February 18, 2009
In which I could not keep from smiling
Just as Death Cab for Cutie sang, so Brooklyn fills in Coney Island: We might be looking at vacant lots for a long time to come,” said Charles Denson, executive director of the Coney Island History Project. “Everybody’s broke. These massive plans, these visions, don’t usually work. But I hope for the best.” They sang: "I can hear the Atlantic echo back roller coaster screams from summers past. And everything was closed at Coney Island, and I could not help from smiling. Brooklyn will fill in the beach eventually and everyone will go except me." The developers are singing the same song, and I will fondly remember the first time, every time, and the last time I visited Coney Island.... Read more
January 9, 2009
In which we have an impeachy idea
This photograph has made me laugh aloud, roll on the floor laughing, and blow milk out my nose. Now imagine saying Blagojevich with a nasal, Jerry Lewis voice, and be sure you are not drinking milk when you think this. Thanks, Aram, for pointing out this photograph and bringing untold chuckles into this apartment.... Read more
January 1, 2009
In which the confetti is the beginning of the party
I like street-cleaning equipment, and photos of ditto.... Read more
December 13, 2008
Le Tour du Chocolat
Amy Thomas, writing in The New York Times, has an idea after mine own heart: cycle from chocolatier to chocolatier, covering ground and sampling chocolates. My solution: devote one full day to chocolate boutiques, and do it in style. So, on my last visit to Paris, I took to the city’s Vélib’ bike system and mastered a two-wheeled circuit of eight of the chocolatiers that had the best reputations and most glowing reviews in city guidebooks and online message boards. It was exhilarating and exhausting, not to mention decadent. It was a chocoholic’s dream ride. The Vélib’s — industrial-looking road bikes that are already icons of Parisian-chic just a year and a half after the city initiated the program — made the moveable feast more fun. Progressing from pralines to pavés, I spun by the Eiffel Tower, zipped across the Seine and careened through the spindly streets of St.-Germain-des-Prés alongside other bikers: Parisians in summer dresses and business suits, their front baskets toting briefcases, baguettes and sometimes even Jack Russell terriers. Practically speaking, the bikes were all but essential. How else could I cover five arrondissements in as many hours, while simultaneously countering a day of debaucherous extremes?... Read more
December 12, 2008
In which I see by my outfit
You have broken faith with the eight million gods of Shinto ... The footless dead will come to you when the grasses sleep and bitch in your ear.... Read more
December 2, 2008
November 22, 2008
November 1, 2008
In which we choose honesty over bribery
The New York Times" has some coverage of Rachel Trachtenburg's testimony.... Read more
October 21, 2008
In which I retire
I used to entertain the notion of retiring to the middle-south of Portugal, not quite as far to the Mediterranean end as The Algarve, and settling in to a quiet life of cork farming. The farm would have a few chickens, for the delicious eggs of a morning, and from time to time I would harvest the cork. Now I have a new retirement plan: away to the rocky north coast of Scotland, my ancestral home, where I will set up a punk-rock bed-and-breakfast, with a nice bit o' land around it. Call it the Inn on the Kilt Acre; my uncle can build a stone fence. He is a renowned builder in those parts.... Read more
September 30, 2008
September 29, 2008
May 4, 2008
March 3, 2008
In which proof of the Almighty is just a Calendar Book away
Read more at http://jameth.livejournal.com/3982795.html.... Read more
February 28, 2008
In which I smell a rat
The sight of a rat in the subway fills me with joy, not horror. I have a superstition: a rat augurs well. I especially enjoy the sight of a rat gambolling along the tracks late at night, in the utter silence of a quiet subway station.... Read more
February 17, 2008
In which the spirit of free enterprise rises
Aram's gig is online, or will be, soon. I wonder if he will recreate those beautiful stamped-metal business cards I last saw him handing out on our back porch on Kimbark Street just before it became Allan's bedroom for that summer. Word is that Gordon has a new shop, too. Word!... Read more
February 15, 2008
A few thoughts on elevators
Elevator-simulation software uses concepts from the field of discrete event simulation. I am not familiar with the algorithms used, but have read about systems used for these simulations. One thing I wonder about whenever I ride an elevator: why do the floor-selection buttons not cycle through on and off? Lobby Mezzanine Gallery Penthouse Terrace (compare to: Lobby Mezzanine Gallery Penthouse Terrace ) I know that people find psychological relief from repeatedly punching elevator buttons, expecting that the additive effect of these pushes will make the elevator move faster. The sudden transition from subway and the horizontal motion to the elevator and its vertical movements sometimes jars me, especially on mornings when I take the train directly to the office building, and expect a jarring forward motion to accompany the closing elevator doors.... Read more
February 14, 2008
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Neutral Milk Hotel album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I would not have noticed were it not for coming across a crisp cover of the title song and following links. The Lazy Catfish presents video interpretations of the album this Thursday at nine o'clock; the poster above is the advert for the gig.... Read more
January 3, 2008
In the sculpture garden of the philosophers
"Garden of the Philosophers" is the phrase I should use to describe Socrates Sculpture Park, a City Park, at an attractive corner of Long Island City, Queens. Walking into the park felt akin to a stroll in a junkyard, complete with a Beware of the Dog sign (and actual frothing-at-the-mouth dog, protecting its rusting iron heaps. Was this also art?). The park area had several fresh-looking pieces as part of the Emerging Artists Fund 2007 annual exhibition, but several had begun to age unnervingly from the weather, and others looked too confusing to be outdoors (an oversized Christmas decoration might be kitsch, but art?). I took some photographs, now that I am back in the habit of carrying my pocket camera. The sculpture I enjoyed the most was a series of steel posts about five meters tall, with a rotating arm that swung with the wind and periodically hit a bell with a weight. I have never liked wind chimes, but this shining sculpture captured my attention. The cups on the East River side of the sculpture catch the breeze, turning an axle connected to a short tube with a weight at one end. The weighted side of the apparatus completes its revolution independently of the cups, and the weight itself is on a hinge, so that it only occasionally hits the hollow tube mounted above the stationary triangular fin. The sound is quite lovely. Thanks in part to the proximity of the Museum of the Moving Image, the Garden hosts annual outdoor film screenings. Where does the name "Socrates" come from? The Park Department's web site is strangely quiet on this. The park's web site notes that sculptor Mark di Suvero led its creation in the mid Eighties, around the same time that the City of Pittsburgh was agonizing over the installation of one of his monumental outdoor sculptures on a traffic island downtown.... Read more
December 25, 2007
In which it is snow joke
> Lots of Calvin and Hobbes snow cartoons, hurray! Now, if it weren't for Al Gore's global warming shenanigans, we could get some snow and make our own snowman!... Read more
December 11, 2007
In which the prevalent attitude creeps up again
An Asian-looking fellow gets hauled off to the station while photographing a subway station. He is suing the NYPD: Police sources said officers question people photographing the city’s rail infrastructure on “rare occasions,” citing instances in which law enforcement officials have identified men taking photographs of city bridges and subways as Iranian intelligence agents and suspected Pakistani terrorists who were stopped by police while taking pictures of the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges. “I was surprised and upset that I could be handcuffed on the street for taking a photograph,” Wiita said. “What was really disheartening was that I knew this has probably happened before and that it could happen again to anyone.” This sounds all too familiar. I just got a new camera, in fact: time to try it out! (Bye the bye, I have lots of photographs of subways and bridges already.)... Read more
November 29, 2007
November 16, 2007
Il faut réchauffer la colle.
