Sleeping Sea Lions
Here’s a close-up of some wild sea lions sleeping on the rocks of the Farallon Islands. Oops, I forgot to clone out that board dock. Darn. Er, I mean these are sleeping sea lions on Pier 39 in San Francisco. That’s the truth. They are wild at least. But it’s pretty easy to get close to them and photograph them. In fact, they are the resident stars of Pier 39, and there is always a large crowd of on-lookers gawking at them. They are actually quite a hoot to watch and are quite entertaining. Some of them, such as the ones above, can sleep rather peacefully together. But others just don’t know how to share their dock with others, and are constantly pushing and shoving each other off the docks. I told my wife this would NOT be a good place to bring our kids. These guys just don’t know how to share nicely with each other. 😉
Pier 39 is a great place to visit in San Francisco if you are a tourist. We usually eat at Bubba Gump’s, but this day there was too much of a line-up there. So we ate at North Beach Pizza instead. I consider myself something of a pizza connoisseur, and North Beach Pizza just didn’t cut it for me. If you want great pizza, go to Chicago Fire in Folsom. That is the best tasting pizza I have had in the U.S., second only to Romeo’s in Victoria, British Columbia (man, do I ever miss that place).
Anyway, after dinner we wandered around, watching people, and sea lions, etc. We went into the gallery of Rodney Lough Jr., professional photographer. I’m not sure if his gallery on Pier 39 was permanent or just temporary, I suspect the latter, but I was rather impressed with his work. I hadn’t even heard of him before.
We also stopped to listen to a street musician named Lao Tizer, a contemporary pianist (cool name, too). I’m no expert on the matter, but he was an absolute magician on the keyboards. We were both spellbound as we watched him play for 20 minutes or so. So much so, that we bought one of his CDs. On the CD, you can’t really appreciate his talent so much, as he also incorporates other instruments. I like the CD, but if you ever have a chance to see this guy in person, he is truly an amazing artist.
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