I'm a lasagna boy!

In which we go metric but not electric

I took an arduous climb (on a cog-wheel railway, the world's longest and perhaps also steepest) to the summit of Pike's Peak, to the height of 4298 m (or 14,110 ft). This was the highest altitude at which I have stood since taking a similar rail up Jungfrau near Interlaken, in Switzerland.
UPDATE: In fact, Jungfraujoch is only 3454m, but to its credit has an all-electric railway. (The Manitou Springs and Pike's Peak Railway is, curiously, diesel despite being of Swiss manufacture.) Pike's Peak may be the highest terrestrial altitude I have attained.

More photographs of Pike's Peak.

In which MUNI shuts the stable door

After the public-transit horse is long gone, MUNI is looking into ways of shutting the stable door. According to an article in the San Francisco Examiner, the transit agency still has no idea about how many people ride the various bus routes. Not only do I find this embarassing -- London Transit conductors and ticket-takers knew this by examining the day's ticket stubs, one hundred years ago -- we should find it doubly embarassing as we are in the region known for its technological innovation.

Muni is currently facing a multiyear deficit and has been forced to raise fares twice in two years while cutting service. Some transportation advocates have called for the agency to become more efficient by becoming faster — streamlining some of its busiest lines.

Having already inflicted a double-whammy on the transit-taking public, a dwindling population, the transit agency is now looking into half-baked computerized statistics collection. Have they not already installed TransLink smartcard readers on all streetcar and light-rail lines? Enforce the use of those, and you will get a vast data set without the need for additional infrastructure.

Data that the fare collection will not provide:

• Amount of time that people waited for the 22 Fillmore while the NextBus sign ticks away the hours. "Next Bus in ... 3 minutes ... 7 minutes ... 12 minutes"


• Number of fare evaders jumping on at the back door at the intersection of Market and Van Ness


• Amount of time wasted at the N-Judah stops that do not note the bus bridge in effect after 2200 daily

If you wanted to get to SFO this morning, I hope that you did not take BART. In fact, if you ever want to get to the airport, you probably do not take BART.

15th and Valencia

In between Zeitgeist and Dolores Park, the regular flow of emo stencil graffiti on the sidewalk encounters a rejoinder.

Waller and Steiner

Across from the café is a utility pole: attached to the utiliity pole is a box, clear on two sides:

The box bears the hopeful legend "Take Something, Leave Something". Most of the transactions to date appear to be trash, even though the height (just above eye level) of the box should discourage this.

In which someone takes pride in the neighbourhood

I frequently slag on the neighbourhood for having a poorly-shared park that smells like poop, for having no respect for its murals, and for

I was happy to see that the recently-defaced mural at Future Primitive Sound System has received some repair. Props to whoever painted over the tags.

In which we become stowaways in our house

Carol Lloyd has an article, with some nice photographs, on residential buildings made from shipping containers. Shigeru Bau's striking Nomadic Museum is an outstanding example of a building -- a massive yet portable building, in fact, made from containers.
Aram, check out the photographs!

In which the car, she purrs like a kitten

From the Park Station Blotter:

Kitty Rescue
Monday, June 5, 2006; 9:41 p.m.; 310 Haight Street

A night watch sergeant stopped to investigate why six people were
gathered around a car. He found that they were unsuccessfully
attempting to coax two kittens that appeared to be trapped inside the
engine compartment. The sergeant located the owner of the car and got
him to pop the hood, one kitty jumped out and the other required
further coaxing. The last reluctant kitten finally did come out no
worse for the ware. Animal Care and Control responded and took custody
of the two.

In which we map our past

The BBC have a very cool map showing the growth of urban areas.

In which the Farmer's Market has an earthquake retrofit

The prospect of the BART retrofit crowding out the feel-good Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building fascinates me.

I especially like that the alternatives include placing the produce and meat stalls in the traffic lanes of the Embarcadero boulevard itself, -- a practice I have seen at Farmer's Markets worldwide. I prefer this to the prospect of having the "beyond organic" dates of Mr Robert Lauer & co. adjacent the BART retrofit machinery.