Dreams: on a train, ordering a drink, en route to the awards ceremony for stickiest glue. The recipient, a friend of mine, had been well-known in our circle for having the stickiest glue, and we were all quite proud for the general recognition this would bring him. I was ordering a typical Martini, but my seat-mate reminded me that the French do not have the same notion of cocktails, and so I ended up asking the waiter for a glass of chilled gin. He gave me a quizzical look but I imagine that I ended up with what I expected -- I woke up or went to another dream.... Read more
November 12, 2007
October 10, 2007
Ghost-dog chess
Under a slightly mis-leading name, the Hip-Hop Chess Federation presents such delights as Garry Kasparov versus RZA and Deep Blue against GZA/Genius. Or something.... Read more
September 10, 2007
In which we see Nature in action
&t Central Park's famous red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, was dining about about the town. I pulled over as I was finishing a circuit of the Park, curious about why the throng of photographers was all agog. New Yorkers might identify with this raptor because he, too, had housing struggles. The bird flew a few feet from my face after he swooped to catch a mouse; he alighted on a nearby bough and devoured it, and then neatly cleaned his beak and talons against the bark. correction: A correspondent observed: "Just for the record, that's not Pale Male but the juvenile from the 888 7th Avenue nest." More photographs and narrative at his web site.... Read more
September 4, 2007
In which we go island-hopping
Governors, Coney, and Manhattan Islands with Aram and Mary. We saw the Sideshow by the Seashore (although Insectavora was off that day), replete with fire-eaters, human blockheads, tight-rope walkers, snake charmers, and the mysterious mummified baby — was it really human?); we wandered through the toroids of Richard Serra at MoMA; we drank beers; we drank wine in the park. Anna and I shared a Swingers cabin on the Wonder Wheel, and got an extra trip 'round because we didn't jump off after the second rotation; we were perhaps too busy looking at the piebald cat sitting on the fence surrounding the massive works of the Wheel itself. Just beyond the fence, a massive clearing where the go-kart track was just recently reminded us that the last days of Coney Island are nigh: at least, the last days of Coney Island as dissolute all-New York playground. Some rides are going, going, gone; condos are coming. Anna and I enjoyed a last swing on the Pirate, although Mary's camera had succumbed to the enthusiasm of the day and was out of battery, so the screams and expressions of glee are as fleeting as Astroland itself.... Read more
August 1, 2007
In which we investigate worn-out sayings
Another of the books I have long intended to write: a work on the etymology of phrases. Many of the hackneyed, trite, and worn-out formulae of speech come from a specific event. Some of the more recent, such as "Elvis has left the building" are well-documented catchphrases; others, such as "Getting on like a house on fire" are more obscure, and require much research. Somewhere in the vast boxes of stuff I have several — not many! &mdash index cards with notations on the etymology of phrases; some cards derive from other reference works, some from my encounters with phrases. As more of our printed material becomes available electronically, searching for the first written occurrence of a phrase might be come an exercise in technology; however, many phrases made a subtle transition from oral to written, and identifying the actual origin might be much more difficult.... Read more
July 21, 2007
On a glass of ice
Some years ago, I had the thought to write a book on ice. In addition to a prècis of the chemical and physical properties of ice, I wanted to focus on the social aspects of the thing. Ice separated classes, divides the restaurants of different countries, and made possible the cocktail. Chemical ice makes possible the global distribution of once-local delicacies; ice as a physical force has shaped our neighbourhoods and our continents. Ice has great importance to scientific and political issues: at the Earth's polar caps, it represents a bank of fresh water that might be used to share water with arid countries; in relatively unexplored areas of the world, the ice is a time capsule that contains undisturbed microörganisms from tens of thousands of years. For extraterrestrial explorers, ice holds the promise of past or future life; for terrestrial explorers, ice is a wonderland, full of adventure and excitement from the skating-rink at Rockefeller Center to glaciers in New Zealand. I wanted to examine not these, but the social history of the stuff. In literature and in popular culture, ice has connotations beyond its physical properties. My outline and notes did not amount to much of a book, and I have long since filed the idea next to my Great American Novel (iteration one: the road trip, but not On The Road) and my examination of the language of sacrifice in the Greek dramatic corpus (I got to examples one and two, the second of which I wrote with the title, "The Religious and Poetic Imagery of Wine-Drinking in the Cyclops of Euripides"; the first is yet unfinished; I wandered into a critical examination of The Cyclops itself, and never recovered. I wonder why, to this day, very few critical studies of the sole surviving satyr play exist). I no longer have my notes; they were on a computer that was lost, reformatted, stolen; they were merely a handful of citations, from mid-nineteenth-century travellers' accounts of encountering ice in American hotels, from sea captains who dragged shiploads of the stuff from Canada to points south, and so on. ... The social aspects of ice are evasive, subtle, and would require more diligence to unearth than I have in me. I would be quite happy to travel to Florence and look for the bar where Camillo Negroni adulterated the Americano (Campari, Vermouth rosso, and soda) with gin, to see whether he had his served up, with a famously thin layer of ice atop, or on the rocks, in an elegant tumbler (after dozens of Negronis, I still cannot decide). I could walk the far reaches of Nunavut and see how the ice has shaped the land -- and how that, in turn shapes the people (for that matter, I could walk through San Francisco, or New York, and see ditto. But I have never visited Nunavut.) I could walk through Buenos Aires (which recently had its first snowstorm in almost a century) and talk to wharfers who unloaded ice from ships a few generations ago; I could find the communities in Russia and in Scandinavia and in Manchuria where people need to cope with moving about on ice almost every day of the week. Marco Polo reported on people who skated along the ice, with curved shoes. A few years ago, Mariana Gosnell's book Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance appeared, and I figured the market for books on ice was probably saturated. I started reading this book, but it was both sufficiently different from the book I wanted to write and more meandering; I did not get very far. All of this came to mind as I filled a glass with pieces of ice from the automatic icemaker in the refrigerator (there's another book: On refrigeration. This would be both a social and scientific book, but not as much about the physics or chemistry of refrigeration, but about the public-health aspects.). I enjoy drinking water from an iced glass: as the ice melts, the clear taste of the water refreshes me. This is one of my indulgences: the energy and expense of ice.... Read more
July 20, 2007
In which we shake and bake
Or wake and quake, to be precise: "It was all pretty minor," said U.S. Geological Survey spokeswoman Leslie Gordon. "It didn't interrupt donut production." Gordon said the quake was centered about two miles northeast of downtown Oakland on the Hayward fault. The actual epicenter was in the Oakland Hills near Joaquin Miller Park and the Mormon Temple, according to an online topographic mapping service that works with the USGS. Aram and I rode past the Mormon Temple plenty the first year that he lived in Oakland: he on the Batavus (!!) and me on either the Ciöcc or the Dutchess. Nice rolling paths along that area, and Joaquin Miller is an awesome little park for exploration on a mountain bike.... Read more
July 18, 2007
In which he has a different sort of revolution
&tThis guy checked out all 171 Starbucks in New York City, beginning by bicycle in Washington Heights and winding up, no doubt with frappucino-coloured stains on his gums and sugary pits in his teeth, 12 hours later traipsing in a car. I won't throw stones: a few weeks ago I did something similar (length, perhaps, not quantity) with doughnut shops and the Bay Area. He made a video, which I didn't. But I did ride a goddam fixed-gear. And I'm into these snacks now (they be a tasty simulacrum of the pieces of my each and every day). And I have long known that cycling is about embracing the philosophical question best put by Eddy Merckx: "Eat to ride. Ride to eat." The New York Times has also put into print its assurance that chubby people can rock the ride as well. (Walking home today, I walked next a woman talking loudly and into a 'phone. She said, quite interested, "Yes, I read the article. I didn't know that cycling can make you fat. Is biking the same as cycling? How does it make you fat?" I can tell her: it does make me fat. I like all the delicious places that cycling takes me.) Yo, Eddy!... Read more
July 3, 2007
