I'm a lasagna boy!

Station to station

This is the first time I am riding Caltrain from its southern terminal, San Jose Diridon, to the northern, San Francisco. This is also the last northbound train of the day.

Sentimental hygiene

On the shuttle back from work this evening, Peter was handing out BART cards like candy. I noticed that he had an unusual card:

Getting to the airport via public transit is too complicated. BART ends, but then the AirTrain begins. The AirTrain takes another several minutes, but then inconveniently drops one off in the middle of the parking structure; from there one must walk through zebra crossings and around structural pillars (how would someone in a wheelchair negotiate this?) to get to the terminal. From there, through a subterranean passage. And then, finally, into the airport: at least ten minutes *after* getting off BART. Similar systems in Zurich, Geneve, London, etc., etc., ad inf. all let off travellers in the terminal building itself.

Exit does not exist!

Once again, a television advertisement caught my ear just as I was starting to beeep-boop with the TiVo remote: the warped guitars, lyrics, and vocals of Modest Mouse praising a Nissan minivan of some sort, while soccer moms (literally!) cavorted gleefully. Sunny dispositions and a minivan do not jive with the pub-brawling, morphine-dampened-singing, battered-blue-van-touring of Modest Mouse.

Nissan are trying to promote a subversive image? This is weak doublespeak! Then again, Modest MouseSony are no longer "indie".

Mohadda mofasta

Riding a fixed-gear bicycle exhilarates me.

It's easy to get caught up in the fad of fixed-gear, but to this day I don't have an answer for when some bewildered derailleur cleaner asks, "Isn't that hard?"

A hand-made track frame.

Erste preis: ein schwein!

Building transit centers

Although developers are fuming about the approval of the Transbay Terminal Environmental Impact Report, construction goes full-bore near BART.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: the Governator seeks to "borrow" from transit funds to feed the state's sapped resources:

His budget proposal would transfer nearly another $2 billion in transportation funds to the state's general fund by suspending Prop. 42, which voters approved in 2002 and devotes sales taxes paid on gasoline to highway and transit improvements.
... In addition, the budget proposal also would end the Transportation Congestion Relief Program, the 181 projects that were guaranteed funding by Proposition 42 from the gas tax until 2008.
"It would be like a highway pileup,'' said Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's transportation planning agency. "Some projects could be salvaged; a lot couldn't.''

Why is BART under-used?

Will the Transbay rejuvenate public transit throughout the Bay Area? In California?

H is for hapax legomenon.

When I was seven or eight, I read an odd book: I cannot recall the title, but remember that the cover illustration had a gaudy painting of a dark room with a brain in a jar, and a boy standing in studied amazement. The story told of the young boy and his relationship with the brain, which could answer anything; one of the curious bits of trivia it knew as that Jane Austen's posthumously-published Northanger Abbey makes the first printed reference to rounders as "base ball".

What is the technical term for the first occurrence of a word or phrase?

Karen Joy Fowler has written a book in the first-person plural, titled The Jane Austen Book Club.

Where my peeps at?

You can see where my friends (at least, people who have acknowledged me through Google's social-networking project) are.

These are the people that you meet Nr. 4

Although not literally my stoop, Coopers might as well be. The concrete-and-board benches outside welcome many of my neighbours: this morning Anna and I were sitting and enjoying some mutant macchiato when Jay rhymes-with-grimace and Sara(h) walked up.

On to the Kaltrain with the Kogswell!

Addendum:
in the evening, as I was pushing the pedals back hom'ards, received a call from Aram, who was "seven minutes away". Just after he pulled up on the Carleton, Mary and Arshad drove up onto the sidewalk, and we played a little music through Arshad's car and sat on the stoop. Next-door neighbour Logan learned a little about skateboarding, watching Aram ollie endlessly ("Can you tick-tack?" she asked.) And Amanda and David walked past with Pilot, who's not 22/7 or irrational in the least bit, and an exhausted jimg came home.

Lauding laudanum

Several years ago I read Althea Hayter's excellent Opium and the Romantic Imagination; today I picked up The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics.

No need to lose your wig!

For Aram's birthday, we went to see the Shotgun Players' production of Moliere's The Miser. When I told my father, he asked, "Did you go to Zachary's too?" And of course we had.

'swell

After several months of languishing in the workshop, the Kogswell F58 finally came into its own. I picked up a few last-minute parts (and a *cough* new saddle) at American.

I swear, threading the leather straps through the clips and pedals took longer than assembling any other part of the bike. And after I finally got one pedal done (I sat out in the park, acknowledging that it would take a long time), I discovered that I had the buckle on the wrong side; I patiently re-threaded.

Why they were concerned for my welfare, I don't know, but they were from Belgo Nord

Listening to the sentimental style of San Francisco's A Minor Forest: So, Were They In Some Sort Of Fight?

The location, usually oral, of introducing a new clause after a full stop (.) with "Particles lend indispensible amazing power to sentences, but there's something about so that grates on me; all the more so (!!) in writing.

Bargee brings mud!

