View of a neighborhood street.  Very charming.

Local monument, Coit Tower, around the corner from the apartment

View of the San Francisco Bay from my neighborhood

View of the Golden Gate Bridge out the front bedrooms

My roommates Guido and Kristin standing in front of their new view of the Golden Gate

Entrance stairwell into the apartment

Central apartment with the staircase to the right, bedrooms behind me, and kitchen and living room at the end.

Crazy little cubby at the top of the stairs.

It looks much larger in the picture than it really is.  San Francisco apartments have lots of odd little cubbies!

One of the street side bedrooms, which in the past was a living room with a once-functional fireplace.

Another view of the front ex-living room turned upcoming bedroom.

Interior bedroom with windows onto the buildings central light shaft bordering a neighboring building.

This room and the front bedroom/ex-living room are connected by large sliding doors.

View of the sliding doors from the central bedroom.

View of another, smaller front bedroom.

Typically San Franciscan: a split toilet and shower room.  Very functional!

View of the kitchen with access door to the rear of the building.

Note the dishwasher.  WOO HOO!!!  (Rather rare in San Francisco rental units!)

Kristin and Guido standing in the hallway next to the kitchen.

The refrigerator is in a semi-artificial pantry, not a secret hall way.  ;-}

The living room/dining room, which is connected to the central hallway and kitchen (closed door on the left).

The living room was the catch-all dumping zone for the entire apartment during the move-in and was the last room to get unpacked.  We ended up with 80 boxes that we needed to get rid of, so we put a FREE BOXES FOR THE TAKING! ad on CraigsList, and within five minutes of putting it online someone called up and drove down from 30 minutes away to take all the boxes.  One man's trash is another man's treasure. . . Gotta love the Internet!

The kitchen while we were unpacking, which looked like a bomb had exploded in it!

Ta da!  Our kitchen fully unpacked.  I quite like it, actually!

Note the lighting that I placed atop the cupboards for dramatic flair.

On all four walls of our living room there is a 4-inch plate ledge that I constructed special molding for that I place light ropes behind for yet more dramatic flair.  All the light ropes that I put up around the house are hidden from direct view and are on light dimmers to ensure the proper, romantic lighting when needed.  Ah yeah, baby!   ;-}

Our living room with an armoire on the left that serves as extra storage space and our alcohol/bar treasure trove; the Chinese scroll hanging on it says "Dragon" and I bought it in Beijing in 2000; the table belonged to Guido and we put it in the living room since, well, we already had a table in the kitchen - and Guido loves table cloths (an Italian thing apparently!) so that's his on the table; the couch is Kristin's and the colored pillows, wall cloths and picture frames are mine.  Note the digital movie projector above the couch which projects onto a movie screen that we've hung on the opposing wall - it's connected to a nice fat sound system so we're definitely being entertained well in the new place!

The pictures on the wall are one of Guido, one of me, and one (in the future) of Kristin, and then the view of the Golden Gate Bridge out my bedroom window.  I thought it'd be fun to have us all looking at guests in the living room from high above.  Also, the color scheme of the pictures matches the frame color that the picture is in.  NOTHING happens by accident in my universe.  Haha.

Another picture of the living room, this time with more of a view of the burgundy curtains I hung up that totally block out light so we can watch the digital movie projector during the day.  Notice that our living room doesn't have the world's sexiest view. . . in fact, the only view we have is that of our landlord's building about ten feet away, but that's OK because the front of our apartment offers a truly spectacular view in exchange.  Can't complain about the view below!

Yes, life is beautiful!

The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from my bedroom in North Beach, San Francisco

Our hallway with the big mirror I bought and hung up along with a nice Thai silk panel that I purchased at a local East/South Asian imports store in my neighborhood.  Too bad you can't see the brilliant blues and maroons in the silk panel.

We have a split toilet room and shower room and this is what they look like now that we've moved in.  The split nature is great since there are three of us living in the apartment and so one person can use the restroom and another person can use the shower room at the same time without being in each other's space.  Note the device I purchased for the toilet tank top: a hand wash contraption that you place on the tank in place of the original toilet tank lid that allows you to wash your hands in the toilet room since there is no sink in the room otherwise.  It uses fresh water from the wall and then the soapy water is then piped to fill up the toilet bowl which means the soapy water keeps the bowl clean, so we hardly ever have to clean the toilet anymore AND we save water since we're double-using the toilet water and don't have to use sink water separately in the other room.  I'm ALL about being Mr. Environmentalist these days!  The company I bought it from is called sinkpositive.com

Next on my list: ultra high power, high efficiency LED 65-watt-replacement flood lights for the track lighting in my bedroom that only consume 7-watts each.  That means that the current ceiling-mounted track lighting in my bedroom which uses a monstrous 200 watts of electricity will be replaced by three ultra bright soft-white LED flood lights that together consume only 21 watts.  The bulbs should arrive in the mail next week and I CAN'T WAIT to slash my electrical lighting consumption by 90%!!!

The lights weren't cheap, but dealing with the consequences of a trashed planet will be far worse if we don't all start making change$ NOW.  Besides, what else would I spend my money on?  Another DVD player?  New shoes?  A couple dinners out?

My bedroom with another nice Thai silk panel, a picture of a Saudi Arabian sand dune and a fun little hand painted giraffe picture that I bought in Zambia while running around the southern Africa region in 2006.  One of these days I'd like to buy a new comforter for the bed: any thoughts on styles???

My bedroom after unpacking.  Not a shabby room, eh!

I've also added rope lighting in my bedroom for nice, romantic mood lighting should the need ever arise. . . and unfortunately these days the need has NOT been arising.  ARGH!  Haha.  Anyways, all the lights are on separate dimmers so I can have any combination of all four on at once, or not, or dimmed to suit the mood.

This is a particularly dramatic view of my backlit book shelf that looks like it died and has come back to haunt me.  AAACK!

And finally, the pleasant view I see out my bedroom window when I sit at my desk and think about how happy I am in my new apartment.

We have plenty of space in our new place, so I hope you come and visit.  You're always welcome!

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