pacific heights

October 24, 20252 Comments

Here are a couple more from the end of May, we went to San Francisco for an overnighter, staying in Pacific Heights where I’d not really been before. I sketched the Vogue theatre on Sacramento Street before we went out for a nice dinner at Garibaldi’s. We were up here to visit the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio, where we went to a really interesting exhibit on Mary Blair, the renowened Disney illustrator who created a lot of the classic Disney artwork from the 40s, 50s and 60s, including the It’s a Small World designs for the Disneyland park. Afterwards we went down the Presidio over to the new park they built on the bluffs overlooking the Bay, some amazing views up there. I did a quick sketch but it was very sunny, I don’t like sketching in the sun. The next day, we visited the De Young Museum to see the Paul McCartney photography exhibit, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, full of his very personal photos of the early years of the Beatles on tour. That was absolutely incredible, one of the best things I have seen in ages. I got a large print photo of John Lennon with his acoustic guitar which I have framed on my wall, and a few other postcard size ones I will also put up on the wall. We enjoyed that exhibit a lot, and then had a longer look around the De Young itself, I’d never been there before. I like art museums, though ones like the De Young can be expensive to visit so it’s not something we’d do often. We did visit the SF MoMA earlier this year, first time in ages. They have the best gift shop. I do wish we’d had time to visit one of the big ones in New York like the Met, but another time perhaps.

San Francisco panorama from Nob Hill

September 9, 2025September 9, 20252 Comments

Hello everyone, I am very behind in posting because I was in Europe for a whole month (London, Poland and Berlin) and have an extremely massive amount of sketches to post, and I am still nowhere near caught up with posting the pre-vacation sketches – I have enough to last me forever, if you can keep up with them all. I draw a lot, that is for sure. It’ll never say on my gravestone “Here lies Pete, who didn’t draw enough”. Yet I always feel I need to draw more. Even since I got back little more than a week ago, I have been busy, running a 5k race (beating my time from last year) and then taking a weekend trip to San Francisco to watch Supergrass and then fly to Los Angeles to watch Oasis! I have hundreds of sketches to scan. In the meantime however I should finally post again here on my old-school sketchblog, and to get going again, here is a big drawing I did this summer (based on sketches I made back in February while looking out of the window of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco’s Nob Hill). It’s big, it’s detailed, it’s of a great city view, and I loved this one. I worked on it while my family were away in Disneyland and I was home alone for the weekend. Telegraph Hill there on the right, Russian Hill there on the left, Alcatraz (long may it remain a tourist attraction and National Historic Landmark), and Powell Street sweeping down to the bay. I liked the buildings on the left in the foreground going uphill like books lined up on the stairs.

Anyway I’m showing this one now because as of this week it is on display and for sale at the Pence Gallery’s annual Art Auction! I have two pieces in there this year, the San Francisco panorama and a drawing of the Primrose Hill Bookshop that I made last year (I did visit that bookshop again on my recent trip, bought a nice book by David Gentleman there, signed copy). You can find out about the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction on their website, pencegallery.org/events/art-auction.

You can also see the listings themselves at the Auction Catalog. My listings (and you can bid on them if you like!) are available to see here.

Anyway, I’d better start scanning the mountain of summer sketches, because Fall is about to begin…

back to nob hill

April 18, 2025Leave a comment

I went down to the city for a couple of days, as my friends James and Lauren were visiting from England for their 10th anniversary, and we met up for a fun day and evening to celebrate. They married here back in 2015, which history books will tell us is a different historical period, and I came down from Davis to spend a really fun day with them which included a few drinks with locals at Rogue in Washington Square. Nowadays we have self-driving robo-taxis going around San Francisco, and Rogue is long gone, but we ate at Fog City Diner, went to look at the few remaining sealions and walk around the Musee Mecanique, before visiting the old historic bars of North Beach, ending up with a trip to the Tonga Room, classic SF history. The next day after they went to the airport for the next part of their trip I spent the Saturday sketching around the city, mostly around Nob Hill where we had stayed. I sketched the view above, which I have done a couple of times before (a very long time ago – this one in 2006, and //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js” data-wplink-url-error=”true”>this one in 2011 – I’ve been here a long time now). Cable cars rumbled by, tourists took photos and waited on the corner for their robo-taxis (the Waymos; I took my first Waymo ride the day before and it is very strange sitting next to an empty seat watching a steering wheel turn by itself). It was quite sunny. When I came down the day before the morning started off pouring with rain, but it cleared up by lunchtime, I had good luck with the weather. We had just had a really nice filling breakfast and a walk back up the very steep hill.

