Triangulating San Francisco

This week I’ve been taking a class at the San Francisco Center for the Book entitled “Mapping as a Creative Strategy”. The first half of the class was a look at traditions of mapping, including a field trip to the maritime library at the National Maritime Historical Park to look at many old maps of the California coast, North America, and San Francisco Bay. This latter half we’ve been working on our own projects. Most of the other students are San Francisco residents, and it was interesting for me to try to work with the perspective of being a visitor to the city, and not being intimately familiar with its neighborhoods.

I started out by making a list of the dozen places I’ve been to in San Francisco these past few years, and penciled these in on my street map. One of the themes that came up in discussion was making a map of places you’ve never been. So I came up with the idea of triangulating several of these places to wind up in spots I’ve never been before. The familiar landmarks were the San Francisco Center for the Book, the S.F. Public Library, the Maritime Library, and the Sutro Library (a bookish selection, to be sure). Finding the midpoints between these landmarks, I came up with a set of 4 new locations to go to.

Today I did my grand tour of the city. At each stop I made a sketch on bristol board. I started out north of the Civic Center, headed west to Haight and Lyon, circled Buena Vista Park to Roosevelt Way, then wound up at Noe and 20th. It was a long outing, but it was wonderful to explore the city this way!