The photo on the right is at 3rd and Clement. It could be art, irony, a college prank, an angry employee or all of the above.
What we have are boxes of commercial
grade tomato paste on top of a phone booth in front of a pizza joint.
I like it as a work of art. It could clearly be a college prank if
it has no meaning, just defiance. It could be an angry employee
letting the public know that this much-vaunted pizzeria doesn't make
its own tomato paste. It is definitely ironic: pizza ingredients in
front of a pizza restaurant -- tomato paste on top of a phone booth.
The image on the left relates to an
earlier blog. The cafe I go to weekday mornings, Greco, is noted in
the neighborhood for the imaginative designs on top of the
cappuccinos and lattes. This is the image of a fern with a flower on
each side of it.
The last image on the lower right shows my
long term harmful effects on the society ... an unexpected
consequence of doing good and doing well. In 1970 I was part of a group of
five runners, part of the Portola Institute, who helped Dick
Raymond produce a product called Shoe Goo. The goal was a rubber to
put on the worn bottoms of our running shoes, actually tennis shoes, to
help us put hundreds of additional running miles on the shoes. The
product was most popular among mailmen. Mailmen found Shoe Goo
helped increase the life of their work shoes.
The product didn't have much of a future because we had only one supplier who could strangle us out of business at any time. So we sold it to Kiwi for a nice profit.
Thirty five years later it is still on the market. Big Five Sporting Goods, where this picture was taken, won't sell it to anyone under 18, because it is widely used for abusive sniffing.
Good product, good capital gains ... bad outcome. (Click on photos to enlarge.)