More than meets the eye.

Say ‘Fisherman’s Wharf’ to any long time San Francisco denizen and the chances are that you will be rewarded with looks of distaste and words to the effect of ‘tourist trap’. And along the main drag through this community, replete with revolting T-shirts and even more tasteless souvenirs, that is largely correct.

But underneath the noise there is a real fishing community here and it doesn’t take any effort to walk off the beaten track to discover it.

It’s the start of the Dungeness Crab fishing season and crab pots abound.

Crab pots ready for deployment. 85mm MF Nikkor.

The stainless steel wires on these are laboriously repaired before the start of the season. It’s illegal to catch female crabs (a strange form of eugenics – don’t they need males?) and undersized ones can easily escape the pot.

Fishermen are not without humor. 85mm MF Nikkor.

One of the few concessions to modernity is the use of power washers to clean the floats which designate the location of the crab pots.

Cleaning the floats. 20mm MF Nikkor.

Truth be told, watching these chaps at work it’s clear they could do this far faster with an old-fashioned bristle brush, with less damage to the floats.

THE bridge is always present. 85mm MF Nikkor.

Every aficionado of early Manual Focus Nikkors owes it to himself to get the 20mm UD Nikkor made in the 1960s.

Eerie storage lockers. Processed in Snapseed. 20mm MF Nikkor.

Mercifully, I was able to find a parking spot among the fish crates.

Plutocrat’s Special. There’s money in fish …. 20mm MF Nikkor.

Moral graffito. 20mm MF Nikkor.

Surreal storage. 20mm MF Nikkor.

Capurro’s restaurant. 35mm MF Nikkor.

These get much cheaper as the season progresses.

Dungeness Crabs. 20mm MF Nikkor.

Tourist trap or not, this beats downtown Detroit.

Lou’s Restaurant. 35mm MF Nikkor.

All snapped on the Nikon D3x with the lenses shown.