Out & About—East Village in downtown San Diego

When I came to San Diego in April 1993, the East Village in downtown San Diego was a nightmare—crime, drugs, prostitution. It was an area that was dangerous for anyone to go into, even if they were part of the crime, drugs, homeless, gangs, prostitution…. Murders seemed to be a daily occurrence, day or night.

Then someone had the bright idea of building a professional baseball park in the East Village. The premise was that sports stadiums in downtown areas of other cities had helped revive downtown areas and resolve the urban blight and mass exodus that was occurring.

I was living in the San Diego city limits at the time, so I got to vote on the proposals. Although I always hesitate to use public funds to help rich, private sports team owners, I voted yes. My vote was based solely on what Camden Yards had done for downtown Baltimore. I thought San Diego could do the same.

Petco Park, opened in 2004, is the result of my vote:

More than that, though, is that with the building of Petco Park, the East Village was completely renovated and revitalized. Crime, drugs, homeless, gangs, and prostitution in the East Village are virtually non-existent.

The East Village revitalization was so successful that in September 2013 the City of San Diego opened its new Central Library in the East Village, just across the street from Petco Park.

The dome on the new Central Library is one of the largest domes in the world.

Downtown San Diego is alive with people, sights, sounds, entertainment—day and night—and it’s all good. Rarely is there a news story about crime and drugs and such in the East Village. Condominium towers have been built, and people are actually living in downtown San Diego again! Grocery stores and pharmacies have been built to serve the thriving downtown community.

Recently I was walking around the East Village looking for photographic opportunities of the new Central Library when I found a brick building built in 1894.

Brick buildings, especially old ones, are extraordinarily rare in San Diego. Even though San Diego was discovered in 1542, and the City founded in 1769, finding a building that was built before 1880 or so is almost impossible. Those that still exist usually were saved and moved from their original locations into Heritage Park and Old Town San Diego.

I was thrilled to find an 1894 brick building in the East Village, and that, to me, is one of the great benefits of building Petco Park and revitalizing the area. Many buildings that were being used by the homeless and criminals were saved from the wrecking ball and are now being used for businesses and even private loft residences.

The brick building I found appeared to be a tasting room for the Mission Brewery, one of San Diego’s craft breweries. However, Google search results lead me to believe that the building is an event venue for The Event Hangar. The Event Hangar’s web site has pictures of the interior’s four rooms:

1. The Silo Room is 10,000 square feet and provides space for up to 450 people. It rents for $5,000, although I don’t know how many hours or days that $5,000 covers.
2. The Tile Room is 3,500 square feet and accompanies up to 250 people. It also rents for $5,000.
3. The Upper Gallery is 2,725 square feet and holds up to 170 people. It rents for $2,500.
4. The Lower Gallery & Bar is also 2,725 square feet and rents for $2,500, but its capacity is 140 people.

Above the front entrance is the date 1894 and Wonder Bread:

Additional Google search results indicate that this was the main Wonder Bread factory in San Diego from 1924 to 2007, and that this brick section is only a small part of the original factory. Other parts of the factory have been renovated into office spaces for Mission Brewery; Interior Solutions; The Honest Kitchen; Financial Additions; and LPA, a sustainable design architectural firm.

I could find nothing about the building going back to it being ESTABLISHED 1894. Maybe a trip to the new San Diego Central Library, and a few hours of research, will shed some light on this beautiful brick building.

As an aside, I grew up on Wonder Bread. My wise old grandmother would buy nothing else. I used to come home from school at 3:30, get out the Wonder Bread, make myself a PB&J (Peter Pan peanut butter and strawberry jam, thank you), and go watch television.

Sadly, Wonder Bread is not available in the San Diego area anymore, having left the market in 2007.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

WordPress and Adobe could drive me to drinking…. :(

I try to take at least two photographs each day and create Photographic Art images from them. Yesterday, due to WordPress and Adobe snafus which took up over eight hours, and for which none of the snafus have been resolved yet, I only got Photographic Art images from one file. However, it’s a photograph that I’ve been wanting to work on for 1½ years now. Here’s the photograph:

That’s the historic ATSF 3751 steam locomotive at Union Station in Los Angeles for National Train Day in May 2012. It’s the best picture I got because so many people were always gathered around it. It doesn’t help that in order to get the locomotive, the passenger car is in the picture at the left.

