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Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, souvenirs, personal projects.
-| March 2021 |-
♣ | Market from 12th
A set of eight prominent brick apartment buildings w/ well-preserved storefronts, some having glass transom lights and unaltered bronze plate glass window frames, has appeared on a list in 2011 as a proposal by SF's landmark designation work program to become a neighborhood. Built btw. 1911 and 1925 by architects George Applegarth and August Nordin in revival styles colonial, classical, and venetian gothic.
♠ | Golden Gate near Jones
The oldest german catholic church in SF is housed in a romanesque revival building built after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Following St Francis since 1852, this parish decants homilies in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. The brethren offer religious education and sacraments, observe Easter and Christmas seasons as well as feast days, and has designated 33 Sundays a year to ‘ordinary time’.
♠ | Market at 3rd
By 1769, spaniard-sprouted missions along the warmer spine of California reached twenty-one; then stopped. The missionary-bent undertook next the task of braiding existing older routes into a user-friendly shape, to get from one to the other. This highway was blessed in 1906 when bells were strung along El Camino Real, from Sonoma to San Diego – guideposts w/in hearing distance from each other.
♣ | Channel at 4th
Since 1969, there has been a houseboat community in Mission Creek, where the owners moved over from Islais Creek, which was being developed to handle merchant shipping. The mouth of this SF river, now culverted, is known to MLB fans since 2000 as McCovey Cove.
♣ | Laguna Honda Blvd at Sola
A small community located near the middle of SF, on land originally owned by the heirs to Adolph Sutro. Begun in 1912, the roads were originally built for horse and carriage. As a consequence, they are unusually wide and generous. These streets in Forest Hill did not conform to SF’s specific standards regarding width, grade, etc., and therefore were not initially approved nor maintained by the city until 1978.
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Besides curving roads the hill is accessible by a staircase system grouped around street names. Take the underground to Forest Hill Station. Exit left to Sola Steps where Forest Hill begins. Stay right and find Castenada. Casanada to Ventura where the Alton Steps await.
Climb to and cross Alton Street and continue.
♣ | Buchanan at Post
An early pedestrian-only street in SF can be found in a 32-acre neighborhood, known as Nihonmachi to locals and as Japantown by the rest. Buchanan btw. Post and Sutter is lined w/ storefronts and there is a cobblestone stream meandering down the middle, pooling around two origami fountains by Ruth Asawa.
♠ | Bay
The largest island in SF Bay was a federal prison from 1934 until 1963. Housed military prisoners also. No women were allowed on the 22 acre lockup.
♣ | Bay
The second largest island in SF Bay was an immigration station until it was destroyed by fire in 1940 and the whole operation moved onshore. Now Angel Island is a 1.2-square mile state park and museum.
♣ | Market at Embarcadero
Postcards summoning attention to earthquake preparedness from the Red Cross.
♣ | Mission at 5th
Established to handle the California Gold Rush, the SF Mint moved into proper quarters in 1874. Designed by Alfred B Mullet in a greek revival style, w/ sandstone for the façade and an open court inside. Staircase down to the gold vaults. Staircase up to the second floor.
♣ | Mission at 16th
Offering old-world film and independent cinema experience. SF’s nonprofit Roxie Theater has, during the coronavirus panedmic, switched to a virtual cinema model.
♣ | 6th at Jessie
By noon on March 8 2013, as a small crowd gathered outside the new substation, an unassuming Mayor Ed Lee strolled down the sidewalk, shaking hands until reaching the podium to announce the arrival of a police presence on the first stretch of Sixth Street, where dickensian deeds high and low can, have and will occur. After a speech, the mayor handed the mic to district attorney George Gascon, police chief Greg Suhr, district 6 supervisor Jane Kim, a local resident, and Zack Stender, co-owner of Huckleberry Bicycles, which had moved around the corner.
♣ | Panoramic Hwy
Just north of Golden Gate Bridge, an old growth coastal redwood forest and national monument, Muir Woods.
