A Camera Phone's Eye View of the Bay Part One

So, I have decided to do a couple of posts about my meanderings around the East Bay and San Fran. Minneapolis is a beautiful city, but it has a penchant for tearing down older buildings and replacing them with new structures. It seems to me that both San Francisco and Oakland have retained much of their 19th century architecture. Every place I go, I run into some little placard or a cool statue. As a matter of fact, I have some film that should be ready to be picked up today that, if they turned out, will have some amazing shots from the two cities. But here are a few for now.

This is part of a two part placard set into the ground outside of the old mint in San Francisco. The larger of the two tells the story of the start of the California Gold Rush. The placard does not mention the devastation of the gold rush on the indigenous peoples of California.



There is some awesome flora running around the bay the likes of which I have not seen before. The flower in this picture was part of a ground cover on the boulevard that runs through the center of my neighborhood. I sent a snapshot to David aka Mr. I Know All Plants On Sight, but his knowledge of the California flora failed me. He has brought shame on his family.



Back in 2005 when the Creating Change Conference made its second appeareance in Oakland. RJ and I had a fun filled adventure for lunch through Oakland Chinatown. After walking for what seemed like a thousand years, we finally ate at this Cambodian restaurant. RJ said that white people only eat at Asian restaurants where there are those cheesy pictures on the wall. He was right.






And finally, this tree grows everywhere in the Bay. Josh said that the street name for the tree is a Princess bush. No wonder I like it so much. It was named after me.