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Bush Street
24 April 2024
We've always been fond of this block of Bush Street between Grant and Kearney in San Francisco's downtown. No particular reason. It just resonates with us.
Bush Street. Nikon D300 with 18-200mm Nikkor at 62mm (93mm equivalent), f8, 1/125 second and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
We took this shot from the corner of Grant and Bush, looking east, ignoring the Dragon Gate into Chinatown across the intersection.
It's a noisy photo. In the sense that there's a lot going on.
The signage is to blame for the noise. The parking signs on the sidewalk tell you when you can't park and when you can and what to do when you can. A bike cheekily embraces one of the sign's poles. It ain't paying.
The storefronts all lean out with their own signs: the Irish Bank, Hotel Des Arts, a cigar store, Le Central the brassiere.
Oh, and the Leica Store.
On a Saturday afternoon last November, there was a robbery at the Leica Store. Four guys grabbed $178K worth of camera equipment (well Leica gear, so we divide that by the crop factor to get $71K worth of cameras) and jumped back in their gray sedan. At gun point.
There was an armed guard the day we walked by.
As alarming as news of the robbery was, a story published Tuesday by the San Francisco Standard tells quite a different story.
Robbery reports are at a six-year low, according to an analysis by The Standard of San Francisco Police Department data. After peaking in 2021, burglaries have fallen. Also down are crimes like motor vehicle theft and larceny, a category that includes car break-ins.
Which may seem hard to believe after the barrage of crime stories during the pandemic.
The piece by Gabe Greschler quotes University of San Francisco criminologist Kimberly Richman, "In general, people are normally primed to think that there is more crime than there is."
Naturally. We hear about crime all the time but you have to experience security. You have to walk the streets, see for yourself.
Which is what we were doing. Unmolested with $25 worth of camera equipment.