The New York Times' Monica Davey has a spectacular piece on mud transplantation, from Peoria to Chicago.
In Chicago, United States Steel will use the nutrient-rich mud to slather a slag heap on the South Side, making a 573-acre site habitable.

Meanwhile back at the Salton Sea, another fabulously muddy area: California lawmakers, having settled with Federal agencies on plans to share water running into the Sea, now have a $730 million development plan.

April 22, 2004
CHICAGO JOURNAL

A Mudflow Rolls to a City That Couldn't Be Happier
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO, April 21 — Chicago needed mud, and East Peoria, Ill., needed to get rid of it.

If the elegant (albeit muddy) solution seems obvious now, remember: these cities are 165 miles apart, and, like most cities, neither had ever devoted much time to pondering the other's problem.

On the South Side of Chicago, 20,000 people had once labored in what used to be the United States Steel Corporation's South Works plant, a symbol beside Lake Michigan of this city's place in building a nation's bridges and skyscrapers. South Works, now empty and closed, filled 573 acres, making it larger than even the Loop, the city's downtown business district. Much of the land was glazed in slag, a byproduct of steel and another reminder of the past.

So when United States Steel and city officials began dreaming several years ago of ways to turn the famed old mill into a new development — perhaps with businesses, homes, roads and parks — the slag posed a problem. How exactly would one set a grassy park on slag, where grass will not grow?

In East Peoria, meanwhile, an entirely different question was being asked.

More and more sediment was accumulating on the beds of Upper and Lower Peoria Lakes, thanks in part to the development of a navigational channel in the Illinois River, which runs through the lakes.

Once six to eight feet deep, the lakes had shrunk to depths more appropriate for a bathtub. Sauger, bass and sunfish were left searching for room to swim. The duck population sank by 90 percent. And people with boats began to fear sucking mud, not water, into their motors.

But where exactly would one throw away all this muddy sediment, especially given the high prices of disposal?

That was where John C. Marlin, a scientist so curious about mud that he has taken hundreds of photographs of it (wet, dry, cracked, caked), stepped forward. Dr. Marlin, a senior scientist in the waste management and research center of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, has been fascinated with silt and sediment for more than three decades.

Standing on the South Works site in the shadow of the old ore storage walls on a recent morning, Dr. Marlin smiled as a crane lifted giant fudgy scoops of mud from a barge that had come from East Peoria.

"There was no real epiphany moment," he said of his realizing that East Peoria's problem could fix Chicago's, and vice versa. "I just started looking at maps and thinking about it."

For at least the next six weeks, barges loaded with mud from the bottom of Lower Peoria Lake will make the 165-mile, two-day journey to the edge of Lake Michigan. There, hundreds of truckloads of mud will be dumped on the slag-covered land. And by summer, Dr. Marlin said, grass will grow on the acres meant to become a city park.

Seventy barges will make the trip, each with 1,500 tons of mud. In the end, more than 100,000 tons of mud will frost the top of this land.

The mud is safe, the federal Environmental Protection Agency reported after reviewing core samples from the lakes. And most of a $2 million grant from the state is paying to transport it — a deal, in the eyes of Chicago officials who needed clean dirt and East Peoria officials who did not.

"We needed good quality soil," said Mayor Richard M. Daley, "and basically this solves two environmental problems, one urban and one rural."

On the rural end, in East Peoria, officials watched with relief in recent days as a public marina in Lower Peoria Lake got deeper.

"We've waffled in the past as to whether our marina could even stay viable or not because of the expense of dredging," said Brad Smith, executive director of the Fon du Lac park district. "This gives us somewhere to take the stuff."

If everything works out here, Dr. Marlin said, he has dreams of similar projects in other places, of other happy marriages between localities separated by so much distance.

"Why not?" he said. The Peoria Lakes alone, he estimated, have gathered enough extra mud to fill a football field that reaches 10 miles high. "Just imagine," he said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Because they were real squirrels!

Second coffee of the day, and I'm listening to Shellac of North America. Who described this band as surgically-precise rock & roll?

I mean, goddammit, I miss the Lounge Ax.

Although I don't have a definitive database (and iCal spiffiness) like Greg, I recall having seen Shellac in many memorable places (and at memorable times: the Sunday morning church service). And having eaten fish an' chips with sundry members. I like their frank Q & A sessions, their spare on-stage presence, and the fact that they sing a song against itself.

Oh you pretty things

The Randall Museum, a "spot in the heart of the city where young people could spend a day in the country," was once housed in an old city jail; now its own building nestled in Corona Heights, it has a spectacular live-animal exhibit as well as a model railroading layout and expansive outdoor area. As its funds from the city dry up, the Randall Museum faces an uncertain future. Operating funds from the City and County of San Francisco may not be enough to sustain the Museum; the city faces a massive ($352 million)shortfall in revenue. The Friends of the Randall have proposed a privatization of the musuem.