In which our neighbourhood needs a vigilante

I am in favour of neighbourhood policing, not just because it affords me the desired opportunity to swing a sack of doorknobs.

After Vallie chased down the Gang of Three, the hoodlums who have been wantonly breaking car windows in broad daylight, I realised that we, the Concerned Citizens, can do an effective job of making our presence known. We can sit outside and enjoy the sights and sounds of the 'hood (also known as stoopin'. We can walk with confidence on the streets, and say "hello" to people as we pass. We can let the police know about businesses and residences that repeatedly suffer from vandalism (especially graffiti, in this area. One of these days I will post the collection I have of crude designs scrawled on the grim building across the street). We can sweep the sidewalks, we can let 28-Clean know about litter, and we can keep our buildings well-lit at night.
And we can swing a sack of doorknobs.

Howto get real audio files on to your ipod

I have been listening to the Rolling Stones Sessions of Death Cab for Cutie, which are readily and handily available from Rolling Stone's web site.

To get these from the interwebs to my iPod was but the work of an instant:

• download use Audio Hijack, a simple and superb piece of software. It requires that you restart the application from which you are recording audio, but other than that is completely non-invasive. And it has a hilarious logo.
• Play the RealAudio link, and click "Record" in AudioHijack. The file appears as a .aiff
• Open the file (the default association is with Apple's iTunes) and control-click on it from within the application. One of the options offered is "Convert to .mp3" (or "to .aac", if that is your default). Select this, and iTunes converts the file in the background.
• Edit the mp3 info (control-click, select "Get Info", and edit from the resulting popup window).
• Sync to an iPod, and Bob's yr uncle.

MTv has some non-Mac compatible Windows Media Player DRM built into its site. I have not yet figured out how to get this to work with their setup.

In which we wager

This week we are betting not on the Belmont Stakes, the desirable third jewel in the Triple Crown, but on parking.

The beginner's bet is against a parking meter: a few pennies, perhaps a quarter: that is your bet that you can finish the errand, the meal, picking up whatever, in the few minutes the city provides you in exchange for the coin.
The more advanced bet is against the painted kerb. Should you park in a red zone, a blue zone, a yellow-and-red zone, or a green zone, you are flirting with having the car towed.

The city's web site sternly warns: "MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES ARE NOT TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION." As for the tow: after several years of scandal around the various shady contractors engaged in the auto-reclamation trade, we have a brand-new downtown impound yard. I chuckle at the euphemistically-named Auto Return, the contractor that the city of San Francisco now has.

Some people are not very good losers in this gamble.

In which we look to an agèd Japanese fisherman to make us French pastries

The arrival of Beard Papa's in San Francisco intrigues me more for their location than their cuisine. Beard Papa's is a Japanese chain of fast-food éclair and cream-puff retailers, and recently opened a franchise in San Francisco, in an alley which may not exist. Papa Beard's occupies a kiosk in a recently-created pedestrian area between Mission and Market, alongside the Museum of Crafts and Folk Art. San Francisco Chronicle columnists Matier and Ross pointed out an intriguing and difficult aspect of the Museum's location earlier this year:

the Postal Service doesn't recognize the museum's existence, neither does Federal Express or UPS or any other delivery service -- all lifelines of any business operation.

Nor does the Internal Revenue Service or MapQuest, or -- for that matter -- San Francisco's computerized 911 system.

"So you'd better not have a heart attack here,'' said museum executive director Kate Eilertsen, who just may need some cardio work herself if things don't get resolved quickly.

It's hard to say just who is responsible for keeping the museum off the map. But there's no shortage of finger-pointing going on between the Postal Service, the city and the developer that created the $7.5 million "Yerba Buena Lane" where the museum now sits after moving from its old location at Fort Mason.

The space -- punched out of the backside of the Marriott Hotel -- is just one of a dozen shops and restaurants that landlord Millennium Partners, developer of the neighboring Four Seasons hotel, plans to lease along the pedestrian mall carved out between Market and Mission streets.