I knew that eventually my Photoshop skills would be such that I could remove the passenger car and the people. Yesterday, I succeeded, but I actually used a combination of that photograph and my second-best photograph of ATSF 3751:

When I finished my Photoshop work, I had this:

Then I went to town creating Photographic Art from my final Photoshop image. I actually created 19 Photographic Art images, and while I haven’t decided on my favorite—favorites go into my Photographic Art Catalog—this is in the running:

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Get up high enough and you can see ’em!

The African Lions are very popular at the Zoo and at Safari Park. There are two at the Zoo, and they usually are visible because their playpen is not that big. At Safari Park, it’s a different story. They probably have a few acres to run around in, so actually seeing them is hit or miss.

However, I found out recently that if you get up high enough, you can see ’em!

I went on the Balloon Safari:

The Balloon Safari holds about thirty people and takes you up into the wild blue yonder, about 400 feet up. From that high, I could see my hometown of Kingsville, Texas. Well, maybe not that far, but you can see a lot, such as these two female lions doing what all cats like to do: sleep!

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park is out near Escondido, and it gets extremely hot out there in the summer time, often up in the triple digits. That’s triple digits Fahrenheit for my Canadian friends.

Consequently, now is the best time to go to this beautiful 1,800-acre park comprising over 2,600 animals representing more than 300 species, as well as 3,500 plant species. It’s also very hilly in some areas, so wear comfortable shoes.

Remember, if you’re coming to San Diego, give me a call! I often can play docent for a day—Zoo, Safari Park, SeaWorld, Scenic 59-mile Drive, etc. And if you fly into San Diego, sit on the left side of the plane; the view of downtown San Diego as you’re landing is awesome!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Google loves me (and how to get Google to love you!)

Yesterday’s post about Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf started out as a simple post about The Freedom Tree on the campus of San Diego State University. It turned into a much more extensive post about Lt. Col. Scharf.

As I began my research on Lt. Col. Scharf, I turned to Google, of course. Simply entering Lt. Col. Charles J. S immediately brought up Scharf’s name, and a click took me to the POW Network.

I finished the post, published it, and then went to read it on my proofreading computer.

SIDE NOTE ON HOW TO PROOFREAD
Change your environment!
If you work mainly on one computer, when you go to proofread, go to a different room or a different computer, or put a cat on your desk. Anything to change your environment.  The newness in your environment will help you proofread better. You could also ask someone else to proofread.  At the very least, take a 10-minute break; don’t proofread something you just finished working on!

When I proofed it, I realized that I had left out the link to the POW Network, something that I definitely wanted to include.

When I went back to Google to find the POW Network again, I probably could have typed POW Network into the search bar. I didn’t, though. Instead I typed Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf. Look what Google presented to me (click on the image for a larger, more readable version):

Notice the very first entry in the search results? Yep. It’s my WordPress post! More importantly, though, notice that my post was published “2 mins ago.” “Mins” is short for minutes. Just two minutes after I published my post, Google had already indexed it!

So, how do I accomplish getting Google to index my site so quickly? Keep reading if you’re interested. Go play with the cat or dog if you’re not.

