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Way Out West / Fisherman's Wharf

On this page I've included a few more images from the Fisherman's Wharf area and Pier 39. If nothing else, it's a fairly spiffing slice of civic planning, particularly if palm tree colonnades are your thing.

iFishWharfPalms.JPG (84404 bytes)

I saw these sunflowers for sale and I liked the picture they made with their shadows on the baked white concrete.

FishWharfSunFlwrs.JPG (75579 bytes)

It transpires they are not just any old sunflowers, but organic sunflowers. I hadn't realised there were other kinds. Sunshine on a stem, indeed.

FishWharfSunSign.JPG (37672 bytes)

This is the photo with everything - the busker, the authentic San Francisco cable car (well, actually, a tram) and a huge metal sculpture of a crab.

FishWharfCrabBuskTram.JPG (77227 bytes)

The busker was actually very good. He had CDs for sale for $15 and I bought one. His name is Tom Edwards, the CD I got is 'Leyenda', and I like it. The crab isn't very clear in the above photo, so here's one I've messed around with so you get a better look. As you can see, the actual body of the crab consists of some sort of trained foliage.

FishWharfCrabSculpt.JPG (44157 bytes)

For natural history fans, I can tell you that the crab is based on one specific species, the Butterfly Crab, so called because (uniquely among crabs) it preys predominantly on butterflys. How it manages to catch and eat them is not, as yet, fully understood.

Vast numbers of fat, lazy sealions assemble every day on available floats and decking around Pier 39. They just lie there and do absolutely nothing, for hours on end. Meanwhile, the Pier 39 crowds gather around the pier fencing to stare at the sealions, and also do absolutely nothing for hours on end.

FishWharfSeals.JPG (54121 bytes)

FishWharfSealsign.JPG (60647 bytes)

If all that standing around doing nothing except watching sealions doing nothing gets a bit too tiring, you can have a massage. And not any massage, but a massage by James. For a dollar a minute.

FishWharfMassage.JPG (61164 bytes)

Zooming in a little, we can see in the background a homeless person whose entire life's possessions are stacked high on a shopping cart, which he pushes around the streets all day. There are lots of people doing this in San Francisco.

FishWharfMassage2.JPG (56735 bytes)