Month: October 2024

Horse Racing is back at the Alameda County Fairgrounds every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday through mid December. I went out to the Pleasanton Fairgrounds, last weekend, for the second day of the Fall Schedule Horse Racing. I know that for some people, horse racing, like boxing, is an outdated sport, and I don’t know how bad it is on the horses. However, it’s fun to watch, especially if you win, which, more often than not, I don’t. There’s always something depressing to me walking around the empty fairgrounds when there’s no fair going on. It’s like one of those spooky Twilight Zone shows where everybody in a whole town mysteriously disappears. Plus, there’s nothing like an empty fairground to give you an overpowering craving for a corn dog. I walked around the fairground in between races to match up some of the pictures I took last summer during the 2024 Alameda County Fair. (Thumbnail images)

  

Passing the empty Livestock Pavilion on the way in:

  

Looking toward Heritage Park from the entrance to the Racing Grandstand:

  

Looking in the opposite direction of the previous picture toward what used to be the main area of the Fair. The smell of chicken tacos on a flour tortilla, or roasted turkey legs was alarmingly absent.

  

Ah, the Midway; “Vomit Valley”. I even miss that, and I hardly spend any time there.

  

Looking past the kid’s area toward the Racing Grandstand:  After the horse racing area, this has to be where they take in the most money during the run of the Fair.

  

No 4-H Club in the Livestock Pavilion:

  

Those two things in the background are rides I never plan to go on when the Fair’s back, but they’re fun to watch.

There was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Aldo Toledo last September 18^th about the old Samuels’ Jewelers Clock on Market Street. The clock has been neglected and vandalized, and it’s a shame because it’s a part of San Francisco history that goes back to the days of Sam Spade, although it hasn’t been running since the 1970s. It made me think of other clocks, both gone and still around, throughout San Francisco, so I looked back through my archives for some clock pictures, and stopped by the “Samuels Clock” last Friday. (Thumbnail images)

  

Geary St. at Kearny near Market during the 1950’s: The entrance to the old Chronicle Building is on the right in both photos. My update was taken in July of 2020 when most everything in the area was still closed due to the Covid Shutdown. (worhtpoint.com)

  

The Ghirardelli Clock Tower, from Larkin Street, in a late 1920s, or early 1930s, in a picture from the Shorpy Archives: This was one of the streets used in the ‘Bullitt’ chase scene.

  

The Bay Bridge Toll Plaza: Not only was the clock from the 1960s picture nicer than the digital message today, but the fare was on twenty five cents to cross back then.

 

They make the street clocks much smaller nowadays, like the one here on Market Street at Grant Ave. My picture was take on March 22, 2020, less than one week after the Covid 19 shelter in place order was activated. The guy in the 1940s pictures always makes me think, ‘An American Werewolf in San Francisco’. (SF Chronicle)

  

The Urbano Sundial counts too. (artandarchitecture-sf.com)

  

Old St. Mary’s church spire, with its biblical message ‘Son, observe the time and fly from evil’, something that I never hesitate to plan on doing someday: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

A couple of pictures from the Westin St. Francis Hotel on Union Square Facebook Page of the St. Francis Lobby Clock: I posed in front of the clock in 2013. Neither I nor, I’m sure, that Shirley Templeish kid, look that young anymore.

  

An update I did last New Year’s Eve on Market Street between Grant Avenue and Stockton, with that classy Caro Bros clock: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

 

Probably everyone’s favorite clock in San Francisco is in the Ferry Building Tower. These are a couple of nighttime pictures I took of the Ferry Building; the first was in October of 2010, when the San Francisco Giants were about to win their first ever World Series, and the second was in January of 2013, when the San Francisco 49ers were about to lose their first ever Super Bowl. The Giants would go on to win two more World Series after my 2010 photo, and the 49ers would go on to lose two more Super Bowls after the 2013 loss.

  

The Samuels Clock was originally installed on the south side of the 800 Block of Market Street in 1915, seen in the January, 1939 picture when Samuels’ Jewelers was located at 879 Market Street, about where the, now closed, Nordstrom portion of the Westfield Centre Building is. As Mr. Toledo point out, Dashiell Hammett worked at Samuels’ Jewelers, and his famous detective Sam Spade refers to the clock in one of the stories Hammett wrote featuring him. (UC Berkeley Library Archives)

 

In 1941 or 1943, I’m getting two dates on this, Samuels’ Jewelers moved, along with the clock to the north side of Market Street next to the Flood Building. The clock is not only referred to in literature, but also played a part in San Francisco’s largest terrorist attack in 1916, so I’ll include a link to the Chronicle article below. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/samuels-clock-flood-building-19758243.php