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A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf
[1921]
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure — a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the hosue all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing-room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling — what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room …” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, cooly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering though the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—” “Silver between the trees—” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When summer came—” “In the winter snowtime—” The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats widly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
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Before the cable car, the task for getting to Nob Hill was relegated to paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11, 1869, this necessary yet wanton civic cruelty of using animals as beasts of burden changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had a front page article on the death of a wretch. It took place when a horse finally lost it on California Street and, throttled, dragged down to its death.
When Andrew Hallidie read this, he paused and paced his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this. Hallidie was already prosperous, although not yet famous. He had inherited a company from his father. The senior Hallidie had invented and then patented a Steel Cable: strands of wire lined up and braided into a rope that was super strong, and proved indispensable in the gold fields and gold mines.
Hallidie took on a failed concern: to build a conveyance capable of conquering the city‘s hills. He bought the Clay Street Hill Railway Co., and by May 1873 had built tracks and a cable assembly up Clay from Portsmouth Square to Nob Hill, a vertical climb of seven blocks.
The tram operator is stationed forward of the tram. He employs the grip grabs and holds on to the moving cable, the tram also moves. When grip is released, tram stops, even on a hill, using a gear invention preventing slippage. Besides the tram operator (gripman) is the conductor.
Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in London, to Andrew Smith (b.1798 Dumfrieshire, Scotland) and Julia Johnstone (Lockerbie). He died April 24 1900, in San Francisco. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earthquake.
Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its opening by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula.”
Accordingly, access from the gold mines to San Francisco were surveyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wherever gold was found, w/ waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought w/ them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.
The Industrial Revolution created tools used in scientific precisioning, allowing innovated models to be tested and profitably manufactured. Among these ideas was the ingenuous “square set” created by german engineer Philipp Deidesheimer. Grey Brechin picks up the umbilical cord:
The Square Set introduced methods of construction. Deidesheimer’s gift went from constructing safety zones to conduct the backbreaking business of mining into other uses, including the ability of a grid of steel beams and columns to allow support for more height.
❛Skyscraper❜ came into usage in the 1880s; America had fifteen. These buildings usually came w/ modern plumbing, electrical outlets in every room, a telephone line in every unit, central heating, and an elevator.
❛ … NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super material, carbon nanotube ... uber-strong, light and flexible. “Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millenium” is the feasibility paper of this new science, to erect a track running on cables, from here to the Moon, a journey of some 62,000 miles.❜
Agadez, Niger
In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l’Air.
Immortal Dane Whitman brought his time-tested skills as the 
Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th century, when not in a hurry to get somewhere Michael Jon Carter prefers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boasting futuristic tech, but the feel of rubber on road gives 
Little is known about this shapeshifting foe of Batman Beyond. Her fluid body allows 
Jimon Kwan’s car is parked behind the world’s first eco-fire station. She’s there to give a demonstration – in her capacity as 
Before he went to war as the 
It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the 
The grandfather and great-grandfather of James Jesse were from the world of vaudeville, which is why their spawn continued their forays into self-powered locomotion and built a portable air-cooled engine, hooked up to an accelerator switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horsepowered roller skates, and later tormenting the Flash w/ weaponized toys as the 
An inside-out refrigerated truck driven by Leonard Snart, commiting crime as 
H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an experimental contraption that his American friend and fellow futurist, the head of 
This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on display in a Belgrade art gallery when 
This rarely seen Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic belongs to Arthur Curry (Aquaman) and is nicknamed the Drop because he almost never has need for it.