When we were up here in Nob Hill for my birthday the month before we had such a great view from our hotel room (see that blog post to have a look, it was incredible) that I didn’t want to go out sketching the area during our rest time, so I caught up on that this time. The scene above is in the square in front of Grace Cathedral. I stood in the shade of a tree to draw this fountain. There are lots of little dogs off leash around here, people come and let them scamper about, meeting other dogs, they have a great time. Mostly small dogs with well-off Nob Hill owners. I took a little while drawing this; it had been a very fun evening before and I was feeling a little hungover, but full of sketching energy. Not as much energy as those little dogs though. I sat on a bench to add the watercolour, so I could put my paint set next to me, and after a while soon found that the dogs and their people were gravitating towards the fountain to chatter and smell each others bums (I’ll not explain who was doing what). Which was fine but the dogs were getting very excitable, and some would come over to me to see what I was doing and see whether my paints were lickable. One larger dog put his snout right into my Winsor and Newtons (that’s the brand of paint I use, not some Cockney euphemism) and I had to be like, whoah there. Its human owner came over and I assume apologized (I was listening to an audiobook at the time) but then decided to shield me from further canine interruption by standing right in front of me, which you do when someone is obviously drawing don’t you. More dogs and owners joined the dog and owner party, running around yapping and sniffing bums (again my memory is fuzzy as to who was doing what), and then put of nowhere an excitable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel jumped onto the bench and landed on my paintbox, knocking over my little jar of water. I had a dog like that growing up, ‘Soppy Dog’ (her real name was Lady) so I have a soft spot for them, and didn’t really make much of a fuss other than a Marge Simpson style “hmmmmm” and frown. The embarrassed dog owner quickly got them away and probably apologized (I was listening to an audiobook), and the crowd of dogs and humans started moving somewhere else. None of this affected my painting of course but I thought, this will be a funny thing to write about when I post this, instead of ‘it was a nice day and my tummy was feeling yesterday’s beers’.

I had the day to myself, it was Saturday and I wasn’t in a hurry, so I found another spot in the shade and drew the panorama above looking up at the Cathedral. I had intended to draw the whole lot in, maybe even do the rest later, but I did get a bit bored so just drew as much as I could and coloured in the bits that stood out the most. I wondered what it would be like to live on Nob Hill – you need to have a dog, apparently – and deal with these hills every day. I like a hill but even I’d feel a bit exhausted at the thought of going up and down them every day, so I probably wouldn’t leave the area much. It’d feel like some village, I don’t think I’d enjoy it. I didn’t go into Grace Cathedral this time (not now you have to pay a lot to enter – sod that, it’s nice but not exactly Westminster Abbey), but remember years ago when I illustrated their Christmas Concert official program, two years in a row? That was fun, I got to go to that concert both times, once with my wife and once with my mum. Well over a decade ago now, time flies.

I walked further down the Hill along Bush Street, and could hear people drinking and partying. Lots of people in green, it was St Patrick’s Day weekend, and there was a parade going on, and not far from here some big street party with live music echoing up the hill. I wasn’t in green (I was in blue, St.Patrick’s actual colour as I boringly point out to uninterested people every year, even though St.Patrick probably didn’t wear navy blue polyester with a big ‘AIA’ and a little cockerel on it). I stood in the shade and drew the Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires, deciding to sketch in pencil to be quick. I’ve meant to draw this church for years. I think there is an Institut Français around here, because this little quarter has a lot of French stuff, I remember my wife telling me about this when we first came over here, she came here while learning French (we met in France, see).

Which brings us to the next sketch (above) which is the Cafe De La Presse, on the corner of Grant and Bush, a French style cafe I’ve enjoyed for years. When I say enjoyed I mean I have eaten there probably two or three times in the past 20 years, but I don’t live locally so that is quite regular. Last time I had some lovely eggs benedict with smoked salmon, which I also ate that same morning somewhere else (and looking at this makes me think of that taste, big fan of the smoked salmon eggs benedict) (and yes, when I see the word eggs benedict I do think of Dirk Benedict, ‘Face’ from the A-Team who drove the best Corvette). More and more people in bright green with big silly hats, just what St. Patrick would have wanted (actually he did like a big silly hat, he ‘mitre’ worn some himself). I couldn’t draw this all there and then because the day was pressing on (get it), so I did all that brickwork and colouring in later on the train.

Speaking of the train, I did this sketch here on the Amtrak coming down to the city the day before, I guess I should show my work. I have to keep that pen moving.

While this one above was a very quick sketch I made at the Saloon in North Beach on Friday afternoon while watching this band play with my friends James and Lauren, before we went to Specs for some good chat. There’s no more Anchor Steam on tap, more’s the pity, but it’s a great city for a beer and a catch-up.

