly).

If you're in San Francisco and you're hesitating to tear down a hateful flyer because of an official-looking notice, you might double-check:

Were the flyers attached with adhesive? That's a no-no.

There should be a legible posting date in the lower-right corner. Missing? That's a no-no.

If you spot an illegal flyer in San Francisco and don't want to tear it down yourself, you can report it to the city.

San Francisco Bay Area folks, heads up: Yesterday I took a weird stroll in Albany, playing The Solano Human Project. I see people comparing it to The Jejeune Institute, and I can see the similarity: you're walking in a city, paying close attention to some weird details and fixtures. You interact with art; you interact with gadgets. The Solano Human Project didn't give me a creepy vibe tho, so that was nicer.

Anyhow, if you're into ARGs or immersive experiences or pervasive games or what-have-you, definitely check it out. If, like me, you're an avid puzzler, don't think "Even though the recommended team size is 2-6, I'll solo-solve; I'm sure I'll blow through quickly like part 1 of Jejeune." That's hubris. I wish I'd had another couple of folks along to help spot things.

Hmm, not sure what more I can say without spoiling the surprises. Just: Check it out.

Oh neat, the Golden Gate Park beer garden has an actual calendar this year so maybe I won't need to rely so much on having a backup plan "in case there's nothing there this week."

#SFHellscape photo of flowers. In foreground, out of focus, some cherry blossoms. In background, in focus, a garage door mural depicting flowers, maybe poppies? I dunno, I'm not a big flower guy

photo of flowers. In foreground, out of focus, some cherry blossoms. In background, in focus, a garage door mural depicting flowers, maybe poppies? I dunno, I'm not a big flower guy

I heard the city wasn't doing anything for 4/20 this year, so I was surprised to see folks setting up some tables at Robin Williams meadow (a.k.a. the meadow at the base of "Hippie Hill") this morning. Looks like Volo Sports is putting on a kickball tournament. I guess the park folks counterprogrammed an event to deflect the weed-o-philes.

chained-off section of meadow; beyond the chain, folks are setting up a table; beyond that, other folks are setting up a food truck

[updated to add:]

I went back to the meadow around noon and noted:

The meadow was mostly empty; nobody playing kickball, some folks playing volleyball. Hippie Hill had about as many people as you'd expect on a sunny day. The helicopters [which had been hovering overhead ~an hour earlier] are gone. It might seem chill until you wonder: Why does that knot of park rangers look so tense? Why is a pair of motorcycle cops riding around the path?

I got a burrito from that food truck (the line was really short!) and came back home.

Don't give pees a chance!	Edgy, makes you think
Pee nevermore	Much more threatening than intended (I hope)

planted area on sidewalk with a sign to discourage dogs. The sign depicts an X-ed out peeing dog with caption: Don't give pees a chance

planted area on sidewalk with a sign to discourage dogs. The sign depicts a 🚫-ed out peeing dog and a raven silhouette with caption: Pee nevermore

Munzee Daily Stroll

The Munzee play-while-walking-around-with-your-phone game has a cool new RandoNautica-like feature. I want to blog about it, but before I dive in I want to start with:

When you use the Find Nearby Wishing Well button, it might plunk a wishing well onto the map right where you are. E.g. I, sitting in my apartment and wondering "What does this button do?" pressed the button and now there's a wishing well at my apartment building. I wish I'd been somewhere else when I pressed that button. My apartment is next to a steep hillside with poison oak; that's not a great place for a wishing well, as it turns out. The wishing well is visible to other Munzee players; now anyone looking at the Munzee map in my neighborhood can see that icon and say "I bet you a dollar that a Munzee player lives in that building."

map zoomed in on 330 Parnassus Ave with a wishing well icon

To me, this public visibility is a little disconcerting. If I had a stalker and if that stalker knew I played Munzee, it would be quite alarming. Either way, if I'd understood I could summon a wishing well by trying to "find" one, I would have walked a couple of blocks downhill before I pressed that button.

Munzee is a play-while-walking-around-with-your-phone game. Sorta like you do in Pokémon Go, you play the game while walking around and looking at a map on your phone. To "move" in the game, you gotta move in real life. Players can tag interesting spots on the map; go to those spots and "check in" to get points and advance in the game. Unlike Pokémon Go, players can also tag interesting spots in real life by sticking QR code stickers to them; you can see those on the map, go there, find the sticker, and scan it to "check in", get points, and advance.

Also unlike Pokémon Go, you can't just keep checking into the same place once every five minutes. Depending on what type of place it is, maybe you can just check in once per day. This might mean that you're asking the Munzee app "Where else shall I walk today?" and Munzee says "I dunno, man; you already went everywhere in the neighborhood." But now it has a Randonautica-like function: you press a button, the app chooses a random nearby spot on the map and dares you to go there and check in. If you succeed, it chooses another nearby point on the map and challenges you to go there.

