produce and skyscrapers

yesterday after work i drove up to the city to meet kelsey to continue our “yet unseen san francisco” exploring. now that my office is in san mateo, it is quite quick to get up to sf on a weeknight, which i love.

i met kels on her corner in the castro, where there’s a evening farmers’ market every wednesday. i could never emphasize emphatically enough how much i love farmers’ markets. look at this produce!!! eating fresh samples at the farmers’ market is one of the supreme simple pleasures of life – really!

  

we hopped on the muni train and headed downtown. did you know that san francisco city ordinances require skyscrapers to incorporate a certain square footage of public open space into their building plans? that means that scattered all around the financial district there are gardens and terraces tucked into corners and accessible to anyone. we set out to discover some of these so called POPOS (privately owned public open spaces). unfortunately, most of them close at 6, so we did a lot of peeking through fences and windows, but we did find some pretty neat spots.

 
the transamerica pyramid:

and its redwood grove POPO:

the views from the rooftop terrace POPO at the crocker galleria:
   
more urban scenes:
 
and us in a mission street POPO as it got dark and the city started to glimmer:

we finished the evening by going to the top of macy’s in union square for one last view:

walking those lively streets with cold fingers and a dear friend and the fading sky was good for my soul.