1. Blog persistently and consistently! There is a reason why this is #1 on my list. Google, Bing, and Yahoo (hereafter, GBY) won’t come by every minute to index you unless you prove to them that you are worth the effort. Blogging persistently and consistently (hereafter, P&C) proves that you are worth the effort. You don’t have to do anything else. Just blog persistently and consistently. GBY love fresh content. Your P&C blogging gives them that fresh content that they love so much.
2. Use tagging and keywords. GBY love help, and if you can help them, they’ll love you for it. However, GBY understands when you are trying to trick them, like formatting inappropriate content to be invisible text, or using tagging and keywords that have nothing to do with the subject matter of your post.
3. Provide quality content. Ranting and raving about last night’s date isn’t defined as quality content.
4. Provide tags, keywords, and alternate text for your pictures and other graphics. GBY cannot look at pictures because they don’t have eyes. If I want pictures of Zoey the Cool Cat to be indexed, I tag them with “Zoey the Cool Cat,” keyword them with “cat pictures,” and provide alternate text, like “A yawning Zoey the Cool Cat in her basket under the piano.” GBY will love cat, basket, and piano, and possibly yawning. And she’ll get indexed as Zoey the Cool Cat. Want proof? Look at the Google search results for “Zoey the Cool Cat” (click on the image for a larger, more readable version):
   The first ten search results are from my blogging, and I have ten of eleven on the first page of Google!
5. Be consistent in using your tags and keywords. If I want Zoey the Cool Cat to show up consistently in search results, I always tag her with “Zoey the Cool Cat,” never just “Zoey” or “indoor cat” or “cat on desk”….
6. Make your blog posts between 300 and 700 words. Apparently GBY think that less than 300 words is not worth reading, and more than 700 words loses the reader’s interest. Once GBY know that you are worth their effort, you can publish some posts that don’t abide by this rule and still get indexed.

Getting results like this is called “organic search results.” It will take some time, so the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get results, especially if your actual intent is to use your blog to sell products or services, like I will be doing with my Photographic Art venture.

I started blogging on the WordPress platform on January 6, 2012. Previously I had blogged from July 2007 to January 2012 on a real estate blogging platform where I was trying to sell my home inspection services. That real estate blogging platform’s only purpose was to help its members sell their real estate services, so I learned a lot of things over there.

One of the most important is to pick a good blogging platform. GBY loved the real estate blogging platform I was at because 90% of the posts were about real estate, and there were 250,000 of us. That’s significant. WordPress is significant because there are several million users. Thus, if you’re blogging to sell products and services, and you have no experience, use the free wordpress.com platform. GBY know and understand wordpress.com, and you’ll get indexed faster. Once you start getting indexed regularly, you can upgrade or change to a self-hosted site and still get indexed regularly. Just be sure you link your wordpress.com blog to your upgraded name (my upgraded name is russelrayphotos2.com, but if I look at the title bar right now, it shows that I am at russelrayphotos.wordpress.com) or self-hosted site so GBY can find you and know that both sites are yours. Whatever you do, though, don’t delete your wordpress.com blog until you’re absolutely sure that you have GBY’s attention at your new site. Since wordpress.com is free, though, I would never delete it anyway, at least not until you no longer sell the same products and services.

When I first started blogging at wordpress.com. GBY would come by about once a month. You can see this on your stats page. For example, I would have 25-50 visits on any given day. Then, suddenly, I’d get 500 visit on one day, returning to 25-50 visits on following days. On that 500-visit day, those were search engines coming by to index my blog. You can see that on your stats page, too:

Each month, GBY will come by your blog and index all the posts you have published since last time they were at your blog.

Notice in the screen shot above that my best ever number of views was 1,583 (upper right corner). That was on February 14, 2013, 13 months after I started using the wordpress.com platform. Look at the number of views by search engines from that day:

That was the day when GBY decided to put me in their algorithms and watch me every minute of every day. They decided that I had good content, fresh content, and could be counted on to publish a post each and every day. I could publish a post at any time, and within five minutes be on the first page of GBY search term results for keywords and tags that were in the post.

If you can’t publish a post each and every day, try every two days, every three days, once a week, even once a month. But be P&C, and if you can’t be P&C every day, then pick a day and time, and be P&C for that day and time. I would submit, however, that if you are trying to sell your products and services, blogging P&C each and every day should be the #1 thing on your daily list of things to do.

P.S. This post got indexed by Google three minutes after I published it. Google Google loves me( and how to get Google to love you!).

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf—POW, MIA, or buried with full military honors?

I have a Bachelor of Science in Forest Management from Texas A&M University, and although I’ve never used the degree other than to proudly occupy a space on a wall, I still have this abiding love for trees. Thus, when I’m out and about, I tend to notice trees. Tall ones, short ones, bushy ones, skinny ones, flowering ones, dying ones….

One of the places that I go walking quite often is the campus of San Diego State University. The walk to the campus is 1.7 miles, which takes me about 30 minutes. An exploratory walk around the campus takes however long I want it to take, depending on opportunities for photography.

