I keep reading about how everything these days is going wireless. But when I look around my neighborhood, I find it hard to believe that anyone or anything is going wireless. It seems, at least where I live, the world is very wired.
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This, That, and the Other 
First of all, replacing the citywide power grid with wireless electrical power is beyond our current technology. We can do it for appliances, but that’s all very short range. I did read an article some decades back that suggested putting massive solar panel arrays in orbit and then beaming the energy to receiving stations on Earth using microwaves, but the necessary intensity would fry anything that got in the way like birds, airplanes, and people.
If you live anywhere near a trolley car line, as you well know, they derive their energy from overhead electrical cables, so there’s that.
Also, San Francisco is an older city and thus so is its infrastructure. Rewiring major portions of your neighborhood would be extremely costly, and the city government has only so much money to throw around, so there’s that.
A lot of people are giving up their land lines and using their cells as their primary (only), phone, but if you still depend on DSL for internet, you need to keep your phone line. I have seen that SF has planned both citywide fiber and a citywide wireless network, which would take copper out of the equation, but neither plan has been implemented. Like it or not, you’ll probably have to put up with wires for the foreseeable future.
All that said, thanks for the photos. Having lived in the Richmond District, I still have a certain fondness for it, though I’d never feel comfortable (or be able to afford) living in the Bay Area again.
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Your town looks like mine. I’ve started to make the wires a part of the photographs. We have so MANY of them, probably because we make electricity in the Blackstone River, so we have high tension wires and all the sub-wires too.
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The only wires I see around me (other than chargers) are those on the corners of my garage going from miniature solar panels (that we installed ourselves) to security cameras. We do still have phone lines in the house, although we don’t have a land line phone in the house (would like one), but the lines to the house are underground. Cable is underground, too; electrical as well apparently. When my oldest son bought his first house a few years ago, the inspector said whenever electrical is added to there they are required to move it underground. We have light bulbs and other things that don’t have to be switched on but can be commanded.
About — or less than — half of that isn’t the same thing as “going wireless.”
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It looks like if you ignore the architecture a third world country..
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I live in a wireless subdivision meaning the wires are buried instead of overhead! We get icing in the winter and the weight of the ice on power lines can cause poles to snap. Wireless makes economic sense here!
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And I bet it looks better, too.
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The City by the Bay has long been my favorite city in the entire country. I would hate to think of it changing too much but no doubt it will.
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