In which we pull it off
Seven years later, seven years of a drone from my only closet, seven years.... Read more
June 30, 2007
On parking in San Francisco
I have long wanted to open a bar, and while driving through the Mission this afternoon Aram and Scott pointed out that the Gestalt-Zeitgeist axis is missing one essential item from the stock of German in English: Schadenfreude. Excellent. I'll open a bar, call it Schadenfreude, and make a mint. Happy hour will entail laughing at the misery of others, trying to balance on the pitched, waxed floor (a "slippery slope". Geddit?), and sloshing back perfect Martinis. Anna suggests that I derive a certain nasty pleasure from having cars tagged and towed, especially when they block the sidewalk or a driveway. (She has, however, disabused me of the rambunctious habit of moving bodily over the hood of a car blocking the sidewalk.) Someone else has the counterpart: threatening retaliation if his car is towed.... Read more
June 23, 2007
In which you can get there from here
Or, more specifically, Théré from Héré.... Read more
June 12, 2007
In which I has a hat
While shifting stuff around over the week-end ("packing"), I found my hat. The Brooklyn Cyclones baseball cap that I have worn off and on for the past several years, and which fits comfortably under a cycling helmet. Oh! and I found the grey cap which I mislaid last week: in the wash. Fortunately, the good folks at Walz Caps have done a good job with the wool blend, and my grey cap fits as neatly as ever it did. UPDATE: Coincidence? I think not!... Read more
May 29, 2007
On the usefulness of the two-dollar bill
Metafilter reminded me of a favourite news story: The Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills.... Read more
May 8, 2007
In which I am a millionaire
If I had a nickel for each time I heard the phrase "Your call is important to us" and a dime for "Your call is very important to us", I swear, I would have money pouring out my goddam ears.... Read more
April 23, 2007
In which I have a leaky memory
What was the name of the good-natured fellow who put up messages each day outside the San Francisco Airport Clarion Hotel? The hotel's sign faces Highway 101, and I fondly remember folksy wisdom and friendly messages from the signboard -- but can't remember the name of the man responsible, although he enjoyed some celebrity back in '98 or thereabouts. Those were the days before my carpool gave up the ghost.... Read more
April 16, 2007
April 10, 2007
In which I have a new toy
My new messenger bag is far from a toy: it's quite practical, in fact. But it brings me the same sort of delight, with its details and bright colours. I ordered it through Zugster Bags, a one-man shop in San Francisco, after my Timbuk2 literally fell apart at the seams (Timbuk also declined to repair the bag, from which a compression strap had detached, the stabilty belt ripped off, and the bottom seams separated. This has nothing to do with their new, shabby, not-made-in-SF-or-even-in-the-US, manufacturing process; I had the bag for more than eight years). The Zugster Bag has pride in the gorgeous details: the glow-in-the-dark thread in the shape of a "Z"; the straps that tuck neatly everywhere; the "Double-D" chest strap; the mass of inner pockets, some with velcro, some without; and the front flap design. All the work is custom, and lovingly hand-made by Adam.... Read more
April 9, 2007
On getting from Burrito Bordeaux to the Jersey Docks
I am not a burrito connoisseur, nor even an aficionado, but reports on the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel do get the hunger a-panging (Question: can pangs pang? Answer: Yes).... Read more
April 4, 2007
In which people, yr author included, act like jurks
I do things like this, but mostly I sit with a few weeks' worth of junk mail and sort into three piles: items with my name or other identifying information (address, SSID, ...); business-reply envelopes; and other. I discard the first pile, filing it into the cross-cut shredder; I stuff the last pile into the second, and feel good that I am keeping postal-service employees ("the mailman") in business, although they probably don't deserve it. Critical Smash vs. Critical Mass, now replete with "parade rules", in Manhattan. Comments on Leah Garchik's blog about the latest SF Critical Mass tend to the vitriolic.... Read more
March 23, 2007
vir1
Thanks to archive.org, you can see my web site from ten-plus years ago. Roffle.... Read more
February 26, 2007
In which we are free, and open-source
It's hard to go wrong at a conference that has a beer menu. And doubly so when the conference is in Belgium, and the beers all local. Ron Minnich gave a LinuxBIOS talk at FOSDEM. I didn't realise that Google was sponsoring this project: it makes me wonder about the extent of their dependence on BIOS efficiencies. This also makes me realise that the amount of time, energy, and computing cycles conserved on the scale that Google runs almost certainly equates to money. Another way in which this project saves is through its use in the One Laptop Per Child project, which must needs save money on licencing. I chuckled at the number of flash-bulbs popping at the beginning of Andrew Morton's talk on Trends in Linux Kernel Development. He discussed coming features and new instrumentation; changes to the core, including a rewrite of the ptrace support code; and approaches to efficient use of hardware. In fact, he addressed virtualisation and containerisation specifically; the first he called a "hack", and pointed at the latter as the proper way to provide separation between tasks. This is an especially intrguing problem for me, as a systems administrator on a distributed system. Providing clean, efficient separation between tasks sharing CPU and memory is a tricky problem; there be dragons. I like the idea of using XenClusters. Also plenty of Jabber, including a good talk on the direction of libjingle, with outstanding XEPs for session-based features: voice, video, and file transfer. I wanted to listen to more of the gdb and SuSE talks, but so many interesting sessions took place simultaneously ... !... Read more
February 24, 2007
In which we go to the Orangerie
The Orangerie at de Hortus is pretty fantastic. The cheeses come with attribution to the farmer; I ate a "mature cheese by Farmer Verdegaal" on some freshly-baked brown, really brown, bread. Not "whole wheat". Yum. The Hortus Botanicus itself dates back four hundred years, boasts some three-hundred-year-old cycad specimens (the male; the female is a hundred years younger), and a Wollemi pine tree, an Australian conifer until recently known only as a fossil specimen. The Hortus also cultivated the coffee plant, and is thus directly responsible for the shakes I get when I don't have my morning cuppa. Fortunately, the Orangerie makes probably the tastiest coffee drinks in town.... Read more
February 20, 2007
In which the weeks pass like hours
Wow, I received an email invitation to view an online photo album yesterday, and, because I did not recognise the sender, the name of the baby in question, or really anything about the message, I ignored the service's request to sign up. Today I looked at the full envelope of the message, and realised: this is an old, dear friend of mine, and she has married, changed her name, and had a baby (a cute one, at that, and a year old now!).... Read more
February 11, 2007
In which we put a cork in it
Design Within Reach wonder what you might do with a champagne stopper -- cork, foil, metal cap, and wire. I had a bushel of corks (all natural! no synthetics!) saved up from a few years' wine and whiskey; they went to Craigslist and disappeared. I thought of various things to do with them (add a pin and a piece of paper, and you have little boats! stick 'em to a piece of wood and make a bulletin board! throw them around the floor and watch the cat play with 'em!), but figured that someone else could make good use of my bibulous tendencies.... Read more
January 28, 2007
In which the right to peaceably assemble diminishes
The New York Times reports that the city of New York has finally pushed through the requirement that all gatherings of 50 or more people require a permit. This is a piece of legislation designed to restrict events such as Critical Mass, fun-an'-stupid happenings like the Idiotarod, and to squash any spontaneous, grass-roots sort of protest or gathering on city streets.... Read more
January 23, 2007
In which we don the vestments and celebrate the ritual
Today is National Pie Day.... Read more
January 21, 2007
In which I hate on mobile phones
No mobile phone has ever satisfied me, and I think that, as manufacturers add features to phones, the dissatisfaction will increase. My Motorola V635 began exhibiting a bizarre failure mode: when it cannot join a network, it refuses to charge. Frustratingly, my office abuts a large wetlands area-cum-Superfund site, and no antennae sometimes leads to no signal. What I really want is a sort of procmail for the telephone, though: an easy-to-use language that I can use to instruct the software to, say, always ring if my sweetie calls; or defer all non-work calls (based on tags in my phone book, a certain prefix, et c.) during non-work hours; or respect "Quiet Time" at the press of a button. Open-source mobile telephony may have a long way to go from the hardware perspective, but why the software cannot implement something like this -- oh, that's right, all of the networks are closed.... Read more
January 20, 2007
In which we go back to bed (thanks, Banksy!)