Adventures on Caltrain, Pt. 3

This morning I rode the bike to the CalTrain. In the seat across from me, a heavily-tattoo'd man hummed along with a Palaestrina score, miming the actions of a chorale conductor.
The mutton-chopp'ed conductor hollered "High Ball! High Ball!" as the train pulled away from the terminal, precisely on-time.
And I read about the (re-) construction of the Transbay Terminal ("An idea that has been in the works for 37 years"), a $2 billion project San Francisco voters approved in 2000.

Going 'round in circles no more

The traffic circles will go away.
Alleluia.

Addendum: Bay City News, The San Francisco Examiner, and the San Francisco Chronicle all ran something along these lines:


A traffic-control experiment that had Haight-Ashbury residents driving in circles has been halted.

The Department of Parking and Traffic ended its test of traffic circles on Page and Waller streets this week after the idea collided with opposition from neighbors, the Fire Department, and pedestrian safety and disability rights organizations.

The department took out stop signs in August and installed temporary traffic circles at five intersections on Page and one on Waller Street. The idea was to encourage bicycling, improve air quality and slow speeders.

Earlier this year, the department sent ballots to residents within a block of the intersections asking them whether to keep the traffic circles or bring back the four-way stops. None of the circles received the majority vote needed.

"It wasn't close,'' said department spokeswoman Bridget Smith.
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Pride before a fall

I got a new un-stained-with-coffee hoodie today. Meanwhile, Aram and Mary got new 'phones.

All you punks and all you teds

Rolled up to the house after a test run on a freshly-tuned Dutchess, and a grungy bearded man was sitting on the stoop, drinking from a 40 and eyeing a bicycle leaned up against the house.
No, it wasn't Aram; it was a ruddy-faced man, grey and dirty, who was doing pretty much as Aram or I might: sitting on the stoop, knocking back a beer, and working on a bike.
In fact, when I first sped past the house I thought he had stopped because of bike problems -- perhaps he saw the sprocket charm on the threshold? -- and I pulled over to ask: "Is everything OK?" but he said, "I'm painting my bike." Even as I asked I knew that he was a bum, and the belligerent tone in his answer bespoke that.
I suggested that he move on -- I needed to get past him just to get into the house -- and he began a mock-polite argument. He ended up taking his gold paint pen to the house next door, yelling at me that I couldn't push him away from the neighbour's as well, could I?

An engaging conversation

Stopped in at the Casa Jender-Vollrath for some merriment and house-warming. Little did I know that Pete (Mr Full-of-Wrath) had given Jen the biggest engagement ring ever.

It is a luxury sky-box!

Would you want to live on a roof? Perhaps not atop NYC public housing, but in Berlin it becomes an appealing possibility.
Here in San Francisco, perennial mayoral candidate and all-'round rabble-rouser Jim Reid may have a sympathy vote in his campaign to provide miniature earthquake shacks for the homeless (who don't seem interested). Reid was recently evicted from his house for contructing a prototype.

It's the heat, not the humidity.

Something about this morning in the 'hood was fraying my nerves. I went out for a ride early in the AM, stopping for a cup of coffee on my way out. While I was pedalling past the beautiful mural in the Duboce Bikeway with the steaming coffee in one hand, I turned to get past a sleeping drunk. Just a little coffee splashed over the edge of the cup and all over my nice grey sweatshirt. It only takes a little to stain. That's twice in one week.

Later in the day, I was walking across the idiotic roundabout at Waller and Steiner. Two uniformed SFPD riding bicycles cut through the roundabout, neatly coming within a few inches of hitting me. I yelled at them, but they didn't stop. Mere seconds later, at the intersection of Waller and Pierce, a squad car stopped southbound on Pierce, and then forcefully turned east onto Waller, where I was already well in the intersection -- and quite nearly a hood ornament on car 1100. I hollered after the cop that he almost hit me, generalizing that cops were jerks. He agreed and sped onwards.

I rang 415 553-0123, the SFPD non-emergency number. Dispatcher 98 advised me to call the Park Station (415 242 3000), where I spoke with a desk commander; he calmly pointed out that police officers have more things to do than show courtesy towards pedestrians.
I suppose he's right, although these incidents both took place within a few feet of where a tully-loaded prowler pulled me over four years ago, and took my licence, preparing to cite me for cycling without lights. Just as one of them was whipping open the ticket-book, a call came over the radio; the officer literally threw my ID back at me, hopped in the car, and said, "Lucky for you we've got bigger fish to fry!"

Is it worth complaining about police procedures and officers? I haven't had a single positive encounter with SFPD in the years that I've lived in the Lower Haight: they've responded adequately to calls regarding neighbourhood violence, people passed out next to the house, but tend to ignore pedestrian- and bicycle-related calls. I've been hit or nearly hit by cars many times while riding my bicycle, and not a single time have the SFPD actually caught or pressed charges against the vehicle driver (Golden Gate transit operator; private car; that irritating post-ballgame incident last year right outside the Hall of Justice). Now I just wonder about the roundabouts and the recklessness they engender.

Sprout sprouts.