And while Millennium posted a street sign with the designation of Yerba Buena Lane, it never got all the legal sign-offs for what amounts to a public thoroughfare on private property.

The folks at the Department of Public Works, who are responsible for street signage, don't know anything about Yerba Buena Lane.

As for the Postal Service? "We get all our information from the city -- whatever they tell us, we go with it,'' spokeswoman Sharon Mayall said.

Officials at the Redevelopment Agency, which was overseeing the Yerba Buena Lane project, say they've been busy themselves lately moving to a new address -- and frankly, they didn't have an immediate answer for the museum's problem.

In the meantime, the problems continue. Just last week, the museum's phones were shut off -- because the phone bill never arrived.

In which I hear talking but I do not see dancing

The continued presence of Pokey The Penguin (archive) on the Internets amuses and gladdens me.

One of my favourite, classic, episodes is Adieu Mr Debussy! Somewhere I have a delightful t-shirt from Nutty Industries with a large-as-life Pokey saying "Yes!!!".

Other Art You Can Use: the Portable Cell Phone Booth, a sculpture by Nick Rodrigues.
Last week-end I was walking around in search of a friend's new abode (hi, Erik! hi, Chiara!) and had a phone running on empty. I could not find a pay-phone anywhere.

Underworld: Sites of Concealment

The photo book Underworld: Sites of Concealment disappointed me: I was expecting more of the mystery of antiquity. I had not realised that this (shrink-wrapped!) book was the catalogue from an exhibition organised by the Office of Science and Art in Frankfurt. The photographs focus exclusively on German basements, dungeons, cellars, pits, and bunkers; too many of the photographs are of military equipment. I wanted more of the fabulous Roman cisterns, like what we saw (and dined in: the Sarn?ç Restaurant) in Istanbul:

In which we discover the prettiest star

I free-associated while reading about a particular sort of star (informally known as "splat" or "asterisk", I guess), and thought about different kinds of non-celestial stars. The candidates:

Wandering Star, the haunting post-modern torch song by Portishead.

The Prettiest Star, the lush single David Bowie released in 1970 at the apex of the glam racket.

Kleene Star, which is an operation on a set of strings that produces the set of component strings, including the empty string. The motto "Kleeneliness is next to Gödeliness" made me chuckle.

I discovered Planet Math while looking for information about the Kleene Star, and find the wiki-based collaborative maths encyclopædia quite compelling.

On practical applications of the dog

Two stories on the news wire caught my interest: "Dog Feces Left at Congresswoman's Office":

a Democratic activist Thursday of leaving an envelope full of dog feces at Musgrave's Greeley office.

Musgrave spokeswoman Shaun Kenney said someone stuffed the envelope through the mail slot in the door on May 31 and then sped away in a car. Kenney said most of the preprinted return address was blacked out, but staffers used the nine-digit ZIP code to trace it to Kathleen Ensz, a Weld County Democratic volunteer.

Ensz told The Associated Press she left the envelope at Musgrave's office but said it "wasn't in the office doors, it was in the foyer." Asked what she meant by the act, she declined comment.

and " Woman Attacks Dog Breeder With Chihuahua":

Early Wednesday, the woman went to the breeder's home, pushed her way inside and began fighting with the breeder as she tried to make her way to the basement to get another puppy, police said.

The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.

As the woman drove away, she waved the dead puppy out of the car's sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said.

And Aram Saroyan Armstrong's Pooptopia is a game exploring how "poo can be harvested to create energy or it can spread disease".

For a stinking-to-high-heaven example of the latter, just consider a picnic in Duboce Park. Another outstanding use of poop: poop as political commentary.

redound

redound comes from the Latin redundare, to overflow; a secondary meaning, in English, is "to return" or "to recoil".

