Weekly Photo Challenge: On Top

20130315-thatone-DSC_3166I was taking event photos for a friend’s art exhibit at the Peninsula Humane Society in Burlingame, California. It was fun to visit and see all the puppies, kitties and bunnies and the walls adorned with paintings by aspiring art students. The second floor elevator lobby offered a nice perspective looking down on the first floor lobby. This photo says, “I like the one on top” to me. What about you? It’s all in the perspective.

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Spring Breakout?

20140414-2tul2_DSC1007A while ago I asked if employment was going to jump this spring… now median home prices appear to want to jump for joy at the sight of spring flowers and warmth from the Sun. DataQuick News reported Bay Area home prices jumped in March 2014 but on the basis of the lowest sales volume for any March since 2008. Lower volume can skew numbers as evidenced by the $120,000 median price jump in Marin County (16% increase) in March compared with February. Home prices don’t really increase 16% in one month, but when there are relatively few sales the median figure can jump around. The new median figure for the Bay Area does set a new benchmark as the highest number over the past year. Finally surpassing the previous high set in July of 2013. All nine counties also saw the median price exceed the six-month average so the trendline has been jumped. Whether we can say joyfully is yet to be seen. Unaffordable homes are not really anything to shout about unless you are on the sell side of the transaction. (See SF Bay Area Housing Trends page above for most recent summary)

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Monument

20140119-2sula_03_DSC9046v2Colma is a small town in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. Last time I checked, the population was just under 1,500 people… if you don’t count the more than one million souls interred there in the twenty or so cemeteries it is famous for. At the beginning of the 20th Century, San Francisco first banned new cemeteries and then banished them completely. This lead to the remains of those buried in San Francisco to be relocated to Colma. So Colma is now a town full of monuments. And, as the bumper stickers and even the town’s website proudly proclaim: “It’s great to be alive in Colma.”

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Threshold

20130508-2Eden_03__DSC4585I’ve lost my dictionary… the hard bound one! What a world! What a world!

The weekly challenge is to portray Threshold: a pivotal moment where change occurs (my definition since I’m lacking substantive support from Messrs: Merriam and Webster).

Well, here in sunny California, a drought condition has made its presence felt. Acutely.

I believe in climate change. It’s been changing since the dawn of time. It will keep changing for millennia after mankind has died off or simply used up all the energy available from fuels of dead dinosaurs. The oceans will rise and fall. The seasons will come and go. A good example is this photo. It’s a reflection of the end of rainy season and the beginning of the arid months of summer. California only gets two seasons along the coast: wet (winter) and dry (summer). Sometimes you can really see the change from one to the other.

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Property Inspection

As an appraiser I get to visit all sorts of properties and see things most people don’t experience in their lifetime. Recently, I got to see the inside of Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Not as an appraiser, but as a regular Joe. The venerable old stadium has seen its last 49ers game and the Giants left way back in 1999. Come next spring the site will be just another empty lot. As a parting gift you can go on a 70-minute tour of the stadium (http://sfrecpark.org/parks-open-spaces/candlestick-park-guide/candlestick-stadium-tours/).

My daughter and I arrived a little early and we were greeted by friendly staff, cool blue skies and puffy white clouds. The tour guide, Amanda, was a real San Francisco treat: very knowledgeable and helpful. The old stadium still looks good as long as you don’t look too close. Puddles of water in places puddles shouldn’t be, tell-tale rust spots, nervous-making cracks in concrete, last-century telephones… the list is long but The Stick served its purpose and the staff is still full of pride for their home at Candlestick Point. We got to share the locker room with the ghosts of 9ers and Giants past and the field with their spirits, as well. The roar is just an echo now but The Stick will not fade too soon. Let’s not forget, the coldest winter you ever spent was at a Giants night game in July with the fog and wind turning a routine fly into the pop-up dance. Gloves, hat and a parka at a summertime baseball game? You betcha! #tourthestick

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

20121030-2sb280_02_DSC9975I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years. That span includes a number of years in downtown San Francisco just west of Union Square. When you live in the center of a region populated by more than 7 million people encompassing nine counties and more than 6,900 square miles of land area (3+ times the size of Delaware), you get used to hustle and bustle.

The true arteries of the Bay Area are its interstates and state highways. We count on U.S. Highway 101, Interstates 80, 280, 580, 680, 880 and all the little connectors to speed us through the Silicon Valley, the Peninsula, the North Bay and the Wine Country, the East Bay and even that little port town of San Francisco. Sometimes speeding is a misnomer as congestion mounts. Slow travel is the price you pay to live in such a popular place.

The Crystal Springs overpass along Interstate 280 is about a dozen miles south of downtown San Francisco along a very pretty stretch of highway. It offers a lovely view to the northeast of San Bruno, South San Francisco and even Oakland and the East Bay Hills. To the west are the Crystal Springs Reservoir and the San Andreas Fault and to the east is the baylands of San Mateo County. Street life takes many forms here. The spectral contrails of car lights streaming to San Francisco or San Jose graphically represent the lives of many of us in the Bay Area.

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What’s At The End Of The Tunnel?

20140322-2mv2_DSC0288Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area remain stuck in a narrow range. The past nine months has seen the stabilization of the market in price but based on unusually low sales volume. The all-homes median price was $540,000 in February of 2014. That represents a 33.3% increase over February of 2013. Not bad! The average median price over the past seven months is $539,036 which is a 4.1% drop from the recent peak of $562,000 set in July of 2013. Even more of a surprise is that six of the nine Bay Area Counties most recent median price is lower than the average for the last nine months. Only Napa, San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties have recent median prices above their respective nine-month average. It will be interesting to see what the second quarter of 2014 brings so we can make a comparison with quarterly trends from 2013. (See SF Bay Area Housing Trends page above for most recent summary)

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Spring Out!

20140309-swee6x4-P1019384Employment growth in the San Francisco Bay Area has not been stymied by snowfall. Oh, yeah, we didn’t have any. The Bay Area saw strong growth in the labor force and employment in February. The statewide figures are not comforting as employment fell on both seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted bases. Without the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties the state would look pretty weak… but we knew that already! (See the Bay Area Employment Trends Page above for the latest table.)

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

20121015-heron_1_DSC9658What makes a powerful image? Content? Color? Tone? Composition? Graphic elements? Luck?

I was working in Marin County one day in October of 2012. On my way home, in the late afternoon, I saw that the Sun was going to provide a wonderful show of setting. I turned off Highway 101 South just before the Golden Gate Bridge and headed west. I managed to capture a few of my all-time favorite sunset images in the span of an hour or so.

Sunset has always been the time of day I enjoy the most. A painted sky with clouds adding character to the landscape… some of those almost magical 3D paintings like the works of Albert Bierstadt (http://hagginmuseum.org/collections/bierstadt.shtml) give me the greatest visual pleasure.

The end of daylight is also a time of reflection. What’s been done, what’s left to do, what’s on for tomorrow?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

20140314-2sf_surf_DSC0169Okay, so sometimes you have to be an insider to get an inside joke/comment. If you live in or near San Francisco you probably understand the difference between inside the Golden Gate (in the San Francisco Bay) and outside the Golden Gate (the Pacific Ocean). What you may not realize is that there are times and tides that make it possible to surf Inside. Welcome to Inside California!

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