When I was growing up in San Francisco, the part of Third Street near where I now live was the city’s industrial zone with steel foundries, ship dry docks and shipyards and the massive complex that contained American Can. That is all in the past now, with just the hulks of the buildings remaining.
I walked around this forlorn area a few days back and was struck by the blunt integrity of these old buildings.
The only active place was a metal recycling facility on the old shipping pier. Every few minutes, another small pick up truck filled over the top with busted appliances and discarded bed springs would come roaring past me headed for the dump some place in this wreck of a building. 