Much as I love Sprout (and sometimes wish that he weren't one nut short of a Tour de France win), there's no way I would go to the weird Pet Sematary lengths of cloning the cute lil' kitty. Some other people would:

"It's almost like creating a family tradition," she said. "We love our dogs so much. If at some future point my children thought back about Akeya and wanted a dog like it, they'd have the opportunity."

Speaking of opportunity,

"We would have had to be dumb not to see a business there," said Genetic Savings CEO Lou Hawthorne, a longtime family friend of Sperling, who suggested they turn the project into a for-profit venture.

Before and after

From the DPT:

Bicycle volumes on Valencia Street during the PM peak hour increased 144 percent, from 88 to 215 bicyclists per hour. The "before" data were collected on "Bike to Work Day" in May 1997 when an entire southbound motor vehicle lane was closed for cyclists. In March 2000, 215 bicyclists were counted on a typical weekday. Given that more cyclists traditionally ride on "Bike to Work Day," the increase in bicyclists is most likely even greater than these numbers indicate. During the "after" count, motor vehicles were also counted to determine the modal split (percentage of motor vehicles versus bicycles). Comparing total motor vehicles to bicycles made up 16 percent of the vehicle traffic along Valencia Street.

Workers own the means of production

... but the production is mean: Bolsinga works for the man, the man capitalizes on his work, and Bolsinga has a sincere sense of satisfaction:

I'm responsible for that. I fixed ONE BUG that they said HAD TO BE FIXED, or they wouldn't buy those Macs. 1200*1500 = $1800000.

Let the beatings continue until morale improves!

Oh, the places you'll go

Through the online service World66, I created a map of places I've travelled (alas not many: two continents, North America and Europe, plus one trip to the Maghreb):

The map casts me as more worldly than I am: I haven't seen the Northwest Passage, nor Hawai'i; I haven't been to Perpipgnan, although I have passed through Monaco (by rail from Marseilles). While I've visited Barcelona on several occasions, I've never walked the streets of Sevilla.
Justin keeps a list of flags for each of the countries he has visited.

Maximize your browser window over at mile x mile: view Chicago's beautiful blocks, many of which I've ridden down. Many years ago, Mark Athitakis and I mused over an escape-from-the-ivory-tower journal of writings about Chicago. The first issue, now lost in the thicket not quite west of the Dan Ryan, might have contained an article on "What to Eat at Each El Stop", an essay on the long-dormant Jackson-Inglewood El line, and a history of 55th Street seen through the bifocals of the University of Chicago's planners and their collusion with Chicago's Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Subways of the world, unite and take over

Subways to scale, but not (yet) including BART.

I like being part of the crowd on MUNI in the mornings; seeing people stream on and off the trains invigorates me (and makes downtown San Francisco feel more vital).

Assess signal timing?

One of the most physically challenging intersections for cyclists and pedestrians is the apparently simple intersection of Fell and Masonic.
The hazards come partly from the lack of visibility for cars heading west (left-most lane of Fell St.) turning south onto Masonic: the broad intersection (five lanes by four lanes, plus parking) allows for at-speed turns; and partly from traffic heading crosstown on Masonic, timing lights between Haight and Geary (it is possible, although very difficult, to drive white-knuckled straight through from Haight, the first traffic signal, to Pine -- at which point you're as good as downtown). These hazards make the simple crossing extremely nerve-wracking.

To add insult to injury, this intersection cuts through the middle of a park, and the crosswalk is part of a multi-use trail.

The lame addition of a "Yield to Peds and Bikes" sign about 18 months ago hasn't affected the speed of turning traffic -- they don't see the sign until they're in the turn -- and the crosswalk doesn't have a dedicated "Walk" phase.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition have posted their endorsement.

If you can't say anything nice about someone ...

The best way of losing a cause is to abuse your opponent and to trade upon his weakness.
You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance.
-- M K Gandhi, Mahatma, the Great Soul

Some of the debate really centers around the fact that people don't believe Iraq can be free; that if you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing or free. I'd strongly disagree with that.
-- Geo. W. Bush, President of the United States of America, 13 April 2004

There and back again

It's been a while since I had any seafaring adventures. I picked up a copy (signed first-edition) of Caroline Alexander's latest, The Bounty. The story of Capt Bligh and the Bounty has long fascinated me, and now I'm learning new details:

May 1 brought an extraordinary diversion: two sharks were caught and in the belly of one was found a prayer book, "[q]uite fresh," according to Lieutenant Clark, "not a leaf of it defaced." The book was inscribed "Francis Carthy, cast for death in the Year 1786 and Repreaved the Same day at four oClock in the afternoon." The book was subsequently confirmed as having belonged to a convict who had sailed to Botany Bay in 1788 with the first fleet of prisoners consigned to transportation.

RTFM(anual).

A few weeks ago, I found a chromed Diamondback BMX street bike lying in the street behind a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, with a sign reading "Free Bikes" taped to the top tube.

Done.

Today Lupe was learning me on manuals, bunny-hopping, and scuffing (the latter on his bike, which has a front brake). After about an hour, we retired to the café for lunch; lo and behold, just as I pulled up to the door the brake cable snapped.