This is a nice workaround for the I-already-went-everywhere-in-my-neighborhood-today problem. I bet it's also a good fix for the I-am-the-only-person-in-my-neighborhood-with-this-app problem. When I started playing this game, there was plenty for me to do: I live in San Francisco, surrounded by many many tech nerds who already downloaded the game and started tagging interesting spots on the map. Thus, there were already places for me to check in. I bet a potential-player who lives in a sparse sprawling suburb has a different experience: maybe the nearest player is a fifteen-minute drive away. Maybe they open up the map and there's nothing to do. Maybe they get discouraged and never even start playing. Thus when their next-door neighboor tries the app a week later, there's still nothing interesting on the map in that neighborhood… It's nice that the first Munzee player in a neighborhood now has something to do.

#SFHellscape pole to which is affixed decorated birdhouses and signs. One sign says 37 degrees, 43 minutes, 47.6832 seconds N 122 degrees 27 minutes 53.6292 seconds [implied West] Mt Davidson Manor. We need to know this. Another sign says Birdville's #1 Realtor, Paul 415-902-8969. Another sign says Now boarding SFO to Florence Italy, direct

pole to which is affixed decorated birdhouses and signs. One sign says 37 degrees, 43 minutes, 47.6832 seconds N 122 degrees 27 minutes 53.6292 seconds [implied West] Mt Davidson Manor. We need to know this. Another sign says Birdville's #1 Realtor, Paul 415-902-8969. Another sign says Now boarding SFO to Florence Italy, direct

Giant sundial surrounded by Urbano Ave

House with old-timey streamlined-ish decorative flourishes

View down to Ocean Ave from the top of Orizaba Ave

I just noticed: if you're in the parking garage for that little shopping center across the street from the San Francisco DMV, the exit door looks out at a fnnch rubber duck mural across the street.

a parking garage. there's a forklift and an exit door. out the exit door, there's a stencilly-looking rubber duck mural

a parking garage exit door. out the exit door, there's recycling bins and a stencilly-looking rubber duck mural

Want to encourage people to #vote, but mostly people with attention to detail? Leave a note of encouragement in a small crack in the sidewalk, kinda buried, kinda overgrown with grass.

mismatched Scrabble tiles spelling 'vote' in a crack in the sidewalk. I _guess_ they spell 'vote.' Honestly, the E is so overgrown it could be an F.

(San Francisco, that church near Waller/Belvedere)

San Francisco's Nightingale House, as seen from the plaza across the street

The paint job on this fence on Anza St. near 9th is neat; it's kinda trompe-l'œil, kinda not.

a fence painted to look like a yard with a driveway and some cacti with a house set back; behind the fence is the depicted house

that same fence+house, but closer

There was a break in the rain, so I nipped over to Golden Gate Park for a quick walk.

Along the way, I looked at some public art: signs made from the pages of the alphabet book: Golden Gate Park, an A to Z Adventure.

two signs with some pretty art letting you know that N is for Nesting herons and O is for Orchids

the lack of a P sign and a sign with some pretty art letting you know that Q is for Queen Wilhelmina Gardens

Alas, someone took a P, so what we have now is some art about Golden Gate _ark.

Golden Gate _ark sounds silly now, but if the rain continues for another forty days and nights, you know I'll be first in line to board.

Why do we call it "AI hallucinations" when we should call it "Artificial Inelegance?"

Full disclosure: I'm not sure who I stole this joke from, but they vandalized a shoe store window ad on Haight Street.

a shoe store window with an ad painted onto it. One strategic letter of the ad has been removed. The ad reads "The Fluevog AI* Sale *Artistic In elligence" Presumably that "In elligence" used to be "Intelligence"

If I ran the HOA: Go ahead and paint your house whatever the heck color, but if you have snowflake decorations, they must have six-way symmetry and no two of them should be identical.

side of a house with two identical "snowflake" decorations exhibiting eight-way symmetry

On 15th Ave a few doors up from Ortega in San Francisco, there are three big houses with miniature-mimic houses out front.

big house with little house

little house in front of big house

big house with little house

little house in front of big house

big house with little house

little house in front of big house

#SFHellscape ...

I chuckled at the Big Free Library that the Internet Archive has by their side door (Clement Ave/Funston), since the I.A. functions as a big, free library. But it wasn't until I got home and looked a...

They tore up the lane-marking paint on JFK Promenade. Years back, JFK Promena Drive was open to cars six days a week, so it made sense to have lanes. Later, JFK was closed to cars all week temporari...

People say that Outer Sunset NIMBYs will stymie all construction but then how do you explain (3227 Lawton) ...

That Entwined Meadow art installation is setting up again this year. But this year, "Entwined Meadow" won't be in the meadow. When I saw the installation getting installed not-in-the-meadow, I ...

People say that Outer Sunset NIMBYs will stymie all construction but then how do you explain (4233 Kirkham) ...

A paper posted in front of the Veganburg restaurant on San Francisco's Haight Street: they're closing October 22nd. I wasted time trying to figure out whether their vegan-ness helped or harmed their ...

I read the news of Senator Feinstein's passing this morning. Thus, when I set out on my morning walk, San Francisco business-as-usual pay-to-play politics was on my cynical mind. But then a line of d...

