The Dark Tower Bummeth

San Francisco is a living entity, constantly in flux, and being made over by the little worker ants that swarm her body. She is like an actor with hairdressers and makeup artists and cosmetic surgeons fluttering about her, turning her into a vision. But sometimes that vision isn’t so good. Have you seen the older actors with the tight faces, faces that resemble plastic masks more than flesh?

By the Bay Bridge, a looming tower, called One Rincon, greets you as you drive in to the city. I get a dark feeling, much like Browning’s Childe Roland as he approaches the dark tower. San Francisco’s manhattanization began in the seventies and is really taking off lately. On Monday, three proposals were made for a train terminal. None of them are really distinctive. Tall glass buildings are rarely interesting. These buildings will be the tallest buildings on the West coast if built:

The three proposals range in height from 1,200 feet to 1,375 feet - each extending well past the 853-foot Transamerica Pyramid, the tallest tower in San Francisco.

These buildings will be as tall as the Empire State Building. Why do we need such tall buildings here? Their answer:

In the early planning for the new terminal, it was assumed that any tower alongside it would climb no higher than 550 feet. Now, though, public officials say the extra height is merited - not just to boost the land sales, but to show that San Francisco continues to measure itself against other cities of global status that are seeing super tall towers proposed or built.

Yuck. I don’t care to have my city look like Kuala Lumpur or Dallas. But at least there will be a park built along with it. The new buildings show a shrinking of neighborhoods and a growing of condominium canyons. One Rincon, the dark tower, will be very expensive to live in:

One Rincon is not affordable housing -- the minimum price is estimated at $500,000 for a "junior one-bedroom" place, an apartment of only 613 square feet. Top of the line, top of the building will be a dozen three-bedroom deluxe condos, 1,967 square feet with drop-dead views. The estimated price: $2 million.

So you can pay half a million dollars for a view of frustrated commuters trying to get into the city. Of course, the higher paying deluxe condos will have stunning views, while they block out the sun for a whole lot of other people. Not to mention blocking the view of the Bay Bridge. There will be no affordable housing in the behemoth, but they did grease some palms:

"Who is going to live at One Rincon Hill? People who can afford it," Kriozere said. His firm -- Urban West Associates of San Diego -- was required to make a $20 million contribution to the mayor's affordable housing fund and $18 million into a Rincon Hill community improvement fund as a condition for building the project. The cost, of course, is passed on down the line. "Basically it is a tax," Kriozere said. "A tax on the people who buy the condos."

How about a pox on the people who buy the condos? Such bullshit. No doubt the city is giving them tax breaks to build the eyesore. We have a housing crisis, but the very rich have no problem securing housing, so this does not help.

The old San Francisco of middle-class and working-class families is vanishing, replaced in part by a city of more wealthy residents. Some of the new residents are only part-time San Franciscans, who reside elsewhere and have second homes in the city.

So Rincon Hill is going to be the second home to some asshole jetsetter? Great. San Francisco will be the play land for the super wealthy, a place where the elite meet and sleep with each other. We already have bars that have guest lists and velvet ropes. We have Tommy Lee opening a L.A. style lounge so he can spin records. We have spatially-challenged Hummers trying to find parking spaces. We have jerkoff supervisors who barely pretend to live in the neighborhood they represent. We have it all and only at a small cost to you.

Build It and They Will Lynch Your Ass

My God, a whole lotta stuff to blog about. First thing:

In the New Yorker, there is an amusing tidbit about tee-shirts saying "Fuck Frank Gehry" that Gehry himself likes and buys to give to friends. What caught my eye was this line:

“Yeah,” [Gehry] said, “because as I’ve gotten to be pretty well known there’s a lot of negative stuff written, right? People potshot at you. So I sort of ignore it. You know, when Bilbao was presented publicly, there was a candlelight vigil against me.” He let out a rueful laugh. “And then there was a thing in a Spanish paper saying, ‘Kill the American Architect.’ That was scary..."

When one is a child, does one imagine a candlelight vigil being held against you when you grow up? Who has such passion against architecture? Apparently we do. When Jasper O'Farrell designed Market Street here in San Francisco, he was almost lynched. I pulled this next quotation off of Wikipedia, but I have read it before in other histories of S. F. so I can vouch for its veracity. It comes from a book called Forgotten Pioneers by T.F. Pendergast:

"When the engineer had completed his map of Market Street and the southern part of the city, what was regarded as the abnormal width of the proposed street excited part of the populace, and an indignation meeting was held to protest against the plan as wanton disregard for rights of landowners; and the mob, for such it was, decided for lynch law. A friend warned O'Farrell, before the crowd had dispersed. He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma. He found it discreet to remain some time in the country before venturing to return to the city."

Ooh, tough crowd. The Transamerica Building is iconic. It's hard to think of downtown S.F. without its pointy little head, but even the great Herb Caen was against it...until he got used to it. We all have to share this space here on earth, so you better not ruffle feathers. But in not ruffling you have some pretty lame architecture. The square boxes of glass and concrete, the international style, is everywhere. I suppose it is cheap and easy and stable but so very dull. When the Art Deco buildings peek out from beneath the behemoth skyscrapers, they resemble Cinderella, outshining her ugly stepsisters. So I wish we had more weird Gehry type of buildings. Same old argument I guess: More beauty please, even if it is weird beauty.