Potential Energy

Any time I'm in San Francisco without an agenda, I find myself drawn to Ocean Beach.

It's not the most beautiful beach in the world-- the weather is often foggy, the water is cold, and there's seldom any babes in bikinis. But it has a surly, moody, post-apocalyptic feel to it that really draws me.

The beach is about 100 yards deep, and completely flat, so it's popular with walkers, joggers, and dogs. You can walk right along the edge of the water, and if you watch the waves, you can avoid getting wet:

Or, if you prefer, there's another 50 yards of so of wet, glassy sand for chasing waves, each other, or a good ball:




At its moodiest, Ocean Beach makes all the walkers look kind of like lost souls:

But really, what I love about Ocean Beach is just the vastness. (The little dots on the beach are people)

This trip, I ventured to the paths north of Ocean Beach to the former site of the Sutro Baths.

The baths were popular around the turn of the last century (boy, that sounds weird to say), and were demolished in the 1960s.

A bit of trivia I also just learned: The Sutro baths were featured in Harold and Maude, with Harold chasing Maude around the ruins and calling her "commie!"


You can walk right down among the ruins, if you aren't scared off by the signs that don't forbid trespassing, but note that "people have been swept off the rocks and drowned".


I also found a nice path over to some great views of the Golden Gate Bridge

I ended the day just sitting on the edge of the baths, watching the angry, angry waves...



...the moody, moody sky...

...and finally, a good old fashioned nuclear explosion over the Bikini Atoll

All pictures taken with my little Blackberry cameraphone, which explains the poor quality, but really a lot of the blurry fogginess is just the landscape, not the camera.