Author: Kurt

I’ve somewhat inadvertently stumbled upon a when-the-sun-goes-down motif as I trip down San Francisco memory lane, so I’ll continue with that. (Part of this is because for some reason, it’s much easier to color-correct in Photoshop these nighttime shots).

These two photos were taken on February 20, 1995, of the AIDS benefit performance “Classical Action: A Concerted Effort Against AIDS” which featured Van Cliburn and Carol Burnett, among many others. Over $1,000,000 was raised that night. I most definitely did not attend, except from the outside. I was shooting outdated Kodachrome, which took the evening’s red lighting scheme and ran with it. The first shot is of the Davies Symphony Hall, while the bottom one is from the War Memorial Opera House across the street.

Two images, taken on the same winter 1995 evening, on the same corner, where Union Street intersects with Webster, in the Marina District of San Francisco. I can’t remember, but I doubt that this sandwich place is there anymore. Il Fornaio, a well-known group of upmarket restaurants and bakeries across California, whose sign is reflected in the sandwich shop window, is definitely not in this location anymore.

I never did care for this area, it being the heart of San Francisco’s young upwardly mobile professional set, with a healthy supply of meat-market pick-up bars, but I did shoot here often, and made a 16mm film out of footage shot at night here, in part because one could count on it being a reasonably safe place to walk around with a Bolex at 11 at night.

I have no idea what the lone customer of the sandwich shop is looking at. Perhaps he’s just trying to avoid my gaze. In all the years that I passed this shop, which I did often as my bus line the 22 Fillmore made its turn on this corner, I never saw but one or two customers at a time in it.