I grew up in San Francisco. And so I’m informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I’m a very ardent patriot. ~ George Lucas

A Happy Sunny Summer Day in San Francisco

I’m fortunate enough in my job to be able to work a four, ten hour a day schedule in the summer. So this means I get eight free Fridays every summer. I consider these Fridays to be very precious and try really hard not to squander them by simply sleeping in and taking it easy. So while in fact I did waste the first one last week in exactly that manner, I was determined not to do that this week and made plan to visit a museum I have not been to in San Francisco, the De Young.

In planning my day I realized that the De Young is currently hosting an exhibit, Monet in Venice, and I’ve never seen a complete Monet exhibit so I was excited to visit. I was excited for the De Young in general, I’ve walked it’s grounds several time but had never visited the museum. It’s not a huge museum but it has really interesting architecture and I really love the layout. The grounds are wonderful and I dig their sculpture garden out behind their cafe. Probably my favorite room was the Oceania room, the sculptures in particular were really fascinating. There were some interesting pieces throughout the museum including a number of really interesting Chihuly pieces. Some of my favorites below:

I was excited for the Monet exhibit and it was nicely laid out with a good number of pieces. But I was a little disappointed. Let me put it this way, Monet’s work is really lovely, the paintings of Venice and the water lily paintings were beautiful and absolutely showed the talent and skill that the master possessed. But for me, art is not just about skill and beauty, for me personally, what makes me love a piece of art is if it moves me emotionally. My favorite painter is Van Gogh, and in Massachusetts several years ago I saw an exhibit of mostly lesser known pieces except for two, Wheatfields and Starry Night. The thing is though, almost every piece in the collection moved me in some small way, whether it was a village, a portrait, a field of wheat or an evening sky, something in Van Gogh’s work taps emotion in me. It’s this metric that makes Rodin’s sculpture of Saint John the Baptist my favorite piece of art. Decades ago a Rodin exhibit came to the museum in Knoxville, Tennessee while I was there in graduate school. I went to the exhibit, excited to see The Thinker and his enormous gate sculptures. The exhibit was incredibly impressive but much like Monet’s paintings, while I recognized the talent, skill and beauty of the pieces I wasn’t particularly moved. They had set up some of the pieces in a bit of a twisty maze of curtains so that you’d turn the corner and be face to face with the next piece. I was going through this part of the exhibit when I had the most amazing art experience of my life. I turned the corner and was face to face with St. John the Baptist, looking directly into the sculpture’s eyes and I started to weep. The piece touched me immediately and deeply in a way I cannot explain or understand but I was stunned. I spent an inordinate amount of time with that piece and it was an incredible experience.

I left the De Young and walked a winding route back to the Civic Center Bart station, strolling around Golden Gate Park.

I strolled through the Haight-Ashbury District.

And back down through Hayes Valley to BART, but this also meant I got to make pizza stops at both Escape from NY and Gioia Pizzeria, the two best slice places in the city.

I really love my walking days in the city. Today was really wonderful, the weather was absolutely perfect, Golden Gate Park was full of people and music. I did a drive at the beginning up to the De Young in a Waymo, and doing a robot taxi is always a blast and our robot overloads always remind us who is in control.

And yes, Waymos are Jaguars, so they’re really nice vehicles, today it even did a right on red which was a bit of a surprise to me. So great weather, a five mile walk and some great pizza make for a really wonderful and happy day in San Francisco my friends. ~ Rev Kane