Of course, none of this coolness was at all apparent when I walked into a meeting with a fresh mug of coffee, sat down in a comfy conference-room chair, and found out that the back was broken. I fell backwards, and the coffee spilled all over my hoodie and trousers.

If you have a cookie-cutter, I've an urban planning project for you

San Francisco's monumental Mission Bay project boasts more lofts -- 6,000 units -- than Alphabet City or Docklands, but more than half of all retail will be chain stores.

Building a city neigbourhood, especially one from scratch, poses great challenges to developers. How to seed the area with enough retail that urban dwellers will feel engaged? Does a neighbourhood feel like a 'hood if it's got the same stores one would see at the other end of a BART line? At the other end of a plane ride? If Lofty Q. Public comes home to San Francisco one evening and home looks like Phoenix, will Lofty throw himself in front of the convenient MUNI or CalTrain?

On the other hand, Jackson park callsitself a neighbourhood and now boasts a Wal-Mart on its main drag. Doesn't get more cookie-cutter formulaic than that. And then again, some places don't care for individuality: Jose Montaner, a Cuban refugee living quietly and cleanly on a city-owned island hurts the posh attitudes of his neighbours, who perhaps can't see because of the mote in their eye. They want him out (and a Wal-Mart in?).

Barcelona is doing this with Barceloneta; London with Docklands;

April 12, 2004
MIAMI JOURNAL

A Paradise of Detritus (Plus Ducks)
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, April 11 — No one was home but the chickens, so the visitors could only peer like Hansel and Gretel into the mysterious makeshift home on the tiny mangrove-tangled island. They walked gingerly back to the dock, so as not to collide with the bedraggled stuffed animals, bright lobster buoys, faded flags, rusty buckets and shiny CD's swinging from the trees.

Then he appeared: a small, stooped man of 70, paddling his weathered dinghy with a pointy-eared dog at his feet. Having checked his crab traps, the man, Jose Montaner, was back for another evening of breeze-kissed solitude on this tropical island, a few hundred yards from mainland Miami, that he has claimed as his own.

"Hola, muchachos!" he said, and offered up a tour of his compound: two jury-rigged structures with roofs of striped tarpaulin, a yard teeming with chickens and a few ducks, a well-groomed beach with views of the downtown Miami skyline, and every salvageable item to wash up on this city-owned island since Mr. Montaner, a homeless Cuban-American, quietly took it over four years ago.

Here are the neat piles of coconuts that float from Key Biscayne, from which Mr. Montaner has lovingly coaxed green sprouts. There is his flip-flop garden — a collection of lost sandals delivered by the tide — and his tree with a battered shoe outfitting every branch. The playground with tire swings, the lean-to where he watches a generator-powered television by moonlight, and the place he calls home: a kitchen and a bedroom built of crude wooden planks, decorated with religious statues and cozy as a child's treehouse.

Take it all in, because Mr. Montaner and his possessions might not be here much longer. A movement is under way to evict him from the island, one of five created decades ago with dredge spoils from the construction of Dinner Key Marina, a few hundred yards away. Some boaters have complained about Mr. Montaner, and while city officials are sympathetic to his plight, they say he has no right to inhabit public land.

"I thank the Lord every day for this place," Mr. Montaner, who speaks only Spanish, said on Thursday, easing into a wobbly kitchen chair on his beach. "Are they going to leave me here, or are they going to throw me to the wind?"

His allies — and there are many among the small-craft boaters who launch from the marina — say Mr. Montaner is not only harmless but also an exemplary resident of Coconut Grove, a lush, affluent section of Miami where some of its original pioneers settled. Some of the neighboring uninhabited islands are blanketed with garbage, they said, while Mr. Montaner keeps his spotless.

Stuart Sorg, a Coconut Grove resident and member of the Miami Waterfront Advisory Board, sees the situation differently. He wants Mr. Montaner off the island immediately, especially after reading in The Miami Herald last week that Mr. Montaner had been arrested for minor crimes in the past. "We've got to go through that island and disassemble everything," said Mr. Sorg, who has complained about Mr. Montaner to city officials. "This city has become too sophisticated, too cosmopolitan for that type of thing."

Mr. Montaner's island sits in sight of Miami City Hall, surrounded by the marina, a restaurant and Shake-a-Leg Miami, which teaches disabled people and poor children how to sail. Shake-a-Leg sailors like to visit Mr. Montaner and explore his hideaway, as do members of the Coconut Grove Children's Environmental Group, who clean the other islands and look to his as a model.

Asked how he got here, Mr. Montaner waved his arm dismissively. "It would take many books," he said. He was born in Caibarien, Cuba, where he was a carpenter and boat builder and was jailed, he said, after stealing milk for his family. In 1968, he said, he set sail in a fishing boat for Key West, ending up in Miami and, later, New York City.

He worked there as a parks maintenance man and salt spreader until, he said, "I couldn't stand the inhuman frozen conditions and I needed to come back to the tropical paradise that reminds me most of Cuba."

