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| Window View February 2026 |
Wednesday is our day to get out early to explore the City. This past Wednesday we returned to San Francisco's City Hall. Since we moved to the city, we have paid our property taxes in person at City Hall. This small act makes the tax payment seem more real to us. On our first visit, we expected to find a busy, noisy place, teeming with angry people. We glanced at the new statue of former Mayor Ed Lee before we passed through the baggage check. Instead of cacophony on a weekday, the halls were quiet. The sounds of people walking through were muted and echoed against the marble walls. Maybe it was the live wedding music we heard (Pachelbel's Canon in D Major) drifting down from the fourth floor gallery. We've become nostalgic onlookers of wedding parties as they pose for photos on the Rotunda's grand staircase. Several groups waited their turns to approach the wedding hall. Last Wednesday, no one seemed to be in a rush anywhere.
Alcoves on the first floor hold statues of other mayors. Some are familiar to me: Dianne Feinstein, who became one of our U.S. Senators, George Moscone, who was assassinated in his office, and Art Agnos, who was mayor during the Loma Prieta earthquake and led the effort to tear down the Embarcadero Freeway.
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| by Bill Slavin |
The tax collector and accessor offices are located in this elegant Beaux Arts building. We walked into the accessor's office to ask someone to explain the supplemental and escape property tax bills we received this year after buying a condo in the city. We were concerned that we might be paying more now in property taxes than we did when we lived in a big house in Danville. We found the people who work in the tax offices to be friendly, patient, and helpful. The idea that government workers are lazy or rude is a stain on the actual people who work there. We received undivided attention to our questions and walked away feeling good once again that our money (taxes) were an important part of our life in California. And no, we aren't paying more than before.
Leaving City Hall from the opposite entrance from the Civic Center Plaza, we walked past the headquarters for the California Supreme Court, another Beaux Arts design, to Books Inc, located in Opera Plaza on Van Ness. We can never pass up a bookstore and found a Peet's Coffe conveniently connected to the store. After I purchased Hector Garcia's The Magic of Japan, and we had a coffee and pastry, we walked back through the Civic Center and stopped to watch a group who covered the steps leading to City Hall. They carried numerous signs and were protesting any decrease in funding for the city's environmental protection office. At the moment we were listening to the speeches of local supervisors, I received a text about writing to our representatives about regulating AI technology. Two distinct issues but connected due to lack of regulation to prevent climate change events.
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| by Bill Slavin |
Across the way from City Hall, we noticed a Zumba class moving to music rhythms. We crossed over to walk through the arcade of sycamore trees that stretched across the plaza. The trees, still without leaves, were pruned the old way so that the ends of the branches were like knobs or knuckles. As we ventured through the central plaza, we noticed children playing on structures at the Helen Diller playground near the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.
At the other end of the plaza a gathering of food trucks offered dim sum and tamales, boba tea and crepes. Workers on their lunch break sat at the benches within the food truck square. Across Larkin Street stands another Beaux Arts building which now houses the Asian Art Museum. On Wednesdays, between the museum and the Main Library, Fulton Plaza is home to a bustling farmers market, where this time of year green vegetables, apples, and mandarin oranges filled the stands. We saw flowers, bunches of Chinese broccoli, and bok choy sticking out of the hand carts that people were using to carry their purchases. Further back from the market at U.N. Plaza, is a skateboard park teeming with young people testing their skills.
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| by Bill Slavin |
We continued our walk towards Market Street. Across from the library, the street in front of the Orpheum Theater was crowded with mostly seniors ready to see "The Notebook" musical.
Europeans long ago figured out how to make the centers of their cities inviting. Skyscrapers won out in the United States and downtowns are often windy, cold places where people rush past each other in the shade of the tall buildings. In San Francisco, the Civic Center, like Union Square and the Embarcadero, invites people to use the space. The plaza at the Civic Center is surrounded by massive Beaux Arts buildings, but the open space allows sunlight and room for people to interact with each other in very different ways. Our visit on Wednesday was a good reminder of what is possible.
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Listen to Pachelbel's Canon in D Major:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptk_1Dc2iPY
Hector Garcia has lived in Japan for 15 years and writes about what he has learned about Japanese culture.Garcia's books, including The Magic of Japan, can be found at Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=hector+garcia