31 12 / 2008

katelosse: Driving around on the Peninsula today I randomly discovered South San Francisco, and how rad it is.  It looks like it hasn’t been touched by developers in 50 years. I identify with Kate’s feeling of discovery. South San Francisco has always existed for me as a kind of weird ghost; for much of life it consisted only of the big white SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO THE INDUSTRIAL CITY emblazoned on the hillside on the drive home from SFO. I have ventured into SSF proper only three times in my life, most of which has been spent within a few miles of it. The purpose of all three trips was to visit S.P. Teri headquarters, custom producers of the figure skates preferred by a majority of serious skaters. Perhaps obviously, the first two visits were quite long ago, before I was really aware of the built environment in the hypersensitive way I am now. But, I knew enough to know I couldn’t get there without getting a ride from someone (BART didn’t run there until I was in college), and my early frustration with places I couldn’t access by bus or train is perhaps one of the roots of my transit-obsessed adult self. The destination itself was and is still located in a curiously insular corporate park that sits within a few blocks of the old downtown grid, facing in on itself and forming an effective barrier between Railroad Avenue (a clue that South City might have once been accessible by rail, and knowing what we do of American history and development patterns, is probably the reason there is a downtown grid at all) and the industrial area south of town. On my recent (last month) third visit to South San Francisco, I took note of these things, and also the same buildings that captivated my friend Kate, pictured here at Linden and Grand Avenues. The little downtown core is indeed a cute nucleus of vintage appeal lacking pretension; at least, that’s what city people like to see in these things. And in that regard it does seem proximal to some similar early-mid 20th century commercial districts in San Francisco, like West Portal or Ocean Avenue. But where those have benefited from more infill-driven and scale-restricted City zoning, I feel like South San Francisco’s diminutive “Main Street” area is a fallow plain (maybe when the economy improves) for the kind of large scale redevelopment mistakes the suburban Bay Area loves to make over and over again, featuring brightly colored architrash and minimal preservation effort, shortening the cycle of waste when the buildings are obsolete and crappy in less than 25 years. It was a bit depressing to see this borne out a little bit a few blocks up from where this picture was taken. But you know, it’s just a feeling, not coming from a truly well-informed place. And maybe the mysterious little SSF has its own built-in defenses; its “untouched” aura might be a pleasant side effect of a failure to muster the economic imperative to redevelop downtown over a period of years, because it’s core usefulness after the railroad’s obsolescence became a bedroom community of disconnected subdivisions? Whatever it is, deferred maintenance is the best agent of preservation. And it’s a lovely little pocket, while it lasts.

katelosse:

Driving around on the Peninsula today I randomly discovered South San Francisco, and how rad it is.  It looks like it hasn’t been touched by developers in 50 years.

I identify with Kate’s feeling of discovery. South San Francisco has always existed for me as a kind of weird ghost; for much of life it consisted only of the big white SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO THE INDUSTRIAL CITY emblazoned on the hillside on the drive home from SFO. I have ventured into SSF proper only three times in my life, most of which has been spent within a few miles of it. The purpose of all three trips was to visit S.P. Teri headquarters, custom producers of the figure skates preferred by a majority of serious skaters. Perhaps obviously, the first two visits were quite long ago, before I was really aware of the built environment in the hypersensitive way I am now. But, I knew enough to know I couldn’t get there without getting a ride from someone (BART didn’t run there until I was in college), and my early frustration with places I couldn’t access by bus or train is perhaps one of the roots of my transit-obsessed adult self. The destination itself was and is still located in a curiously insular corporate park that sits within a few blocks of the old downtown grid, facing in on itself and forming an effective barrier between Railroad Avenue (a clue that South City might have once been accessible by rail, and knowing what we do of American history and development patterns, is probably the reason there is a downtown grid at all) and the industrial area south of town. On my recent (last month) third visit to South San Francisco, I took note of these things, and also the same buildings that captivated my friend Kate, pictured here at Linden and Grand Avenues. The little downtown core is indeed a cute nucleus of vintage appeal lacking pretension; at least, that’s what city people like to see in these things. And in that regard it does seem proximal to some similar early-mid 20th century commercial districts in San Francisco, like West Portal or Ocean Avenue. But where those have benefited from more infill-driven and scale-restricted City zoning, I feel like South San Francisco’s diminutive “Main Street” area is a fallow plain (maybe when the economy improves) for the kind of large scale redevelopment mistakes the suburban Bay Area loves to make over and over again, featuring brightly colored architrash and minimal preservation effort, shortening the cycle of waste when the buildings are obsolete and crappy in less than 25 years. It was a bit depressing to see this borne out a little bit a few blocks up from where this picture was taken. But you know, it’s just a feeling, not coming from a truly well-informed place. And maybe the mysterious little SSF has its own built-in defenses; its “untouched” aura might be a pleasant side effect of a failure to muster the economic imperative to redevelop downtown over a period of years, because it’s core usefulness after the railroad’s obsolescence became a bedroom community of disconnected subdivisions? Whatever it is, deferred maintenance is the best agent of preservation. And it’s a lovely little pocket, while it lasts.

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