When I moved back to San Francisco, I started noticing layer upon layer of spray-painted dots on a lot of street corners. For a long while the top dots were pink, and then today on my way to work I discovered that they had all turned purple! Thinking that this was just fascinating, I started taking pictures of (almost) every one I came across on my way to work and realized that they weren't just at the corners, but instead marked every sewer grate.
I don't know what these dots are for -- I assume that they're related to some
municipal process -- but I find them absolutely delightful. I took some pictures on my way home, too. And looking through them now, it seems that someone else has also noticed them...note the pink, thistle-like stencil that appears in two of my shots. (Next project: follow the stencil! It's probably not at thistle.)
For some reason the changing of the dot colors reminded me of this mysterious table in one of my classrooms when I was in undergrad. It was a creative writing workshop in a small room in Merrill that was almost entirely dominated by a huge octogonal table (really, it may have had more than eight sides when I think of it). The table must have been moved into the room in pieces, because there was no way that thing could have ever fit into the door as a whole. Anyway, the middle of the table was a smaller, bright-red however-many-sided-ogon. It was a bright focal point i the center of our discussions. One day, though, we came in, and the middle had been carefully painted blue, with no sign of it's original color.
ReplyDeletehttp://missionlocal.org/2010/06/streetscience-bloodthirsty-females-foiled-by-bikes/
ReplyDeleteWhich says in part:
Each catch basin is treated roughly every three weeks. The team member who treats it types the location of the drain and other characteristics into a cell phone, marking the spot by GPS, and spray paints a dot on the curb. The color of the dot changes every cycle and is layered onto previous markings. That makes it simple for the city or anyone else to see when a catch basin was last treated.