As I walked back I passed where a lot of the music and partying was happening, a block party just off Grant. It was a paid event behind security so I didn’t go in but I stood by the edge and did some people sketching. I was looking out for interesting football kits, there were some, plus a couple of rugby kits. Back in Irish north west London we used to have some fun St.Patrick’s Day parties as a kid, I grew up on the Irish music back in the 80s and most of what I learned on guitar was from a book of Irish folk songs we picked up in Willesden or Southport or somewhere. If my grown-up self didn’t feel so much of this was a bit cheesy I would probably have really enjoyed getting my Irish shirts on and getting all festive, my Mum would certainly have loved it. So I stood and sketched like a good urban sketcher, or maybe like a plain-clothed officer at a party in 1980s Cricklewood, and laughed that the band went right into ‘Come Out Ye Black And Tans’, which now makes me think of that episode of This Time with Alan Partridge. “Double-O Feckin’ Bollocks!”. I had the old Irish music of my youth in my head now, and felt like getting home and spending the next day singing the Wolfe Tones and Brendan Shine. Time to get back on the Amtrak bus and train to Davis, another good weekend in the city.

the view from the fairmont

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025Leave a comment

For my birthday this year we went away to San Francisco for the weekend, the weather was sunny and super clear (if a bit cold), and we spent the day at the SFMOMA (Museum of Modern Art), which I have not visited for many years and is a great day looking at art (it’s huge). I miss going to huge museums, it is one of the things about London that I loved most. Well, the gift shops anyway. The shop at the SFMOMA is probably the best museum gift shop in the world. After we’d been in the gift shop for a while we drove up to the hotel, which is easily our favourite in the city, the Fairmont on Nob Hill. We’ve only stayed there once before, for our anniversary seven or eight years ago, so it’s a real special treat. The Fairmont is historic and very grand, in a classic sort of way rather than a Vegas sort of way. Presidents have stayed there (remember them?), and famously it is where Tony Bennett first sang about leaving his heart in San Francisco, presumably they didn’t have a lost-and-found back in those days. These days if he sang that, he’d have hundreds of comments online from Fox News viewers making up stories about people stealing your body parts here. Nob Hill is very steep, and it’s a big climb to get up here even in the car. We got to our room, thinking we’d drop our things off and go back out to wander about outside, but immediately we saw the view from the window and it was like BAM we ain’t leaving the room before dinner! See above and below. The view looked across a wide view from Russian Hill on the left to Telegraph Hill on the right, with Alcatraz right in front of us. Squeezing down each end of the window we could make out the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid, but I couldn’t squeeze those into my sketches. We relaxed in the room admiring the view and I sketched, as did my son (who’d forgotten his sketchbook but used my iPad). We were up on the twelfth floor, but being on Nob Hill our elevation was really high anyway. There was so much detail. I have dreamed of drawing this view, but there was so much detail there was no way I could do what I did with that sketch from the Hilton I did in 2021, which was a bit lower down (though included the building I was drawing from here). I did my best to keep up with the changing afternoon-evening light, and drew a few smaller sketches as well to show what the light was like. Here is Alcatraz. It always reminds me of the third X-Men movie.

I drew a couple of quick ones of Coit Tower as well, as the late afternoon turned into sunset, to show the magnificent colours as the light changed. It was last year I think (was it the year before?) that I went up to the top and did that long drawing. I’ve drawn a lot of this city now. I’m not done yet, but the plan was that we’d spend the night in the city, and then next day after my family drove back to Davis I’d go out and do a lot of drawing by myself and get the train home.

Dinner was at the famous Tonga Room, downstairs at the Fairmont, and that was great fun. I love that place. The cocktails ain’t cheap, nor is the food, but they were strong and the food was super filling, I could barely eat half of mine before I was full. No dessert for me. The band floating on the pool played great music, and every half hour the showers came on imitating a thunderstorm. I love the Tonga Room, though I wish the bathroom was not such a walk. The next morning we got room service breakfast, and sat looking out of the window until it was time to leave. Well I sketched of course. The light was very different again in the morning, the shadows creeping in a different direction, getting shorter rather than longer, and it was another clear day. Imagine if it had been foggy. So I drew the view below, mostly of the tall towers of Russian Hill. I’m very lucky to be able to come to this city and to a hotel like this with a view like that and draw it. Ever since I was a kid I loved to look out of a window and draw. I like being down there on the streets among it all, but it’s always special to look at it all from above.

I never spent the day out drawing. I was already sketched out, and feeling pretty tired. It was cold out, and the thought of getting the train back to Davis later on a Sunday evening with work the next day, well I didn’t fancy it, so I rode back in the car. As we waited I popped across the street and did a quick outline of the hotel, drawing it in later with the statue of Tony Bennett singing about leaving internal organs in San Francisco. I started idly wondering why it was called Nob Hill, but it was time to go home. A nice weekend in the city, and a big thanks to my lovely wife for arranging it.

