Day 7: Taking a Sutrobath
The Sutrobaths were at one point a huge bathhouse with a gigantic swimming pool, built sometime in the late 1800s, which eventually was destroyed by an earthquake, or fire, or other natural disaster. The means of the destruction is unimportant. What does matter, however, is that the foundations for the building were carved from stone, and are therefore very well preserved. You get all of the thrill of exploring ancient Greek ruins, plus the knowledge that the original building is so recent that your grandmother may have been swimming there.
In contrast, the building which houses San Francisco's "Exploratorium" (or kid's museum) is what I imagine an ancient Greek temple would have looked like in its heyday. I can assure you that these arches are *huge*, it's not just trick photography on my part. A quite impressive building, though I find it a little odd that the only purpose of such an impressive structure is to house kiddie entertainment.
Fisherman's Wharf is San Fran's main tourist attraction (or tourist trap), a section of town with all sorts of cheesy overpriced stores. Yet these stores are trimmed to radiate a false sense of sailordom - salty wooden posts, faux-rickety boards, store names clearly meant to imply "the finest goods from the far regions of the globe" (while said stores contain the same Bay Area maps, snowglobes, stuffed lobsters, etc as one would find for a lesser price in the town's many gift stores). I did find some awesome merchandise at a small Asian import depot a few blocks off - awesome, however, only in the "cheap thrills" sense of the word. Lots of hilariously poor bootlegs of American toys, the same sort of crappy figures you find in the 99 cent store, but with the logos of famous superheros painted poorly over the generic logos which they obviously wore originally.
Batman as he would have looked if drawn by a gay Frank Frazetta:
Any gamers or Otaku will recognize this as Barret Wallace from "Final Fantasy 7." Stranger than the fact that Barrett, the game's second-least-popular character, was the only figure they had, is the fact that he is GREEN. Were they trying to pass him off as the Hulk or something?
Don't even ask.
In contrast, the building which houses San Francisco's "Exploratorium" (or kid's museum) is what I imagine an ancient Greek temple would have looked like in its heyday. I can assure you that these arches are *huge*, it's not just trick photography on my part. A quite impressive building, though I find it a little odd that the only purpose of such an impressive structure is to house kiddie entertainment.
Fisherman's Wharf is San Fran's main tourist attraction (or tourist trap), a section of town with all sorts of cheesy overpriced stores. Yet these stores are trimmed to radiate a false sense of sailordom - salty wooden posts, faux-rickety boards, store names clearly meant to imply "the finest goods from the far regions of the globe" (while said stores contain the same Bay Area maps, snowglobes, stuffed lobsters, etc as one would find for a lesser price in the town's many gift stores). I did find some awesome merchandise at a small Asian import depot a few blocks off - awesome, however, only in the "cheap thrills" sense of the word. Lots of hilariously poor bootlegs of American toys, the same sort of crappy figures you find in the 99 cent store, but with the logos of famous superheros painted poorly over the generic logos which they obviously wore originally.
Batman as he would have looked if drawn by a gay Frank Frazetta:
Any gamers or Otaku will recognize this as Barret Wallace from "Final Fantasy 7." Stranger than the fact that Barrett, the game's second-least-popular character, was the only figure they had, is the fact that he is GREEN. Were they trying to pass him off as the Hulk or something?
Don't even ask.
posted by BG | 2:44 PM
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