As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, dear reader, this blog is a bit  Bayshore-centric.

I’ll admit it.

Despite my Tenderloin / Mission / Western Addition / Bernal Heights  roots, I will always have a soft spot for the South-East sector of The City.

So my grief at the loss of the Old Cannery should come as no surprise to you.

For those of you unfamiliar, that huge old building at the end of Rankin St.where it meets the shores of Islias creek, was once the largest fish processing plant this side of the Mississippi, until the resulting scare from the 1960′s Botulism outbreak forced it to close it doors.

Since then, it became (among other things)  a graffiti mecca know as “The Cathedral”, an encampment for many of the local disenfranchised, (some of which I’ve known personally), the site of 3 murders, and, above all else, the crumbling icon of what once was a thriving industrial area.

My personal tendencies to romanticize aside, it was hard to look at this enormous abandoned structure and believe yourself to be anywhere but at the ends of the Earth,  sometime long after civilization’s collapse.

But progress abhors entropy  as much as nature does a vacuum. The Old Cannery was at last torn down. The only comfort to be had can be found in the truth that it did not go quietly into that good night, and that mine was merely one of many voices who raged against the dying of it’s light.

I was fortunate enough to hear of it’s eminent demolition about a week beforehand, and so with  camera in hand I hurried myself down those familiar dead-end roads to gain my first (and tragically last) glimpse inside those land marked halls. I took many photos that afternoon and you may see them all here.

As an urban explorer, it was an overdue conquest. As a preservationist, I wish it could have been on better, and less final, terms. As a San Franciscan. I will miss it’s silhouette against the empty Bayshore skyline…

And perhaps most importantly, as a writer I can deliver a fitting eulogy, and then ask of those present at the service to speak!

And if there are words to be said, if you, gentle reader, have a story to tell of (or merely love for)  the Old Cannery, then please!

Send them to me at lastcallsanfrancisco@gmail.com

Don’t be nervous! Here, look. If it breaks the ice, I will share a poem I wrote about The Cannery.

*ahem*

“In the wasteland of my dreams

Rust and rotten gasoline

Atop this twisted scrapyard hill,

I watch your shadow stretch..

..then still.”

There. Your turn.