On water and corn

A bottle of Biota Spring Water advertises that the bottle is biodegradeable. In fact, the bottle is "made from a 100% renewable resource, corn".
Although corn is renewable, that fact does not endorse our approach: that we should renew corn corps in the way that we do. Since the 70s the United States has contributed to a national surplus of corn without increasing the world's ability to feed its population, and has increased the corn supply specifically for the benefit of few. Many of the corn products we see and consume in our everyday chores are a direct result of the gross corn surplus: the necessity to consume the surplus became the mother of invention.
In this case, the invention is the bottle:

NatureWork ™PLA uses 30% to 50% less fossil fuel to produce than petroleum-based plastics.

Although it decomposes naturally, the bottle still requires energy to produce, and from a source that we renew at great expense to the American taxpayer: $5 to $20 billions annually.

Other by-products of the corn surplus include high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS, chemically guided to taste exactly like naturally-occurring sugars); corn-fed beef, and accordingly lower beef prices (and quality); and, perhaps most damning of all, monocultural agribusiness which encourages the industrialization of all aspects of the food chain, at the expense of agricultural diversity and of environmental stewardship.

In which we 'love toping'

Even as a Danish study claims that men should drink a cocktail a day (!!), I fondly recall the days when we enjoyed a tipple while on the clock.
Michael Pollan, in his recent book "The Omnivore's Dilemma", also remarks on this practice:

As the historian W.J. Rorabaugh tells the story in The Alcoholic Republic, we drank the hard stuff at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, before work and after and very often during. Employers were expected to supply spirits over the course of the workday; in fact, the modern coffee break began as a late-morning whiskey break called "the elevenses." (Just to pronounce it makes you sound tipsy.) Except for a brief respite Sunday morning in church, Americans simply did not gather -- whether for a barn raising or a quilting bee, corn husking or political rally -- without passing the whiskey jug. Visitors from Europe -- hardly models of sobriety themselves -- marveled at the free flow of American spirits. "Come on then, if you love toping," the journalist William Cobbett wrote his fellow Englishmen in a dispatch from America. "For here you may drink yourself blind at the price of sixpence."

Although Pollan is using this quotation and the surround paragraph to illustrate other uses for a corn surplus, I find the historical note of whiskey consumption quite amusing. toping refers to the love of liquor, and the habitual drinking of ditto.

In which Monday is the quietest night

The tradition of shutting down restaurants of a Monday is alive and well in Hayes Valley. Last night I was meeting a peripatetic friend, and had thought that a nice evening at the Citizen Cake or the Absinthe was in order -- we could eat a few small plates, and have good wine and good coffee. Neither was open: we walked down the eerily quiet Gough St. to Hotel Biron, which was full and noisy with a private party. We then walked around the corner to Cav, the Catalan-inflected wine bar in Market Street's Deco Ghetto. Really, it's a high light of these few blocks: it does not make the pretence of a sidewalk café, and thus avoids the disappointment of Zuni for a casual drink. And the staff at Cav welcomed us, although we were not sloshing back the vino nor eating a full meal.

We did not want a meal, but neither did we want fast food. I do like the growing number of San Francisco wine bars, and the quality of the food they serve.

Yelp has nice snaps of some of Cav's dishes.

In which I was separated at birth

I was busting a move on the myheritage.com online facial-recgonition software (scary stuff! use bugmenot, perhaps!) only to discover that the "celebrity" I most closely resemble is Brian Aldiss, the octogenarian British science-fiction writer. I have read a few of his works, including the title story from the anthology "Who can replace a man?".
Apparently computers are not yet up to the task: he and I are markedly different in facial colouring, age, and other physical characteristics represented in the photo -- does he have a moustache?!

Of warm beer and cold coffee

I find that I prefer warm beer and cold coffee.

Warm beer: typically British ale, drawn from a hand-pump. The beermapping project presents a nice view of the city, although really what matters is Magnolia.

Cold coffee: not coffee poured over ice, but coffee brewed through a cold-water process. I discovered this at Barefoot Coffee Roasters, where the engaging baristas make all sorts of whimsical drinks (several recent concoctions have involved a culinary torch!).