Banksy has a shop from which you -- yes, you! -- can freely download and print images, t-shirts, et c., for personal use. No licence, just an admonition against unfair use. Hurrah! The above is one of several photos of Banksy graf in situ. Hmm. I thought I had more, including some of what turned up in Match Point; I will dig 'em up.... Read more
January 16, 2007
In which we are not proud of Duboce Park
In a local commentary on the Berkeley pet-shop fiasco, in which neighbours along Solano Avenue object to a pet shelter for its barking animals, excessive dog shit, and the smell of piss wafting through the air, the SFist remarks that "their (sic) their being kicked out for being a little too much like Duboce Park". I am not the only one who complains that Duboce Park is a rank patch of dirt unfit for any sort of public or social activity.... Read more
January 15, 2007
In which our neighbourhood has a lot of nice people.
Two young men were shot in the head and killed early Sunday morning in San Francisco's Lower Haight neighborhood. From the Chronicle's write-up on the shooting, we learn, unsurprisingly, that "A reporter who pulled up to the block at 10 a.m. this morning was immediately asked if he wanted to buy drugs as a teenage boy rolled a joint in plain sight on the hood of a car." Apparently some of the neighbours are less observant than others: 'A 36-year-old man who lives in an apartment above where the shooting occurred said the neighborhood was "usually all right. There's the occasional crack-head and what not, but it's a good place to live. There are a lot of nice people."' ... because we have more than the occasional crack-head on that block, and certainly more than a fair share of the number of drug-dealing louts in San Francisco. It's almost comical, how ubiquitous the cheap drugs are on the 400 and 300 blocks of Haight Street. Those blocks are distinctly unpleasant, and despite an impressively vocal Lower Haight community group, the city is acting slowly on the questions of increased police foot patrols.... Read more
January 9, 2007
In which LA gets pwn3d
Los Angeles' transit system was hacked, perhaps by disgruntled workers.... Read more
January 8, 2007
In which we hear a famous scream
I stumbled across the Wilhelm Scream while thumbing through some old movie reviews. The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect first used in 1951 for the movie Distant Drums. The scream was most likely vocalized by actor-singer Sheb Wooley, who later had a number one pop hit with the novelty song "Purple People Eater." It has been featured in dozens of movies since. Alongside a certain recording of the cry of the Red-tailed Hawk, the "Universal telephone ring", the "Charlie Brown fall," the Goofy holler and "Castle thunder," it is probably one of the most well-known cinematic sound clichés. A great name for a crappy band, probably.... Read more
January 4, 2007
December 10, 2006
In which I celebrate, or, I am a mean, petty man
Taking delight in the misfortunes of others is one thing, but to celebrate when someone dies -- that is another level of ill-tempered selfishness altogether. I did not let anyone stop me polishing up my dancing shoes when Ronald Wilson Reagan finally kicked over. Seeing the inexplicably long-lived members of his Cabinet also go to meet the dust of the earth that they have despoiled also makes me happy. And I get a little chuckle as I see a tow truck pull a car away from in front of a fire hydrant, out of a handicapped spot, or away from a Baptist double-parking zone -- indeed, my afternoon bus ride takes me past the San Francisco Auto Return, and that offers some vicarious pleasure. That pales, however, because one of the reasons that I never will believe in an Almighty or any sort of Divine justice is that people like Augusto Pinochet lived and fluorished. He brought more than enough evil into the world to compensate for a continent filled with the M K Gandhi and Mother Teresa; with Jimmy Carter and with Bill Gates; with St Isidore and with whoever invented Cheddar cheese. In short: a great but mixed joy comes from reading that Augusto Pinochet has died. Aram said it well last week, when Pinochet was expiring: "Here's to hoping Dante underestimated all that you will suffer, you bastard." For the curious, Dante would place Pinochet (and Hussein, and Kissinger, and the various and sundry dictators this country has propped up over the years) squarely in the Ninth Circle. That is The Ninth Circle, for traitors to their country; for betrayal to one's love; and for those who perpetrate crimes with great historical and societal consequences.... Read more
November 27, 2006
In which I accumulate
After several years of living in the same apartment, I have some ad-hoc collections. Not the sort of collections that will lead to a museum, but the sort that come from a nervous disinclination to throw out items that may someday be useful. Some items accumulate synergistically: the empty whisky tubes fill with wine corks; the plastic tubs (mostly from Tom's Peasant Pies, and those in turn from the time when kozmo ran rampant through San Francisco) fill with twist-ties and other grocer's miscellania. I also found a wax-paper envelope stuffed with colourful transit receipts and passes from various parts of Spain. I long ago abandoned my MUNI transfer journal ("There's a story in every trip on MUNI!"); perhaps I had retained these for some grand scheme of a worldwide transit card journal? In a bundle of more than a dozen large cylinders (tubo, in Castilian, as I learned when scrambling about the Barrí Gotic on the last day of a trip to Barcelona, hoping to protect the majestic city maps I had obtained from the government bookstore. I still have not framed the maps; they remain in their tube, three trips later), I finally uncovered the laminated Tintin posters I bought at Camden Lock Market. I have been thinking about these off and on for the past several years, and have indeed bought new Tintin posters — and have even framed and hung them! An inspiring poster from the otherwise disappointing National Maritime Museum hangs in the stairwell. A couple of smaller prints hang around the apartment. Of this collection of tubes, fewer than half actually contained anything.... Read more
November 22, 2006
In which time flies like an arrow
but fruit flies like a banana. Or, rather, fruit thieves like avocados and almonds. These twain are high-revenue, easily-portable, hard-to-spoil crops. A few years ago, Patricia Leigh Brown had an engaging piece in the New York Times about avocado thieves in Southern California.... Read more
November 16, 2006
In which we have more adventures with the umbrella
I recently realised the origin of the word "umbrella", but had not actually used one of these devices until yesterday evening, when I walked out of the office into a downpour. I went back inside, borrowed an umbrella, and then walked back home. Nifty device, the umbrella (or brolly, or bumbershoot). The umbrella should be an epoynmous device, like Phillips screwdriver or the Harvey wallbanger; I still fancy the idea of a Guglielmo da Umbrella excitedly holding his invention over the pretty head of a Tuscan lady as the summer rain begins to fall, and a scheming fellow-inventor stealing the carelessly-guarded secret mechanism that propels the canopy. Scene: The town square. Rain begins falling. Damsel: Oh! my curls! they are becoming all wet from this rain! Guglielmo: Here, please allow me ... neatly pops open a large cloth device D: But what is this magical machine that you have? G: shrugs modestly It is nothing, I have just invented it for you, my pretty lady ... D: You are so clever! It keeps the rain away! ... and my hair and dress are dry! How marvellous! G: Also, when the sun comes out again, this will keep you quite nicely in the shade, while you eat strawberries and cream! D: ooohs and aaahs, and takes Guglielmo's arm Cut to scene: a caped and jealous Marco, Visconto di Pantalones, steals into Guglielmo's laboratory at the back of his cottage. He casts his eyes around the room Marco Aha! The plans for the device are on the table! I will take them, and soon I will be escorting all the pretty ladies around the town! Throws back head and laughs. Fall curtain. Rain continued through the night, and into the morning; I used the umbrella again on the way back to work today.... Read more
November 8, 2006
In which we count our lucky stars
I stopped at a busy espresso counter (readily identifiable through the Seattle fog thanks to its neon "Caffeine" sign) for the second time in as many days. The long line moved quickly, and the woman at the counter recognised me as I walked up, and asked if I wanted a macchiato -- the drink I had enjoyed the day before. Wow. (Initially, I was going to contrast this experience with another town, another shop, but Seattle gave me a great opportunity for comparison. To wit:) A few hours later, I walked into a fancy restaurant with a sharp-dressed friend, and we asked for a table. As the hostess walked us past the (tuxedo-clad) waiters and the (informally-dressed) patrons, past the neon-lit "Boys Room" (cigars, not pole-dancers), and along the open kitchen, she turned to me and asked pleasantly, "Do you live here in Seattle?" To w. I replied, "No, I am visiting," and my companion ditto*. She said, "Well, it's fortunate that we are an informal town, and we don't have a dress code." She looked snottily (snootily?) at my grubby shirts, stained with the espresso of the day, and put the menus down on the table. Snap. * he actually does live in Seattle. Sort of.... Read more
