During a visit to San Francisco last week, I was hanging out in the Mission with an old friend from college and we passed by this closed-down gas station ripe with weeds and graffiti. On the sidewalk in front of the lot was a Heidelberg press sitting shinily in the sun. My friend’s attention was caught by this amazing spectacle of machinery while I went and checked out the weeds.
I thought this urban space was very lovely and wished it weren’t fenced-off. It’s annoying to have to stick your camera through the chain links!
We then passed by a gigantic church made up of lots of angles and planes of hard-looking materials like glass and concrete. It was very sterile-looking, but covering the side wall were perfectly rectangular patches of green!
Well, there were a few frayed edges where the ivy was escaping its rigid boundary.
I was also interested in the multi-level gated and locked concrete terraces in the front of the church. They contained lots of cylindrical cement planters with sad-looking, dried-out plants.
I wonder what is the point of caging in these spaces?
On an unrelated note, I found a stretch of nearby residential street lined with a vivid display of weeping bottlebrush.
No fences here to keep me from marveling at this beautiful shrub!
Interesting. Beautiful bottlebrush.
I’m looking for an abandoned gas station to shoot. Do you remember where exactly this one is? It’s lovely. Thanks!
Hi Sonya. I believe it was on Valencia at 23rd. Good luck with your shoot!
-Sara