Multimedia Pin Map of the Month: Phantoms of Mission Bay


View Phantoms of Mission Bay in a larger map

A few years back, in Dave Flemming's early days in the Giants broadcast booth, he was paying homage to >The Big Mortgage and its environs when, inexplicably, he said something along the lines of: and the incredible thing is, before the ballpark, practically nothing existed in this part of town. With all due respect to Flem, something did exist in the Mission Bay area before the ballpark and >il Baer-McGowan Galleria came along. This multimedia pin map of bygone dives, diners and whatnot only represents the tip of the iceberg . . . happy clicking. (note: distance between closely spaced pins has been increased slightly to facilitate clicking . . . pin location may not be accurate at higher zoom levels)

10 comments:

  1. Lowdown recording studios also existed there, imediately underneath what is now the left field bleachers. SF underground wiffleball rock grup PADDLEFOOT recorded one and a half CDs there, under the tutelage of recording engineer/ producer/ Ginats fan/ sweetheart-of-a-guy Greg Freeman.

    PADDLEFOOT recordings are available for absolutely free (except for the time it takes to click and download, obviously) from:

    http://joelmurach.com/paddlefoot/index.htm

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  2. does the bayview boat club live on?

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  3. Lowdown studios . . . great name. And definitely worth a pin on the map. And while I'm at it, Strain, is this Pandlefoot band the same outfit that immortalized Larry Walters long before tie balloons to a chair was cool?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_Chair_Larry

    whatever the case, I'm digging that tape (the one with J Kidd on the cover) out of my tape box in their honor.

    Bayview Boat Club was there last year . . . still fighting the good fight against rampant UCSF expansion and rising sea levels . . . might be the perfect spot to hold Tubestock (stay tuned for details)

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  4. pardon the walk down memory lane ala anyone who remembers scalping tix for 5 bucks to freeze thru ane afternoon game at the stick----

    while working as a motorcycle messenger for lightning express in the 80's had the pleasure of seeing fritz and the mutants play lightning express's christmas parties at the BBC a few years in a row...

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  5. not even a five dollar a ticket scalping story measures up to a yarn involving a band called Fritz and the Mutants . . . pray tell, did Fritzie and the gang hail from Paraguay or thereabouts?

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  6. Strain--
    I just took a highly enjoyable trip through the past via Pandlefoot's untitled (Kidd) album . . . not many bands have the range to write songs about both the moon and Daly City!

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  7. That put a huge smile on my face. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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  8. will upload a snippet of "Westlake" or some such gem to the Lowdown corner of this multimedia map, soon . .. but from a gen-wine cassette tape, not some stinking online download (this is Tubesox Nation, after all)

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  9. This just in from the great Greg Freeman:

    the address for Lowdown was 860 2nd Street.

    He goes on to talk about there being a mortuary in the building and a crazy merchant marine ( the ghost of McCovey Cove???) and some vending machine hijinks. Suffice it to say there was probably very little Gordon Biersch drunk there.

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  10. "vending machine hijinks" . . . the mind reels . . . does this greg Freeman have any dirt regarding the arrival of the Good Ship Giants in "South Beach" or was everything hunky-dory as far as the local merchants were concerned?

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