October 26, 2006
In which I get a tune wedgie
Erik sent me this link, as reward for an amicably naughty game we have been playing for the past ... oh, ten-plus years. I sometimes call him and leave brief messages with catchy song lyrics ("All the old paintings on the wall, ..." or "On a steel horse I ride! And I'm wanted ..."), just enough to get a song caught in his head. And he responds in kind, and gives it the name "tune wedgie". More fun with music: One of my favourite such songs features the line ... rumor around town says you think you might be heading down to the shore.. Have at it.... Read more
September 24, 2006
September 22, 2006
In which I hold a check for 33¢
From bash.org: 1. Save every Free Credit Card Offer you get, Put it in pile A 2. Save every Free Coupon You get, put that in pile B 3. Now open the credit card mail from pile A and find the Business Reply Mail Envelope. 4. Take the coupons from pile B and stuff them in the envelope you hold in your hand. 5. Drop the stuffed to the brim envelopes in your mail and walk away whistling. I have now received two phone calls from the credit card companies telling me that they received a stuffed envelope with coupons rather then my application. They informed me that it they are not pleased that they footed the bill for the crap I sent them. I reply with "It says Business Reply Mail" I'm suggesting coupons to you to ensure that your business is more successful. They promptly hang up on me. Now, I did this for about a month before it got boring, so I got an added idea! I added exactly 33 cents worth of pennies to the envelope so they paid EXTRA due to the weight. I got a call informing me about the money, I said it was a mistake and I demanded my change back. After yelling at the clerk and then to the supervisor they agreed to my demands and cut me a check for the money. I hold in my hand at this very moment a check from GTE Visa for exactly 33 cents. thanks (is that the phrase? Do I mean "no thanks"?) to john for indirectly introducing me to bash.org, a vast time suck of juvenalia.... Read more
September 20, 2006
On divers methods of self-defence with a Walking-stick
Self-defence with a Walking-stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions (Part2). My favourite bit is No. 6, "How to Overcome the Advantage of an Assailant who Attacks You with a Stout Stick when You are Carrying only a Light Cane." I copied the illustrations from the article.... Read more
September 11, 2006
In which this isn't some kind of metaphor
Aram was also really excited about the Touch & Go Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Show, and I was glad to see Tyson's swell set of pictures from the weekend, including a gem of Heather with Todd (who looks rather frightening close up to a microphone, especially in his Bricklayer Cake persona). Wow. (Goddammit, this is real!) .... Read more
August 25, 2006
In which we party on MUNI (not)
Tonight is a MUNI MUNI Metro Party flash mob dealie. I do not like MUNI. While walking about to the much-changed Magnolia (new chef, new menu, fewer sauces for the frites), one of my companions, a visitor from Seattle remarked on how fortunate San Franciscans are: "You don't know how lucky you are, with these quiet electric buses." I told him about the off-spec diesel monsters that MUNI half-assedly took delivery of to run on the 71L route, the same buses that whine past our corner at 80 dB. I complained about MUNI, about the intermittent service, about how one can't rely on MUNI to get from point A to point B in less time than walking. I do not like MUNI, and the service worsens year to year. MUNI faces continuing budget problems, and still fails to address its core scheduling problems.... Read more
August 3, 2006
In which everybody smokes crack today
If I could coördinate this: a smoke-out day in which everyone smokes crack. I really do not understand the Federal attitudes towards drug use and possession, and the criminalization thereof. WSB had it right, of course, and desperately exhorted officials to address the head of the pyramid -- the distributors -- rather than the ever-spreading base, the consumers. Yet misguided drug policy, in this country and therefore in many others who depend on our aid, continues to aim at the base. If we could distribute crack to everyone in the country, and defy the government to prosecute and incarcerate all of us, we could show 'em. Or we could at least unveil the purveyors and distribution system, and the guv'mint could throw them all into the slammer, and we would have streets free from crack (and the steps to our apartment would be forever free from those irritating small vials). Next: the whole nation tunes in, turns on, and drops out: Acid For All.... Read more
In which I am full of bile
Perhaps it is a side-effect of being in West L.A., but my fellow man has me chafing, irritable, and ready to swing a wooden bat in their general direction. Before I reach that extreme, however, perhaps I should enumerate my grievance, all of which concerns courtesy: holding a door open this is a small piece of consideration: as one passes through a door, one notices another behind you, and at least prevents the door from abruptly closing in that person's face. Not so: many times I have needed to scramble in order to keep the door open. I am taken aback that the oversized shades many people wear are not protection enough, as the sun blinds them to anyone but themself holding a door open, the corollary When I instinctively held the door open, I never received a smile, a thank-you, or a similar acknowledgement that the other person and I existed on the same plane. ... Perhaps that is because we do not. assuming the world is your ashtray (To borrow a phrase.) The number of people who cut in line, at the coffee-shop, at the valet (what is it with the ubiquitous valets?), at the maître-d', all saying, "I'm just getting a [something apparently small], I'll only be a minute, I am more important than you anyway". Driving Descartes ("cogito ergo sum") had it wrong. Ago machinam ergo sum is the Divine Equation of Existence. At one point I found myself feeling sorry for someone driving a dilapidated old Nissan down the streets of Brentwood, and shook myself back to reality. Fuck cars, fuck private transport, and fuck Los Angeles for buggering the street-cars and buses. Repeatedly. Fuck 'em in th' ear. Jogging in the street Hopeful, I think that they might meet some disaster with the boobs who are driving as though they are all alone. Especially the jackasaurus jogging down San Vicente with his baby in a stroller, precariously just within reach and just within the door zone. Theme music for this list: Why You'd Want To Live Here.... Read more
July 17, 2006
In which we might eat outside
One of my long-standing complaints about San Francisco is its paucity of outdoors seating. Few cafés have tables on the sidewalks (and few sidewalks are broad enough to pleasantly accommodate this scheme); few restaurants have outdoor areas with table service. Too often the outdoors seating is like Squat and Gobble on Fillmore street: untidily arranged against a shopfront and facing a loud, stinking avenue. Even Zuni has to contend with derelicts and the odour of the city's failure to keep itself clean. Ross Mirkarimi is introducing legislation to allow more businesses to provide outdoor seating: this could perhaps be one of the few topics on which he and I agree. Ross: now if we could get the "medical" dispensaries to follow some sort of licencing process, and if we could get the better ones to have outdoors seating too, everything* would be peachy. * "everything" does not include everything. We still suffer shootings, stabbings, graffiti, so much graffiti, and the ubiquitous trash and filth. I would rather rid of neighbourhood of those than have swells supping on the sidewalk, but one takes what one can get, I suppose.... Read more
June 23, 2006
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.... Read more
June 1, 2006
How to be contrary in conversation
After a sociable cup of coffee (alas, not Chocomel!) outside in the sun-shine, I have a few suggestions on how to improve one's contrariness in conversation. Use a twenty-four hour clock ("military time"): Rather than saying "Why do'n't we meet for coffee at seven o'clock," say, "I will see you at oh-seven-hundred". In email, write 0700 or 07h00; do not write 7.00, which implies a decimal system. Find words that startle the listener. Use alternative pronounciations with vigor: bär-b?ch'?r-?t, h?-l?-s?' n?-j?n. Find words with varying pronounciations (does banal rhyme with canal or anal?) and work them into conversation. Find unusual euphemisms and metaphors. Toss in "we got along like a house on fire" or "This band is really the snail's eye-teeth" for descriptions. Prefer localisation that is not your own. Provide a shifting sense of place. Use non-local affirmatives: "Ayuh" works fine if you are in urban California, while "Dude" should be good in rural Vermont. Do not let the dialogue inch along. Provide directions in metric measure: "Ayuh, the coffeeshop is five hundred metres past the park. See you there at nineteen hundred." Do not, however, attempt Babylonian measurement unless you enjoy watching eavesdroppers' heads asplode. This is about being contrary, not infuriating.... Read more
May 30, 2006
J'ai oublié mon chapeau.
