Tag: ugly

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The Trouble with Pine Needles

I’ve been around a lot of houses in San Francisco and it seems like the Sunset District is the only place where we get a problem with pine needles. It could be because they blow south from Golden Gate Park or it could be the people who got the idea of  stuffing that old Christmas tree in their backyard 50-60 years ago and now it’s taken root and taller than the house.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with trees. I used to spend my days in the summer at my Aunt’s house in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range so seeing big tall pine trees wasn’t unusual. Where it begins to be a problem is when you live in a house with people who though planting pine trees in their backyard was a good idea.

Here is my main complaint. If you take a look at the picture you’ll see something you commonly find in Sunset District houses. It’s a skylight so that when you wash your dishes you can look out the window at a kind of sunny box. Unfortunately, they also tend to collect pine needles that get blown by the strong salt air which of course, land in your skylight. My wife, who is a goddess in my opinion asked me for help yesterday as she climbed out to clean out the pine needles that had started to become rather thick. She is a goddess because her being 5’4″ and me being 6′ she understands that it’s easier for her to get out the tiny window than me. This is unlike my parents who always decided that me being the biggest one in the family was best to squeeze through tight openings.

The little bunch of clumped up wire that you see next to the pipe is a homemade filter that my grandfather made specifically to keep pine needles out of the drain. It works fine when you don’t have a lot of needles, but there have been times when the needles have blocked the drain and we’ve had rainy weather in which we suddenly have six inches of water starting to build up which even with the tar paper the water will eventually leak around and you’ll get rot underneath it.

I think overall my biggest problem is to figure out what to do with this area. My family used to have cacti right outside the window because they didn’t need water and it was hard to get to. It’s really just a useless part of the house that lets a little light into the kitchen, but requires high maintenance. If anyone has an idea or two I’d love to hear them.

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Golden Gate Park Gone Wrong

While everyone seems to be focused on the West end of GGP nobody has noticed what they’ve done to the Eastern side. It turns out that they’ve moved the parking to where the bike lane is and the bike lane to where the parking is. This is bad for a couple of reasons.

First, the bike lane isn’t used that much so leaving it next to area where the cars drive makes sense. If a person on a bike is riding by and the driver of the car opens the door to get out without noticing the bike the rider can move a little to the left to get out of the way. Now with the bike lane blocked in by cars and the curb, if a passenger opens the door without noticing the bike you will have two injured people.

Also pushing the parked cars out makes driving more difficult. I find myself not being able to drive the speed limit in the Eastern part of the park now, because I now have to drive very close to the cars. So far this only affects JFK Drive East of Transverse Drive, but if they think of moving it to other parts of the park it will be a disaster.

I used to enjoy my drives through the park as they were always pretty peaceful, now even driving slow I have to be aware of hitting cars. As you can see from the picture in front of me [that I took after I came to a full stop next to the Rose Garden] The car in front of me is not centered in the lane and veering to the left, practically driving on the divider line to avoid hitting the parked cars on the right. I suspect we will be seeing more car accidents in the future along this part of the park because of the dumb idea they’ve put in place.

The other thing that is puzzling me is how packed with cars the park is now. I took the picture above in the middle of the week at somewhere around 2pm. Why are all those cars there or were they there before, but I just didn’t realize them because they were farther away from me? From Transverse Drive all the way up to the Conservatory of Flowers was completely packed with cars and I have no idea why.