Art Siegel took this photo exactly one year ago today. Are the flowers still as pretty? Is the sky still as blue? Where were we then, and where are we now? These are all questions that are probably best to avoid. But the photo? Wonderful.
UPDATE: Amasonbrink took this Instagram photo today on the hill, one year to the day from the photo above. It looks like those flowers are right on time:
It’s Friday. You need less words. You need more pictures. We know people who take pictures. So let’s oogle a few of the awesome photos lurking in the Bernalwood Flickr group.
Wake Up, City by Cyril_at_sf
Models and Bottles by Charlie Dillingham
Bonview Street by Guillaume Lebleu
Bernal_Hill3 by Dyche
Do you take pictures? Of Bernalwood? Join us!
From her observation post in Bernal Heights, peephole spotted this rogue water plume inundating our neighbors to the south.
Viewed from our Bernal Window. It’s over at Bowdoin and Burrows in the Portola District. It’s been going a while now.
(I noticed it about 15 minutes ago, still going around 10:30am. Exciting update. At 10:44, it was gone.)
This may have been another gift from our friends at DPW, but based on the color, at least it doesn’t look like the icky Sewage Fountain they installed recently on Bocana.
Photo: Peephole
Very long story short… I’ve been following Shepard Fairey’s work ever since we were both students in Providence, Rhode Island during the 1980s. (I saw his early-career Andre the Giant/Buddy Cianci billboard hack live and in person, and it was sublime.) Since then, our paths have crossed many times, both online and in person. And now they’ve crossed again, on Bernalwood’s back door.
On March 10, Fairey will offer screen prints of a 2003 street art installation of his Obey graphic on Bayshore Boulevard. Step lively if you want want to get one to enjoy in the safety and comfort of your own home:
I’m illustrating some of my favorite street spots from over the years to be included in the LA MOCA “Art In The Streets” show, so I decided to make prints of some of my favorites. This one is from Bayshore Blvd. in San Francisco around 2003. Photo by Mark the Cobra Snake. The silhouette is some random lackey I hired because I don’t do street art myself.
-Shepard18 x 24″ Screen Print, $45, Edition of 450, Limit 1 per person / household. Signed by Shepard Fairey. Release date: 3/10/2011 at a random time.
Image: Shepard Fairey
Reader WJ wrote to Bernalwood recently with a gushing customer testimonial about Monkeybrains, a Mission-based high-speed Internet bandwidth provider that offers service in Bernal Heights. Since I continue to muddle along in a loveless marriage with Comcast, I was intrigued. Perhaps you will be too.
WJ says:
After a couple of years struggling with scheming and incompetent Comcast technicians, and then dealing with the total unreliability of my DSL service, a friend of mine from work told me about Monkeybrains, another high speed internet service for the Mission/Bernal Heights area.
It’s not actually too good to be true, I had it installed and the speed is incredible (at least, compared to DSL it’s incredible). There’s a $250 setup fee for all of the hardware but they are running a pilot program now so internet access is free until June (when it will go up to around $35/month).
The guys who run the company are local — the tech who set me up lives on the other side of Bernal hill from me — and when installing my devices today he noticed that my neighbor also had one of their antennas on their roof, so it seems like word is getting around.
I thought you might be interested in posting their website since their pilot program specifically targets Bernal Heights. I’ve been using the service for about three weeks now and it’s been absolutely flawless.
Bernalwood has been assured that no monkeys are actually harmed while providing this Internet service, so no need to feel guilty about that.
More importantly, I was interested to see that Monkeybrains has a five-star rating on Yelp, which is more than a little impressive given that a) Monkeybrains is an ISP, after all and b) Yelp is swarming with crankypants.
Any other user testimonials? Add ’em in the comments!
Photo: A Monkeybrains antenna in Bernal Heights, by WJ
A broken coffee cup, a ceramic figurine, and a shrunken dolly-head.
There’s something so quintessentially Bernal about this odd collection of ornaments that decorates a tree in front of a home on the western end of Precita Avenue.
Photo: Telstar Logistics
Writer Neal Pollack wrote “Alternadad,” an all-too-poignant memoir about the challenge of being male and remaining cool even after having a kid. Since he now (presumably) has the whole parenting thing down pat, Pollack’s has turned his attention to yoga, while anointing himself the “Hot Jew of the Yoga Generation.”
Oy. In any event, Pollack’s new book is called “Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude,” and you can attend a reading by the Yoga Dude himself at Bernal Yoga on Cortland from 7 to 9 pm on Saturday, March 5, 2011.
My daughter can’t walk past the labyrinth on Bernal Hill without following the route to reach home base at the center.