I'm not sure whether this thingy on a rooftop near 38th Ave & Irving is a cultural reference I'm ignorant of or some non-referential inflatable glow-in-the-dark party-lovin' ghost decor...

After days of wildfire fallout, it's good to see the UCSF Smoke-Free Zone is back in effect. ...

Like many San Franciscans I've recently struggled played with Chris Arvin's excellent Name SF Streets game. Crossword fiend that I am, I thought Remembering street names by looking at a map is hard; ...

Animals drawn using the letterforms of their words. Sidewalk chalk art in San Francisco at Judah & 20th, sadly faded by the time I saw it. ...

Some Snoopy in the Sunset district from my last couple of exercise walks: A little free library just south of Moraga & 25th Ave; and Some sidewalk art at Judah and 20th Ave. ...

There are some new traffic lights going up where Medical Center Way hits Parnassus Ave. I dunno enough about traffic light installation to tell whether this is the first step in setting up perma...

Erratum/Update Last week I reported that a DJ tent and an inflatable giant roller skate were at the Golden Gate Park 6th Ave Skatin' Place for the occasion of the San Francisco Skater's Showcase. But I went past th...

I walked past a storefront near 33rd Ave and Judah and saw some big Braille out of the corner of my eye. I snapped a hasty pic through the window, but didn't try to get a better one—inside the ...

Golden-color Adirondack chairs abound near San Francisco's JFK Promenade, an art installation among several in that area. Lots of art went in when the Promenade was established; but these chairs exce...

I walked by the San Francisco Skaters' Showcase today. [Updated to add:] I went back a week later. The tent and the inflate-a-skate were back again. I guess they weren't there for the San Franci...

I snapped this photo of strange traffic redirectors near Alvord Lake so I could ask later what was going on. But then a bicyclist came up behind me, saying "Look out, runner coming through" and ...

Strange doings this morning in the San Francisco Music Concourse: someone wrote the lyrics to the "Rainbow Connection" song on a giant beach ball and left that ball in a fountain. We'll exorcis...

I guess the local fire department station got pretty excited about the recent final show of the final tour of the band Dead & Co, seeing as how they've got a new deadhead skull lit up at night. ...

Down at the Waller Street skate park this morning: a memorial to Zion Williams, a skateboarder who kept skateboarding after being blinded. (In theory that's a gift link and should get you past the pa...

Can you imagine a loop more doomed than #SanFrancisco? You cannot; it is impossible. When was the last time someone washed those cacti? The neglect is inestimable. ...

Welcome to #SanFrancisco, where it's all decline all the time. ...

If you let your eyes unfocus, you might convince yourself this license plate is a palindrome: (Safety note: please don't let your eyes unfocus while crossing the street in front of motor vehicle...

A #SanFrancisco mystery: What happened to the middle Doggie Diner head on JFK Promenade? On my morning exercise walk, I was surprised to see that one of the Doggie Diner heads was missing, replaced w...

Walking back to my apartment, contemplating/dreading the steep hill, I was surprised: why was there a giant hexagon up there? Once I got up there, I saw this mysterious "hexagon" was a rather-t...

There's a big crane operating in the steep cul-de-sac on my block today. I guess it's lifting some AC equipment up to the top of the office building (that has a bunch of medical offices so maybe(?) t...

You might have looked at ballards* and thought There's no point trying to balance things on top of something so round. But on my morning walk, I saw that someone had precariously balanced a stack of ...

Nice Bench Mystery: Solved You might recall a couple of weeks back I noted a mysterious bench plaque at San Francisco's Music Concourse: "Nice Bench, 2" I looked around a little for the implied "Nice Bench, 1" but gave up...

Walking in San Francisco's Inner Richmond neighborhood, I wondered which portmanteau folks had settled on for Sushi Bistro's Castle Cagliostro-themed mural: is it Caglibistro or Cagliobistro? Google ...

Seen at the Music Concourse: a modern fairy circle; a bench dedication that I don't understand: "Nice Bench, 2" ...

Sidewalk chalk art on Judah at 20th Ave: Answers the question you never knew you had, "What if the Care Bears were actual bears?" ...

Some weeks back, I saw a post on the New Bohemia Signs tumblr, a picture of art&artists, students in a sign-painting hand-lettering class. Beyond admiring the handiwork, I also was intere...

It's a #graffiti mystery: Several days back, I noticed a graffito "wet concrete." You might assume I saw it written in sidewalk concrete, but it was actually written in chalk on a gray (cement-colore...

San Francisco trivia / Expert Level: What's wrong with this picture? ...

San Francisco's Golden Gate Park emerged from the recent storms relatively unscathed, but the scathed bits yielded more interesting pictures so here you go. ...

Yesterday I walked out to San Francisco's Ocean Beach. Along the way, I observed the carcinisation of a mailbox at 4625 Lincoln. The beach itself was misty, pleasingly abstract. The Great Highway had...

There was a break in the storm this morning, so I took a quick exercise walk. There was tree debris, mostly due to the storm, but also a bit I suspect due to a Haight Street drunk. ...

