The great San Francisco architectural critic Alan Temko on the slow death by construction, as opposed to death by destruction of the great city of San Francisco:
…a variety of villains: real estate sharks, the construction industry and its unions, venal politicians, bureaucrats, brutal highway engineers, the automobile lobby, and – in some ways worst of all – incompetent architects and invertebrate planners who were wrecking the Bay Area before our eyes.
He long opposed the Embarcadero Freeway. I’ve driven on it many times, but I always thought it was an abomination. In 1989, the hand of God struck the Embarcadero down via the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The monster was then demolished.
He described the Armand Vaillancourt Fountain on the Embarcadero as a thing:
…deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines.
Nice writing! Here’s the fountain. See what he means?
The fountain in question. For some idiotic reason, it is called "Quebec Libre."