So does that mean she will have a more enlightened Buddha-nature than other sentient beings who don’t spend so much time tracing the path?
Mu!
Video by Telstar Logistics
On the subject of Bernal’s vintage Coca-Cola mural, it’s good to see that Supervisor David Campos has well and truly come around, at last. Today he told the San Francisco Examiner:
“We have decided that on balance the best approach is to move forward and protect the sign which ultimately is there, not for the purposes of advertising Coca Cola, but for the purpose really of giving us a sense what the neighborhood was like,” Campos said. “There is a historic value to that sign.”
Since that’s exactly what Bernalwood has been saying since day one, we can only say, Hurrah! The Examiner says Campos will introduce legislation next week to save the sign, and we’ll keep you posted as soon as the details become known.
Photo: Halsted Bernard
Because we’re all about the love, Bernalwood republishes this Missed Connection from Craigslist as a public service to romantics in our community:
You: Standing outside Bernal Yoga, short bobbed light-brown hair with a blue streak in front, petite, adorable. ~6pm, Monday (2/28).
Me: Walking distractedly down Cortland Ave. Brown hoodie, leather jacket, short dark hair, boyish. Noticed you standing there. You immediately riveted my attention. You looked up & caught me checking you out. Embarrassed, I looked down. When I dared glance back up, you met my gaze, took a sip from your water bottle then smiled. I smiled back and wanted to stop right there on the street to speak to you. Couldn’t think of a way fast enough before my walk carried me by. I crossed the street to Good Life grocery. You were getting on a bike, then rode out of my life.
Give me another chance to see your smile?
Photo: Telstar Logistics
When we say that Bernalwood is chic and glamorous, we’re not kidding. (Well, not always.) Hummingbird Girls is a cute vintage fashion website, and one of the site’s recent posts features a photo shoot taken on our always-glam hill:
When I first moved to San Francisco I lived in Bernal Heights. It’s a wonderful little neighborhood with lots of lovely shops down Courtland, the main road. The coffee shops are filled with regulars and The Good Life Market grocer knows your name. Now I live just below this pretty hill that always shines above the clouds. But it’s still nice to go and visit all my old haunts.
Oh, and for all you fashionistas keeping score at home:
Photos: Hummingbird Girls
During this time of year, wildflowers pair with Bernal Hill’s rakish microwave antenna tower almost as well as peanut butter and chocolate.
Photo: Telstar Logistics
The case of Anonymous NIMBY vs. Vintage Coke Mural has been exasperating for (almost) everyone involved.
It has been exasperating for homeowner Richard Modolo, who has had to deal with the inconvenience and expense of responding to the City’s notice of violation about the old mural. It has been exasperating for the City Planning Department, which has become the object of national scorn and ridicule as a result of its decision to declare the mural illegal. And today Bernalwood learned that it has also been exasperating to Supervisor David Campos.
Indeed, the only one who probably feels empowered by the debacle is our Anonymous NIMBY. One complaint, and — boom! — an all-consuming controversy ensues. Not bad for a lone voice in a city of many tens of thousands.
This evening Supervisor Campos returned a phone call from Bernalwood. The Supervisor did not explain his long silence on this issue, but he reiterated that he has been trying to get a sense of how the neighbors in Bernal Heights feel about the vintage Coke mural.
The results of his fact-finding were clear and directional.
Campos received exactly one (1) email — perhaps from our Anonymous NIMBY? — expressing concern that the presence of the Coca-Cola mural so close to Paul Revere School might encourage childhood obesity. To gauge the depth of this sentiment, Campos says he reached out to a group of parents with children at the school. Were the parents worried the nearby mural might send their little ones careening down a path of sugar-fueled gluttony and lifelong corpulence???
Hardly. “None of the parents had an issue with the sign,” Campos reports.
Campos says he is now “moving in the direction of protecting the sign.” He also said he has been in discussion with the City Attorney’s office, and that he intends to make the details of his plan clear during the Board of Supervisors meeting that will take place tomorrow afternoon, on Tuesday, March 1.
“We need a solution for the city as a whole,” Campos says. “There is value in preserving our history, and that’s true city-wide. Creating a historic preservation district may help in this particular case, but we need a broader mechanism.”
Bernalwood couldn’t agree more. In fact, hasn’t this incident shown that the current law is more than a little ridiculous?
Campos readily agreed. “As a matter of law, I don’t think it makes much sense, given the lack of nuance,” he said. “We want to inject some common sense into this.”
Wouldn’t that be novel! Stay tuned tomorrow, when we will finally learn the details of the Campos Plan to Save Bernal’s Coke Mural.
Photo: via Supervisor Campos
