SFMOMA

Today was my day with Ian, my 12-year-old nephew. Everytime I come home to the Bay Area, I make sure I spend a day with him. I picked him up last night and we camped out at my mom's living room. We got up very late though, and then we wrapped some gifts, so it was 1:30pm by the time we left.

We still couldn't decide where to go, but Ian mentioned going to a museum, so we got directions to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from my sister and off we went.

We drove to the BART station in West Oakland. While getting our tickets, a man in the next ticket machine spoke to me in Spanish. But he was talking so fast, I couldn't understand what he wanted. It seemed he was having problems with the machine and he thought I was Latina. Well, the only Spanish I could think off at that moment was "Un momento," so that's what I said as I finished getting our tickets. Then he handed me a one-dollar bill and he continued describing the problem he was having with the machine. He said "cinquenta" somewhere in that flood of words, so I figured he just needed another fifty cents. So I traded four quarters for his dollar.


A flower stand at the Montgomery BART station. more pics

We took the train to the Montgomery station and found a map that told us which direction to take. Two blocks down Market, left on Third, then eight blocks to SFMOMA at the corner of Third and Howard. Actually, we took a long time walking, since we were taking pictures and I was giving Ian some photography tips. He wondered how I find the good pictures. I replied that he has to keep his eyes open. He insisted that his eyes *are* open.

We found SFMOMA but decided to get lunch first. It was already 2:30 pm. Ian didn't like anything in the menu of the SFMOMA cafe (although I would have loved to try the salmon croissant), so we went to Chevy's in the next block and had sizzling fajitas.

SFMOMA was $14 for adults and free for kids 12 and under if accompanied by an adult. However, with my studen ID, I only had to pay $7 and Ian was free.

Ian had fun at the museum. We saw antique shoes behind cellulose strips inside the walls. Some guy named Close had an entire exhibit full of his self-portraits.

The best exhibit was a small circular room with nine screens in a row. When the show starts, it looks like you're on a rotating restaurant at the top of a tower and you have nine windows around you. Then as you wait for skyscrapers on one screen to start showing up in the next screen, you realize there's something wrong because the skycrapers get lost in the gap between the screens. Well, it turns out that each of the screens shows a different city across the country. And the clips are shown so that the sun rises from the leftmost screen to the rightmost screen. I recognized the rightmost screen as the view from the top of the Space Needle in Seattle. I was even surprised to see Mount Rainier, because you don't always see it, what with all the clouds and rain. I also recognized Las Vegas in one of the middle screens during the "nighttime". I had seen that view before atop the Stratosphere.

We were there until they closed at 5:45 and we were able to see displays in all floors.


Detail of the Hearst Building in San Francisco. more pics

Afterwards, we went to a Starbucks at the South Shore Shopping Center in Alameda. Ian was hoping for a taste of Snickerdoodles with his hot cocoa but they were out.

But he's growing up to be a gentleman. Since I paid for our expenses all day, he offered to pay for our Starbucks drinks from his allowance. :-)