BTW, I realize from looking at the blog post that the small size of the panoramic drawings do absolutely no justice to them whatsoever, but if you click on them it takes you to my Flickr page where you can see them a little bigger.

tunnel records and trad’r sam

October 26, 2024October 25, 2024Leave a comment

Part Two of my day in the Clement Street /Geary Street area of San Francisco, about seventeen or so blocks further towards the ocean and the rolling fog. I was looking for the 4 Star theater, on the corner of 23rd, which shows older films and which unfortunately I had not given myself time to watch anything, but on this day they were showing My Neighbour Totoro (always a favourite), Toy Story 3 (good but I prefer 2), and North by Northwest (which I have never seen but I think involves a small plane and a man running away). I was here to look around the attached record store, Tunnel Records, which is in a little nook of the cinema. It is not the main shop of Tunnel Records, that one is somewhere else in San Francisco, another area I have not yet been to. It was not open when I got there, which gave me some time to draw the building. I stood opposite and looked up Clement, listening to another Jarvis Cocker interview, I can’t get enough of his soft Sheffield accent. I left the details of the other side of the street a bit sparse, sometimes that is all you need to get the message across, and all I had time for, this was not a ‘finish later’ sketch as so many seem to end up as these days, I just wanted to draw what stood out to me in those moments. The record store opened, and I went in to have a long browse. It’s something I don’t do any more, and I can’t remember how or why I do it, but once you start you can’t really stop and have to look at all the racks, alphabetically, in case something pops out that makes you think oh wait, now that I might like. There was one other person in there browsing too. I realized he was a few racks ahead of me, but browsing each rack one by one, same as I was, though more slowly. Was I not paying enough attention to what I was browsing? Either way, I knew at some point I would catch up, and would either have to go around to the next rack and quite obviously miss out the one he was looking at, or what, start looking at the same rack? You can’t do that. I would try to slow down by stopping and pulling out something interesting, to look at as if I could hear the music coming from the sleeve. I would nod and pull that expression people pull with their mouths when they want to show silent respect for something, you know the one, but I was just faking it really. In the end, I caught up. Instead of skipping to the next rack over, I decided to pretend that I needed to look at my phone suddenly, and then went to look at some t-shirts. I am not sure why I was acting like I was in some kind of play. I went and looked at the soundtracks section (like, why would I be looking there), and then after the other man, who was probably in some play of his own, moved to a different genre, I went back and looked through the alphabetical racks again but this time, in an unexpected move, in reverse order, starting at Z. I ended up not buying anything, despite being tempted by an Al Green album, because I didn’t fancy carrying a record around with me while sketching, and I didn’t really need it. I gave a little smile and raise of the eyebrows to the shop clerk as I left vie the movie theatre’s main entrance, and went off to draw a massive Russian church.

It’s pretty hard to miss as you go up Geary, yet it’s not one of the famous San Francisco sights. The Holy Virgin Cathedral “Joy Of All Who Sorrow” has tall, shiny golden onion domes that probably look even shiner in the sun, let alone on this foggy day. It’s a Russian Orthodox church; there have been Russian communities in the San Francisco area for over 200 years. This is the largest Russian Orthodox Cathedral outside Russia, and was completed in 1965. I sketched it from across the street, adding in the metallic gold paint when I got home (you can’t tell here but the page is actually quite shiny). I popped inside, but only to peek through the door, I wasn’t sure if I could walk around and have a look. It was very ornate looking, and even though there wasn’t a service going on I felt a little bit like I was out of place, and I didn’t want to unwittingly break any rules. The Church Etiquette and FAQs pages of their website are quite interesting, full of extremely clear and specific instructions as to how you must behave. If your phone goes off: “You should answer the call (accept it), but do not start speaking until you have stepped away (outside or in the narthex). Walk out of the church quietly and calmly. Do not sprint/dash out of the church when this happens. Make the caller wait.” They are thoroughly disgusted at people leaving lipstick marks on icons, which is fair enough frankly and not something I was in danger of doing; as for clothes, shirts must have collars and be buttoned up, though you’re ok to loosen the top button if you have to, and don’t ever wear a t-shirt saying “This Bud’s For You!” I imagined there must have been a very specific incident involving a t-shirt with that phrase on it. I was wearing a Red Star Paris football shirt, which was probably a big nyet-nyet, and the big red Star on the badge may have been confusing, so I didn’t take any chances, and just peeked through the door. I tried to teach myself Russian when I was a kid, I didn’t get further than a few phrases, but I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and so I was enthusiastically reading the signs outside and trying to figure them out. I think it was in Old Church Slavonic, which would have blown my teenage self’s mind to see in person.