Recently I was at the Turtle Pond in Scripps Park, smack dab in the middle of campus:

View Larger Map

I usually don’t walk on the grass (my wise old grandmother taught me to walk on sidewalks), but I saw what looked like a plaque or memorial of some sort under this very tall tree. Tall trees in San Diego usually are eucalyptus trees, but this tall tree was a Western Sycamore (Platanus racemosa; also known as a California Sycamore, California plane tree, and, in Spanish, Aliso).

Western Sycamores get to be about 35 feet tall (this one is right there, if not a little taller!), but one of this height in an urban landscape is quite rare since they like a goodly amount of water. However, this one is planted at the bottom of a grassy slope, and to get grass to look nice in a desert environment like San Diego’s, well, you have to water it. Ergo, this tree probably gets more than its share of water.

If you look in the shade on the ground, just to the left of the trunk, you can see a round, dark spot, which is the plaque that caught my attention:

THE FREEDOM TREE
WITH THE VISION OF UNIVERSAL FREEDOM
FOR ALL MANKIND
THIS TREE IS DEDICATED TO
LT. COL. CHARLES J. SCHARF
AND ALL
PRISONERS OF WAR
AND
MISSING IN ACTION
1979

This tree probably was about a year old, with a balled root, when it was planted in 1979. Thus, it has grown to its maximum height in just 35 years, one foot for each year. That’s quite a growth rate for a sycamore! Again suggesting that it gets all the water it needs.

Of course, being the history buff that I am, I had to see if I could find out any information about Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf. A quick Google search took me to Charles Scharf’s entry at the POW Network.

Charles Scharf was born in San Diego on March 20, 1933 (Hey, I’m also a March baby!). According to the entry:

Col Scharf and a fellow crew member took off in their F-4C Phantom IIs from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand on October 1, 1965. Their mission was to attack an enemy concentration and a major highway in North Vietnam. After the lead aircraft developed problems en route, Scharf assumed the lead of the two other F-4s in the flight. After he completed two bombing runs, Scharf’s aircraft was hit by enemy fire. His radio transmission of “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” was heard by the other two aircraft. One radioed “Gator 3 (Scharf’s call sign), you’re on fire, you’d better get out! Bail out, Gator 3!” Scharf’s plane began to disintegrate and a parachute was seen leaving the aircraft.

The other two aircraft lost sight of the parachute, and circled the area for about 10 minutes where Scharf’s aircraft had crashed and burned but no radio or visual contact was made then nor in subsequent aerial search and rescue operations.

….

Charles J. Scharf was promoted to the rank of Colonel and Martin J. Massucci to the rank of Major during the period they were maintained missing in action.

A news release from the United States Department of Defense on November 9, 2006:

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. Air Force officer missing in action from the Vietnam War have been identified and are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is Col. Charles J. Scharf of San Diego. His funeral is scheduled for Nov. 30 at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington D.C.

Interestingly, though, there was a later entry for Charles Scharf in the POW Network, dated April 9, 2013, from Steve L:

Col. Charles Scharf has been a prisoner since 1 Oct 1965.  My mother, Barbara Lowerison has fought very hard for 40 yrs to bring him home.  She passed away 8 Jan 2012.  In Oct 2011 a Vietnamese male arrived at her home. He said he had been in prison with Charles Scharf in Hanoi 2 levels below ground. We know this is true because he relayed information only my mother and myself know. He had to see Uncle Chuck in order to say what he said. He also said Col. Scharf has one arm missing which accounts for the bone fragment sent back. Our government has always known where our prisoners are, a fact made clear when they sent someone to kill several prisoners saying they were collaborators. The operative could clearly see they were prisoners and did not take the shot. Col. Scharf was on that list with 4 others. Why are these national heroes still there?

So….

Is Lt. Col. Charles J. Scharf a POW, still MIA, or buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery?

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Look for me in a shelter somewhere!

My trip to the deep boondocks was exciting. Here’s where I went:

That’s the Desert View Tower. It’s about 75 miles due east of downtown San Diego.

View Larger Map

The view of the desert from the tower is breathtaking. Although today was a little hazy, I think I got some good enough pictures to show you, but that will be tomorrow, along with the history of this roadside attraction.

