Graffiti and Murals

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge

This is an easy one for me as I am an avid mural hunter and photographer.

I'm going to go with some personal mural history.

This is the first mural I remember ever seeing, in San Francisco in 1987 pre-digital. It is still there!!

Since then I have participated in Monday Mural since 2013. Luckily, John shares my interest in murals and we have searched out murals around the world on our travels. Click on the word "mural" in the tags/labels below this post, 746 posts and counting!!!


This is the first mural I remember seeing in Toronto, on a visit, before we moved here. It doesn't exist anymore. It was on Yonge St. around 1989 pre-digital as well.

And the first mural I remember when we moved to Toronto, It is an icon.
It has quite a story, check it out.

Foto Tunes

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme. 

Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco - 1987

New York was so good they named it twice - 2013.

And if you say the sun doesn’t shine, Ralph McTell will walk you through the streets of London to show you something that will make you change your mind - 2010

Tuesday Treasures

Tom hosts Tuesday's Treasures.

May 1987 - San Francisco CA

This was our first and only trip to San Francisco, how did that happen? We've been in California many times since then.

The first mural we had even seen! And in googling it, it is still there!
Columbus and Broadway in North Beach by Bill Weber and was painted in 1987.
Featured are three musical legends: Teddy Wilson on the piano, Gene Krupa playing the drums and Benny Goodman with his signature clarinet.

This was also the first time I saw patrons have to get a key to the washroom.

An icon.

Another icon.

Is it any wonder you need signs like above?

The biggest SF icon of all!

A bus tour to Napa Valley.

We took the ferry over to Sausalito for a day.

Yes, you can still see this houseboat!

The Taj Mahal was built by land developer turned winery and vineyard entrepreneur Bill Harlan in the mid-1970’s after he visited India and was fascinated by its architecture. With travertine marble floors, a wine cellar (logically enough), a top-level solarium for meditation, a sauna and a secret elevator, the houseboat’s cost in 1970’s dollars was over $2,000,000, which would be a staggering $9,000,000 today.

We were staying close to City Hall, a rather seedy area at that time.

The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline. The building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, which moved their U.S. headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland, but it is still associated with the company and is depicted in the company's logo. Designed by architect William Pereira and built by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, at 853 ft (260 m), on completion in 1972 it was the eighth tallest building in the world.

And our introduction to Ghirardelli chocolate, which is now a life-long addiction!

Coit Tower on the left.

Coit Tower, also known as the Lillian Coit Memorial Tower, is a 210-foot (64 m) tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco; at her death in 1929 Coit left one-third of her estate to the city for civic beautification. The tower was proposed in 1931 as an appropriate use of Coit's gift.

Alcatraz. The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a federal prison from 1933 until 1963.

inSPIREd Sunday

Sally and Beth host inSPIREd Sunday!

January 2016 - Guadalajara Mexico

On 16 de Septiembre Avenue in the Historic Center is a temple dating from 1580: the Temple of San Francisco de Asis. This church replaced the Franciscan convent founded by Friar Antonio de Segovia in Analco previously.
The original convent was of adobe, very simple. Where the gardens are now, was once the atrium of the church.
Over the years it has suffered several reconstructions and modifications. By the eighteenth century this compound included six chapels, the convent, some orchards and a cemetery, but in the mid nineteenth century it began to divide. In the twentieth century suffered a terrible fire and in the middle of this century was rebuilt as we know it today.
Its baroque facade has three bodies with columns and on each side with statues of San Buena Ventura and San Antonio and above those of Santo Domingo and San Francisco.

San Judas Tadeo, is officially the saint associated with difficult circumstances, but more recently has been associated with delinquents, with the idea that the saint hears the petitions of both the good and the bad.

Sebastian de Aparicio y del Pardo, O.F.M., was a Spanish colonist in Mexico shortly after its conquest by Spain, who after a lifetime as a rancher and road builder entered the Order of Friars Minor as a lay brother. He spent the next 26 years of his long life as a beggar for the Order and died with a great reputation for holiness. He has been beatified by the Catholic Church.