Diary of a Pickle Eater.

In which I find the mythic Sky Terrace.

There is a rooftop on top of the mall in downtown San Francisco. It’s apparently a public open space, but it’s very well hidden. There is no way I would ever have been able to get there without the very helpful Yelp! review of Manabu M.

If you’ve ever been to the mall in question, you have probably seen this sign.

This sign in a lie and WILL NOT take you anywhere near the Sky Terrace. To get there, you must walk out of the mall and down the street to 835 Market. (It’s between the Walgreens and the Old Navy.) Walk all the way into the building. You will see a security guard on your right and 4 elevators. Only the elevator to the back left will take you all the way up to the 9th floor, but you can take any of the other elevators up to the 8th and then transfer. If you have trouble ask the security guard. I had to because none of the elevators would go to the 8th floor and he had to swipe his magic card thing.

I get to the 8th floor.

And enter the back left elevator to go to the 9th.

The 9th floor doesn’t have anything other than the terrace. You enter into a small room, turn left and exit through a pair of glass doors to find this.

!!

It was completely deserted. This is probably because it takes an epic journey and inside knowledge just to get there.

The view is amazing. You can see almost the entire city.

This is the view from the other side of the dome.

Don’t you love the fog hanging low over the sunset? That’s my city!

What do you think they use these stairs for?

Of course I had to take a few pictures of myself. But what expression to make??

It was highly awesome. Sort of windy (my soup almost flew all over my face…) but otherwise amazing. I highly recommend stopping by the next time you’re in the area.

<3 Stef

Pride!

I love, love, LOVE this image of SF Pride, by the inimitable One Love Photo.

I’m sad I missed it, but there is always next year. You can see more here.

<3 Stef

On weddings.

I used to love wedding blogs, back when I wasn’t actually engaged. It felt illicit somehow, dangerous. Oh, hahaha, I’m reading about weddings! I’m not even engaged and not sure I’ll ever be! I hope Anders doesn’t see me looking and freak out…
Now it’s mostly tiring. Now that I have actual planning to do, it occurs to me that I don’t want to spend so many hours pouring over the photos from someone else’s wedding, admiring their decor and dress and choices. I have my own choices to make! Comparing “mine” to “yours” just seems dangerous.
Not that these wedding blogs didn’t teach me something valuable. I’ve been reading Offbeat Bride for nearly two years now, and it taught me that when you get married it can look however the hell you want it to. You don’t have to wear the white dress, have the standard catered reception, or go into debt planning your wedding. I never spent years and years planning my wedding, mostly because I thought they were staid, ridiculously traditional affairs. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun at every wedding I’ve ever been to. But aside from very small variations, they were all the same. That’s the point of tradition, I suppose, and there is value in tradition. Some people want that. There are traditions I plan to follow, just not very many of them. The exchange of rings, yes. Ceremony, yes. Garter and bouquet toss, matching bridesmaids, white dress, church, tuxedos, tiered cake? No, no, no, no, no, no.
I’ve also discovered that I don’t really like wedding planning, and I really assumed that I would. There is just too much pressure! Do you know that I spent about two hours surfing the internet last Saturday looking for a venue in San Francisco that had a rooftop patio (that wasn’t a hotel)? I didn’t find any. (Though you should check out The Hamilton-a remodeled, GORGEOUS Art Deco hotel.) Then my first vendor call with Delysium (the event planners who handle the Dogpatch Studios rental) went terribly and they never sent me a price sheet. I guess I just wasn’t willing to spend enough for them! I oscillate between wanting to find something that is “perfect” and something that just works. I want my wedding to be pretty, but I don’t want to drive myself crazy over it. I don’t want to obsess. I just want it to be.
As a closing note, please don’t think that if I went to your wedding I thought it was awful. I didn’t! Your wedding was amazing. It just wasn’t “me” or “us”, and isn’t that the point of planning your wedding? To do what you and your partner want?

Pictures, pictures.

Anders bought me photography classes for my birthday, and I have been taking them for the past 4 weeks. As part of the class I have homework (just like real school!) so I’ve been having a bit of fun running off and taking photos every week. The best part of the class is that I’m learning how to actually use my camera-I keep it (mostly) on manual now, and I know what ISO, shutter, apeture all do and how they are combined to get the best possible photograph. This is something that I just couldn’t understand by reading the camera manual alone, try though I might.

I’ve got all the photos up on Flickr (I’ve become disturbingly addicted to flickr in the past few weeks) but following are a few of my favorites.

This was one of my first assignments. We were supposed to take pictures of an object, a landscape, and a portrait. So of course I chose Anders as my subject. According to my teacher, I should have chosen a different background for this picture because this one doesn’t add anything to the composition. Additionally, traditional portraits are supposed to be portrait-oriented, as opposed to landscape-oriented. This may be true, but I say pshhhh-aw. I like it anyway!

For our next assignment we were instructed to purposely under, over, and perfectly expose a set of images. They are up in my Flickr page, but I’m not going to show them to you because they are pretty boring. They just show that I know how to use the camera, basically.

Next we were supposed to take a set of images that were perfectly exposed, using elements of composition that we had learned. I’m not particularly sure what I was going for, but I took a bunch of pictures of these sets of flowering shoes that are found in Alamo Square, right outside of the bathrooms.

Lastly, the only picture my teacher had good things to say about, taken in Boston of the Back Bay Fens.

It is, coincidentally, my least favorite!

<3 Stef