My weather app said there was a break in the storm so I struggled into my rarely-used rain gear and went outside. When the rain hit my head, I got mad at the app and the national weather service and ...

A big storm will blow through the San Francisco bay area tomorrow. We're supposed to prepare; but I wasn't sure what to do. A lot of earthquake-preparedness carries over to storm-preparedness. But t...

Foresters have been clearing out the eucalyptus trees from the hillside above my apartment. They've been working for months and aren't done yet. These are some especially-tough eucalyptus trees. Late...

On this day between rains, I walked in a strangely lush Golden Gate Park. Today, one could pretend San Francisco wasn't dealing with a drought on top of everything else. ...

Oh cool, the city set up a Men's World Cup viewing party on JFK Promenade so the local soccer fans could watch on the big screen without swapping air. In case you're wondering "since when does L...

W- were they on sale? Suddenly ballards are all over Golden Gate Park. (Pictured: Ballard, ballard, ballard. Bollards, ballard. Ballard, barrier, ballard. Ballard, barrier, ballard.) Oh...

When I walked through Golden Gate Park, the carnies were setting up Jingle All the Way, also known as the San Francisco tree lighting ceremony and official lighting up of the Entwined artificial tree...

Every so often, you stumble upon something that reminds you how much more is going on in San Francisco than you know about. ...

Looks like that Entwined light-up art installation is coming back to the Peacock Meadow in San Francisco (as has been noted elsewhere). ...

Someone was asking me what they do with the Golden Gate Park pianos on JFK Promenade at night. They put piano covers on them: ...

Nick's Labyrinth I continued my morning exercise walk past Laberinto Verde: floreciendo and in amongst some trees I bumped into a new-to-me labyrinth. And when I search the web for it, I don't find anything. I guess ...

A few weeks back, I blogged a picture of the road mural Laberinto Verde: floreciendo. It was hard to figure the mural out from my picture; it's a big mural on the ground; so my on-the-ground picture ...

Spotted on my walk this morning: ladybug deco on this column (painted by fnnch) Ha ha ha, see it's funny because I said "spotted" and ladybugs have spots. ...

Not sure if the orange blob on this stump is a mushroom that grew in the rain; or a pile of candy corn left out in the rain by discerning litterbug trick-or-treaters. ...

Hallowe'en Haunt ♫ Oh I don't want no more of that carnie life / Gee Mom, I want to go home ♫ From now until 2100 tonight it's Hallowe'en Haunt on JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park. I saw people setting up som...

Laberinto Verde: floreciendo Folks continue to decorate the car-free portion of JFK Drive Promenade. There's a new road mural, Laberinto Verde: floreciendo by Josué Rojas, assisted by Anthony Jiminez. I suppose to really ca...

Last year, I spotted some Hallowe'en riddle decorations at a neighbor's house. Alas, I didn't spot them until after Hallowe'en, too late to be useful. So this year, I'll post a link back to my last-y...

Polytechnic Way San Francisco has a new commemorative street, Polytechnic Way. It's named for Polytechnic High School, which you probably haven't heard of. That school is defunct now, its main building torn dow...

There's a new art installation up by JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park. When I first saw it, I thought "It's too bad my puzzlehunt-addled brain's going to spend the rest of the day trying to find a messa...

On my morning walk, the stretch of Haight Street by Buena Vista Park was being taken over by movie-production people. The big signs said Dust Bunny but the smaller permission notices said PYM product...

On this morning's exercise-walk, I took pictures of some things that seemed out-of-place. Not every out-of-place thing is bad; most quite the opposite. ...

A little model house appeared in Golden Gate Park near the 19th Ave & Lincoln entrance, by the fence of the Arboretum. It sits atop a… stump? Do I call it a stump if it's taller than ...

On my morning exercise walk, I saw SFFD ladder trucks doing some sort of rescue on 17th Street. 17th Street is pretty steep; it's easy to remember it's 17% steep (though not that steep on the block w...

San Francisco is getting new public trash bin enclosures. There are a few designs up for consideration. I visited one design today. It just plain didn't work. When folks tried to throw out their tras...

I'm progressing nicely in that Pikmin Bloom walk-around-with-your-phone game. I've walked over 2.5 million steps, yes indeed. ...

I walked a mile (the wrong way) along the San Francisco Marathon this morning. ...

Some gold-color sidewalk chalk art for the golden ratio. Willard Street, San Francisco, USA. ...

San Francisco, a city in decline (if you're walking downhill (which I was)) ...

This morning I rode BART out to Berkeley, walked around south & west Berkeley for a bit, and caught AC Transit back. That's not super-exciting, but it is my first time getting out of town since the f...

As I headed out on my exercise walk this morning, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. In a house garage that hosted a polling place for last week's election, there was still voting equip...

1 Million Steps I'm still playing that Pikmin Bloom walking-around mobile phone game. I recently hit a milestone: I've walked a million steps while playing the game. ...

Plum blossoms starting up on Hillway Ave. Not a lot so far, but they're a-comin' ...

Because of the recent COVID-19 surge, I've kept my morning walks close to home. E.g., this morning I walked past this building on the hill across the street from my apartment. In other news for ...

