San Francisco History At The Mint

Saturday: (03/03) Lou made French toast and sausage for breakfast. We caught the train up to San Francisco. Lou and Dawn shared a gyro from the Oassis Grill at 200 4th St at Howard St. I could bring myself to have a gyro so I walked a block and found the Cravory Pie shop at 829 Mission Street and got one of their chicken pot pies. We then all went to the Old Mint for a history expo, a collection of all the historical societies in the city. The Old Mint building itself is quite interesting but is also the home of the San Francisco Museum And Historical Society. The building was built in 1870 but it is one of the few buildings in San Francisco that survived the 1906 earthquake. The architect recognized early the potential danger of earthquakes and built the buildings foundation to float the building and it worked. Of course that was 36 years after it was built. It performed as the  US Mint in San Francisco for another 30 year after that before a new mint building was built.


I didn't take many pictures at  the mint except for this bad one in the basement vault area. Now it is a generally vacant building on its way to becoming a museum. The various rooms were occupied by representatives of all the historical societies in town as well as speakers. One presentation we attended was about all the old garage buildings in town and what an architectural treasure they are. If only the buildings being built now days had a little of their style. When they closed down and we were thrown out we went over to the Amoeba Music shop on Haight Street by Golden Gate Park. They are a realy good used CD and DVD shop. Dawn thoroughly examined their stock and picked up a couple of things as well. We stopped at the nearby Siam Lotus Thai Cuisine restaurant for dinner (1705 Haight St). I had the Pad Thai while Lou and Dawn had coconut soup. For desert we shared a coconut ice cream and fried banana desert. This neighborhood is the famous Haight Ashbury neighborhood and there are still "interesting" people on the street. It was getting late as we hopped onto the Muni bus to the Muni Light Rail Station which took us to the Caltrain station and home. Interesting day! The weather was much nicer today than on my Tuesday visit just 4 days earlier. Today was clear and warm.