This is how San Francisco looks to me. Like a vertical cross section that sticks straight up into the air, a slice of a hill. The light, too. When it's sunny out, the buildings cast blue shadows on the streets around 5:30.
Walking down California Street, sometimes I felt like I was going to fall off to one side. I'd walk straight past a cross street and suddenly look to the left to see nothing but empty air stretching all the way to the ocean and the city splaying out before it in a patchwork grid of pastel buildings. There are the stucco facades of apartments painted light blue, the faux-Roman flat rowhouses with shuttered windows.
Everything thing is angled straight up and perched on the hills like a row of birds bobbing on a telephone wire. So when I'm riding in the car like a roller coaster and trying not to fly off the pavement, my eyes are still out there in the empty air, looking down, picturing the city like a Wayne Thiebaud painting: everything mushed against the flat sky, pushed up like a body against a wall, slammed by the sunlight. Everything rolls down San Francisco like the city got tilted on its side. The cars go fastest cause they've got wheels.
All paintings are by Wayne Thiebaud, variously titled: Down 18th Street, Apartment, and Highway Curve by Google Image search. Happy looking.
1 comment:
I love Wayne Thiebaud! Thanks for this post. I'm going to get a tattoo of one of his San Francisco works.
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