J'ai oublié comment le froid me sent sans chapeau. Sacre bleu! UPDATE: If you have a more pertinent, useful, or practical French profanity, please let me know. My sailor's vocabulary is sadly limited to English, despite years of reading Hergé comics.... Read more
May 20, 2006
On divers methods of coffee procurement
I could get a coffee-filled backpack like this and hose people down at early-morning meetings. Or fill coffee-cups:... Read more
May 13, 2006
quiesce and shard
Some computer-science-industry jargon (different from the more general project-management jargon I encountered earlier): quiesce v.t., To quiesce is to put a computer, a program, a thread, or some other computer resource into a temporarily inactive or inhibited state. A resource that is in a quiesced state can be reactivated more quickly than one that has been completely removed from the system. Typically, any descriptive information about a resource that has been built by the system remains where it is during the quiescence. The reverse of quiesce is usually unquiesce, but reset and other terms are also used. shard (as opposed to 'frag') v.t., to split a single logical dataset into multiple physical stores. Each of the resulting sets is equivalent in size and responsibility to the others sub, the component datasets resulting from sharding a database fig. To split responsibilities for a project or service across several people.... Read more
May 12, 2006
In which I am married to the sea
Married to the Sea is great stuff, I tells you. And drinking, it turns up everywhere. Including on bicycles.... Read more
In which we recall the darling buds of May
I had more than enough time today while waiting (from 1706 until 1718, at 8th and Market), so a sonnet rather than a haiku: Shall I compare thee to a MUNI bus? Thou are more timely and more fleet-of-foot: Rough traffic shakes the snarling Boulevard, And rush-hour's flight hath all too long a wait: Sometime too clean the bus rarely arrives, And often is the ventilation stifl'd; And year by year our tariffs incline, By chance or traffic's changing course untrimm'd; But thy infernal wait shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fare thou owerst; But shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long MUNI shrugs its responsibility. Apologies to the bard. This is doggerel, not a sonnet.... Read more
May 10, 2006
In which we drink the coffee, slowly
Waiting on line at Blue Bottle Coffee always provides vicarious joy and entertainment. Sunday mid-morning, I was behind a lanky, jumpy man who told everyone that his wife had just given birth. "At 3:29 this morning!" He had two espressos, which he said reminded him of his student days in Zagreb: "We would drink five, six espresso and study all night." This morning the talk was about the San Francisco Chroncle write-up on drip coffee, which credits the Slow Food movement with making coffee drinkers aware of the value of a just-made cuppa joe. This type of elixir is not for everyone -- this is no In-N-Out coffee experience. Because most filter-drip purveyors use only four to six filter cones and the beans are usually ground to order, orders can quickly back up. But there are plenty of people who don't mind, as a visit last month to the Ferry Plaza's Blue Bottle showed. Despite the rain and the long line, cup-at-a-time drip coffee fans continued to show up and wait. "The waits are really epic on Saturdays," [James Freeman, owner of Blue Bottle] says. "If you're going to wait 30 minutes for an 8-ounce coffee, it better be really good." Wait or no wait, Blue Bottle does not pretend to be a café: it has the atmosphere of the Caffe Zio I knew as a young 'un, drinking espresso from La Prima Espresso in Pittsburgh. A short counter, precisely-made ristretto shots of espresso, barely a menu. Yet the best coffee, the most personable and straightforward baristas, and the intended result: the joy of coffee. This morning the talk was also about routine: a delivery-van driver came up to the counter, ordered a drink, another drink to take away, and a third drink to take to a coworker unfortunate enough to be leashed to a desk somewhere and unable to visit Blue Bottle in person. The delivery man said that he was recently offered another, easier route in Millbrae, but demurred, thinking "How am I going to get my coffee?"... Read more
In which we drink the nectar of poets
The stalwart Mr Looney suggested an outing to the Rabbit's Food Meadery, and we spent the evening in rare form with glass after glass of mead, sweet mead, cyser, and some devilish trouble that combined a lemonade of mead, lemon juice, and blackcherry cyser. Afterwards in the queue for a double-double I was asked about IPA (silly me, I first thought of Imperial Pale Ale, not the International Phoenetic Alphabet) and the man of a certain age in front of us interrupted with a comment. "You know about prefixes, right?" We nodded amiably. "And suffixes -- at the ends of words?" Again we nodded. "What about infixes?" I nodded and briefly explained, but he interrupted and said: "I looked in Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, and the only example of an infix they provided was fucking: unfuckingbelievable! unfreaking real!" He eventually sat down at the molded-plastic table with us and told us all about the Computer History Museum, where he works.... Read more
May 5, 2006
In which they are made of ... !?
Watching the short film "They are made of meat" th' other evening, I recalled the original story by Terry Bisson. As the end credits rolled, I saw, much to my surprise, the familiar name of Tom Noonan, co-star of a film I saw once at DOC that has puzzled me since.... Read more
April 27, 2006
In which we go underground
In addition to some excellent photographs, New York Underground has a good page of links. I ordered the book from Routledge.... Read more
April 25, 2006
In which a confluence creates awesalaam aleikum
In honour of confluential Aram's birthday, Alberta poured drink after drink with her signature (and, indeed, award-winning) gin-and-cucumber mixes. She also threatened rabble-rousers with a stern speech that pointed out: a drinking straw has enough rigidity that if one holds a thumb over one end and jabs down, it can puncture the xyphoid process or sternum. Aram, where's the video? Alberta's drinks have won her renewed acclaim, most recently from none other than Geo. "Tiger" Shultz: Announcing the winner, former Secretary of State George Shultz determined: "The results are as clear, crisp and unambiguous as an Italian election." not to be confused with Charles Shultz, really, although how can you say "I'm a big fan of your work" to Geo. without thinking of Iran-Contra, (shudder) Jeane Kirkpatrick, or Sandinista! Happy Birthday, Aram. You will have a very good year. -- even if the only present you get is a first-class ticket with "Sixth Circle" stamped on it, in return for coining the "awesalaam aleikum" phrase that made me chortle and Alberta wince.... Read more
April 15, 2006
April 6, 2006
April 1, 2006
In which the police investigate
SF POLICE INVESTIGATING EARLY MORNING HOMICIDE 04/01/06 7:05 PST SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) Police are investigating a murder that occurred early this morning in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. The victim was shot at a bus stop near the intersection of Fillmore and Hermann streets around 4:20 a.m. Investigators were still at the scene two hours later, police said. Police were initially searching for a 1980s Mustang that fled the area, but there are no reports of suspects in custody. If you heard or saw anything that might be related to this incident, please contact S.F.P.D. Inspector Cleary at 415-553-9569... Read more
March 26, 2006
In which the south takes what the north delivers
It is a recursion: the Material Safety Data Sheet for water suggests flushing the eyes with water in case of accidental exposure. "INGESTION: Give several glasses of milk or water. Vomiting may occur spontaneously, but it is not necessary to induce. Never give anything by mouth to an unconscious person."... Read more
March 13, 2006
In which we lose our temper
I think I am going to pull out the old Opinel and disembowel the next person who responds to my "Thank you" with "Uh-huh", "No problem," or "Sure." How nice 'twould be to fit "shiv" into that preceding sentence, somehow, but I suppose that will happen readily enough once I am hauled off to the hoosegow. I am mad that really cool web apps like eyespot do not work with Safari (which apparently lacks certain features necessary for being fully buzzword-compliant). My temperament probably would be worse had I not eaten a superb, nutty sheep-and-goat cheese earlier. What was that mysterious cheese? Frustratingly, the cheese counter (which usually wraps the cut cheeses in plastic, and even when they cut to order always pull a sheet of cling wrap tight across the still-breathing cheese. Horrors!) only marked this as a "tomme", but it looked and smelled so good I had to buy it. And eat it, with a fresh demi-baguette and a pint of ale. UPDATE: the guys from eyespot say that they are working on safari integration. Hats off to them (hat's off to them? I was only wearing one when I read the email ...). How many times has this happened, though: a nifty javascript-based webapp that barfs under Safari's immature or non-standards-compliant engine, api, support, whatever, -- gmail, google maps, usw.... Read more
