On a November Saturday morning I decided to pop over the Golden Gate to one of my favorite places in the Bay Area: the Marin Headlands.
I spent 14 seasons as a hawk bander for the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) and I have spent many days in beautiful and sometimes foggy fall weather.
One call from other blinds would be, “RT heading towards Kirby Cove!” The RT is question stood for red-tailed hawk and Kirby Cove was my Saturday hiking/ sketching destination.
The distance from the parking lot on Conzelman Road to Kirby Cove Beach, as the hawk flies, is about a mile but the road from the trailhead takes a winding path downslope, to the beach.
The trail to the beach is a graded fire road that winds down to the Kirby Cove Campground. This proved to be easy hiking.
Who doesn’t love a bit of Radiolarian Chert in the morning?
From the trailhead to the beach took about 20 minutes. Before heading to the beach I looked for the Kirby Cove swing which had been taken down. I originally planned to sketch the view with the swing in the foreground. Well it was time for sketching Plan B.
I then headed to the beach and found a sketching seat on a piece of driftwood (a former power pole) and began sketching the view of the Golden Gate, the famous bridge, and the San Francisco skyline in the background.
Beachmaster!
Even thought the nearby campground was full, I had the beach entirely to myself during the duration of my visit.
A Princess cruise ship coming into the Golden Gate like so many gold seekers in 1849.
On a recent Saturday morning I had a pleasant surprise as I drove north on El Camino Real at San Carlos. At San Carlos Station was one of the new electric CalTrain sets.
The new trains are built by Stadler, a Swiss-based train manufacturer. The company was founded in 1942 and is headquartered in Bussnang, Switzerland. The company has a factory in Salt Lake City, where Stadler will build 24 train sets for Caltrain.
The train sets are known as BEMUs which stands for battery-equipped electric multiple unit.
I parked, thinking that the train would surely have left the platform by the time I walked to the station but as I walked down San Carlos Avenue, the train was still stationary at the station.
As I crossed El Camino, a placard stated “No Train Service”. The line was closed all weekend.
The line was closed from San Francisco to San Jose so Caltrain could test eight of the new electric train sets. The electrification of the line started in 2017 and electric trains are scheduled to start running on September 21, 2024.
If you think of some of the most iconic passenger trains in modern rail: Japan’s Shinkansen (“Bullet Train”), France’s TGV, Eurostar, Amtrak’s Acela, Chinese Railways CRH, the Bay Area rail corridor was finally being electrified to catch up with the rest of the world, although it would not come close the top speeds of modern Shinkansen (186 mph).
Three quarters of the world’s passenger service are powered by electricity. About time!
This is what powers the new train sets: the pantograph that delivers power from the wires above to the train set below.Not sure if these new trains sets earn any style points. They look like a large streetcar or tram.
I live a hop, slip but not even a jump from San Francisco’s largest reservoir: Sunset Reservoir.
This terminal reservoir was completed in 1960 and has an impressive capacity of 270 acres. To put this into context the sides of the reservoir are four blocks north and south and two blocks east and west. The surface area is 11 acres.
The reservoir is covered and fenced off. Over half of the reservoir is blanketed in 25,000 solar panels. The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project started in December 2010 and has tripled San Francisco’s solar generation capacity.
The irony is that the Sunset is the foggiest part of the city.
Some of the 25,000 solar panels of Sunset Reservoir.
While the reservoir itself is not a sight to behold, the northwest corner (featured sketch) affords some of the best views in the Sunset. Along the embankment are walking paths and at the northwest corner are a line of benches.
The bench-view to the north. I can almost see the Farallons. These paths are popular with dog walkers.
Here you can look out to the west towards the Pacific Ocean and on a clear day, you can see the Farallon Islands perched on the horizon like a large, gray battleship.
The views to the north as just as stunning taking in Golden Gate Park, the Richmond District, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, and Mt. Tam. On really clear days you can see outer Pt. Reyes.
Looking north down 27th Avenue towards the Golden Gate from one of the walking paths.
I’ve been wanting to join my local sketch group, Sunset Sketchers, for a weekend sketch and it was fortuitous that Sunday’s location was San Francisco’s Columbarium.
I have been to the Columbarium many times and I have even sketched it a few times.