I stood outside the cathedral though to sketch my last destination on this day in the city, Trad’r Sam, an old tiki-themed bar that’s been around since 1937. It is not fancy, but is a real San Francisco legend I had read about on a list of historic San Francisco bars, since I have it as my mission to go and draw them all. I was already quite tired by this point, so when I drew the exterior and that big green sign, I went in through the saloon doors (am I misremembering that now?) and ordered a Lava Flow cocktail. I sent my wife (who loves a historic tiki bar) a picture of my drink; she was in Disneyland and had just ordered a Lava Flow ice cream at the same time, coincidentally. It was a pretty popular place on a Saturday afternoon and started filling with locals. The bar itself is a big horseshoe, my favourite type of bar set-up, and the barman was friendly. I chatted with some of the others sat at the bar, got comfy and finished off one of my sketches. I decided I didn’t have the energy to draw the bar itself, this time, but enjoyed the mood. I tried a Mango Mai Tai, and wow it was really good. I think it was really strong as well because I started feeling a bit drunk already; maybe that was the lack of a proper lunch mixed with looking at all that orthodox religious architecture and old pop records. I had to explain to the barman who Red Star Paris were; not the team I support, I just like their kits and the fact they aren’t PSG. He’d heard of Red Star Belgrade, and hearing I was from London he asked who my team was, giving me a fist bump and an acknowledgement of how good Sonny is when I told him. I talked to a couple who lived about a block away and gave me some good tips for other old local bars in this area, they are now on my visit and sketch list. It was a good place to wind down the day, and I had a beer to finish off, alas not an Anchor Steam which was always my SF drink, but eventually I had to get myself back to Davis, a long long journey from this part of town. I took the 38 bus back, got the Amtrak bus to Emeryville, took the Capitol Corridor train to Davis, and then had to walk back from the station up to north Davis, four hours later. I slept hard that night, but got up next day to watch Spurs batter Man United 3-0 away. A good weekend.

green apple and schubert

October 24, 2024January 23, 2025Leave a comment

I needed a day in the city, and wanted to explore another part of town. Davis was getting too hot, and it’s about 30 to 40 degrees cooler down there. I’ve been spending too much time under trees lately. I took the early Capitol Corridor, the familiar journey across the Valley and past the Delta and along the Bay, and I can’t help myself sketching those colours, it will never be enough. I have sketches of this trip going back a long time now. It’s all a learning process. I listened to, what did I listen to this time? Pulp I think, still in the excitement of having finally seen them play live after thirty years of waiting. I listened to another podcast interview with Jarvis Cocker where he talked about some of his favourite records, and how he never lost the love of vinyl as a format for listening to music, the side of a record being just long enough to experience it, before doing something else like reading a book. I see that. It’s how I felt growing up, when CDs finally came along I missed that ‘two-sided’ construction, but could see that bands in the mid-90s still tried to think of their albums in that way. I was thinking about records and books as part of my destination, though I didn’t think I’d buy any, because I only brought a small bag, and anyway I have too many and not a lot of space at home. It’s good to buy tickets to places where you can look at them and then draw things. I always worry that by spending so much time looking at and drawing things I forget to experience them as well, so I decided that I’d draw what I can, but not be too worried about it. So I arrived at the Transbay Terminal, the fancy bus station in downtown San Francisco, and found the bus that would take me straight out to the Richmond area, and up to Clement Street.

Although I’ve heard about this place for years, I had never been to Green Apple Books, not this one anyway. I drew the smaller one over in the Inner Sunset about three years ago, another September day exploring the city. Clement Street and that whole area on the north side of Golden Gate Park was somewhere that in all these years I had never explored, it felt just a bit far away. The 38R bus got there pretty quickly. I passed by buildings I thought would make good drawings, and old pubs I thought I should take note of and check out some day. I got out somewhere up on Geary near 6th, and walked over to Clement to find Green Apple Books. Fellow sketcher Suhita Shirodkar had sketched the bookshop recently, which gave me the idea to finally come over this way, and it was a good place to explore. A day like this is a big effort, getting up early and catching a not-inexpensive train at 7am, not making it to my destination until about 10am, just to wander about until it was time to make the long journey back. It was foggy, and there were people around having breakfast or brunch depending on how organized they were. I ate a pastry and stood opposite Green Apple to sketch it. I was on a sort of elevated wooden platform where people can sit and drink their coffee, and could see over the parked car. It’s funny, when you stand near a parking spot, there is always the chance that a large car might park in the way to block your view, but I find that sometimes people think about parking there, but do not when they see me sketching. Those people are usually in cars that would not block my view anyway. Then there are those, usually in larger SUV-type cars, that don’t mind blocking my view if they park, even if they notice me. I don’t worry at all, these are occupational hazards of the urban sketcher and I just move down slightly (I am not standing there with an easel), it’s what I expect when I pick a spot to draw. It’s just an observation, I’m not making any judgements about the type of people who drive bigger cars being less thoughtful, and actually I would like to tell those who choose not to park where I am sketching that it really doesn’t block me at all if they park, I’d rather they got the good spot (and save it from a minivan or something). But really I think they just assume I am a traffic warden. Anyway, here I had a good view of the shop. I decided to do all my sketching before going in to browse.