March 12, 2006
In which the teflon president receives airbrushed tribute
Unexpectedly sighted in the Lower Haight, an 80s A-Team stylee van with an airbrush wheel cover sporting a tribute to the Teflon President. mad props to anna for being the adept wheelman who maneouvered so that I could shoot this from a moving rental car.... Read more
March 10, 2006
In which we have bad luck with cars, Part Two
(Part One is here).... Read more
February 27, 2006
In which we visit the crossroads of the world, and in which some of them wear no pants
At London's Heathrow Airport, I always expect to see someone I know -- and almost never do -- not someone as in the opening montage of Love, Actually, but someone unexpected, someone I have'n't seen in years. While standing in the mind-numbingly long line between Terminals One and Four (Advised transit time, including security re-screening, 75 minutes -- that was longer than my flight!) I did see a guy with a ROIR shirt featuring the Bad Brains logo. I hummed "The Youth Are Getting Restless" for the remainder of my time standing in the queue.... Read more
February 21, 2006
In which we enter the labyrinth
The Scott St labyrinth has yet to materialize. The Scott St. Labyrinth was the second phase of the playground project and called for replacing the condemned wooden play structure on Scott St. with a labyrinth. The project was approved at a community meetings in December, 1998 and September, 2003. The plan received initial Rec & Park Commission approval in 1999 and final approval in December, 2004. The playground project was to be done in two phases. While the big playground was shut down during construction, the wooden structure on Scott St. was left standing since it was the only play equipment available in the park during construction. Upon completion in 1999, the wooden structure was to be demolished since it is old and dilapidated, a safety hazard with splintering wood, and contains arsenic that was originally used as a preservative. The site was to be appropriately cleaned to remove any arsenic in the wood, the sand, and the surrounding ground. Rec & Park also agreed to prep the site for our labyrinth at the same time. A landscaped labyrinth seems a whimsical use of space on small corner plot like this. It may not achieve the proportions of a grand labyrinth such as Antoine Duvall's estate, home to El Labyrint d'Horta on the outskirts of Barcelona, but it might bring a little joy to a stinky corner of San Francisco. UPDATE: now with an illustration:... Read more
February 17, 2006
In which the secret is uncovered
The San Francisco Examiner's Tiffany Martini (what a name, considering her beat) sings about "Five hidden gems of San Francisco": widely-known secrets like the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company in Chinatown (warm fortune cookies!), and neighbourhood treats like Specs and (my favourite!) Hotel Biron (she also writes up Catalyst Cocktails, but that really is'n't anyone's neighbourhood bar). I remember something Tami of La Moone told me ages ago. Sitting at her bar, I wondered whether to let everyone in on the secret of a great café I had found, lest I ruin it with the unwashed unappreciative masses. She said: If you really like it, the best thing you can do is share it with people. They will come, the place will prosper, and you ensure that it remains alive, at least, for you to enjoy. If you do not share it, then it might wither because it simply hasn't the momentum to make money. So I do'n't worry about Specs being overrun with clean-collared downtown office workers, nor about Biron filling up with bachelorette parties, so long as I can pull up to the counter and have a plate of cheese and a glass of wine.... Read more
February 13, 2006
In which we eat ice-creams
While en route in the famous Mitchell's Ice Cream parlour, I cursed Sunday drivers but stopped short of throwing stones: just a moment before I had pulled a strange half U-turn which resulted in my blocking a crosswalk in a busy residential neighbourhood. And I did so in front of two prowlers! (One drove slowly past and gave me a look so dirty bleach was necessary to remove it -- but, luckily for me, they had bigger fish to fry.) I made the bizarre turn reflexively, perhaps because it was exactly what I would have done were I on a bicycle. But I was not, and I narrowly escaped 2 points and a whatnot from San Francisco's finest, who, thanks to the blossoming Lower Haight neighbourhood group, are patrolling in full effect. Usually the driving path to the outer mission takes one along Guerrero, or Dolores, both of which are beset upon by double-parking Baptists. What gives them licence to occupy a lane of traffic? Why can I not do so of a Friday evening, for example, if I wanted to duck into Tartine for a coffee? But those who live in glass houses, et cetera, so I kept quiet for once and wound up rather enjoying a chocolate-dipped chocolate caramel cruch ice-cream cone.... Read more
February 8, 2006
In which we play at favourites
The Sagan Piechota Architecture building between Fell and Linden, near Gough, is my new favourite -- and not only because it contains the Blue Bottle Coffee counter. The inside looks airy and spacious, minimal and natural; the façade is friendly; and the building across the street has a fascinating garage-elevator: cars drive in to a lift, and then descend to the parking area. Nifty. I shoulda gone out to Maverick's yesterday: the reports are wonderful. The pictures are pretty swell, too. And Greg had his first signal encounter with Raccoons in the 'Hood.... Read more
January 26, 2006
In praise of beer
... but not of pilsener, or of lager. Give me a pint of bitters, of ale, and especially a pint from the cask. Zeitgeist, that place that so perfectly is San Francisco, no longer carries cask ales: they did not sell. The bartendeers at the Toronado look more than usually put out when I ask for a cask ale -- "You know I have to pull that by hand, and it takes a couple minutes, right?" they always inform me. Yes. I am not in a hurry to get the beer: if I were, 40s of the Champagne of Beers are $1.99 ("Out the door!" the sticker on the bottle gleefully reminds me) at any corner shop. Magnolia, in the otherwise-execrable Haight, produce some very tasty, and fresh beers. Hurrah for their Ruby Red!... Read more
January 11, 2006
In which we wish you a happy birthday
Albert Hofmann turns 100 today. Most famous, perhaps, for the colourful bicycle ride he experienced after administering his synthesized hallucinogen to himself, he also fits in well to the words and sentiments of REM's song "Man on the Moon": "Albert Hofmann / on a bicycle ride / yeah yeah yeah yeah / Albert Hofmann is the chemist of shrooms / (etc) / now Albert did you ride along this street (etc) ..." I have a very handsome edition of his memoir, "LSD: My Problem Child", which is readily available online.... Read more
January 8, 2006
In which the sacrificial bonfire must burn
Last night, Aram drove down in his big old ford pickup and we filled it with discarded xmas trees, proceeded to Ocean Beach, and set them all ablaze. Unsuprisingly in the town that inspired Burning Man, a whole festival devoted to incendiary pyrotechnics and bacchanalia, several other folk had the same idea, but I think that we were the only people with smores (and whiskey)! Anna and I had made a last-minute stop at the exquisitely depressing supermarket adjacent the very depressing 70s condo development that faces the beach area (and replaced Playland, the amusement park that occupied the beachfront for most of the twentieth century) and picked up skewers, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars. The harassed cashier looked dejected in the yellow-green hues of the flourescent lamps, and the floor manager kept popping up behind her to ask: "Do we carry mops? Do we carry cleaning solution?" And, overwrought, she answered, "I do'n't know. I do'n't know." We skedaddled over to the OB, where we lit the fire, watched the needles burn and send sparks high into the still evening air, and then handed over the embers to an erstwhile arriving group who had even brought some hardwood to get a real bonfire going.... Read more
December 18, 2005
In which we have a fishy situation
While some people find a sturgeon through the mail-slot amusing, I chuckled at the reporter's use of "yobs" to describe the miscreants who stuffed a live (and, as of the time the article went to press, still living) sturgeon through a Portsmouth-area door. My favourite fish prank remains the anarchist who stuffed a Pittsburgh safe-deposit box with agèd cod as a protest against the bank moving jobs out of the area. Not that a good prank need have some political motive.... Read more