It is here that my grandparents and father are interred.
In all, we had about 15 local sketchers show up on a cold Sunday morning. The group consisted of a few architects and designers and artists sprinkled with some sketchers for sketch-sake. I’m not sure which group I fit into.
I found a bench and started to sketch the imposing lines of the 1898 Neo-Classical columbarium. The building is very ornate and I was trying to keep my sketch loose and at the same time take a little Sketcher’s Liberty and simplify or leave out certain complex elements.
I was soon joined by another sketcher and we sketched and talked about gear and materials and future sketching trips. I finished my sketch (featured sketch) and I went into the Columbarium to warm up and visit dad and my grandparents.
We still had some time before we all met up for the “throw down” so I decided I wanted to sketch the exterior from another perspective. I walked down Loraine Court and sketched the entrance with another Sunset Sketcher (our organizer) for perspective. This time I went really loose with no pencil undersketch. The whole quick sketch was done in brush pen and then painted loosely.
My loose brush- pen sketch with a Sunset Sketcher for scale.
At 12:30 we had the “throw down” where all the sketchers laid their sketches down and it was great to see the columbarium through other sketcher’s eyes.
We all talked about our sketches and shared insights into our process. Comments are allowed but only of the positive variety. You aren’t even allowed to talk trash about your own work!
I recently found an interesting connection between a Norwegian Polar explorer, an Oslo maritime museum, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
The Norwegian explorer was Roald Amundsen.
The plaque under the monument reads:
Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian polar explorer, was the first to locate the magnetic North Pole and to navigate the Northwest Passage, the Arctic water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He left Norway with a crew of six on June 16, 1903 in a 69-foot-long converted herring boat named Gjoa. Amundsen spent three years on the perilous journey. The Gjoa continued on, sailing through the Bering Straits and anchored off Point Bonita, outside the Golden Gate, on October 19, 1906. The San Francisco Norwegian community purchased the Gjoa from Amundsen and donated the ship to the people of San Francisco in 1909. In 1911, Amundsen became the first explorer to reach the South Pole. The Gjoaremained on this site at the western end of Golden Gate Park until 1972, when it was returned to Norway. The restored ship is now on display at the Maritime Museum in Oslo.
The Amundsen monument is a bauta, or stone shaft, or Norwegian granite which was donated by Bay Area Norwegians, March 1, 1930.
I headed west to the end of Golden Gate Park to do an afterwork sketch of the monument that sits in the parking lot just north of the Beach Chalet.
I look forward to sketching the ship that was once on display near this location, it’s bow facing the Pacific Ocean. The Gjoa is now on display at the Fram Museum in Oslo.
The Gjoa was at the western edge of Golden Gate Park until 1970. The elements took their toll on the static Polar ship and rot and vandalism tarnished this once proud and pioneering ship. She was donated to Norway and headed back to her homeland.
A sketch from a c1910 postcard view from Ocean Beach looking east towards the Gjoa and the Dutch Windmill. While the Gjoa is gone, the windmill remains.
One of the ships docked at the Hyde Street Pier is the former Northwestern Pacific ferry boat Eureka.
In the era before bridges, (the Bay and Golden Gate), the only way to get from San Francisco to Marin or Oakland by rail, was by rail ferry.
The passenger cars would be boarded on the ferry and then, well, ferried, across the Golden Gate to Sausalito or Tiburon where they would be unloaded and continue north on the rails of Northwestern Pacific.
The ferry and the Hyde Street Pier was actually considered part of Highway 101.
The boat was built in 1890 in Tiburon by San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company and was originally named the Ukiah, which was as far north as the line reached. The Eureka is a double-ended, wooden hulled ferry-boat that was originally built to hold train cars. Two standard-gauge tracks where built into the main deck.
This 277 foot, 2,564 tonnage boat is the largest wooden-hulled boat afloat in the world.
A pen brush field sketch of the Eureka, displaying the Northwestern Pacific circular logo, and the modern San Francisco skyline.
The Ukiah was initially in service to ferry people from San Francisco to Tiburon during the day and then carry freight cars during the night. In 1907 the Northwestern Pacific Railroad took ownership of the Ukiah and it was routed to the Marin port of Sausalito.