This impish fellow stands in front of the shop, holding a red book and a green apple. The bookshop is much bigger inside than I realized, and going up and down its stairs was like an adventure book in itself. My son would love this place, I thought. My teenage self would too, and after all when I was a teenager what would I do on a Saturday other than get on a train or bus and go exploring for interesting bookshops, usually finding myself in the foreign languages section. There were things I wanted, but I exercised restraint, and just bought a postcard with a painting of the shop on it, and a canvas tote bag for my son. Despite having worked in bookshops, I sometimes get overwhelmed by it all.

Before I went into Green Apple, I decided to sketch the bakery outside of which I was standing. Schubert’s Bakery has been making cakes since 1911 and having eaten one myself I can confirm they are delicious. I got one in a little box, covered in all sorts of fancy chocolate, and had to go back in for a fork because it was bigger than expected, and filled me up so much I never ended up eating lunch. I could not get a certain song out of my head as I sketched, “Blue Suede Schubert” by the Rutles. A good bakery is an essential part of a good neighbourhood, I have always thought that. Somewhere for amazing cakes. Places that do not have this are very much worse off for it. If people end up getting the generic bland cakes from your Targets or Safeways or whatever, the world becomes a much more boring place. Show your local bakeries love! And eat lovely cakes. When I was done sketching and looking around this part of Clement, I walked down a bit further, where there was a local Chinese festival happening, with little stalls lining the street and music, and people canvassing for local elections. I found the bus that would take me further down Geary again and explored a different part of the area.

swensen’s, at hyde and union

August 7, 2024August 6, 2024Leave a comment

This heat though. It’s like being under the boot of a massive invisible giant, whose feet are very very hot. The Central Valley just gets a bit carried away when the temperatures go up. We’re not Phoenix or Vegas or Mercury, but when it’s like this you don’t want to go outside and do anything. Except drive an hour and a half away to a place where temperatures are about 40 degrees or more cooler. Where is this magical place, is there some land of snowy peaks where massive invisible frost giants hold sway? (What is it with all these giants today?) No, it’s in the other direction and it’s called San Francisco, the foggy city between the Bay and the Ocean where Mark Twain famously said “brrrrr”. Interestingly enough, San Francisco does have Giants, and they played at home that day against the Twins, winning 7-1. Nice way to connect my previous metaphors there. We drove down to North Berkeley, jumped on the BART and spent a nice lunchtime around the Embarcadero, before getting a cable car up to Nob Hill. It was so much cooler down there, and we had a fun family day of exploring the city. I was surprised to see you now have to pay to go inside Grace Cathedral, quite a lot as well, so we decided to skip it. I remembered though the two fantastic Christmas concerts I went to more than a decade ago, when I had illustrated the cover of the program. We looked about the Fairmont, we love that hotel (we spent an anniversary there years ago), and decided we’ll definitely do afternoon tea there on a future visit. We then decided to walk down and up hill towards Lombard Street, quite a way but we got our steps in. The cable car going down Hyde was sadly not running that day, but we were exploring. I was happy to find the old Swensen’s Ice cream shop on the corner of Hyde and Union, I had always wanted to draw that, so we rested a while and I sketched it (I added the colour later). This being the last page of my sketchbook, I was glad to have something interesting there. I’m not saying the Varsity and Orange Court Davis are not interesting, but you know, something new. This sketchbook has Davis already, and loads of areas of London, Aix, Nice, Monaco and finally San Francisco. We didn’t get an ice cream (we were actually feeling cold…). After zigzagging down Lombard, and that really steep downward slope after that to North Beach, hard on the knees, to sit in Washington Square and then go and eat pizza, and browse City Lights Books. We covered a bit of ground on this day in the city, as usual, but it was just nice to be out of that Davis heat, for a little while.

