Taking the train during the rain

While my primary mode of transportation in San Francisco is my bike, I do find myself enjoying the varied modes of transit here as well. They are especially useful during the rain: it has been pouring, for days at a time, during the 'atmospheric rivers' that we are currently facing in California.

When that happens, I don't love being on my bike. Not only are roads slick, but drivers are also worse than they usually are (and they are usually awful).

The train I take the most is the N.

There are so many transit systems and agencies here that it took me a while to learn all of them. I wish someone had told me at the start, when I was a tourist, that the 'tram' is a 'train' (trains were only subways to me) or a 'streetcar', and that they all have letters; whereas Muni local buses have numbers, like 38, 49, 5.

View of an underground station from inside the N.

These days, I most frequently take the N to get to the Harvey Milk Photo Center.

The Harvey Milk Photo Center is a darkroom and photo center run by the city of San Francisco. It is also one of the largest darkrooms in the west coast of the United States. The darkroom has something like 30 different enlargers; they also have a cool set up where you can go in, as a member, to enlarge and develop prints, and they take care of the chemicals and wash for you. I took a few lessons there this past month, and love going there to learn and to spend time with like-minded photography enthusiasts.

Since this roll of film was also developed and scanned on my own, I feel like I have made some large leaps where film skills are concerned: going to HPMC has been a large part of that journey.

All photos taken on Olympus XA2, Tri-X 400, developed in D76 1:1, scanned with a Noritsu LS-600 and edited for dust and contrast.