Please enjoy these snapshots from my morning walk: New year, new me folder to set up to hold my blog pictures, please pardon my dust ♫ la la la ♫ ...

When I popped out of the coffee shop on the homeward leg of this morning's walk, a rainbow dazzled me. San Francisco doesn't get much rain; I don't see many rainbows. This one caught me by surprise. ...

Today at sunrise, I snapped a picture of Sutro Tower. Turns out I wasn't the only one. ...

When I walked past the UCSF Parnassus Emergency Room, its parking lot was overflowing with ambulances. An ambulance that didn't fit was parked in a nearby bus stop. As I kept walking, another ambulan...

Lately, I've been playing a new walking-around game: Pikmin Bloom. As I walk, I look at a map on my phone, where I see that I'm leaving a trail of little flowers behind me. I also see trails of littl...

On Hallowe'en evening, kids in St. Louis don't just say "Trick or treat," they ask jokey riddles. Unfortunately, these little kids make up their own jokes, and the results are abusrdly unfunny. Each ...

You may recall that some months back I started playing a walking-around game called Orna. I'm still playing it these days and hit a milestone this morning: My character is №100 in my region (Northern...

On this morning's exercise walk, I encountered some racist horseshit flyers. They were stapled to some wood in a bus shelter. When I went to rip them down, I discovered that they weren't just stapled...

I walked around San Francisco Bay July 1-7, 2021. You might think Big deal, Larry walked around the bay before. But before, I only walked most of the way around the bay, stymied by the lack of a pede...

Orna, another walking-around game (or not if you'd rather stay put) Lately, I've been playing Orna, an RPG-style phone game in which your character moves around in the game world when you, the player, move around in the real world. E.g., in the picture below that loo...

Comic Report: The Secret to Superhuman Strength It's a graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel, who you might remember from Fun Home. It's about her attempt to keep mens sana in corpore sano (sound body, sound mind). She talks about her experiences...

My local Nextdoor is full, as ever, of whiners. Lately, car drivers have been squawking about streets that got closed to through traffic to ease pandemic exercise—give folks space to bike and r...

The Walk Lately, I've been playing The Walk to make my walks more interesting. During the pandemic, my usual way of keeping walks interesting doesn't work. I'd hop on a bus/train so I could walk someplace I ...

#IVoted in person today. This might surprise my fellow Californians—California's dodging the pandemic by voting by mail this month. I was sent a mail-in ballot to fill in and return. But this m...

RandoWalk A while back, you might recall, I tried using the Randonautica app. The app chooses a random walk destination nearby. i got frustrated with the app and uninstalled it: when I switched between apps on...

Wildfire smoke having relented in San Francisco, I resumed my exercise-walks. I noticed some Hash House Harrier marks on the ground. The Hash House Harriers, you will recall, is the drinking club wit...

My walks took me past civic efforts. I traversed part of the leftover marks from the recent attempt at breaking the world's longest hopscotch course record in the NoPa neighborhood. And I saw the new...

Randonautica I had a system to randomly choose exercise-walking routes. I put that system aside when the pandemic reared up. The system chose routes that often involved a bus ride to the walk's starting point and...

Public health art by Susan Kare, I bet. Walkway at Presidio Ave Presidio Gate, San Francisco. ...

Yes, the flying pig is wearing a facemask. 240 Third Ave, near Clement. ...

Yesterday, I walked along a stretch of Fulton Street to see the message recently painted there. It wasn't so easy to read on the ground; it made more sense from the vantage of, say, a local news heli...

That DRILL IN PROGRESS sign is up again in the UCSF Parnassus Hospital emergency room parking lot. Once again, there are tents up. This time, it's fenced off, presumably to keep clueless doofuses lik...

As I walked past UCSF Parnassus (a combo medical school+hospital), there was a big sign out front saying DRILL IN PROGRESS. Behind that sign were some big tents set up in the emergency room parking l...

This morning, I went for a walk along the Embarcadero. Not much happened. I appreciated that. ...

[Content warning: implied violence] This morning, I went for a stroll on the Embarcadero. I came up to a small gathered crowd and stopped when someone pointed out the reason for the crowd—a jo...

One the one hand, I fell in the mud. Maybe I should be more careful. On the other hand, mud is soft. I emerged with no injuries, just a lot of dirty laundry. Maybe I was just-the-right-amount carefu...

Looks like I just ran out of excuses for not walking all of the way around San Francisco Bay. ...

I have walked 1000km while playing that Harry Potter Wizards Unite game. (That milestone doesn't capture the fun of the game, but it's something that folks can understand even if they don't know t...

The really unsettling thing about out-in-the-world puzzle hunts, eldritch horrors aside, is days later when you think you see puzzles everywhere. Just looking down at the sidewalk and you think you s...

Today I walked the SF Crosstown Trail, a long walk from one corner of San Francisco to the opposite corner via lots of parks and greenways and trees and such. There were a few stretches of sidewalk i...

Some people think I went overboard writing an app and designing an elaborate ritual to tell me where to take my walks, but in the long run it's probably less trouble than these naive saps who thought...

