City Center

A few of us in the office made a trip this week via I-80 and the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station to Oakland City Center at 1111 Broadway. The topic was sea-level rise, conducted in a lawyers' conference room high above the city. Some pictures downstairs on a quiet morning early December:

Looking back toward the entrance with a Peet's latte' in my possession.

'Tis the season in office buildings near and far.

Business 

Get me a laptop, coffee and a good book. I could live here.

Oasis in the City

The day before Thanksgiving I walked into Westminister Presbyterian at Capitol Park to take in part of the Music at Noon series, this one featuring harpsichordist Faythe Vollrath. I left the church to resume a walk in the park and noticed people looking inside the patio next to the church. Very classical and inviting urban oasis, home to many weddings.

Social Media

Forget Yelp and Groupon. Give me the old-fashioned sandwich board on a city street. I like a colorful making the case for lunch. Here are a few boards I've seen recently in the vicinity of the state Capitol. I'll add more as I find them  -  one gem in particular that I've seen on L Street, advancing the cause for "peace and cookies on earth."

Philosophy

Hot soup, flatbread pizza

Note Dog Friendly Patio.

Here's our "Peace and cookies on earth."

....and 30 flavors of Italian soda

Cheerful, colorful - Trader Joe's in the suburbs

Architecture of the State

A fall day. The lunch hour in downtown Sacramento.  I strolled to the State Department of Education, getting a sense with these arches, columns and pillars, of being inside a great cathedral. An elegant space. Ahead of this woman and to her left inside the windows, employees were looking over collections of holiday gift baskets. 

What's Wrong With This Picture?

 I believe that F is falling asleep.

City of Trees

Sacramento's Capitol Park is ablaze in color. It was nearly 80 degrees earlier today, bringing out the city's bureaucrats to sit a spell, hike, gab and stroll amid the leaves of autumn. We, who work for the state downtown, benefit from visionaries of a century ago, the tree planters and landscape architects who envisioned such a creation as you see here below:

Young Capitol staffers with the Legislature out of town.

Crossroads.

Somewhere it's snowing, but not in California

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Pacific Grove, California

My wife and I ventured off for a long weekend to Pacific Grove, a small Monterey Penninsula city best identified by dual icons of monarch butterflies and Victorian architecture. We walked, we ate, we sat and watched the Pacific Ocean. It had been a dozen years or more since we last set eyes on a town that we explored when we first met nearly 35 years ago. It has lost none of its charm in a world that leans toward big box stores and shades of beige.

The private residence of Dr. Hart in the good old days of style and taste.

Nothing beats an explanation of this old house.

We had a great breakfast in this busy family-owned restaurant.

What town wouldn't kill for such a benevolent mascot?

 Even the trees in Pacific Grove have interesting design. Living in the arid Central Valley of California I also tend to forget about ice plants. Here are an big fertile belt of them to frame this old Monterey Cypress.

Another spectacle at the sight of the Point Pinos Lighthouse, the Pacific Coast's oldest continously running lighthouse.

A beauty in itself.

We got there too late to see the newly remodeled interior. This guy in the blue coat and his colleague told us it was closing time. Next trip.