Picture break: 2024 in review

Twelve months of street photography.

I had fun doing this last year, and a few of you said you liked it, too, so I’m back with selections from my camera roll — mostly signs and billboards, because a) I like words and packaging and advertising and b) signage doesn’t fidget or blink.¹ I’ve posted a few of these images on my Instagram feed; others are newly public.

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January 12: I wandered around the Castro neighborhood before the San Francisco Silent Film Festival screening of Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr at the Castro Theater. A bar on 18th Street was advertising its dry wit.

Dry January was started in 2013 by the British charity Alcohol Change UK. Meharry Medical College, in Nashville, is the US home of Dry January USA.

January 21: The Oakland Athletics’ lease with the Oakland Coliseum expired at the end of 2024 and team owner John Fisher, an heir to the Gap fortune, could not possibly have cared less: He’s shipping the franchise off to Las Vegas after an interim stay in Sacramento. A lot of people in my town felt deeply betrayed. This Oakland billboard, from the Oakfruitland cannabis-dispensary chain, summed up the bitter sentiment.

“Loyal to the East Bay / Unlike the A’s”

February 11: Speaking of sports and weed, the Cannabis Media Council took out a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle on Super Bowl Sunday. “I’m High Right Now™” read the headline. The trademark registration is pending.

February 13: These Calvin Klein–ish undies (“Caliainiao Kalin”) were for sale at a sidewalk stall in San Francisco’s Chinatown during Lunar New Year celebrations. Red is the main color associated with Chinese New Year.

March 16: I’ve featured JewBelong billboards in the past (see April 2022). JewBelong’s mission statement is “Supporting joyous Judaism and confronting antisemitism”; past messaging has emphasized the former, but this year, as the Israel-Gaza conflict deepened, the billboards took a sterner turn. I spotted this billboard in San Francisco.

“You don’t have to be a Jew to protect Jews.”

March 30. Throughout the spring, Grammarly blanketed parts of San Francisco with large-format ads touting its AI “writing” services. The entrance to the Salesforce Transit Terminal was festooned with a huge sign reading “Words Are Money,” and underground BART stations contained a campaign’s worth of ads like this one.

“Your umbrella in the brainstorm. With Grammarly’s AI, every word your team writers can be compliant and on-brand.”

April 6. The San Francisco Ballet’s “Dos Mujeres” program, at the Opera House, was a mixed bill: The “Carmen” segment was less successful than “Broken Wings,” which choreographed the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The best part of the afternoon came after the performance, when the all-female Mariachi Bonitas de Dinorah band performed in the lobby and audience members like estas dos mujeres bonitas showed off their Frida-inspired ensembles.

May 8. I drove down to Los Angeles in time to catch the final weekend of Luna Luna, a recreation of an “art amusement park” that originally opened in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987. The backstory is wild; the installations by internationally famous artists — like this merry-go-round by American artist Keith Haring — are spectacular. (Viewing only; no riding the rides.) After L.A., where Luna Luna was installed in a Boyle Heights warehouse, the show moved to The Shed in New York. It closes there on January 5.

Also May 8: A busy day! My brother Michael and I were lucky enough to get a personal tour of Willis Wonderland, longtime home of the late composer Allee Willis (“September,” the Friends theme, and much more) and short-time home of my pal

Rusty Blazenhoff

, “artiste-in-residence.” You can see more of the house in the new documentary The World According to Allee Willis, streaming on AppleTV+ and rentable on other platforms.

June 8. Throughout the year I kept seeing posters and homemade signs from people seeking or offering friendship. Most were poignant; this one, for the Oakland-based Friend Cult social gathering, leaned into “sinister.” This wasn’t just a Bay Area phenomenon: The New York Times published at least ten articles in 2024 about how to make adult friends (without an app, without joining a book club, etc.), and in December ran a story about Twitter, Medium, and Blogger co-founder Ev Williams, whose latest venture is a social-connection app called Mozi (“Stay close to your friends”).

“It shouldn’t take a blood sacrifice to summon your friends.”

June 16. I spent a day² in Sonoma County and ducked into Whistlestop Antiques in Santa Rosa, possibly the best vintage/antique shop I’ve ever visited. I’m still a little sorry I didn’t buy the Paul Wing’s Spelling Bee game. Wing, a reporter turned film director, hosted a popular spelling-bee show on NBC Radio from 1937 to 1939.

July 19. The gorgeous Grand Lake Theater, a 10-minute walk from my house, has been displaying political messages on its marquee since 2000. Whenever I see one, I take a photo. Two days after I shot this marquee, President Biden heeded the advice and withdrew from the 2024 campaign.

