Walking in San Francisco Part Four: The Buildings!

What's a city without an abundance of interesting buildings? San Francisco has it's fair share of beautiful architecture. 

This looks like the sort of place a wealthy business man would rent for his daughter while attending college. The daughter would befriend strange characters who her father would never approve of and invite them to cocktail parties at her apartment. They would open the windows wide, play their favorite music on the stereo and climb onto the fire escape where they would talk for hours and watch the happenings of late evening San Francisco below them. 

This looks like the sort of place where and old lady and her fluffy dog named FiFi would live. She would be the type of old lady who listened to soap operas too loud and who took FiFi on walks wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe. All the people in the apartment building would be like 'there's Iris again, being a batty old lady.' But they wouldn't realize that Iris was once an explorer and an archaeologist who has traveled to 68 different countries to explore new regions and dug for dinosaur bones and ancient artifacts. They'd only find out after she would die and they would happen upon her obituary in the newspaper. They'd wonder how things would have been different if they'd gotten to know Iris better and what it would be like to hear about all her adventures.

This looks like the type of place that would be home to a detective agency. When any prospective clients came in looking for their mystery to be solved, they'd stand just at this angle and look up. Their eyes would meet the sky and up there in the vastness they'd wonder if there were answers hiding in infinity.

This looks like a place where there would be a bank full of stodgy old bankers. But one of the bankers in there would be unlike the others. He'd dream at night about living thousands of different lives and when clients came into the bank, he'd dream about them too.

This looks like the type of place that a youth counselor would live. He'd spend his days trying to help young people of San Francisco succeed and prosper. During the day, he'd feel optimistic and hopeful for the kids. He'd see greatness in each one of them. But then, while walking home, he'd start to feel the dread settle into his mind. By the time he got home it would be fully set in. He'd worry Larry would not get the scholarship he needed to go to college, and if he didn't get the scholarship, he wouldn't be able to afford college, and if he couldn't afford college, then what? He'd worry Carol would keep dating that dead beat who was far too old and creepy to be dating a teenager, and that she'd get pregnant and that she'd not get the life she deserved. So the youth counselor didn't like his home. His home was where he worried. He'd try to turn on the television and distract himself. He'd drink a beer or a glass of wine and try to unwind. But he worried about those kids. He wanted the world for those kids.

This looks like the type of place where the top floor would have a grand library. The shelves would be 20 feet tall so anyone who wanted a book on the top shelf had to climb a ladder and stretch their arms to reach it. And if you dropped a book from a top the ladder, it would come tumbling down and potentially could harm a person underneath. The library would have beautiful nooks and crannies where people could curl up and read a book. The best nook and crannies would be in front of the windows where you could go back and forth from reading a book to gazing out the grand windows at San Francisco below.

These look like the type of buildings where office workers work. They sometimes feel trapped and lonely in their cubicles, typing away at the keyboard. Sometimes their fingers type while their minds wander, till their heads are inflated with dreams. Then they go home and they would turn on the music and they would dance with their kids before cooking them dinner and remembering that their jobs may be boring but their lives aren't.

The building that is wedged in between the other two looks like the sort of place a resourceful inventor type would live. She'd live in the apartments at the edge of the wedge. She'd look out the window and daydream until inventions popped into her mind. Then late into the night she'd tinker and create until she created marvelous things.

These buildings look like they would hold offices of high powered lawyers who spend their days and nights immersed in law, trying to prove the innocence or guilt of the frightened accused. They'd sometimes take criminal cases where they knew the person they aimed to prove innocent was guilty as could be. They'd take other cases of those who were innocent but appeared destined to go to jail despite their innocence. Each case was a challenge and a moral conundrum. Each day was exciting and dreary and delightful and tense.

This looks like the type of building that is full of old businesses no one thinks of such as text book companies and telemarketing companies and insurance companies. All the people that work in the building think where they work is boring until legends of a ghost living in the building surface. When people start hearing about the ghost, the water cooler talk gets far more interesting. The legend would be something pretty standard, a ghost of a man who jumped off the top of the building after being spurned by a lover, or a ghost of a little girl in Victorian garb (even if the building was built long after that era). Suddenly, all the workers look behind their shoulders when they are the last to leave, or pay extra close attention to what they thought they saw from the corner of their eyes.

The buildings of San Francisco are quite beautiful and interesting and full of stories about the people who potentially occupy them! For each window on each building there is a story about a person we've never met.