During World War I, the ferry was rebuilt and the refurbished ferry was renamed the Eureka, in honor to the northernmost station on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad.
The Eureka from the bow of the Balclutha and Coit Tower echoing the steam stack of the Eureka.
The ferry was later used to ferry automobiles on her main deck and had a capacity of 2, 300 passengers and 120 cars. At this time, the Eureka was the largest and fastest double-ended passenger ferry in existence and because of this, the Eureka was called up for the busiest commuters times from Sausalito to San Francisco. Hyde Street pier was the primary auto terminal to connect San Francisco to points north and east.
When the Golden Gate Bridge was completed in 1937, ferry service passengers dried up and Northwestern Pacific abandoned all ferry service in 1941.
The Eureka found a new life in the 1950s with a new owner, the mighty Southern Pacific. The Eureka now linked passengers on SP’s overland service from Oakland to San Francisco.
Today the Eureka is docked with the C. A. Thayer (foreground), the Eppleton Hall, and the Balclutha (background).
He grew up as an only child in San Fransisco in an era when most people got around the city in street cars (or trams as they are called in Britain). He would ride them as a child getting to know the motormen (who where mostly Irish). Once they were beyond the last houses and running out into the sand dunes that would later become the Sunset District, the motormen would let my father take the controls as the motorman ate his lunch. Such a scene seems so unthinkable now!
We were down sketching at Hyde Street Pier and I wanted to show Grasshopper Sparrow some of the vintage streetcars that were running along the Embarcadero.
The most common vintage car seen on the F Market Line is a PCC (President’s Conference Committee) car. In this case No. 1053, painted in Brooklyn, New York livery, was built in 1947. MUNI has a fleet of 32 PCC cars.
This weekend was extra special because it was Muni Heritage Weekend and Market Street Railway was bring out some of the vintage cars like San Francisco Municipal Railway’s No. 1, built in 1912.
The one car that I wanted to show Grasshopper was an open-air car from the coastal resort town of Blackpool, England that I read was going to operating this weekend. This car is so unusual and rarely out on the line because it takes a crew of two to operate and has a lower passenger capacity that your normal PCC car. This is the Blackpool boat tram! I remember riding this car in the mid-1980s with my father.
This red and cream boat on wheels announces it’s presence with a nautical air whistle. These novelty cars where built in 1934 and out of the twelve cars in existence, MUNI owns two.
My plan was to drive along the Embarcadero from it’s intersection with Grant Avenue to the Ferry Building in search of the boat. It turns out that we didn’t have to search very hard. The Blackpool boat was at the turn around at Jones and Beach Streets.
So the chase was on! We easily passed the boat and pulled far enough ahead and pulled over just past Bay Street to get a photo run by.
Blackpool’s boat tram is a real head turner. The destination sign reads “NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR”. Here No. 228 heads on the rail right-of-way on Embarcadero towards the Ferry Building and the San Francisco Railway Museum.
We then drove on to the heart of the Heritage Weekend at the San Francisco Railway Museum near the beginning of Market Street and the Embarcadero.
We were able to get a parking spot on Mission and walked over past some vintage buses painted in the famous green and cream livery of MUNI. Shortly after our arrival, the boat pulled in front of the museum and I started a quick field sketch (featured sketch) before it loaded up and left. I finished the sketch with help from one of my photos.
The area around the museum had a carnival feel to it. Many people were out to see and ride these vintage buses and street cars. The museum was selling used rail books outside. I foraged through the titles, many of which my father owned. Perhaps some of these were his books; we ended up donating hundreds of my father’s books when he moved out of his home (my childhood home).
I selected a few titles about mainline steam engines and a book about the streamlined passenger train era. I took Grasshopper into the museum and pointed out a vintage streetcar roller sign that was displayed on the wall, which my father had donated to the museum from his collection of San Francisco street car artifacts.
The roller sign was procured from a streetcar near Fulton at a place called, the Boneyard. Nowadays we would call this “trespassing” and “stealing”. But because of this “stealing” and a railfans’s passion, this bit of San Francisco rail history is preserved and is now on display for all to see.
I talked to the manager of the museum and told her that my dad had donated the sign and he was also pictured in one of the displays. She of course knew my dad and was excited to meet me and noted that I looked just like my father ( but with more hair). This is always nice to hear!
