Excitement on 3rd Street

Living on one of the main roads into the center of San Francisco is always full of excitement. Over the last few years I’ve only had to move 10 feet from the coach to grab some interesting photos. Late last month, our morning was disturbed by Police sirens. That’s not particularly unusual when you live in a city but when you hear them on their loud speakers it worth looking outside. On this morning there were police bikes blocking the entrance to our street. We’ve seen this before, it means there’s a motorcade coming into town. It’s happened a few times, particularly during the elections. I quickly ran upstairs, grabbed the camera and took a few pics. The convey consisted of ~10 motor bikes, ~6 police cars, a limo and 4-5 SUVs. In the SUVs you can clearly see body guards (maybe even Secret Service) checking out the street as they flew by. They were followed by the blood wagon, a white van that carries spare parts for the protectorate. Of course I could be wrong on all this but we checked and we’re pretty certain it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Govinator.

This weekend we were disturbed by Fire Engine sirens. Again, not that unusual, we live 2 blocks from a fire station and they regularly use our street to get places. This time they parked right outside the apartment. I hesitated for a moment; should I grab my camera and run for safety, or grab the camera and takes some photos! Of course I started taking photos, and when Lisa came back from grocery shopping she encouraged me to get closer. In turns out a workshop around the corner from out apartment was on fire. Nothing spectacular but as the building was full of oxygen tanks it could have got interesting.

Finally, I posted these almost two years ago, but I’ve not blogged about them before. I was enjoying a quiet evening when once again I was disturbed by sirens. I looked outside to discovered hundreds of people walking down the street. at&t park was hosting a concert and everyone had emptied out on mass. The police initially used sirens to get people off the street but there was simply too many people. Over the next hour hundreds of police turned up, in riot gear, and started encouraging everyone to obey the law! All the time I was snapping away.