What I wanted to show you this evening, along with the picture of the tower, is a picture of the Sorry We’re Closed! sign that hangs on the gate to the Tower. The gate was open today, of course, but read the sign. The reasons why sometimes they are closed are funny.

I’m thinking that if the temperature is above 120° or the winds are howling over 100 mph, look for me in a shelter somewhere! I guarantee you I won’t be driving around in my car visiting tourist attractions!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Chargers, WordPress update, and Zoey the Cool Cat

For the last five years, the San Diego Chargers, purportedly a professional football team in the National Football League, have played way below their abilities. When heavily favored, they have proceeded to lose quite handily. For the last five weeks, they have been heavily favored…. to lose! Each time, they have won. They are on a five-game winning streak, which includes a road win over Cincinnati in the playoffs. That has gotten the area into Chargers mode, reflected most recently in the new San Diego Central Library. During the daytime, it has looked like this:

For the past few nights, in preparation for the Chargers taking on the mighty Denver Broncos in Denver today, the library at night has been dressed out in rotating Chargers blue & gold colors:

Update on my open letter to WordPress: Things are still messed up, and WordPress has not responded to me, either on my blog or in their Forums. LIKE buttons still don’t show up on blogs that have a URL ending in wordpress.com, but I am able to comment on them as long as I click directly on the words “Enter your comment here…” Previously I could click anywhere in the comment box, which was really convenient. Now, not so much convenience.

My stats page still doesn’t show up, and the little gold star at the upper right that notifies us of new comments and LIKEs only shows up if I load my blog, and then reload it!

I shall continue to camp out in blogs but it won’t look like I’m camping since I can’t leave a slew of LIKEs everywhere.

Lastly, I’m heading out into the boondocks today, deep down into the boondocks. I’m leaving Jim and Zoey the Cool Cat at home alone, all by themselves, no one to listen to (they say that I like to hear myself talk). If I get lost and don’t make it home, I want the last thing you see to be Zoey the Cool Cat. So here she is, from the comforts of her newest home:

She doesn’t look at all interested in the Chargers playoff game today, and she doesn’t even seem to know that I’m going to the boondocks. Ha! She will later on when she wants to play red ring fetch and eat, and realizes that I’m nowhere to be found. She’ll have to rely on Jim, which might not be a good thing to do when it comes to playing red ring…. or even eating, for that matter!

I always like it when I go away for more than a couple of hours because when I come home, Zoey the Cool Cat is a real love bug. She knows who’s Chief of Staff, attending to her every whim……………….. and she misses him when he’s gone!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

But what is it?

One of the interesting things that I have noticed during my stompings around San Diego County is the number of impromptu memorials (for lack of a better, or more relevant, term), such as this one:

I found that near some coastal railroad tracks where I had set up to watch the trains go by.

I was transfixed, mesmerized, inspired by it. It exuded peace and relaxation. Maybe that was its intent.

Is it a memorial? Is it religious? Anyone know?

The reason why I ask is because I want to create Photographic Art from that picture but I don’t want to be using a religious symbol or memorial inappropriately. The other thing is that on the back of each Photographic Art print will be some fact/information/trivia about what’s presented in the art. For example, the back of a flower art print might have information about the flower or plant—datura and brugmansia, known as angel’s trumpet and pictured at the right, are toxic and can create severe skin problems if you get the sticky white sap on you. How can something so beautiful be so dangerous?

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Ruocco Park in downtown San Diego

A few people asked some questions about the photo that I used in my Wires, wires everywhere! (And how to remove them easily in Photoshop) post. Here’s the picture:

That was taken at Ruocco Park shortly after the park opened.

Ruocco Park comprises 3.3 acres overlooking San Diego Bay and the downtown skyline. It is located at the corner of North Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway.

View Larger Map

Ruocoo Park is the eighteenth park under the auspices of the Port of San Diego. The photo above shows a commissioned public art piece titled, “The Riparium,” a sculptural gateway of eucalyptus tree branches designed by Roman de Salvo, a local artist.