up the fillmore, down to union square

June 29, 2024June 29, 2024Leave a comment

I ended up going towards Fillmore. I was up that way last summer when I spent the weekend in the city with my family, but it’s always worth a trip. I fancied doing a sketch from on high, so I headed up the steep way to Alta Plaza Park. By this time of the day, it was really very windy. Alta Plaza Park had some nice views, not as dramatic as Dolores Park or Alamo Square, but worth the hike. I was still listening to all of Belle and Sebastian, though my back was still aching, and the wind was going right through me. I like a big observation piece when I come to the city, like the view from Coit Tower or the view from the downtown Hilton. I walked down and bought an expensive donut at a trendy donut shop, that I waved for the train ride home. I needn’t have bothered, the donut was bland and tasted of nothing, not an uncommon thing these days (as I was reminded when I went to France recently, when every pain au chocolat or escargot de raisins at the morning boulangerie tasted a million times better than anything over here). I spent a lot of time in Paper Source, a shop I used to be obsessed with when I had the idea of making my own notecards years ago (it wasn’t worth the effort), and then spent a good half hour in Browser Books, which I had drawn last year, and keep thinking is called Bowser Books. I like this little store, and really browsed a lot. I even looked through some magazines, including one which an old friend of mine works for; I haven’t seen him in many years, and there was a small picture of him in there that for some reason took me by surprise, the same guy but older and sharper. I don’t know why it surprised me so much. The years move fast, I wonder how I would look to someone who knew me only as a much younger face, thinner and less sun-blasted, and I found myself suddenly worrying about age and time. I went to the music section, and picked up a small book about Pulp, who were a band I loved in the 90s (so, not worrying about age or time any more then). I had recently bought tickets to go and see Pulp right here in San Francisco this coming September, having never been able to catch them back in the old days; I honestly can’t wait. The guy behind the counter, it turned out, was a fellow Pulp fan and asked if I was going to see them. He had seen them in SF last year when they were here. The book was about This Is Hardcore, and album I really loved, though it was the sound of a changing time for me, mid university years, a comedown from the fist-pumping mid-90s when I could stay up all night long and not even be tired the next day, and everything was possible. Were age and time were getting to me even then?

After spending some of my age and time in the shops and streets of Fillmore I took the bus down towards Union Square. My back was still hurting. When I got there, I still had a bit of time before my Amtrak bus was going to leave, but I did need to sit down. I decided to sketch Sam’s Cable Car Lounge, which I must have passed a bunch of times before and always thought was a liquor store. It looks old, and the thing about places like this is that they are disappearing, so in my mission as the recorder of places I stood opposite and drew it, as best my tired fingers could manage. I think the motivation for sketching this part of the city has waned over the years, and it shows. Many of the big shops around Union Square are closing, there were so many large empty spaces where once there had been big stores, and the number of shoppers looked a lot less than in recent years. I heard that the large Macy’s flagship store on Union Square, a place I visited on my first ever trip here (going up to the Cheesecake Factory on the top floor) was going to close, with nothing to replace it. It feels bleaker around there. I couldn’t get too far before I just had to go and sit down, so I popped in for a beer. It’s an interesting enough interior, with the front of a cable car sticking out of the wall behind the bar, and the staff kept offering me popcorn. I ordered a beer without popcorn and sat sketching. As I sketched I got the news that the Amtrak bus was cancelled, and I’d have to take the BART out to Richmond to catch my train. An annoyance but not a huge inconvenience. The bar got a little busier as I sketched, I think mostly with the pre-theatre crowd. Anyway I think the staff liked my drawing, because when I ordered a second beer they said it was on the house. I got my bill; sure the second drink was free, but the first one was pretty expensive, about $14 with tax for a beer? Even in London these days that’d be a lot. I didn’t even finish my second beer. I handed over my card to the waitress, and she came back with the bill to sign, but no card. I went up and asked where my card was, they said maybe I dropped it. I hadn’t, it was never returned. They said they would look for it; ten minutes later, still no card. I was having to go to the BART soon. Perhaps I need to call the police, has someone here pocketed it? I could see them with flashlights looking all over the bar area. Eventually, the waitress came back and handed me my card, which had ‘fallen on the floor’. Strange they had not found it more quickly. I was very suspicious of that and have been keeping an eye on the card transactions since, but I won’t be going there again, and not only because of the beer prices. Still, I’ve sketched it now. I made the long, long journey back to Davis, tired and not completely sure if the day out was worth it, but I added a few more drawings and walks to the experience box. And when I got back to Davis, I discovered my bike had a flat tyre, so I had to walk all the way back from the train station. I rested well next day. I still like San Francisco, but after so many years I’m not feeling quite the same about it as I do about, for example, London, which I always want to go to. But I’m still glad it is (sort of) nearby, and has some interesting neighbourhoods.

a morning up and down the castro

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024Leave a comment

Last month I took a sketching day down in San Francisco, taking the long train ride down from Davis with the entire catalogue of Belle and Sebastian in my ears (two days after having seen them live in Oakland). It was one of those days when I just needed to get out alone with my sketchbook and my feet, I have always needed those days for my mental health, and though it feels like I need them more and more, more and more I have no particular aim for such a day, and more and more I decide to just stay at home and rest rather than expend a lot of energy in just wandering and filling my book. However I am usually glad when I do, especially if I explore a few more streets I’ve never seen. This day was aimless for sure. I got up very early, took the early train out of Davis, stepped off the connecting bus in San Francisco and went down to the BART station still with no idea where I was actually heading. North Beach? Mission? Inner Sunset? In the end, I jumped onto a MUNI metro which whisked me quickly up to the Castro. I always like sketching up there. As I got off the tram, a man seated nearby started yelling random homophobic slurs out of the door, not at me or anyone in particular, but at the platform in general because this is the Castro, and I’m sure it made him feel better about his life, even though it made everyone else remember the world is still full of homophobic wankers like him. It was a foggy day when I emerged onto Harvey Milk Plaza, so I got the sunscreen out and layered up. Yes, I’ve been burnt too many times in this city by not realizing that those rays come through that fog, even if it feels a bit chilly and a bit gloomy. The sky had a glare too, so I wore my sunglasses for a bit, which again looks a bit odd in the fog but I’m squinting otherwise. The Castro theatre was covered up, a shame as I sketched a panorama of it eleven years ago and wanted to do the ‘eleven years later’ sketch. Ten years? Where does all the time go. I also sketched it fifteen years ago on another sketchcrawl. So I looked over to where the streetcars stop outside the Twin Peaks cafe, which I have also drawn on my little wander up here two years ago, though from the other side.