“You’ve done well Pres. Biden / Now be a great patriot / Pass the torch Joe!”

July 21. I could have filled this entire Picture Break with billboards from San Francisco AI companies. This one, from Vercel, was one of the more enigmatic examples I spotted — a real “if you know, you know” situation. Me? I’m in the don’t-know camp.

Triangle symbol ~/ npm i ai

August 13. I noticed this vanity plate (GOTHKRT) and bumper sticker (I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE WE KNEW ELON WAS CRAZY) on a Tesla parked near my dentist’s office in Albany, California. The Musk backlash had begun.

August 15. I see the wackiest posters on my walks through San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. This one is from an outfit called The Advice Line.

“We need your help / you, yes, you! / you are so wise and smart and did i mention you look beautiful today / your teeth are so sharp and your eyes look almost human and you have voluptuous, pixar-mom-like hips plus you look jacked as h*ll”

September 5. There’s a rotating cast of food trucks during lunchtime in the Salesforce Transit Center plaza³. On this day I caught the Borsh [sic] Mobile, with its gorgeous photorealistic mural by Russian artist Valerii Barykin. I was in a hurry and didn’t have a chance to sample the wares, unfortunately. The menu looks delicious, although the inclusion of burritos, while very San Francisco, is a tad off-brand.

September 20. Another trip to L.A. I hadn’t been to Beverly Hills in years; Rodeo Drive is a scene. I have no idea what this window in the Prada store was trying to communicate or why one of the mannequins was wearing what looks like the cap from a police uniform.

“What seems to be easy for other people but hard for you?” “Explain your parents’ jobs.” “What scares you that doesn’t seem to scare other people?”

October 13. I saw The Apprentice at my neighborhood movie theater, the Grand Lake. (I recommend the film highly; it’s available to rent on several streaming platforms.) This hand-painted portrait, captioned “Liar Loser Felon,” was carefully tucked into the case that held the official movie poster.

October 18. I went to Santa Fe to visit a friend and attend the annual film festival (highlights: September 5, A Real Pain, Homegrown, and Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light). I missed the annual Zozobra burning, which takes place in late August, but shortly after I returned home I read Caity Weaver’s terrific story about the event (gift link) in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

“Old man gloom”

November 12. A week after the presidential election I spotted this hopeful, handmade sign on a chain link fence next to the 24 freeway in Montclair.

“Everything will be OK.” But will it?

November 17. San Francisco fashion designer Lan Jaenicke held a fashion show in Transamerica Redwood Park, and I was lucky enough to score one of the free tickets. I’ve never even tried on one of Jaenicke’s creations — out of my price range, alas — but I frequently walk by her Jackson Street atelier and admire the window displays. The show, which included music by the San Francisco Philharmonic and dancers from Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, was a thrilling experience, and the audience was at least as creatively dressed as the models. This gentleman amiably allowed me to take his photo; the pigeon in his hands was in fact a small clutch bag. For photos of the venue and the fashion show, see Bess Friday’s Instagram.

Yes, there was a bar! And free charcuterie!

December 7. I’ve been following the unlikely success of the partially madeupical word “sonder” — defined as “the realization that each random passerby is the main character of their own story” — for quite a while. I spotted Sonder Cafe (one of multiple unrelated cafes called Sonder) at the Saturday farmers market in my Oakland neighborhood. It was new to me but has been around, in various pop-up locations, for about three years.

December 19. This was the day Luigi Mangione was taken into federal custody and charged with December 4 fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson. I was walking on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco when I spotted “FREE LUIGI” scrawled on a postbox. “That was fast,” I thought.

1. If it’s reading you’re craving, may I recommend the 10th annual Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing? Ben Zimmer has once again done the honors for the Strong Language blog (which is also celebrating its tenth anniversary, and where I am a regular contributor.)

2. It was the day the Point Fire started. The smoke was bad enough in Santa Rosa that Whistlestop closed early, before I had a chance to spend way too much money on antiques.

3. I always urge people visiting San Francisco to go to the Salesforce Transit Center and they always give me skeptical looks, but I’m not joking: It’s one of the city’s gems. You can take a free 15-second gondola ride to the rooftop gardens, which are magnificent. This transit center replaced the creepy old transbay bus terminal, which I remember with a shudder. (People used to call it the Transbay Urinal.) Read my 2018 blog post about the Penrose tiling that surrounds the transit center.