This nine and a half minute video is longer for a reason: it takes time for a Sikorsky S-58T helicopter to lift a microwave repeater system through the air to the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge!
In September (2009), after a couple of weather and technical delays, ARIS Helicopters accomplished a high-profile lift and placement job on the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. With pilot Sam Nowden flying a Sikorsky S-58T twin-Turbine helicopter, the job consisted of removing and replacing a twin parabolic microwave repeater disc assembly on the south tower of the bridge.
And here’s another view (including a hello from the guys doing the job).
From the Marin County Free Library, cars, boats, trains and a motorless gravity car in 1920s California.
The Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railroad ran from 1896 until 1929 between downtown Mill Valley to near the summit of Mt. Tamalpais, with a second line descending the West side of Mt. Tamalpais to Muir Woods beginning in 1907.
The first part of this film from 1926 depicts the journey taken from the San Francisco Ferry Building (notice the cars boarding the ferry), across the bay, to Sausalito. From there, passengers would board a passenger train to Mill Valley. At the Mill Valley depot, an open-aired train traveled up the mountain, on the “Crookedest Railroad in the World.” At the terminus was a tavern; the one pictured here was the third incarnation, rebuilt after a fire in 1913.
The second part of this film begins at the Tavern of Tamalpais where, travelers depart on a motorless gravity car, which traveled down to Muir Woods.
On older buildings, it’s not too uncommon to see the crowning touch of an ornamental weather vane — a rotation device which indicates the wind’s direction. But what happens when a bunch of weather vanes are put together on the same surface? That’s the question that American artist Charles Sowers answers with Windswept, a kinetic installation of 612 aluminium weather vanes placed on the facade of San Francisco’s Randall Museum — and revealing surprising results, as you can see in this video from Dezeen.
As you can see, the spinning blades don’t uniformly point in the same direction as one might expect, but rather show smaller diverse patterns and paths of the breeze. Says Sowers: ”Windswept seeks to transform a mundane and uninspired architectural façade (the blank wall of the theatre) into a large scale aesthetic/scientific instrument, to reveal information about the interaction between the site and the wind.”
From Treehugger. Thanks, @mamagotcha.
More kinetic sculptures and more wind in the archives.
This Chronicle Books video features Chad Robertson, co-owner of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, and the author of Chronicle’s Tartine Bread, published in 2010:
To Chad, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. He developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens.
We always like videos that show how things are made, but the bonus here for us was talking about how having the patience for the bread to rise made the bread taste even better than it would have had it been rushed.
Related DIY on our list: No Knead Bread: so easy a 4-yr old can make it!
Artist Jim Campbell describes the process of developing and creating Exploded Views, a commissioned work that was installed in SFMOMA’s atrium in November 2011.
More light, more art, more San Francisco, more museums.
