San Francisco local

The parts of San Francisco that have been an integral part of my life. The areas where much of who I am, developed. My first visit to San Francisco was in 1967, when I was in the military. I've been in and out of the city ever since, having lived there from 1983 to 1996 and continuing to have personal and professional contacts there that facilitate regular visits. The city was very important in terms of being a location where I developed a strong sense of my own identity, and it still remains a vital connection in my life. It is impossible to succinctly describe the experiences of living in SF, other than to say that it can be very mystical and other-worldly. What defines the San Francisco Bay area so beautifully is the relation between the land and the water, a relation resulting in key tensions that have defined the city. The bay meant that the city was a key transport center going back to the the days of the 1849 California Gold Rush, a key coastal defense site through major wars and the Cold War, and a key embarkation point for immigrants coming in and troops being sent abroad. With the city itself being the tip of a peninsula and almost cut off from the rest of the state by hills, the combination of geography, commerce, and human flow resulted in a particularly cosmopolitan and unique city. Hopefully these pictures capture some of the relationship between the physical beauty of the area and the emotional qualities of the environment. (Most of these pictures were taken with a digital camera and thus were taken after I moved to Southern California.)

To insure that photos from the same trip are adjacent, photos are in date order with newest on the left.

The parts of San Francisco that have been an integral part of my life. The areas where much of who I am, developed. My first visit to San Francisco was in 1967, when I was in the military. I've been in and out of the city ever since, having lived there from 1983 to 1996 and continuing to have personal and professional contacts there that facilitate regular visits. The city was very important…  (read more)

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