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Farallon Islands live (and controllable) webcam
- kaycebasques 2y agoTowards the bottom of this page there is a "join the queue" orange button that lets you control the camera for 2 minutes. So cool!
- joshuaturner 2y agoI couldn't see any seals, too rainy :(
- kaycebasques 2y agoI definitely saw a handful but I can't remember exactly which view it is
- kaycebasques 2y agoThe Barbary Coast [1] has a wild story about this (now) nature sanctuary back in the Gold Rush era. There was a lot of money to be made feeding and housing the gold miners flooding into SF. That's literally where the whole "don't look for gold, sell pickaxes to the miners" business idea comes from. Some people found out that you could eat the huge eggs of some bird that lived on the islands. Maybe the murres. It was a pretty lucrative business selling the eggs in SF. There was a fight over rights to collect eggs on the island resulting in 2 deaths. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_War [1] Can't find the reference now, maybe it was a different book
- roughly 2y agoSF history is fucking wild - my personal favorite story is that a number of the bars in the financial district got their land by basically buying and scuttling ships when the city announced the landfill project that created the current coastline to secure the rights to the filled in land: https://www.kqed.org/news/10981586/why-are-there-ships-buried-under-san-francisco https://www.kqed.org/news/10981586/why-are-there-ships-burie...
- kaycebasques 2y agoMy favorite is the guy who had a business shuttling people across the Golden Gate via row boat. Had a big Bowie knife hanging off his neck. Halfway across the water he would stop and basically say "so here's the deal. You give me everything you got or I throw you overboard here." Apparently he got away with it for quite a while but eventually tried it on the wrong dude. Said Wrong Dude killed the row boat guy, tossed him overboard, and rowed himself the rest of the way to SF.
- world2vec 2y agoI'm in the queue, this is so cool! Which view is the best?
- kaycebasques 2y agoFertilizer Flat is fun. Seems like each of those specks is a bird! Hence the "fertilizer" reference. It's too foggy to get a nice view of Sutro or the Golden Gate The close-up view of the cove is pretty satisfying
- nickvec 2y agoI got kicked out of the queue for some reason :(
- kaycebasques 2y agoI'm pretty curious to find out if the controllable webcam experience withstands the HN hug-of-death
- gwking 2y agoMy dad got to go out there in the 90s on an unusual artist permit and painted landscapes for a few days. It sounded incredible. There was white shark research going on and he saw a seal get eaten through a spotting scope.
- kaycebasques 2y agoWow! Do you have pictures of your dad's landscape paintings?
- gwking 2y agoHis website is tonykingart.com. It is sorely in need of an update. I don't have any photos of the Farallon paintings, but a small one hangs in my childhood bedroom. You could contact him through his site and I'm sure he'd oblige!
- GloamingNiblets 2y agoI have been shark diving at the Farallon's. We didn't end up seeing any sharks, but it was a remarkable experience. We sailed on a 65ft research sailing vessel and the crew was incredibly professional and a lot of fun. You can book at https://sharkdiveadventures.com/dive-locations/farallon-islands-california/ https://sharkdiveadventures.com/dive-locations/farallon-isla...
- shkkmo 2y agoAnyone else have some other favorite nature web cams like this they can share?
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI thought that the camera was down (a gray background) and was looking closely in the picture when suddenly a bird flew by and scared me to jump :)