It is back! - A True San Francisco Apartment

It's been almost two years since my last feature (thanks to Apple for killing MobileMe and me not knowing how to continue and where to go).

But after slowly working my way through a number of different options, I settled on Blogger by Google.  

As time allows, I will start re-posting some of the favorites from the original ZRH2SFO.  (Feel free to request any specific features you might remember). - Of course, new ones will be added as well!


For starters here now my all time favorite entry, my good friend Maury's fabulous San Francisco apartment:

My good friend Maury lives in a typical San Francisco “railroad flat”.  Well, it’s actually not a true flat, since there is another apartment on the same floor.  But it sure is looong and narrow.  

What is not so typical, is what he has done with it.  -  Let’s just say, Maury is not a minimalist.  And, yes, there isn’t much empty wall space to be found.  But this top floor treasure chest still feels open and bright, despite the vast amount of visual stimulation everywhere.

Maury is a collector of many things. His biggest passion is probably the opera.  The walls of his entire entry and dining room are covered with signed photographs of every great opera singer from the last half century.

His long hallway is a gallery of vintage photographs of ancestors, but also perfect strangers that are finds from flea markets, thrift stores, and gifts from friends.

The kitchen walls feature his enormous collection of souvenir plates from all over the world, a cork board with a lifetime of political and other buttons, and the now iconic Marky (Wahlberg) Mark Calvin Klein billboard.  

You find yourself surrounded by some great art in his Asian themed living room.  Many pieces there are creations from friends and some by Maury himself, like the fabulous mosaic of buddhist monks. 

Let’s not forget, no true San Francisco apartment is complete without some old photograph on the wall of the City in ruins after the 1906 Earthquake. 

But it’s the bathroom that usually gets the most comments when guests are present.  One could call it the phallus gallery. And, boy, they are everywhere, in many different ways of artistic interpretation.  The “pièce de résistance” is, of course, his own creation, the “cock pot”.

It doesn’t matter how many times I walk into this amazing apartment, I always discover something new.  Not that it has changed much in the last decade or so.  How could it?  There is no room for anything new.  And I like it that way.