Schizo Nr. 4

I was pretty damn happy to find new comic books of the "morally inexcusable" cartoons by Ivan Brunetti at the recently relocated Al's Comics on Market St. I bought a nice-smelling copy of Schizo Nr. 4, resplendent in its beautiful large format.
I was looking for "Shutterbug Follies" from beecomix, but finding Ivan Brunetti instead made me quite happy.

In which we call for Hammurabi

Like the mural on the corner of Scott and Haight, the Future Primitive mural on Steiner and Haight was not especially beautiful, but was carefully-done and appealing in its own way. Hoodlums have bombed it with their tags over the past several nights, defacing the now-vacant store.
I suppose that in the end, the entire mural will be painted over, suffering the same ignominious fate as its cousin two blocks away.

In which we go Barefoot

I visited Barefoot Coffee Roasters, in Santa Clara, yesterday afternoon. After hearing about their fastidious roasting, monthly cupping (first Saturday of each month, ten ack emma), and comfortable café, I was excited to head down there.

The barista was alarmingly pleasant, and explained some of the ingredients as she made a "Whim" -- the variable drink-of-the-day. She was putting together a concotion made from almond, orange, and espresso. I imagine that it would go well with some chocolate flavour as well. I drank a classic cappucino -- I imagined something like what (the late, much-lamented) Coopers would sell, or perhaps like the one from Intelligentsia in Chicago. I also had a double espresso, which came straight from the gorgeous single-boiler machine. The taste of the bean was distinct and different from my favourite, Blue Bottle, and also very good. I do not have the (expert) vocabulary to describe the coffee, but both the drink and the café impressed me as well put-together and welcoming. The coffee menu boasted many appealing-sounding drinks, and especially the cold-brewed iced coffee. The coffee grains soak in cold water for several hours, slowly absorbing the flavours without leaching out bitterness: the result is an exceptionally smooth (and potent! one needs to dilute before drinking, as the Greeks did with wine) iced coffee.

But: Barefoot hold down the fort far, far away in Santa Clara: I am glad that the Blue Bottle kiosk is a happy km or so away from my stoop, a distance eminently walkable. Barefoot's website tantalizingly hints "Yes, Barefoot is currently located in a little hole in the wall in a super dense commercial zone without a lot of swank culture… but just you wait!". Swank culture or not -- Blue Bottle is in an alley also populated by a car-repair shop, several sleepy drunks, and a shooting gallery! -- the visit to Barefoot was a pleasant treat.

Tintin in Tibet

The Dalai Lama will honor Tintin with an award.

Tintin is a comic-book character, created by Hergé. One of my earliest memories is of the Thompson twins ("Thomson and Thompson. No, without a p, as in Venezuela. Yes, with a p, as in psychology.") falling down the stairs, probably from "The Secret of The Unicorn" which my mother read to me on a road-trip across the western United States. From these books I developed a keen appreciation of colourful profanity -- I knew coelocanth as a derogatory epithet a long time before I found out it was a long-vanished fish; similarly for carpetbagger, ungulate, troglodyte, and so many more (not only in English, either!). Much of my geography (but not, I hope, cultural knowledge) came from Tintin's travels: to America, India, the Congo; to Shanghai, to Scotland, through Switzerland. In fact, some years ago I arrived on a train in Geneva to see a huge reproduction of Tintin's adventures in that same train station (in "The Calculus Affair"). The many and wonderful translations, not the least of which are Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner's beautiful rendering into English, have become a fixture of my bookshelf. A few weeks ago I put some books on the counter of a bookstore in Amsterdam. The clerk looked at me as she came to the Tintin book, and said: "It's in Dutch. Is that okay?" and I told her how I like to pick up a Tintin in each country, in each language, and she smiled and said she would start doing that for her nephew, who also loves the books.

In a case of life imitating art, this award echoes the respect paid Tintin in his adventure "Tintin in Tibet". In that story, Tintin follows his intuition across Asia to rescue his old friend Chang. He gains the respect of a secluded monastery for his devotion and sincerity.