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Posted Aug 9, 2007, 5:40 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: SD/SJ, CA, USA
Posts: 1,879
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I know that some of this is off target but it really conveys the excitement of change...
Heady Week For The City
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, August 9, 2007
You have to admit, this has been a pretty cool week for San Francisco.
Architects unveiled plans for a towering, landmark skyscraper that will transform the city's skyline. And Gap founder Donald Fisher offered to build a museum for his one-of-a-kind art collection, making San Francisco a mecca for modern art.
And then, oh yes, there was the national attention when Barry Bonds hit his record-breaking home run at AT&T Park. I got an e-mail from a friend in Asia on Wednesday, the morning after Bonds' blast. He said the story was on the front page of a Hong Kong newspaper.
"It's a pretty exciting time in San Francisco,'' said Mayor Gavin Newsom. "We can reflect on where we are and where we are going as a city.''
The mayor still has to deal with the misery and problems of the homeless and the hassles of the Muni system. But for a moment, these events reminded us what it is like to live in a city of substance, one reaching for the heights.
As Craig Hartman, an architect for Skidmore Owings and Merrill, says, the proposed tower rising more than 1,000 feet above the Transbay Terminal isn't a building -- it's a statement.
"This is an important signal to the rest of the world to continue to see San Francisco as a global city,'' says Hartman, whose firm submitted one of the designs. "Great cities have always marked their points of arrival with a mark in the skyline.''
Because when you build the tallest building on the West Coast, you're making an announcement to the rest of the world -- "Hey, take a look at this."
"It becomes an icon for the city,'' says Zigmund Rubel, president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "It is what everyone looks for when they are coming in on an airplane.''
Typically, Hartman says, a statement tower like this should rise well above the surrounding structures. This one certainly qualifies, and the public controversy seems destined to rise to even greater heights. If you've looked at the comments on SFGate.com, you know that many residents are not pleased with the idea of the edifice.
That's all part of the process, of course. Go back and read the news clippings about the "outrage'' the Transamerica Pyramid caused when it was going up in the '60s and '70s. One critic wrote that the structure had "all the grace of a dentist's drill.'' Yet today it is an unmistakable, if not dominant, feature of the skyline.
Art, on the other hand, is often heard about but not seen. The Fisher collection, a comprehensive gathering of the work of modern artists, was much discussed but not often viewed, at least in total. His offer to build a museum to house the pieces was not only a big deal here, it was national news.
"This is tremendous,'' says John Buchanan, director of fine art for the museums of San Francisco. "It really nails San Francisco as a serious place to come face to face with modern works from the last 30 or 40 years or so.''
And then there is Bonds. In a perfect world, he'd be another kind of guy -- sunny, cheery and uplifting. Instead, he's more like a summer day in San Francisco -- forbidding, overcast and chilly.
But you have to admit, in an age of hired professionals, where your hometown team's hero may have grown up in Pennsylvania and played college ball in Indiana -- sorry, Joe Montana, but it's true -- Bonds is a legitimately local guy. He went to high school in the Bay Area, his dad played for the Giants, and AT&T Park will always be the House that Barry Built.
He is as identified with San Francisco as the Golden Gate. My son, no baseball fan, is just back from a summer in Washington, D.C.
"Wow,'' he said when he returned. "People really don't like Barry Bonds.''
Yeah, we know. But we're dealing with it. As a fan said on these pages not long ago, "He's a jerk, but he's our jerk.'' Other cities can boo him, but this week they weren't in the national spotlight. San Francisco was.
Now let's admit it, San Franciscans can be a little smug. When out-of-towners mention that they've seen one of the four B's -- the bridges, the bay, or Bonds -- up close and in person, locals sometimes resist the urge to point out that they live right here with them all the time.
And, of course, sometimes they don't resist.
That's one of the reasons why the recent columns about homeless campers and dirty hypodermic needles in the city's parks have hit so hard. It runs counter to our image of this as a world-class city, with restaurants to die for, and its own national radio talk show catchphrase -- "San Francisco politics.''
This week's news is more like it: soaring vision, lofty achievement and a reach for the heights.
It's like those tourists standing around the Powell Street cable car turnaround in their shorts and T-shirts, shivering.
"How,'' they want to know, "do you stand this cold?''
We prefer to think of it as cool.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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1,000 posts and still going...
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It's more than sad, it's blantantly ignorant.
...nevermind the fact he was wrong about the height anyways). 
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