I always love sitting at the ocean at that spot where the waves crash along the shore. I particularly love when it’s rocky and the waves slam against the rocks. This photo is at Baker Beach in San Francisco which offers a little bit of the chance to experience that although there are definitely some better areas around here to capture that smacking of the waves. Instead, this is a good spot to watch the water creep up between the rocks.

Tags: baker beach, ocean, Photos, San Francisco, water, waves

There is a Flower Mart in San Francisco. It’s a series of stores inside of warehouses where you can go to buy flowers as a wholesaler. You can also go if you’re not a wholesaler and I had a nice time wandering around there recently to soak in the scent and sight of different flowers.

Tags: flower mart, flowers, Photos, pictures, San Francisco

Today’s photo is one that I took while waiting for BART. It’s at the MacArthur Station which is one of the few BART stops that I wait at which is actually above ground. I often take photos of the Berkeley Hills from here while waiting for the train but thought that the station itself made an even better subject this time.

Tags: bart, bart train, bay area, kathryn vercillo, macarthur staton, Photos, pictures, San Francisco

This is hardly a perfect picture. It could probably be manipulated to be brighter or to have more contrast. However, there’s something that I like about it just the way that it is. Shadowy and imperfect images watching the water that I live by.

Tags: bay, kathryn vercillo, people, Photos, pictures, San Francisco, water

I’ve been playing around a lot lately with capturing reflections in photos. Mostly I’ve been taking photos of store windows that reflect whatever is across the street from them. In this case, I chose an angle that would let me get the reflection of the lamps hanging right outside the window of a restaurant in San Francisco.

Tags: kathryn vercillo, lamps, photo, pictures, reflection, restaurant, San Francisco, sushi, window

Today’s photo was actually taken a couple of weekends ago at San Francisco’s Pride Parade. I didn’t get too many good shots of the parade itself since it was so jam-packed down there but I got a few good ones of the various people who had come out to watch the Parade. Here’s one:

Tags: glbt, kathryn vercillo, people, photo, pink, pride parade, San Francisco, san francisco pride, sf pride

All around San Francisco are these sculptural hearts.

This one is in Union Square along with several others. I love checking them out when I’m down there.

However, I also love it when I stumble across one while I’m just walking through the city. That was the case with this one:

Tags: hearts, images, Photos, San Francisco, Travel

I don’t actually spend as much time in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as I should. I really love this part of the city. I really love that a city which is so geographically small can support a park that is so big. ( It’s larger than Central Park, I believe.) I just don’t make it over there nearly as often as I ought to.

There’s so much to see in Golden Gate Park that it really requires multiple trips throughout the year to check everything out. I recently compiled a list of twenty things to see in this park and the list doesn’t even scratch the surface of what you could check out there if you wanted to.

My problem is that I don’t trek over to that side of the city very much. It’s really only a few miles away from me but it’s a couple of bus rides to get there and there’s always so much else to do in the city that somehow I manage to miss out on that part of San Francisco a lotl.

The other problem is that I always see the same things when I go to the park. I stick to the limited area around 9th Avenue where there’s a cluster of attractions – the Botanical Gardens, the Japanese Tea Garden, the deYoung museum, the California Academy of Sciences … If I have guests in town then I’ll see a few other major attractions like the windmill and tulip garden. Otherwise, I don’t venture around the park much.

I’ll have to make that a goal for this year – to see and do more in Golden Gate Park!

Tags: attractions, golden gate park, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, parks, San Francisco, things to do, Travel

AskMen.com recently published their list of the top cities that guys might want to move to in 2009. Why would women be interested in this list? Because all of the cities that were recommended were cited as being full of cosmopolitan life, culture, entertainment, beauty and fun. Women who want to find guys who are interested in that way of life will find themselves with a better chance in those cities.

The top three cities on the list were Chicago, Barcelona and San Francisco. That’s an interesting mixture of places. Just compare Chicago and San Francisco for a moment – Chicago is a huge sports-loving, music-rich city and San Francisco is a much smaller, arts-loving, tech-loving spot. And yet, what they share in common is a strong sense of community and a vibrant energy, something also found in beautiful Barcelona.

Another theme that ran through the list provided by AskMen.com was that these cities are great places to find women. However, they weren’t just for finding any women – they were for finding smart and interesting women. This means thta the guys that are paying attention to the list are guys that may actually be interested in different facets of you beyond your availability and your looks. That takes things up a notch right there!

Tags: ask men, barcelona, best cities, chicago, cities, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, San Francisco, top cities, where to live

I have just written an article for this week’s HubMob series over at HubPages. The series is a weekly series in which writers from around the web contribute their thoughts on a specific topic. This week’s topic is real estate. There are already articles up about things like real estate as an investment. My article is all about why I choose to live in San Francisco, the city with the highest real estate prices in the nation except for those in New York (and that’s only if you count Manhattan alone and not the other boroughs).

In summary, the article basically tells readers that I love San Francisco enough to choose to pay the high cost of living here. But that makes me sound a bit resigned. And the truth is that I don’t really mind the high rent here even though I complain about it sometimes. Because the thing is, the high rent keeps San Francisco from being a place where people just end up. You have to work to get here and you have to work to stay here and that means that the people who live here really love it here. It makes for a happy place filled with people who like where they live and I think it’s worth a pretty penny to live amongst that.

Don’t get me wrong. There are times when I hear stories of other people living elsewhere and think for a moment that I’ve made a mistake. Just yesterday I was told the tale of a happy couple in a small town in North Carolina who earned less than $9000 between them in income last year but it didn’t matter because they own their car and home outright. A few weeks ago my mother, who does real estate in Tucson, mentioned that she had to collect $350 in rent from someone. He lives alone in a house with a yard. I pay more in two months for my no-yard apartment than he pays for rent in an entire year. So yes, sometimes I think twice about the choice I’ve made.

But most days, I wouldn’t trade a lower rent for the life that I’d find anywhere else. I love San Francisco. What I lose in rent each month, I gain in not needing a car (which means I walk which also means I don’t need a gym membership) and free entertainment and life that I love. It’s not right for everyone and I can see why people wouldn’t want to pay what it costs to live here but I don’t think I’d ever have it any other way.

Tags: california housing, housing, hubmob, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, real estate, San Francisco, sf real estate