Back in Miami, Mr. Montaner lost a job because of an injury and became homeless, he said. He lived in shelters and abandoned buildings until he discovered the island, where he collected detritus for a month before building his house in a single day.

His routine is steadfast, Mr. Montaner said: rising at 4 a.m., making his beloved Cuban coffee on a propane burner and listening to Radio Mambí, a popular Cuban-American station. By 6, he starts his daily cleaning, traversing the long, skinny island to collect whatever washed up overnight. He rakes seaweed, checks his crab traps and feeds his birds, which provide him with eggs.

After dinner — rice and beans that friends bring, or groceries he has picked up from the mainland — Mr. Montaner watches television for two hours before turning in at 9 sharp. To get to sleep and stave off chronic back pain, he drinks a homemade brew of fermented mangrove root.

Audrey Eckert, a Miami police officer, said there had been an outpouring of concern for Mr. Montaner, and someone had even offered to give him a houseboat.

"That way he can enjoy his island, continue to visit it, but he just can't live on it," she said.

Mr. Montaner said the only thing he could not bear would be a forced return to homelessness on the mainland. He would love to stay on the island until he dies — or at least until Fidel Castro, just a few years his senior, does.

"Then it's a whole different story," he said, staring over the water as if to see his other tropical island, and Caibarien, at last.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

... is for death, said she;

Today is (yet another) Easter Sunday, as my neighbour Mark pointed out, by way of explaining why the 'hood was so eerily quiet. Does this mean that sales of bauhaus' "Stigmata Martyr" are going up on eBay? Don't kid youself.

Let the voters speak.

If ballot measures and propositions can pass by narrow margins, eventual second-guessing shouldn't come as a surprise.

So why is the public outcry over Pier 39 redevelopment, Central Freeway / Octavia Boulevard (re-)construction, and Golden Gate Park Concourse demolition such a surprise? Bitter words and legal action surrounds all three, even after public opinion, committee meetings, and acrimonious votes.

California's system of ballot propositions brings democracy into false consideration. Rather than allowing only policy experts and civil servants to solve problems, uninformed, rabble-rousing, and reactionary public groups must be heard. Does this make participatory politics useful? From the reaction to the Octavia Boulevard plan, no; ditto the Garage under the Concourse; ditto the new retail development at Pier 39.

The problem is that by putting the vote before the public, the apparent seal of approval is placed on the project yet the actual constituents don't decide the fate of their local resources. Did the residents around Octavia Boulevard, and those people who actually use the Central Freeway, make the decision?

Mind-reader blues

Wandered down to the Freight and Salvage to hear a recording session for Suzy Thompson with the formidable steel ukelele player Del Rey and Thompson's Rib Ticklers. With a fair bit of chatter in-between the songs, we heard some saucy historical anecdotes about what might be served down by the North Memphis Café ("everything you need ... love biscuits and gravy"). Neighbor and comrade Ben Sigelman was bowing the cello and bearing the brunt of Del Rey's caustic humour.

This begs the question.

The Fresno Bee wonders whether San Quentin makes the best use of its site -- A Transit Hub instead of Death Row?

The Nine Taylors.

Thurston Moore writes about the solid legacy of Kurt Cobain, and more so about the importance of continuing to innovate music at its boundaries.

Today I'm listening to the vaguely sinister "Ali Click" in its myriad incarnations, but this was moving music slightly further towards the middle, a decade ago. Where now? Eno composes traditional peals for conceptual bells (perhaps inspired by Partch?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/opinion/08MOOR.html

April 8, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

When the Edge Moved to the Middle
By THURSTON MOORE

The boy looked just like Kurt Cobain. He was no more than 19. Same yellow hanging hair, fallow blue eyes, the sad square jaw, innocent and adult.

We were in a Brooklyn basement full of artists and sound-poets gathered to watch musicians throw down extreme noise improvisation. One performer played records with two customized tone arms on his turntable; the discs broke and scratched, creating shards of hyperfractured beat play. He was followed by a quartet of young women scraping metal files across amplified coils mixed through junk electronics. I was to perform a spontaneous guitar/amp feedback piece with a stand-up bass player on loan from his teaching post at Berklee College of Music and a free jazz percussionist who had traversed through New York's downtown underground in the 60's. Not your typical night of alternative rock.

And I had a feeling this kid was looking for alternative rock. It was the year 2000. Kurt had died six years earlier, and through whatever fleeting friendship I had with him, this ethereal look-alike saw me as some connection.

Before being labeled alternative rock, Sonic Youth, the band I started in 1980 (and continue in still!), was called "post-punk." By the early 90's, we existed as a sort of big brother (and big sister) group to Kurt's generation of underground America. When Nirvana became popular, we were all called alternative rock — a less threatening term than anything with punk in the title (though with Green Day and Blink 182 in the late 90's, punk ultimately became accessible and extremely profitable — at least for the new MTV punks). The original alternative rock bands — Nirvana and Sonic Youth included — never had any allegiance to alternative rock. We all had come too far and through too much for any professional advice toward stylistic adjustment.