Back in December, I took an overnight trip to Sacramento. Sacramento has rivers. ...

If anyone asks why I'm busy, I'm just gonna go take all my 💰 out of the bank and hide it under my mattress after seeing an ATM frozen on this screen. ...

#Book Report: Balancing on Blue It's an account of walking the Appalachian Trail, hiking for months to travel 1000s of km along mountain ridges. Folks hike this if they're in great shape and want to get away from civilization for a...

I volunteered to pick up trash today. Lately, San Francisco's been in the news for outlawing plastic straws but having streets littered with needles and human poop. So I kept count of some things as ...

Book Report: Walkable City For a few decades, Americans thought that they wanted out of the inner city; bought cars, moved to newly-developed suburbs. These sparsely-developed areas weren't "walkable"—Getting anywhere in...

A while back, you'll recall I made a phone game that involved walking around and "checking in" to various landmark-y locations. The game got its information about local landmarks from Foursquare, tha...

Book Report: The Lost art of Finding our Way This book is darned near perfect: It's about how folks navigated back before there was a GPS phone in every pocket. Had things I didn't know about Vikings and about Marshall Island stick chart wave m...

This morning I tried out the Metaverse augmented reality game, which might or might not still be in beta, depending on where I read about it. In this game, you wander around looking at a map on your ...

My bus slowed to a crawl behind the naked march. Fans of nudity slowly slowly ambled down the middle of Haight Street, in the way traffic. It seemed rude. Did they really feel justified blocking buse...

Game: Troubador Tour Board I made a phone game: Troubador Tour Board. You play it by walking around with your phone, occasionally pressing a button. Nowadays, that's not so unusual for a game. This game's unusual in that you d...

Walking around my neighborhood today, I see 100% grim faces. It reminds me of hallways in companies facing multiple layoffs. ...

Last week, I walked most of the way around the bay (again). This week, I wrote about it. Unlike the previous time I walked most of the way around the bay, I didn't make a point of stopping at interes...

I'm just now back from a most-of-the-way-around-the-bay walk. My feet must recuperate. I may wear socks and sandals together. I appreciate your understanding during this difficult time. ...

Book Report: Wild It was a bestseller. Everybody read this before I did. You probably already read this or decided you wouldn't. Anyhow. It's a memoir of grief on the Pacific Coat Trail. I saw the movie before I read ...

Understand: I grew up in a time of paper maps. I'd look at a map of some place and never think I could get from there to some other not-on-the-map place. Maybe those places were close; but whoever th...

Yesterday, I passed the site of SCRAP's upcoming escape room game, Escape the Jail. It was a little bittersweet to consider that "Escape the Jail" theme. On the sweet hand: Run More Games, yay. On...

Book Report: The Old Ways It's a book of philosophical meandering ramblings about walking and sailing old routes. It starts out with a great deal of meandering musings, but if you can get past that, there are some interesting...

It's like someone started to bedazzle this lamp post. And then someone labeled some stones for a phone keypad before noticing that there weren't enough. Or something? It's like something, that's for ...

This morning, I did a sort of whaddyacallit… phone-guided walk of the Berkeley hills with a back-story. Following SMS and voice instructions, I walked and climbed and saw some things to a narr...

obscure joke What does one say to an urban drifter who lacks snacks? "You're" a "flâneur" without a "flan". ...

Google Streetview knows Muir Woods trails Why walk the Steep Ravine trail like a chump when you can traverse it virtually through street view? There's the Steep Ravine, the Matt Davis, much of the Dipsea… I was thinking of walking ...

Wanted: Mnemonic for Proper Coyote Hazing What this photo is failing to show you is a coyote peeking out from amongst the eucalyptus trees uphill from UCSF Parnassus Heights, i.e., really really close to where I live. That's from my walk ...

Further Around the Bay I walked more of the way around the bay. You may recall that my walk most of the way around the bay last month skipped a few parts that seemed too dangerous for walking; and a part that didn't seem t...

That time I walked most of the way around the bay I took eight days and walked most of the way around the bay. I wrote down some things that happened, took some photos. Let's hope I left out the tedious parts and included only the interesting parts....

I finally tried a Detour audio tour. These tours are like a neighborhood audio tour that you listen to on headphones, but use your phone's geolocation to figure out if you're at the right place to he...

Over-Engineered Walks: Pittsburg Yesterday, I walked from the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station to Old Town Pittsburg and back. This was my last walk chosen by that "Geocaching Vicinity" system. It was a good system. It was a good...

I finally figured out there's no great way for me to walk south off of San Bruno mountain, a.k.a., the dramatic hill from the end of the WHO game. Ages ago, when I wanted to take a long walk, I used...

Overloaded Name If you say Gordon Moore, as in "Moore's Law" …now we have to ask if you mean the Intel co-founder's rule of thumb about computer hardware advances or the San Francisco beat cop. ...

Book Report: Cool Gray City of Love It's a book about San Francisco. Something of a cross between a history and a gazetteer; it's a collection of 49 essays, each using a San Francisco neighborhood as a leaping-off point for talking abo...

