While I’m generally all for trying, I have no idea why those powers that be are trying to “spruce up” Hallidie Plaza with these banners. There were a number of them last week, but it appears that this is the last one now. I guess that they’re trying to celebrate some recent landscaping work that went on, which has left this plaza pretty much the same way, it’s always been: a sad, sad gateway to San Francisco for those arriving on public transportation.
The [ahem] homeless guys selling the StreetSheet and/or just bumming for change are still there. That sad looking cable car cafe thing is still there. And most importantly, the 213th Shitting Congress (also known as the native Hallidie pigeon flock) is still there. I can’t really tell what has changed that necessitated the installation of these banners.
There is a solution for this 1973 sweat stain of a station entrance which was covered here. The plan that John King outlines in the link on that article is a mighty good one and makes me sigh every time I hop out of the Bart and head in to the Loin, which quite honestly, I find more welcoming than Hallidie Plaza.
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I emerged from Powell Station the day they set these signs up. There was also a series of tables and chairs along the upper rim of the plaza, deocrated with green, blow-up palm trees. This was all surrounding a live band playing downstairs next to the visitor’s center!
I was overjoyed to see our city actually sprucing up our most central train station – even if it was a little tacky. And I was unsurprisingly disappointed when I saw the next day that everything had been taken down but the ugly signs.
Meh, at least the Giants are winning.
I saw this the other day while riding the amazing 27 Bryant…All i could think was.. “hallidie plaza welcomes me to….what exactly?” It is the same. They could at least have made a welcome sign to Carls Jr. or something..
I especially like the implication that there’s ballroom dancing taking place in Halladie Plaza.
There was some…thing there a few weeks back. There were green balloons, food trucks, performance art.
I really don’t know what the occasion was. I only think if the Plaza as a place where people pee, sell Street Sheets and hang out on the stairs. :/
That’s some seriously ugly signage, with weird leading between the words and the YOU peeking out to the right in a flush left message. But the plaza has always been seriously ugly too, so maybe it was intentional. I do everything to avoid having to use it as either an entrance or an exit, simply as a quality of life issue.
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