Even super-heroes driving sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles 
After punching Hitler in his debut, the city of Manhattan awarded Steve Rogers w/ a spanking red 1937 Ford, and he promptly took off to drive cross-country. Then 
Before his life was imbued w/ Bahdnisian powers and he took control of the human thunderbolt, 
Bentley Wittman, narrowly escaping the Human Torch, is chauffeured back to his mansion on Long Island and his life as the 
No way is the mysterious 
Suddenly, the hovering air-car is jolted by a fantastic wave of force … and that is when 
A surreal episode of the 
To have a bit of fun while Superman is recovering from their latest encounter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from elsewhere, uses 
Vic Sage blends into his camouflage car, ephemeral behind a pseudoderm mask, during the time he joined Blue Beetle, Captain Atom and Nightshade as the 
When insect-female hybrid Queen Zazzala of planet Korll returned for a rematch w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took possession of an experimental 1940s light-weight hovercar which she used as a beehive-nest. Badly damaged and abandoned, it still oscillates when touched, awaiting new instructions from the 
The nomadic Roy Harper, leaving behind his Speedy persona, took to the road in an oft-vandalized therefore oft-disguised van. When he landed in England, the former battling bowman persuaded Banksy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an extended spin as 
Random page from the mid-century portfolio of billionaire industrialist 
Sue Richards fetched Agatha Harkness, her boy Franklin’s new governess, in a custom-built Hispano-Suiza, previously owned by an heir to the Dubonnet fortune. It was a regal ride befitting the 
An early electric car prototype from the morbid mind of Oswald Hubert Loomis, aka the 
When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jennifer Walters sent this blurry pix of her unusual find while in college. It proved ideal for camping, and that was when she got into an accident, needed a blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce, and began a new existence as the ravishing rough 
In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad visited the Fiat Factory in Turin and openly admired their roof treatment. When what later became the 
Besides lending his occult skills to combat evil, 
Tony Stark awarded his executive assistant 
Kent Allard’s elusive 1957 Lincoln Premiere, which he drove as the 
Carter Hall was so smitten when Hal Jordan drove up in a Phantom Corsair that the test-pilot promptly gifted this one-off automobile to the extraterrestrial detective, known to Earth as the 
An experimental floating fortress from the malevolent minds at 
Although a haunted horse accompanies his cursed existence, the ghost of highwayman James Craddock also owns a train, breaking the law as the 
Long after the owner of Gotham Broadcasting Co. Alan Welling Scott, was visited by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Second to bring life! Third to bring power!”) and fought evildoers as the 
Brainiac 5 retooled an antique and created the “frisbee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a combat suit for Chuck Taine, the 
Hooking up to his Plymouth Barracuda’s batteries to recharge his pyro-costume, Garfield Lynns unleashes a color crimewave based on rainbow rays as the 
Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fighting crime as 
Brainiac 5 constructed this bi-cycle for Luornu Durgo Taine (
With wealth to spare, socialite Wesley Dodds had a taste for danger and cars. Which is why he could imperil his 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe by taking it out to strike terror among wrongdoers as the 
A gift from Brainiac 5, this experimental bike allowed Lana Lang to apply 30th-century technology to her 20th-century life. While fiddling around w/ the teleportation button during a ride in the countryside, she managed to trade bodies w/ all the insects in a nearby field, becoming for a spell the 
Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first appearance as a masked crimefighter, leading the Batmobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hurry, Batman – the 
The keys to this experimental car from Stark Industries were handed to Matt Murdock, giving added comfort to his forays as 
Samuel Joseph Scudder drove this solar laboratory on wheels in his first appearance in Flash #105, “
This innocuous van offers storage for Rory Regan’s collection of mystical rags, allowing 
Model kit from Aurora for Britt Reid’s special-built 1965 Chrysler, featuring a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the 
Sowing feline felony in Gotham City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a lawless life as the
Winslow Schott, the terrible 
The seldom driven Joker Mobile is deployed to track down a double-crossing mobster. “The whole job – the safe-cracking, the getaway - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, 
A proficiency in auto mechanics as well as miniaturization landed Ray Palmer a plum position as a team member rehabilitating a Ferrari 375 Plus. Palmer kept tinkering some more on the racing car, giving it a capability of being shrunk, and constitutes the first step in his quest, as the 
While parked on a cloud, the 
King T’challa of Wakanda’s elusive jeep parked in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, where he was on a secret mission as the 
This “fire” truck, designed by Stark Industries, later patented by General Motors as the Futurliner, was used to house JIm Hammond, an android spawned in the mind of Prof. Phineas T. Horton. This lab-on wheels is remotely controlled, insulated inside to withstand the intense fire generated by the golden age 
Personal gear: pair of blankets, frying-pan, flour, salt pork, brandy (or other sanctifying spirit). Field gear must-haves: pickaxe, shovel and pan. Some procure a mule.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining 
