The Architect's Tale

[airportkid]

The San Francisco Ferry Building and its Clock Tower is one of the more famous landmarks here, and this morning the architect who's planning my home renovation projects came by to discuss porch work with a carpenter and after that was all done we sat down in the dining room and traded war stories while the coffee brewed, and he told us an interesting and revealing piece of unknown lore about the Clock Tower when he inspected it for damage right after the 1989 earthquake. Being an architect, engineering of all types fascinates him, so while inspecting the tower he got up into the old works that used to drive the clocks (four clocks driven by a common, enormous, weight driven mechanism - the clocks are today driven by electric motors but the old works were left in place). But before he could get up behind one of the giant clock faces to check it out, a Ferry Building superintendent warned him to stay clear of the faces. Why? The superintendent told the architect to take a good look at the back of the glass faces. They were riddled with bullet holes; the face facing Market Street the most bullet-riddled of the four. The clock faces are used as targets by gun yahoos who shoot at them from the surrounding high rises, at any hour, so getting up close to the back of a clock face could very well be lethal.

We try to keep guns out of the hands of children on the argument that they aren't mature enough to handle them safely, or fully understand the depth of consequences, but I have to say, the fact that a clock tower draws fire just by virtue of its being there indicates that the line separating child from adult needs some adjustment upward by at least several decades.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

[daniel]

Very interesting! Many gun owners are responsible. Unfortunately, many people with no official record of mental illness or arrest are irresponsible idiots who think such playing with lethal weapons is "innocent fun" and there is no way to screen out such people from gun ownership.

I will not speculate on the ratio of responsible to irresponsible gun owners, but I strongly suspect that the latter far outnumber the former. The popularity of drinking beer on hunting trips seems to support my thinking.

[samiam]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Nov 4 2007, 08:00 AM) [snapback]534358[/snapback]</div>

The clock faces are used as targets by gun yahoos who shoot at them from the surrounding high rises[/b]

Just killing time while waiting for their elevator to arrive.

[nerfer]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(samiam @ Nov 4 2007, 05:59 PM) [snapback]534718[/snapback]</div>

Just killing time while waiting for their elevator to arrive.
[/b]

Oooh, that's bad. Really bad. :P

My experience Daniel is that most gun owners are responsible, but that might be a slim majority. (The deer hunters I hung out with never drank, but that's certainly not universal). Still, a lot of people own guns of various kinds and the vast majority have never been used on a person.

I've seen a lot of shot-up signs on rural roads, never figured something like that would happen in the middle of a city.

And I get perturbed by all the golf balls I find in the local forest preserves ringed by fancy houses....

[zenMachine]

Speaking of Clock Tower and guns, I got a chance to visit UT Austin yesterday. Naturally, we went to the area near that infamous Clock Tower. Not as creepy as I'd expected, but clearly the place still draws curious visitors. The most surprising things for me, however, were the gorgeous architecture of the buildings (built back in the 30s) and huge bronze statues of famous Confederate generals lining the esplanade.

[fshagan]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Nov 3 2007, 11:00 AM) [snapback]534358[/snapback]</div>

The San Francisco Ferry Building and its Clock Tower is one of the more famous landmarks here, and this morning the architect who's planning my home renovation projects came by to discuss porch work with a carpenter and after that was all done we sat down in the dining room and traded war stories while the coffee brewed, and he told us an interesting and revealing piece of unknown lore about the Clock Tower when he inspected it for damage right after the 1989 earthquake. Being an architect, engineering of all types fascinates him, so while inspecting the tower he got up into the old works that used to drive the clocks (four clocks driven by a common, enormous, weight driven mechanism - the clocks are today driven by electric motors but the old works were left in place). But before he could get up behind one of the giant clock faces to check it out, a Ferry Building superintendent warned him to stay clear of the faces. Why? The superintendent told the architect to take a good look at the back of the glass faces. They were riddled with bullet holes; the face facing Market Street the most bullet-riddled of the four. The clock faces are used as targets by gun yahoos who shoot at them from the surrounding high rises, at any hour, so getting up close to the back of a clock face could very well be lethal.

We try to keep guns out of the hands of children on the argument that they aren't mature enough to handle them safely, or fully understand the depth of consequences, but I have to say, the fact that a clock tower draws fire just by virtue of its being there indicates that the line separating child from adult needs some adjustment upward by at least several decades.

[/b]

You should make it illegal to discharge a firearm in the city.

Seriously, I wonder what would happen if they were caught? I have lived in areas with a majority of a certain ethnic minority that has, as part of its culture, celebratory shooting into the air on important occasions (New Year's for instance.) Its a dangerous practice, as the bullets attain a deadly velocity coming back down, and in LA, there are few deaths every decade to the practice. Its a problem the community I lived in was not able to solve, but LA has made some headway.

I would think it would be easy to make "horizontal random target shooting" a felony within the city limits with a minimum jail sentence of 10 years. A few arrests and convictions and you might be able to stem the tide of crazed San Franciscans shooting AT the clock towers (instead of shooting FROM the clock towers).