Kurt was not enamored with new traditionalism. He was more attached to the avant-garde rock of his hometown pals, the Melvins, who continue to stretch the parameters of what rock music can be. The traditional aspects of Nirvana's music — aspects that lent it accessibility — were expressed through Kurt as if they were experimental gestures. (The Beatles, also grand pop experimentalists, were loudly whispered by Nirvana as a primary influence, something unusual for punk devotees.) These elements were an important part of Nirvana's appeal. But what is transcendent about Kurt's art — what today, 10 years after his death, gives him rock immortality — was his voice and performance ability, both of which exuded otherworldly soulful beauty.

The initial popularity of alternative rock was in conflict with punk culture, which has a history of denouncing commercial success. Nirvana's second album, "Nevermind," along with the success of the Lollapalooza tours, changed the game. Both announced the discovery of an unaccounted-for demographic, cynical and amused by the pop rebellion displayed by new wave (Duran Duran) and hair-metal (Guns N' Roses). This newly discovered audience, one that surged well beyond the punk elite to the greater population of alienated and dislocated youth, was all at once represented by Kurt.

Kurt was aware of his sudden high profile and how it could be perceived as uncool in the punk scene. He made snotty comments about the fresh-minted alternative rock acts being touted by MTV. We all did. At the request of The New York Times, Nirvana's first record label, Seattle's Sub Pop, created a mock lexicon of "grunge" culture. Remarkably, the news media ran with it — to our disbelief and delight.

In the face of success, Kurt seemed to feel the need to maintain this stump position of punk rock credibility. Save the mainstream acceptance of the relatively straight-ahead pop of R.E.M. — which Kurt loved as much as hard-core thrash — there really was no model for such success from our community. He told Flipside, the iconic Los Angeles punk rock fanzine, that he hoped the next Nirvana album would vanquish their affiliation with the "lamestream." He recounted being taken aback by an audience member who grabbed him and advised him to, "Just go for it, man." I remember smiling at this, as it was how most of us felt. We didn't perceive Nirvana's status as lame. It was cool.

After all, the kids chose "Nevermind." Geffen Records, the band's label at the time, had no real plans for it, hoping for modest sales. Rolling Stone gave it a lukewarm review. Its subsequent off-the-map success was wonderful, fantastic and completely genuine. What was disingenuous and annoyingly misrepresentative was the reaction of the corporate music industry. The alternative rock phenomenon was a youth culture hit and it made stars out of select artists but, for the most part, it was a bunch of corn to the creative scene where Kurt came from.

Nirvana made a point of touring with challenging groups like the Boredoms, the Butthole Surfers and the Meat Puppets and presenting them to a huge audience — one that was largely unaware of those bands' influence. But only the Meat Puppets would click a little bit. Without MTV or radio support, no one was likely to reach Nirvana's peak.

When Kurt died, a lot of the capitalized froth of alternative rock fizzled. Mainstream rock lost its kingpin group, an unlikely one imbued with avant-garde genius, and contemporary rock became harder and meaner, more aggressive and dumbed down and sexist. Rage and aggression were elements for Kurt to play with as an artist, but he was profoundly gentle and intelligent. He was sincere in his distaste for bullyboy music — always pronouncing his love for queer culture, feminism and the punk rock do-it-yourself ideal. Most people who adapt punk as a lifestyle represent these ideals, but with one of the finest rock voices ever heard, Kurt got to represent them to an attentive world. Whatever contact he made was really his most valued success.

You wouldn't know it now by looking at MTV, with its scorn-metal buffoons and Disney-damaged pop idols, but the underground scene Kurt came from is more creative and exciting than it's ever been. From radical pop to sensorial noise-action to the subterranean forays in drone-folk-psyche-improv, all the music Kurt adored is very much alive and being played by amazing artists he didn't live to see, artists who recognize Kurt as a significant and honorable muse.

The kid who looked like him sat next to me in the basement where we were playing and I knew he was going to ask me about Kurt. This happens a lot. What was Kurt like? Was he a good guy? Simple things. He asked me if I thought Kurt would've liked this total outsider music we were hearing. I laughed, realizing the kid was slightly bewildered by it all, and I answered emphatically, "Yeah, Kurt would have loved this."

Thurston Moore is a member of the band Sonic Youth.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

World War II flying ace Antoine de Saint-Exupéry disappeared somewhere over the Mediterranean, on a spy mission in '44.

Succinctly, he wrote a beautiful story that profoundly affected many, and has led to much thought in many languages.

It took me a long time to learn where he came from. The little prince, who asked me so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones I asked him. It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was revealed to me.    The first time he saw my airplane, for instance...he asked me:    "What is that object?"    "That is not an object. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my airplane."    And I was proud to have him learn that I could fly.    He cried out then:    "What! You dropped down from the sky?"    "Yes," I answered modestly.    "Oh! That is funny!"    And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.

