A reminder of school days.

Doubtless political correctness prevents the action suggested by this building’s name, but I recall only too well that the threat of a good caning concentrated my mind wonderfully in my school days. I wasn’t that successful in avoiding corporal punishment, so my preferred protection was a thin volume of Ovid tucked in the pants – worked every time. This obvious subterfuge only served to increase my early contempt for authority of any kind.

Spank me. G1, kit lens at 16mm, f/6.3, 1/320, ISO 125

The firm on the right boasts of having been there since 1954; how on earth have they answered the question “Which building are you in?” for the past 50+ years? Would you send your kid to the pre-schoool here?

Spotted in San Mateo, CA.

Monochrome – just a little chrome.

A little color goes a long way.

San Mateo. G1, kit lens at 21mm, f/6.3, 1/160, ISO 100

Interesting living.

Here’s the charm of a big old city at its best.

G1, kit lens at 45mm, f/5.6, 1/2000, ISO 100

Quite who would want to live among this ramshackle jungle I cannot imagine, but the city is a better place for not tearing this sort of thing down only to be replaced by some concrete silo. Spotted by sticking the lens through some old wire fencing in North Beach. I have yet to figure out how that red framed door at the top works.

Tied to a lamppost.

It seems cruel and unusual punishment to tether America’s bird, but these two were tied with a flimsy piece of string to an alleyway lamppost in North Beach. Nothing else in sight. Very strange.

G1, kit lens.

Boy oh! boy.

When one thinks of the greatest accomplishments of western civilizations, whose thoughts do not turn to the soaring egos and imagination of artists of the Renaissance and their patrons? The very touchstone of quality, taste and skill, few things compare in this photographer’s visual cortex.

Yet, at the same time, the same religious beliefs and doctrines which gave the Renaissance its heart and soul have also resulted in some of the most appalling kitsch visited upon humanity.

Along those lines, few stoop as low as the Franciscan’s store in North Beach, replete with horrors like those displayed here:

G1, 23mm, f/5, 1/400, ISO 100

I mean, the jaw simply drops. Absent one tattered tome on Pollaiuolo this very large store was simply filled with this sort of …. well, there’s no other word for it …. crap.