Scott Hess Photography

The Glowing City on the Edge of Time

 

I make my way to Russian Hill to take in one of my favorite views of San Francisco—especially at dusk, when the city begins to glow and overpower the ambient deep blue of the approaching night sky. The air is clear, just before the oncoming storms. I ponder the energy expended to create this vibrant golden metropolis and wonder about the future. The Transamerica Pyramid gives the scene a bit of a futuristic look and that is no accident. The architect, William Pereira, is from LA and he was into science fiction.

 

Yet the mind also reels backwards into the relatively recent past when ships from all over the world began to arrive at the Gold Rush port rapidly developing on Yerba Buena Cove. Underneath pocket park next to the Transamerica building lies the bow of the cargo ship Niantic. Like countless other vessels, as soon as it arrived in San Francisco the crew deserted and headed for the mines. It was hauled ashore near Clay and Sansome, leveled with pilings, and converted into one of the most desirable pieces of waterfront real estate in the rapidly growing city.

                                           

I head off to the hostel at Fort Mason and sleep in a bunk for the night in order to wake early and resume my photo investigations in the morning.

 

   

This model of the Niantic immediately after conversion to hotel and office space around 1849-1850, is found in the Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park on the north waterfront. 

It is a new day. The rains have come and I duck into the Maritime Museum to take shelter from the storm. My plan is to photograph a historic painting in the Argonaut Hotel but now I'm face to face with the very history I was pondering from Russian Hill.  Here in the lobby is a large piece of the stern and rudder of the Niantic- the ultimate relic from Gold Rush San Francisco! Amazing and fascinating. Also displayed in the lobby is a model of the Niantic and a painting of the ship, recently acquired from a descendant of the ship's final Captain. I study the structure of shaped and sculpted wood beams covered with copper.  This ship was built in 1835 in Connecticut for the China trade.  Then the political situation changed (the Opium Wars) and the Niantic seemed destined for the emerging Pacific whaling industry, only to be swept into use as transport for gold seekers and then stationary office space and hotel accommodations on the edge of Yerba Buena cove.

 

      
This piece of the stern and rudder of the Niantic was discovered in 1978 during excavation for the Mark Twain Plaza complex next to the Transamerica Building. There are scores of ships interred under the landfill covering the former Yerba Buena Cove. This fill is now the foundation of the financial district skyscrapers.  The waterfront buildings, wharfs, and storeships were burned to the waterline in 1851 and covered over at that time, pushing the waterfront to the east and deeper water.

The Niantic was being constructed in Connecticut in 1835 as the new Pacific trade routes were developing in the Pacific. These networks would soon be be shifted into a new global formation by the United States takeover of California and the discovery of gold.

The presence of the past: Trans Pacific relationships, especially with China, are still a major key to economic health in the U.S economy.  San Francisco continues to be a global city with a Pacific Rim as well as American identity.

                                                    

 This painting of the Niantic was painted in a port near Hong Kong in the late 1830s.It was recently donated to the Maritime Museum by Cythia Riggs who lives on Martha's Vineyard. Cynthia is the great great granddaughter of Captain Henry Cleaveland who sailed the ship and 250 gold seekers into San Francisco Bay in 1849.

                               

Heading uptown at the end of the day I look back down Clay Street to the waterfront directly at the spot where the Niantic was beached, converted, burned, buried and rediscovered more than once. It is almost a mystical point of convergence in the soul of the City.                                                                                                                 

 

Lighting Up Mid Market—The ARTery Project 12•9•2010

The San Francisco Arts Commission's Mid Market ARTery Project fires up three new art installations tonight and is having a party to celebrate. Arriving at Market Street in the twilight I am happy to see Eric Staller's Lightmobile rippling in the center of U.N. Plaza. It's funny how a relatively small piece of art can shift perception in the moment. 

The Mid Market Street area, as locals know, is a rather sketchy area. Although only blocks from City Hall, it has a seedy, derelict appearance and is often populated by panhandlers, drunks, and drug dealers. There has been a lot of interest in bringing a new energy to the city's central boulevard but progress has been slow. Bringing "improvements" without gentrification and displacement is tricky.

San Francisco's Mayor and Arts Commission believe artists are just the people to do this trick—thus the genesis of The ARTery Project. I'm surprised to learn Mayor Gavin Newsom will be here in person for tonight's "opening". The gathering in front of 1119 Market across from U.N. Plaza celebrates the "turning on" of installations by three internationally recognized light artists, Theo Watson, Jim Campbell, and Paul Notzold. Salsa band T-Mambo is warming up the crowd with rich urban rhythms when a contingent of school kids from the Filipino Education Center arrive with their traditional mandalic parol lanterns to lead a procession to the various installation sites. Arts commission and city officials, including District 6 Supervisor-elect Jane Kim, are present to proclaim, inspire and celebrate the new lights in the night. 