Here are a few other pictures of The Riparium and Ruocco Park:

Other than the public art, there really isn’t much at Ruocco Park on those 3.3 acres other than a lot of concrete, a walking path, restrooms, and, according to their web site, picnic tables. The picnic tables were not there the last time I visited the park, and I don’t find any pictures on the Internet of picnic tables in the park. Being a new park means that there are no mature trees for shade, so if the picnic tables are not protected from the sun, I can see them becoming extraordinarily hot on a summer day during tourist season, certainly not a place I would choose for a picnic. Maybe a quick sit-down for tourists tired of the long walk along the harbor, but not long enough for a picnic.

I also found all the rocks placed in the concrete to be a little dangerous. I tripped over a couple of them because I was busy looking up at the eucalyptus (which is how I got that last picture) rather than watching where I was going. I suspect I’m not the first one to do that. If you’re going to look up, stop walking first!

Ruocco Park is within easy walking distance of Seaport Village, Petco Park, the USS Midway Museum, the Convention Center, and the huge Marriott (shown below) and Hyatt hotels.

The San Diego Trolley has several stops nearby, too. Parking is almost non-existent right now because of the bayfront renovation that has been going on for a couple of years, and is scheduled to continue for another couple of years. Leave the car at home or at the hotel and either walk or take the Trolley.

You can also come into San Diego via Amtrak or the Coaster, arriving at the historic Santa Fe Depot, which is just a couple of blocks from Ruocco Park. If you’re arriving by plane, the airport is at the far end of North Harbor Drive. You’ll need a rental car or taxi to get to the southern end where Ruocco Park is.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Wires, wires everywhere! (And how to remove them easily in Photoshop.)

I didn’t have to search very far to find a picture with lots of wires in it to illustrate how easy it is to remove them. Here’s the picture:

Right click on that picture, download it to your computer, open it in Photoshop, and follow along.

With the file open in Photoshop, first let’s rotate it 90° clockwise. My purpose in doing this is because, when you are using a mouse, it’s easier to move your mouse horizontally back and forth than it is vertically up and down.

Click on Image ► Image Rotation ► 90° CW.

I use the rotate clockwise (90° CW) and rotate counterclockwise (90° CCW) command regularly, so I have assigned keyboard shortcuts to them. That’s the CTRL + , and CTRL + . you see next to the commands on the menu.

You should have a rotated image that looks like this:

All of the wires are relevant except for the top two, so we’re going to remove those.

First we need to magnify the area that we are going to work on. Click on your magnifying glass….

Now click three times at the top edge of the picture where the topmost wire is. That should give you this:

We want to use the Spot Healing Brush Tool:

If you’re thinking, “But wires are not spots!”, well, don’t think that! Wires are just long spots, very long spots.

You want your Spot Healing Brush Tool to be slightly larger than the wire you’re going to remove. When you work at these higher magnifications, you’ll see a lot of fuzziness and jagged edges. That fuzziness and jaggity (jaggity?) is actually part of the wire, so make sure that the size of your brush covers all of the wire. I found that a brush that is 10 pixels worked well on these wires. Go to the options bar and set your brush size to 10 px:

The other values should be default values, but make sure your Hardness is set to 100.

Now simply click once at the top end of the topmost wire, move your cursor to any other spot on that wire, hold the SHIFT key down, and click again. The wire magically disappears:

You’ll get the best result if you center the wire within your 10 px brush.

Keep doing that all along the wire, and soon you will have no wires!

This works most quickly on straight wires, but if you have a drooping wire, simply use shorter distances between your first click and your SHIFT click.

Here’s my finished picture:

Much better. You can go further and remove all the wires that are going to the pole that is out of the picture. If you do that, you’ll discover the limitations to Photoshop’s Content-Aware feature. Once you have the other wires removed, you’ll have some cleanup work to do. Not so much that the chore becomes tedious, though. If you know how to use the Clone tool, you’ll have the cleanup work done in no time.

More complicated backgrounds sometimes work in your favor and sometimes work against you. I have found it best that when you have more complicated backgrounds, simply use shorter distances between your Click and your SHIFT Click.

There you go! I figure if the power company won’t get rid of these wires (by putting them underground), we’ll get rid of them ourselves!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend James Frimmer, Realtor, CDPE
CA BRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!