Book Report: A Sense of Direction In which the author goes on a few walking pilgrimages, though he is not himself religious. He discusses what folks got out of pilgrimages back in the day. Similarly, he discusses what they get out of...

Assumption school exists. The jokes practically write themselves. ...

Over-engineered Walks a year later: Munzee I still play Munzee, in which folks post the GPS coordinates of barcode stickers, and I go find and scan those bar codes. Since you only get credit for scanning any particular Munzee once, it gives m...

Over-Engineered Walks a Year Later: randomized deck from index cards I still let some written-on index cards figure out my walking route to work each morning. If my route doesn't bring me to the correct block, then I take the last card, cross out its number, and write...

Over-Engineered Walks a Year Later: Geocache Vicinity When I want to get out from behind the computer and go for a walk and don't want to choose the route myself, I still do this: Choose a geocache that I haven't visited yet that's a little further away...

Larry Lane …as encountered on a walk through the Oakland Hills ...

Nautical Flags, Richmond Posting this just in case it shows up later as a Shinteki puzzle site, you know? ...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even Stanford Campus and/or the Moon This long weekend was all about location-based games, mostly out in the world. Played Shinteki's Stanford Puzzle Tour Failed to Real-Escape the Moon Base Followed a Hash House Harriers trail from th...

Happy National Poetry Month I saw a poem this morning: Parent demonstrates-by-example how to look both ways… ...

Updated a photo of McGrouther-Conradi tacks with an informative message I got about their history. ...

How to be sure a site is GPS-friendly? How do I know if a place is "glitchy" for GPS? I thought it was enough to just glance at my phone-map for a few seconds, but now I don't know what to think. The other day, I met friends downtown. I ...

OK, I've tried Ingress now It's another location-based game; Egnor finally nudged me over into trying it. By checking in at one spot and then checking in at a nearby spot, I drew a line segment on a map between those two spots...

To try a game prototype where the "map" depends on where you physically play, go to Amnesia Fortnight, pony up a few bucks, vote for "Buried Metropolis," and hope for good luck. That's the skinny. H...

Book Report: The Ludic City Mostly, an academic jots down observations of people goofing around in cities' public spaces. Pedestrians waggle their arms. Buskers and street crazies accost passers-by. Bicyclists ride in perhaps-s...

The plan was to stick some Munzee barcodes to things. Things did not go according to plan. I tried sticking a barcode under a utility box and the barcode fell right off—the box was covered with...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even 10.4 N 75.5 W This morning, I had the spirit to look up. Above the usual eye-level was a crudely taped-up laminated message, triva-lly cluing a certain location. (Not my location; I was in San Francisco, USA, of c...

Over-Engineered Walks: Munzee Addendum Last week, the Munzee folks must have spidey-sensed that a puzzle-hunt enthusiast was writing about their geocaching-in-the-age-of-smartphones game. We know this because soon afterwards, they launche...

Over-engineered Walks: Munzee Munzee is a game that encourages you to go places, something like Geocaching in the age of smartphones. In Geocaching, you are given a set of lat/long coordinates; you go there, you find a little con...

Over-engineered Walks: randomized deck from index cards A few weeks back, Brian Enigma posted in response to one of these "Over-engineered walks" posts: @lahosken Or get a set of DiceCards and remove/ignore the ones with a north or diagonal compass. Or ma...

Over-engineered Walks: Geocache Vicinity When I'm traveling and I want to to do some semi-random wandering, I look for geocaches, little boxes hidden around the world whose lat/longitudes are posted on a website. Except I don't really look ...

Tonight's talk wasn't recorded, which is too bad because it touched on The-Game-ish themes. Participants move through space, facing challenges which they overcome as a group. Still, that lack of reco...

Over-engineered Walks: Dice Around the start of 2012, I started work at Google's San Francisco office. I walked to work, but quickly got tired of walking the direct route day after day. I started walking a different route each ...

Over-engineered Walks: Keep Walking South I walk for exercise. I don't like deciding where to go, though. I set up systems to make that decision for me, so I can enjoy the breeze and the sweet, sweet endorphins. Complicating these systems: I...

Vertical garden, Hickory Alley ...

A resident addressed me: "It would be interesting to set up a time-lapse camera here." I was walking at Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito, a big houseboat area. Specifically, I was stepping off a tempo...

The people of Brisbane, California, decorate the town's fire plugs. When a fire plug wears out, they don't want to discard their art, so they have a plug preserve. ...

New-to-me Golden Gate Bridge overlook by Battery Godfrey ...

The @Shinteki logo, before it was a triangle, was a seated discus thrower. (Specifically, it was a mash-up of Rodin's Thinker and Discus Thrower statues.) That was pretty funny because ha ha who thin...

Photo: Niantic Ave If you walk from San Francisco to the Daly City BART station, you could pass this. ...

Saw a Hash House Harriers pack run past, my first time seeing a live pack instead of just leftover chalk marks on the ground. At first I was kind of disappointed. I thought "If I were the hare, I wo...