 

Gavin Newsom gestures enthusiastically as he cheerleads for a Mid Market transformation, with artists in the lead.

Arts Commission officials look on with the Mayor as Jim Campbell hits the On button for his work Urban Reflections.

Then we lift our gaze to the Seventh Street side of the Renoir Hotel across the street to see the first frames of Storylines by Paul Notzold. This piece uses cartoons, images, poems, and subject matter from the surrounding urban landscape to tell stories and create shared experience.

I am energized by the transformative power of art-magic and the night is still unfolding. With the Filipino contingent leading the procession we head down Market toward Theodore Watson's portrait/projection installation, Faces. The atmosphere is warm and relaxed. We are casting a new spell in this place. I walk about 3/4 block with the Mayor, thank him for his work with artists and mention my experience here on Market during the Giants Victory Parade which also gave Market Street a large shot of love. It is surreal cruising through this usually edgy neighborhood with the charismatic, impeccably dressed Mayor.

Finally we arrive at the Faces "capture booth". The public is invited to have their picture taken and projected high onto 1017 Market—much larger than life. Newsom is the first to be "captured" and "projected". A line forms and I jump in. It's fun. Gazing across the street I see the faces of those around me going up one by one—a pantheon of random art participants. 

 

The Mayor strolls past the World of Stereo

Faces begins to project on 1017 Market

That's me having fun at the celebration

and the lady who stood next to me looks like she's having fun too.

After watching a run of crazy, larger than life portraits I head back toward the Civic Center and discover Robert James has installed his beautiful piece Menage a Trois across from Hollywood Billiards. I remember Menage a Trois in its full form at Burning Man where it created an instant social hotspot in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. I only see two of the three glass mosaic eggs here tonight but they sparkle and twinkle with a delicate charm—now placed in a nest of greenery over the gritty concrete. It's good to meet Rob here in person and I thank him for his generosity of spirit in bringing his work to the streets. He says he is ready and wiling to do much more of this, given the opportunity. 

Sculptor Robert James (center left) and SFAC Director Luis R. Cancel
at the site of Menage a Trois.

 
Menage a Trois at Burning Man 2009     

 

ARTery info on the gazebo at U.N. Plaza.
The installations will be in place until June 2, 2011.
Learn more at San Francisco Arts Commission

Mark Twain, Chinatown, Irony, Innovation

Commercial street connects Portsmouth Square, now Chinatown, with the waterfront which has moved several blocks east over the years. The building on the left marks the site of the Morning Call where Twain first worked as a reporter. An immense wharf, extending from Commercial, extended 2000 feet into the Bay. Commercial was also the temporary site of the first U.S. Mint in California.

Passing by Commercial Street on Montgomery, I can't help but think of Mark Twain who first worked for the Morning Call located here at 612 Commercial. Twain was hired as a reporter for The Call in June of 1864. His job was to scour the city hotspots for important bits of news and story. Twain's stomping grounds were centered on Montgomery Street where he lived (The Occidental Hotel and the Lick House), worked (the Morning Call) and drank (the Montgomery Block—located on the site of the present Transamerica Building). He spent only two years here, from age 28-30, but found his true voice in the rollicking, energetic, "innovative' atmosphere of silver rush San Francisco.

Twain had frequent fallouts with the editor of The Call and was fired after only four months. One of his early pieces described the stoning of a Chinese laundryman by Irish thugs while the police looked on. George Barnes, the editor, nixed the piece on the grounds that it would alienate the Irish working class population that the paper depended on for support. Twain soon realized he must transcend "reporting" to let his mind's unfettered "poetic realism" have it's sway. He went on to write for other local journals and had his first breakout national hits from this western outpost.

Now, I look at Portsmouth Square, the heart of anglo San Francisco in the early days, and it stands as the heart of Chinatown.  The Chinese not only survived the vicious persecutions of the early years but continue to expand their influence in all aspects of the city's life.

On Grant Ave, midway between Washington and Clay, is the site of the first permanent dwelling in Yerba Buena—a wood, then adobe structure built by William Richardson in 1835-7. Now there is an import shop on the site selling San Francisco trinkets to tourists. 

A San Francisco t-shirt on display at the shop at 823 Grant hangs over the plaque entitled Birth of a City commemorating the first residence in the City.  

 

Asian Seniors hang out in the twilight in Portsmouth Square, chatting and playing board games. The Hilton Hotel, seen above on the left on Kearny Street, occupies the site of a long series of important historical buildings including Gold Rush gambling houses, the Jenny Lind Theater, purchased for San Francisco's City Hall in 1852, and a Hall of Justice building that survived until 1970.

Mark Twain is likely chuckling at the ironies continuing to play out in this wild and fiesty city of the Pacific Rim. We are hearing more each day about this radical, poetic, "reporter" with his breakthrough "modern" style as the public begins to digest his "new" autobiography released this week exactly 100 years after his passing.