From Grace’s Steps.

Date: July 28, 2009
Place: California Street, San Francisco
Modus operandi: Just in time
Weather: 100% humidity but no rain
Time: 9:45 am
Gear: Panasonic G1, kit lens at 29mm
Medium: Digital
Me: Just exiting Grace Catedral
My age: 57

Grace Cathedral is one of those edifices erected by the self-important so that all can wonder at the greed which made their munificence possible. Atop Nob Hill in San Francisco, you exit it wondering what it is that you have just seen, with the word ‘big’ being about all you can articulate. Some of the truly tasteless murals testify to the bourgeois burghers who made it big and built it even bigger.

So I was sort of standing outside this Cathedral of Commerce on the south facing stairs, a tad lost in thought, only to be confronted by yet another memorial to purported goodness masquerading in the shape of an overbuilt granite monstrosity, the Freemasons’ temple across the road.

Glancing down I spotted these two – one just leaving the Tenderloin, not two blocks West, the other about to enter that worst of the city’s neighborhoods. And you thought people carried their life’s possessions on a stick slung over their shoulder only in children’s books?

The play of the figures against the backdrop was just perfect as I watched them fall into place. You don’t get two opportunities at this sort of thing and I grabbed mine no less greedily than the financiers all around me had grabbed their share of Nob Hill. Lady Luck arranged for the break in traffic and absence of vehicles on the road. Those with shutter lag need not apply!