SFJAZZ Center 1: The Building

The new, $63 million SFJAZZ Center has just arisen at the corner of Franklin and Fell Streets where the modestly scaled three-story building glows in the morning sun.



That stretch of Franklin Street from Hayes to Market has long felt barren, so the glass-and-concrete modernist building already feels like a major transformer in an increasingly lively neighborhood.



Though the 750-seat Robert N. Miner auditorium that is the heart of the Center is virtually complete, some of the public spaces on the first floor are still being worked on by a small army of construction workers in anticipation of the Opening Day ribbon cutting on Monday the 21st. A Grand Opening Concert, emceed by Bill Cosby with an impressive roster of jazz superstars, follows on Wednesday the 23rd.



The philosophy behind the building is to make it as open and welcoming to the surrounding community as possible. Part of that mission involves the glass-walled rehearsal and performance space along Franklin Street above called the Joe Henderson Lab. The sights and sounds coming from the very public room should be an exciting addition to the neighborhood.



In addition, SFJAZZ is offering low-priced courses in digital music production to the public, divided into classes for adults and teens.



There are three wraparound lobbies encircling the single auditorium, and the ground floor is attached to the second level by a striking modernist stairway.



There you are greeted by one of three hand-painted ceramic tile murals which are a collaboration by California artists Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet.



On the second level, there are pair of bars and balconies at either end...



...and the main entrance to the auditorium...



...with its steeply raked stadium seating surrounding a powerful and extraordinarily refined speaker system and a flexible stage.

Fame. Infamy. Immortality.

Striking new signage was being pasted to a wall this morning at the corner of Larkin and Fulton on the side of the Asian Art Museum.



The installers discovered that the title wasn't quite straight as it spelled out China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy, so they took the section down and started again.



Finally, it was as uniform as the slickly designed Fame. Infamy. Immortality. section of the wall sign.



On the Asian Art Museum website, they explain:

The First Emperor, Qin Shihuang (259-210 BCE), conquered much in this life, but his driving purpose was even greater: He sought to conquer death. In order to achieve immortality, he built himself a tomb—a vast underground city guarded by a life-size terracotta army including warriors, infantrymen, horses, chariots and all their attendant armor and weaponry. First unearthed in 1974, the underground burial complex of the First Emperor is a revelation for the ages, an astonishing discovery on par with Egypt’s mummies and elaborate tombs.

The exhibit of ten warriors and assorted objects from the tomb will be opening February 22nd for four months, and should be quite a crowd-pleaser.

Civic Center Sunday

In front of the blasted heath where City Hall's Holiday Tree stood for most of December...



...a man in a 49er hoodie with pom-poms in his hand was dancing in a celebratory manner to music delivered via headphones.



Across the plaza, between the Asian Art Museum and the Main Library, trucks were parked awaiting the packout from the final Orpheum Theatre Lion King matinee before driving the production to Austin, Texas.



In anticipation of the quick packout, there were large wooden production boxes parked on Market Street near the stage door with surreal signage, including "Hyena Rack 1."



Behind the theater, the Heart of the City Farmers Market was in full flower, with a new busker above playing an electrified cello in music so unexpectedly beautiful that it stood out like a beacon. The cellist looked mortified while I was taking his picture and kept his head down. I wanted to ask if the music was written by him, notated or improvised, or the work of a fellow composer, but talking felt rude so I left some money and bought some Fuji apples five feet away.

This neighborhood is a joy to document.

BART Pigeon

Friday rush hour in the San Francisco 24th Street BART station featured a lone pigeon calmly walking around the boarding area as if it meant to take a train to Richmond rather than bother flying there.



The pigeon walked about the platform pecking at crumbs of food in the cracks while stopping to read discarded pieces of writing.



It was a mystery how the bird made it down two sets of long stairways to the boarding area in the first place, but this didn't seem to be its first time hanging out at the BART circus.