three plain colors

     I was riding up Fulton Street on the sidewalk when I turned and saw these three apartment buildings on the left side of the street.  They caught my attention because, I think, of the colors with which they were painted.  I don't know why.  My eye took a little bit of its pleasure from looking at them, like Pantone color swatches, standing beside one another. Providing mutual support, in a way.  Keeping each other's structure intact, the colors true and defined.  I don't really know what colors they are.  The gray of the sky influences both the seen color and the way my camera records the light being reflected off of the objects.  Yet I dismounted, set my bike against a wall, walked a few steps to center the composition, and made the picture.  I like looking at the buildings together.  They are so plain and undistinguished, the middle one in particular, realizing that towns like Tijuana of maybe towns in Cuba may also have apartment buildings very similar to this one.  I don't really know, to be honest.  
     If you take a stroll or bike into certain neighborhoods here - the Richmond district, the Sunset district, for example, or near the sea - you might see that buildings like these three, with facades lacking in flourish or ornamentation, are quite common, even more common than, say, Victorians like those found around Alamo square.  Or those found on our Walter Street, even.  They are so square and uninteresting there on Fulton Street.  I'm surprised by my interest, that I chose to dismount and compose and photograph them.  These three friends of different colors standing together, keeping each other company, leaning on each other, day after cloudy summer day.

Dough boy

     

     I bought this big blue bowl for two dollars on Page Street between Scott and Divisadero, specifically for dough mixing and rising.  I've used it several times now since discovering it, and it has been magnificent.  Here I have made a jpeg where the bowl cradles a ball of pizza dough.  Julie and I are visiting the Sueys and the new boy Hunter Harvey this afternoon.  Pizza seems right for the occasion.  I'm rising this dough, above, in order to make two rounds of about one foot in diameter.  It is not yet clear what they will be topped with.  Ideas are smoked mozzarella, pepperonis, mushroom, ground pork knots, and tomato sauce.  The possibility of introducing shrimp ceviche has surfaced as well, for we have here at least three lemons that have been previously zested for dressings.

     There they are.  I often and always wonder what to do with them.  I should stick googly eyes on them and punt them into Duboce dog park half a block from my front door.  If anyone knows what to do with a trio of zested lemons, it's a pampered urban maltipoo and his friends pug and sheba inu.

     I have taken the recipe for my dough from Alice's magnificent book The Art of Simple Food.  Alice is my niggie.  I think this book is magnificent and recommend it to the earth.  Come two pm, the dough exits the refrigerator and gets set on a table to warm to room temperature, two hours,  before shaping into flat discs one foot in diameter.  Here is a jpeg of an orchid bud in our sun room.  The bud is opening:

     Find below also three jpegs of our resident ferns.  We joined the local fern kick only recently.  Neighbors in the surrounding Victorians I suspect joined this kick long ago.  We are just now discovering the simple beauty of the local fern.  These three fern came from Cole Hardware store, in Cole Valley.  Aside from ferns, this store vends portable grills and screws of various shapes, sizes, and metals.  Do not forget to think of them after your next Ikea run.