On Saturday, fresh off of CHI 2007 and the last of my spring semester duties, I took the Caltrain from Mountain View to San Francisco to see Matt and his San Francisco home. I was exhausted and really wanted to have a full day of nothing on Sunday, so I headed back that night. But not before hanging out with Matt and Tiffanie in the afternoon and then taking a long walk down Embarcadero. I would have pushed for a Giants game, but it was pretty much over by the time I arrived.
Along the way, I made note of all of the URLs I saw in ads, banners and sides of buses. I figured a place like Silicon Valley would have website addresses tattooed on the back of everyone’s neck, but for all the travel I did on foot and train, this was all I found:
- Mountain View Farmlands—this was on the side of a parked car. The whole area used to be nothing but orchards before the tech came.
- Idea Farm Associates—a software developer who wants 25 cents a day from everyone to bring the Microsoft empire to its knees.
- Mountain View Center for Performing Arts and Peninsula Youth Theatre—despite banner after banner screaming these addresses, I got both of them wrong when I wrote them down. Anything ending in “net” makes me discard the “.org” or “.com” that follows. Plus, I tend to transpose.
- Bamboo Reef Scuba Diving Centers—this was the first URL I saw in San Francisco
- Lorrie’s Airport Service—apparently, San Fran’s first shuttle to provide door-to-door service
- University of California-San Francisco—this is another one I got wrong, writing down “.com” instead of the ed domain
- Ghirardelli—another typo … it’s not “http://www.ghiardellisf.com”
- ZipCar—rent a car by the hour or day, including gas, insurance and parking.
- Remo—alas, not a movie; they make drum heads
- San Francisco Marathon—the race is on July 29, so there’s still time to register … and to wait for the flash intro to finish downloading
- Teatro Zinzanni—a human circus, set up on the bay not far from the Wharf in San Francisco. Comes with a 5-course dinner and a $123 pricetag.
- Sauza Tequila—I’d tell you more, but it may require age verification
- Hornblower Cruises & Events—sort of like the Pacific Princess, but I’m not sure they have a Gopher
- The Piers—real estate foundation, created in 1999 for the purpose of developing the San Fran piers
- The Gap—I fell into it
- SF Giants site?—I don’t recall where I saw this, but it couldn’t have been on anything official. This looks like a cheap portal.
- Modern Denistry—upscale looking dentist’s office
- Theatre Works—a repertory theatre from Palo Alto
There was also a particularly large banner atop of a skyscraper under construction, but one had to be living across the Bay in order to read it.
I guess I’m surprised there weren’t more URLs out there in print. I have to wonder how effective it is, though, since a guy walking around being hyper-conscious of it still wound up with a few typos that needed to be corrected by Google.
