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Cityscape 2020
6 January 2020
Remember those little pencil marks that climbed up the door jam marking your height as you grew up? Cities can use that kind of periodic mark up, too. So we hiked up Twin Peaks today before the rain came in to capture the skyline at the beginning of the year.
Cityscape 2020. Mark the skyline.
Our thumbnail in the carousel on the headline page is telling. Rather than crop in the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bank of America building, we crossed Market for our crop to show the newer high-rises.
It's a three-mile hike for us both ways. We decided to start the year off right by climbing both Noe Peak to the south and Eureka peak to the North. This shot was taken coming down Eureka Peak.
In the full-resolution version you can tell the time on the Ferry Building. Click on the image above for a slight enlargement.
It isn't all beauty, unfortunately.
The foliage in the corner is at the edge of the overview area. When we were there an Australian tour group, far from the bush fires, was visiting.
We had been anxious to see how our peaks looked in January and shot 54 images as we ascended the hill. It has a personality that changes with the seasons, after all. You just have to look in the same places to see something different.
It isn't all beauty, unfortunately. There's quite a bit of broken glass on the pavement. A secondary parking lot between the peaks has been closed, the barriers moved back to the roadway to avoid break-ins, which are quite common now.
We were in fact ourselves cased on the way back when a car pulled over by the relocated concrete barricades and a young man who had been in the back seat left his two companions to come across the road toward us.
Our camera was conspicuous. And we were wary.
He apologized for his ignorance and asked where to hike around the area and where the best views are.
We politely answered his questions without engaging in a conversation, suggesting he walk toward the overview as we kept walking ourselves in the other direction toward some skateboarders. He thanked us and walked off, discouraged by the skateboarders not visible from the car and perhaps our wrist strap.
The questions, clearly, were a ruse. So we felt rather fortunate that nothing happened. And that we're able to present this picture of the city in 2020, the beautiful and even the less so.