San Francisco Academy of Sciences Visit Today

Am I ever so fortunate to live in San Francisco that has totally upgraded itself from 18 years ago when I first moved from Los Angeles! The city has brought me such wonders as the Pharaoh Hatshepsut who I had previously studied and placed on my web site in 1999, and most recently tremendous artifacts of King Tut. Today I'm going to the newly restored and remodeled new Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. I waited a while after it opened so they could work out all the bugs of their beta version.

The former Academy was a really outdated relic from the early 1900's (it actually was started in 1853 but had to be rebuilt a few times due to earthquakes). It included a small tank that held a dolphin and seals for decades. They would swim to each side continually as if in type of Mobius Strip (Loop) unable to escape. I visited 25 years later from way back in 1970 when I was just ten years old and remember seeing the dolphin way back then! Some of the eels had been in their tanks for 30, even 40 years.

What's really exciting news is the museum also boasts:

The Morrison Planetarium is the largest all-digital planetarium in the world. State-of-the-art projector and software technologies allow the planetarium to produce the most accurate and interactive digital Universe ever created.

San Francisco has significantly upgraded its city since I first moved here in 1995. They completely rebuilt the De Young Museum and built a large Asian Museum as well. When I arrived the main library was about to open that is really a stupendous building. Today many homeless people use the library and make it rather unpleasant for the public. Security does nothing whatsoever to protect the public because it's a political issue in the city.

Around the time I arrived in San Francisco they had also restored the Legion of Honor I visited last week. At the time I had thought it was brand new until I saw an Edgar Hitchcock movie that featured the museum in its background. I still haven't gotten around to visiting the Hall of Flowers that houses all kinds of hard to find exotic plant species.

San Francisco has so much to offer and I don't for one minute regret living here. The San Francisco International Airport has also been redesigned and is completely state-of-the art in every way. For local travel I can catch a ferry ride across the bay to visit Sausalito for $8 and there's all kinds of other nature areas to get away to. Everything I need is within walking distance. I love to walk and it only takes 30 minutes to walk to Fisherman's Wharf. Other spectacular places are the domed Westfield Mall, the rather new Apple Store and the newly restored Ferry Building Clock Tower shopping mall.

I got out of my car fetish a long time ago. In Los Angeles when I departed with my sports car it was a horrifying traumatic experience as if the world was coming to an end. In San Francisco I don't need a car and can save a lot of money using the Zip cars occasionally. The underground Bart train enables inexpensive visits to surrounding cities.

From where I live within one block is the Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium that features some top names in the music industry. Two blocks away is the historic Fairmont Hotel that has hosted many historical figures throughout history and is also where the United Nations was formed in 1945 (not quite a good thing from my point of view, but it is historical nonetheless). I'm very fortunate to have lived long-term in one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. San Francisco is a historically transient town.

The building I've lived in since 2003 is in the heart of San Francisco and was built prior to Amelia Earhart's infamous flight. It even has the same glass cut door knobs from the 1920s.

Mobius Loop on Wikipedia