I had no plan of action for exploring, so I walked a block down Castro and up 18th Street, not towards the Mission but uphill. I liked this building opposite, and the little shop ‘Five Star Truffles’, so that’s what I sketched. The old Victorian houses round here are so interesting. Further up I sketched this pink and blue house below. That’s a lot of steps to get into your door every day, after climbing a hill, a common feature on these old houses, people must be pretty fit round here. I like wandering about here though because the people and places you pass by, you do get a strong sense of local community. The area is most well known for its prominent gay community, though this does feel like an area whose residents take a lot of pride in their neighbourhood, and you see that a lot in San Francisco, even in the face of busy city streets and exorbitant pricing-out of communities. The idea of communities in large cities has always fascinated me, especially the idea of evolving communities. I’m just back from London, and you still see it there in some places, while others it feels like have no community any more. It all depends on perception I guess.

The house above was drawn quickly in pencil just because I liked the shape of it, the turret and the huge round window and the long curving stairway. I was already on my way to lunch when I drew it. The building below though was an amazing find, an enormous mansion on Douglass Street, which was a trek to walk up to, looming large over the treetops as the morning fog burned away. An impressive number of turrets and shapes, I bet this place is a world of stories. I sketched one of the little lions out front as well. To draw this I needed to be in the shade of a tree across the street, but for some reason I decided to sit and sketch, not on a stool (I pretty much never bring a stool out these days, as I always stand to sketch), but sat on the sidewalk like in the old days. Remember when I’d sit on these San Francisco streets cross legged with my paints next to me? Well this time when I got up I must have hurt my back, because it got increasingly bad throughout the rest of the day, noticeably so after I ate my lunch (which was a pasta dish at the old Spaghetti House on Castro, a place which looked interesting but I was the only customer, at lunchtime). My shoulder bag felt heavy the rest of the day and I felt like I was hobbling about. I’m sure it’s because I sat on the ground for 45 minutes, though all the urban hillwalking with my bag on my shoulder did not really help as much.

And here is a fire hydrant that was on the corner of Douglass and Caselli near that big mansion. I like these old SF hydrants with the round nobs on top. I wandered up hill and down admiring all the big old houses and little shops, and after my lunch (which was nice, albeit a little lonely) I walked (in some pain) towards Church Street, remembering there was a bookshop there that I visited once. It was gone now, and my back was hurting, I needed to sit down again, so I jumped on literally the first bus that came along, and wasn’t even sure where it was going. Wherever it was headed, that’s where I’d go next, I guess.

fillmore, fifteen years later

September 6, 2023Leave a comment

Back in San Francisco, this time on a short trip with the family to escape the atrocious Davis heat. We went to Japantown and had a look around, and then I had a little bit of time to myself heading back to the hotel, so I wandered up Fillmore, to an area I had not been in about fifteen years. I had a new sketchbook, a Stillman and Birn Alpha. Despite having used those extensively in the past, it has been a while, and so I’m still getting used to the different paper after a few years back in the Moleskines. On this day, I decided what I wanted to do was draw quickly in pencil with some light wash. There are some nice shops up that way; I popped into Paper Source, still a great little shop I used to love getting envelopes and things from. I found the Clay theatre; I remember that I had sketched this place once back in late July 2008, back when my son was just a wee baby. I recall kinda struggling with that sketch a bit. It seemed to be closed down now, but still there to sketch. I walked about a bit more, there were lots of nice looking cafes and shops around here, it’s quite upscale. I did find this little bookshop, Browser Books, which at first I thought was Bowser Books, that big dragon guy from the Super Mario world, with Thwompers coming down as you enter and highly pixelated fireballs moving slowly towards you, but thankfully it wasn’t like that. I had a good look around at some books, and then I drew the shop, again just quick pencil with a little bit of watercolour. I took the bus back to our hotel, and then before our evening dinner at Fog City Diner I found, at the hotel bar, Anchor Steam on tap. So I had my final ever Anchor Steam on that day. I’ve not found it since, and I’m probably not likely to. I like it up Fillmore though, I’ll come back this way, but maybe I’ll not leave it fifteen years this time.