busy talking
cars, will only remark, if he listens at all: "Pretty good dope at
that." But argumentatively I proceed.

Not that I can name them. I am only sure, really sure, of a Ford. But I
admire them with a great pride in my human kind. They sit so
majestically in their palaces on Van Ness, great limousines, powerful
roadsters, luxurious touring cars, waiting there on display and
containing in themselves all the skill, energy, artifice, and beauty of
line, color and trim that the machine age can produce.

And the buildings on Van Ness strike a new and independent note in
architecture. All that the ages have contributed of arches, columns,
coloring and lighting are utilized and made into palaces of great
dignity and beauty. There is something about the arched and windowed
walls and the spacious, open look of the buildings that is entirely
distinctive and Van Ness. It is not Mission, Grecian or Colonial, but it
is all of them. It is as new and distinctive as the service stations
that have sprung out of the automobile needs. If we dared we would call
it entirely American.

And the printing that high lights each building is an achievement in
modern art. Who but Americans would dream of using printing instead of
gargoyles or classic medallions as ornamentation. Some of it is very
beautiful and almost none is ugly. The use of the word "Paige," the
printing of "Buick," the "H" of Hupmobile, the Mercury "A" of Arnold are
to me very beautiful.

Van Ness avenue. It is exactly like its name. A long wide sweep for the
regal motor car, the most wonderful and proudest automobile row in the
world. The ghosts of the old, aristocratic and residential
before-the-fire Van Ness have seen to it that even commercialized it
shall still be--Van Ness.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

You live in San Francisco and I live in San Francisco, and so does the
man who owns the peanut wagon on the corner, and none of us live in the
same San Francisco--funny. We're like the blind men who each gave a
different version of the elephant.

To some, San Francisco is always eight o'clock in the morning or six
o'clock at night, swinging on the straps homeward, swallow their dinners
and to a show in the evening. Such people never have wandered through
Golden Gate Park of an afternoon or sunned themselves on the benches of
Union Square. They have never seen San Francisco by week-day sunlight.

Then there are home women and leisure women to w