Windows Phone event setting up at San Francisco @BillGrahamCivic, preparing for major crowd control. ...

Link: SpliceVine interview with Sara Thacher @thacher is a big name in the @jejuneinstitute game and other TransMedia experience/game/thingies. This site about video editing(?!) interviewed her, and she mentions an early influence: Janet Cardif...

My high school chums and I used to go to the No-Name Sushi restaurant every so often. We stopped going after it caught fire. (How does a restaurant specializing in raw fish catch fire? Anyhow.) I wal...

@HollowSF now has @DandelionChoco. nextdoorsweets.com is open and serving boba and gelato. I'm gonna get fat. ...

I used to stop in at the Roastery for the decor. They used Papyrus font despite being across the street from an art school. I always wondered what woke the art students up more: the coffee or the gra...

People are surprised that Barefoot Contessa's at @sfcarts Stanyan/Waller. But "no shoes, no service" law sez she's gotta eat outdoors. ...

Each morning, a food truck pulls up behind the San Francisco opera house. Its car horn plays the bugle tune First Call. A night at the opera meets a day at the races. ...

I walked home a different way yesterday and bumped into #OccupySF . It's a real thing. You know how sometimes you read a news report of a protest, but eventually figure out it was just a half-dozen p...

I walked south and took some photos http://goo.gl/nQMb5 ...

Puzzle Hunts were everywhere, even the Magic Mountain area at Coyote Point park I went for a walk partway down the peninsula this morning. At one point, I realized I was walking past the Coyote Point playground, the one with the big castle-themed play structure. This site was th...

I went on a walk this morning. I took a few photos. ...

Wooly Pig Cafe There's a Wooly Pig Cafe 3rd Ave and Hugo in San Francisco. I feel like I scored some kind of "scoop" by discovering this cafe by walking around instead of by reading Heath Putnam's Wooly Pig blog. ...

In the Haight, trading words with a tattooed dope fiend is old news; but shopping in a supermarket is novel. ...

Art Hunts are Everywhere, even the Presidio I was just reminded of a walk I recently took in San Francisco's Presidio. There was an art event going on around the Fort Winfield Scott area; exhibits scattered around outside. You could approach...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, but the Edges are Fuzzy On my way to Saturday's excellent Shinteki Decathlon game, I swung by a few places to take care of a few things. E.g., I stopped to take an unhurried look at that worn-down Jejune sticker I'd spotte...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, Even the Marin Headlands and maybe the Seat in Front of me on the Bus There was that awesome Shinteki Decathlon game a couple of weeks ago. One of the clue sites was Hawk Hill, a high hill in the Marin Headlands. It seemed like a neat site, so... yesterday I went bac...

Link: Ken Jennings roolz San Francisco City Hall runs this town. And who runs city hall? Not Gavin Newsom--he's bumbling around, grooming himself for a gubernatorial run. Fortunately Jeopardy star Ken Jennings stepped in to keep city ha...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even San Jose I like The Game. I like the puzzles, but in between puzzles, I like hopping into a van and zipping around, visiting interesting places. Even though... all too often we don't really linger at the in...

Follow-up: SFZero Suggestion Box You may recall that last month, I stumbled onto a suggestion box on Waller and Steiner streets. This suggestion box, as it turned out, was part of a game. This game, SF0, is a sort of mutual-dare c...

Not-Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, but especiially at Waller and Steiner On my way back home from the library, I encountered a nicely-made suggestion box at the Northeast corner of Waller and Steiner. Signage encouraged passers-by to write suggestions on index cards and ...

Book Report: The Roads to Sata In this travelog, our hero walks the length of Japan, from the tippy-top of Hokkaido, the length of Honshu, down south past Sakurajima. This was in the 1980s, and gaijin were mysterious; he encounte...

Can I Mooch a Ride from San Francisco to Mars Saturday Morning? Dear Lazyweb-- I'm volunteering at the Googol Conglomerate tomorrow, i.e., Saturday. I could spend three hours getting there from San Francisco on CalTrain. But I'd much rather mooch a ride with y...

Book Report: New Yorker Feb 14 & 21 2005 I read the New Yorker in stack order; magazines are not pushed on the stack at publish-time, but are queued elsewhere for a nontrivial time; that is, I don't read them in chronological order. So you ...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere I stepped off the streetcar two stops early tonight. I wanted to walk a ways. I had recovered from my wild and crazy weekend. I was no longer hobbling around--I could walk. So I wanted to walk, g...

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere Peter Tang just rented a new apartment. Today Steven, 'Lene and I went over to paint some of the walls. Watching paint dry is not interesting. So between coats we headed out for lunch. As we walk...

Park Challenge Today Team Unwavering Resolve (a.k.a. Steven Pitsenbarger, Paul du Bois, and I) played in Park Challenge, a puzzle hunt game organized by the Desert Taxi folks. It was a fun stroll in Golden Gate Pa...

Book Report: A Walk In the Woods Bill Bryson confirms that hiking is difficult. This book was OK. Tags: book | Appalachian Trail |Labels: book, ok, pedestrian...