Everywhere they looked (and they looked in a lot of places)

The proof is in the pudding: computers have validated Dr Thomas Hales' proof of (also known for Sir Walter Raleigh, who demanded an estimate of the cannonballs in a yay-high stack). He didn't call it face-centered cubic packing, and probably the grocers down by the corner store didn't either, but now we're closer to agreeing on the proof.


... the proof that the grocers have been right all along, and we can't even get a computer to prove it within twenty years.

Revolution is on the rise.

Revolution is taking place / and you better watch out / for it's righteous

The Youth Be Getting Rizzestlizzes.

I don't have enough speakers for this song. It is, as they say, off the hizzle.

The cloverleaf is the most popular flower.

Although a spotty-faced fifteen year-old like me could spot the fatal flaw ("weaving area? Why, that's stupid") in the cloverleaf design, only recently have engineers begun to reassess the stupid symmetry of America's national flower.

Now, transportation engineers recommend cloverleaf interchanges only for rural regions where traffic is light. But that suggestion comes too late for Southern California, where at least two dozen cloverleafs contribute to congestion on major freeways. Moreover, the state's budget crisis has ensured that only a few of the interchanges will be replaced in the next decade.

And while we're at it, get me off of this English Roundabout!

Yeah, hell has frozen over.

I'm going to

punch you in your glasses.

... to hang from my own thread

Civil engineers are designing a steeper cliff better bridge to strike with a big barge.

MIAMI April 5 (Reuters) - A 1,000-tonbarge rammed into a pier supporting an aging bridge over Florida's Apalachicola Bay last week, delighting civil engineers, who plan to ram it a dozen more times.

The old St. George Island Causeway Bridge was scheduled for demolition anyway, so the Florida Department of Transportation and engineers at the University of Florida set up a $1 million experiment to collect crash-impact data that will help them design safer bridges.

"It's something that we don't get to do very often," Henry Bollman, senior bridge designer with the department, said on Monday. "We rammed the channel pier once last week. ... Today we'll have hopefully two collisions."

The bridge and the barge are fitted with more than 150 sensors to provide a microsecond-by-microsecond record of the impact load as the barge hits the bridge at increasingly faster speeds. Most bridge design standards are based on tests using scale models, so the data collected from the crash tests could affect national design codes, the engineers said.

They rented the 150-foot (45-meter) barge from a contractor who built the newly opened replacement bridge connecting the small town of East Point to St. George's Island. When the tests are done, the experimenters will pay to have the vessel repaired. The bridge will be demolished and the pieces sunk to create an artificial reef for fish.

This used to be my playground.

Before too long, in addition to the Lower Haight Shopping District, we may well have the Upper Wal-Mart neighbourhood. Hell, we already have Upper Safeway, the energetic triangle stretching north-west between Mint Hill and Duboce Park.

The bullying approach that Wal-Mart takes in shoe-horning its union-busting, wage-cutting, immigrant-exploiting stores into California make me shudder.

Three words that changed my world, (times two)

Proudhon's anarchist statement that " ... ownership is theft" has been ringing between my ears.
Curiously, the first hit from a Google search resulted in a recent column from the vaguely fascist and often inaccurate Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

And the rabble-rousing motto "Qui Tacet Consentit", perhaps adapted from Goldsmith, makes a spendid caption for a poster by David Lance Goines. I first saw this powerful grainy image in Laura Slatkin's garret office somewhere at the College of the University of Chicago.

Achilles, heal thyself.

Roy and Leslie Adkins' stirring account of Jean-François Champollion's life, spent in pursuit of hieroglyphics, revealed that this young linguist, hailed as a genius from a very early age, struggled with German. Of all the modern languages (French, English, Italian, the latter two necessary for reading scholarship) and the oriental and african languages (Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldean, Persian, Greek, Latin, Demotic, and especially Coptic), he encountered problems with the most structured of modern European languages?

I didn't realise that the decipherement of the Rosetta Stone didn't take place for many years after Champollion's discovery.

Although the Adkins' book tosses in odd bits of sensationalism (describing the work of an English antiquariam, "... he was a homosexual ...") and often irrelevant and unedifying asides, it is a decent account of the struggle to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. At times they attempt to cast Champollion and Young as fighting mano a mano, but they would do better to focus on Champollion and his stalwart brother, Jean-Jacques. They present the historical context of the Royalist upheaval in France very well.

... where there used to be a motorway.

While listening to XTC's bucolic Apple Venus Vol I, I for the first time hear the lyrics:

I want to see a river of orchids /
where there used to be a motorway

This from the band who sang of the nonsense of the "English Roundabout"

Lies, damn lies, and the Chronicle.

Don Asmussen'sBad Reporter makes the Chronicle worth buying.

Since my comrade Mark and I can no longer commiserate over the local print media while downing crumb donuts (me) and blueberry muffins (him) at Bob's Donuts, it's up to me to belly-ache about how his comic ("The LIES behind the TRUTH, and the TRUTH behind those LIES that are behind that TRUTH") amusingly underscores all the crap that is the Chronicle. Both the L.A.Times (frustratingly not available for home delivery in my 'hood) and the Examiner ("Since 1865") have more solid regional coverage.