Up, up and away!

Monday I'll report to work, bright and early, to a new office, in Salesforce West, the 6th tallest building in San Francisco.

Although this won't be the first time I've worked in a high-rise, I've generally avoided such office settings over the years.

But that's getting hard to do, at least in San Francisco, where an explosion of new development surrounds the Transbay Terminal development area, just one block away from my new office building.

A lot of this burst of development is due to changes to the zoning laws around downtown San Francisco, as well as considerable improvements in construction techniques.

Already built and operational are:

• 50 Frement (Salesforce West)
• 350 Mission (Salesforce East)
• the (sinking) Millenium Tower

But that's just the beginning, for here come:

• 181 Fremont, already topped out I believe
• 50 Front Street, the Oceanwide Center
• Park Tower

And, of course, the Big Daddy of them all, the Salesforce Tower, where the concrete was poured for the top floor just last week.

The new tower is just across the street, so I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

And, the transit center itself seems like it will be pretty nice, with a beautiful (I hope) blocks-long public park atop the terminal, that should be very fine on sunny afternoons.

But the city is definitely a warren of canyons. You'd never believe you were just a few blocks from some of the most beautiful scenery in the world (the Golden Gate, the Bay, Alcatraz and Angel islands, etc.); you'd think you were somewhere around midtown-Manhattan, instead.

Which, I suppose, is sort of the point.

But here I am, and up they go.