She told me that my father had an interest in streetcars from an early age and he was not allowed to join the local rail society because he was too young so he formed his own youth group with his friends.
The picture of my dad at the museum is of him in later life aboard a streetcar. He is dressed up his motorman outfit. Standing to his right is his friend Walt, one of his lifelong friends he formed the youth rail group with. He must have been volunteering for some excursion. My dad is looking dapper in his black tie and Market Street Railway motorman’s cap (which I now have).
My 600th post is dedicated to my father, John E. Perry Jr. He introduced me to streetcars and trains, history and travel, and that a good life is well learned. His greatest complement of my sketching: that I drew a nice straight line.
I recently heard a rebroadcast on NPR of a This American Life episode titled “My Undesirable Talent” that reminded me of the 2002 crime spree in my neighborhood.
The part of the episode is called Climb Spree and is about a burglar in western San Francisco that climbed up buildings and enter through a skylights, ventilation shafts, or attics to rob local businesses to support his gambling habit.
I wanted to do a spread about the “Spider-man” crime spree. I decided to visit and sketch a few of the businesses where the burglar dropped in and connect these thumbnail sketches with a map of western San Francisco.
He was dubbed the ‘Spider-man Burglar” by the SF Police but his real name is Kristain Marine. He was adopted from Korea by Midwestern parents. People at his church, (The Church of Latter Day Saints), knew him as the guy with Italian shoes who was respectful and soft spoken.
He first stole $200 from the gym where he was working and then proceeded to gamble it all away. He needed money to replace what he had stolen and lost so he committed his first “Spider-man” robbery: a concession stand at City College of San Francisco. He climbed up on the roof and lowered himself down through a skylight. He didn’t even have gloves to conceal his fingerprints so he had to use snowboard mittens.
The concession stand at City College. This is where the crime spree all began.
This was the start of 63 burglaries in San Francisco. My thumbnail sketches are of the Church of Latter Day Saints in the Sunset (where he might have attended) and the The Lunch Box concession stand at City College of San Francisco, the location of his first robbery.
Noriega Produce is now closed. The market has moved up the street and is now called Gus’s, in honor of the Greek immigrant who founded the market.
The next thumbnail is of Noriega Produce, on the western fridge of the continental United States. I once lived a five minute walk away and this was my local market. This market is owned by a Greek immigrant and run by his oldest son. Spider-man robbed this market and had time to have an ice cream bar at the owner’s expense. This was an assault on my neighborhood and the family businesses I patronized. Gus Vardakastanis, the owner, was killed by a hit and run driver in 2017.
The next thumbnail is of a Japanese noodle house called Hotei on 9th Avenue, near Golden Gate Park (this excellent restaurant is now closed). Marine lowered himself down into the restaurant but fell and injured himself. Outside the picture window he noticed a police car. He was trapped, his crime spree was about to end. There was only one way out and that was through the front door.
He walked out the door, said hello to the officer, and pulled his keys out and pretended to lock the door and got away.
The last thumbnail is of Clancey’s Market on the 3900 block of Irving, near Ocean Beach. Most of Marine’s burglaries where starting to show a pattern: early in the mornings on certain days and in certain neighborhoods. The police presence in the Sunset Neighborhood was increased at these times.
Marine was trying to break into this corner market but he became trapped in the attic. After a neighbor heard glass breaking the police where called and they were on the scene in minutes. Marine’s 63 robberies where now over.
Clancey’s Market and Deli, where “Spiderman’s” crime spree ended.
Marine was a first time offender and he admitted to all his burglaries, even taking investigators to his crime scenes. He was sentenced to six years in prison.
I think the main problem with tone of the This American Life piece and with other media stories is that Marine is portrayed as some sort of comic book super hero. What he did was not super nor heroic. As I visited and sketched some of the 63 local businesses he robbed, I thought mostly about the people who owned these shops, markets, and restaurants. Many of these businesses where and are “ma and pop” family businesses, not big box corporations.
If Marine’s crimes reminded me of any literary “hero” it would be as a kind of corrupt Robin Hood.The Spider-man robber was stealing from the poor and giving it to the casinos.
Corvid Sketcher 