November 30, 2005
In which I wear out the shoe leather
As I found myself at Civic Center at 5.30 this evening, I looked at the surprisingly cloud-free sky and figured that I would walk home, rather than stand in a humid MUNI aisle. And then as I looked down Market and saw nary an outbound bus, I wondered if I might reach home faster than if I were to ride MUNI. If I walk the MUNI route, I could easily see when one of the outbound buses might pass me. The route is pretty straightforward: along Market Street, turn right on Haight, and then bob's yr uncle. I walked all the way to Larkin before two buses, both northbound 19-Polk trolleys, rolled sedately past. An F-Market screeched by as I waited at the infuriating intersection of Market and Van Ness. -- infuriating because of the new crosswalk signals, which beep incessantly. When one pushes them, the beeping changes (and a light comes on); what do the different beeps indicate? How might I, as a blind or deaf pedestrian, know what pushing the button accomplishes? And the only gain is a psychological one, for the light timing has not changed at all -- so pushing the button does not accelerate the pedestrian signal. What the intersection needs is an all-walk cycle, really, but that is tricky considering that Van Ness is really State Highway 101 in disguise. I walked past several moaning derelicts and the new wine bar Cav before reaching the congested intersection of Franklin, Page, and Market: still no 6/66/7/71/71L in sight. Traffic on this stretch of Market gets all buggered up during rush-hour because of the way the freeway exit ramp defers north-bound crosstown traffic onto Market for two blocks before it reaches Franklin. Why Octavia Boulevard does not reach Geary I will never understand -- I swear that is what I thought I voted for all those years back! I started walking up the last stretch towards home, and not without a trace of worry on my brow: well into the rush hour, and not a single bus had passed me. I saw what looked like MUNI tail-lights ahead, on th' other side of Octavia, but nothing behind me. Might I actually overtake MUNI? I chuckled at the thought. I waited on the east side of Octavia. A cyclist was getting a little ahead of himself, skillz-wise, with a limp attempt at a track-stand, and kept lurching into the intersection. (Aside: How do you manage to not 'track' stand when pointing uphill?) Finally a big pickup truck honked at him, and he turned back towards me and said, "Will you look at that. They're mad because they're stuck in traffic, and they take it out on us." I told him, "If I had a horn, I would honk it at you. You are in the intersection against the light, and that's not only disrespectful, but your guardian angel is working overtime." Before I finished, he spluttered, "I can't believe you're on the side of the cars!", issued a few choice epithets, and turned to ride off, only to then realise that he was in the headlights of another oncoming car. I smiled. As the light changed and he finally took off, I saw that he was stupidly riding with a freewheel. I figured that a bus would catch me up for certain as I had to keep in low gear walking up the three blocks towards the Lower Haight, but it was not until I passed the bus stop closest to home before MUNI, and I would'n't have taken the bus -- it was a 71L and did'n't even stop. A 66 Parnassus and I reached the corner of my block at the same time. Twenty-five minutes, during which not a single bus passed me. I beat MUNI home during rush-hour.... Read more
November 28, 2005
In which we are caught between a rock and a just-say-no place
I ca'n't stop laughing at the idea of paying a tax on marijuana. From the Tennessee State Revenue documentation on the topic: If I purchase stamps, will I then be in legal possession of the drugs? No, purchasing stamps only fulfills your civil tax obligation. You will still be subject to the criminal statutes of Tennessee for possessing the drugs. This is how the IRS nabbed Capone, is'n't it?... Read more
November 27, 2005
In which I revel in being contrary; Or, Turk and Hyde
I appreciate the bustle of the (big) city as much as the next condo-dweller, but I especially like the quiet moments when the city sleeps. I revel in seeing which other lights are on, who is walking down the streets (insomniac joggers and groggy dog-owners, mostly, of a Sunday morning). In the interrgenum between the time that bars shut down and greasy-spoons open, the newspapers noisily arrive, thumping on stoops whacking against iron gates. Between last call and day-break, city crews patrol the streets, picking up trash from the night before. Between four and five this morning, a pile of old clothes and a cracked coffee maker appeared and disappeared from the corner. I even caught sight of a MUNI Owl bus service, ponderously making its way west'ards. What shops are open in the early hours? Nothing, in this neighbourhood: the grates drawn across the windows belie the bright neon signs and wheezing air conditioners of the bodega across the street. A few blocks and a few hours away, the café-owner, clad in a beret and crisp blue shirt, shakes his head and says, "I never thought that anyone will be here first thing on a week-end, but you always are!". The croissants are still warm from the bakery, and the espresso machine is yet warming up. I have never seen the corner of Turk and Hyde as cheery as in this photograph of Felipe Dulzaides's "incidental vista", part of the Double Take installation art project.... Read more
November 24, 2005
In which we do the hump-free dance
What do you call a camel with two humps? Bactrian. What do you call a camel with one hump? Dromedary. What do you call a camel with no humps? Humphrey. Or, in this case, Rodney: Camels are one of the more difficult animals to anesthetize,” Cranfield said. They were lucky Rodney reacts well to low volumes of drugs, he said. “The other problem with large animals like Rodney is you don’t want to have them down too long because they get cramps in their legs,” Cranfield said. Aside from those challenges, Rodney is moody. “He’s not the easiest creature to work on. He’s a little grumpy. Well, he’s a lot grumpy,” Sallaway said.... Read more
November 18, 2005
In which it is hard to stick to principles
After yesterday's debacle, during which I consumed approx. one-half bottle, Advil, between the hours of 7 ack emma and 7 pip emma, only to belatedly realise that I had not had *any* coffee, I grimly broke my one-cuppa rule and had back-to-back double espressos at the counter of Blue Bottle Coffee in Hayes Valley. For the second cup Mr Travis Crawford joined me, and told the amusing story of how he had once ordered a cup of coffee, wandered over to the nearby expressway Hayes Green, and then realised, "Wait! I didn't pay for this" because he is so accustomed to procuring fine espresso drinks at our office, where they flow plentifully and without denting the wallet. The Blue Bottle Coffee Blog is quite amusing, and well-illustrated with yummuy photos of coffee, crema, and all things foodish. Today the barista, raffish as ever, was grinding beans from five days ago, well outside their proudly-stated goal of only using 48-hour old beans at oldest, but, hell. Yesterday evening I used beans that have been sitting in our 'fridge for nigh upon a fortnight.... Read more
November 6, 2005
In which the youth are getting restless.
There's not enough rioting in this country. After Rodney King, L.A. burned: but why have we not seen large-scale riots (well, in San Francisco last week a handful of protestors were arrested) because of the Bush regime's continuing violation of international law, domestic due process, and civil rights. We have not see violent outrage at the state's theft of money from the public schools, nor at the undermining of unions. But France gets it: the youth are getting restless, burning cars and staying out all night. Some of them wear no pants.... Read more
November 3, 2005
In which I day-dream about automobiles
Cars I once thought I would like to own: 1971 Mercedes 280SEC 1956 Nash Metropolitan(and it probably would have its hood up most of the time!) 1984 Toyota LandCruiser FJ60 Volvo 122 waggon (I did have a 1984 Volvo 240GL waggon, which is also quite splendid) I did (briefly) drive a burgundy-and-black Mercedes, aka Blinky, which "smelled like money" according to one of my neighbours: now all I have left is the three-cone pininfarina air horn and a single fog lamp (the other flew off somewhere on the road between Breezewood and DC); the Volvo, known during its brief life as Moby; and Winnie the Poopmobile, a handsome brown FJ60 which spent more time on the back of a tow-truck than actually off road anywhere.... Read more
October 31, 2005
In which raccoons appear, again
More raccoons, courtesy ritchey, who is in a different part of the Golden State entirely . Last night Anna and Matt saw the little ring-tailed beggars scampering across the street, looking about as tidy as the other Lower Haight denizens wandering about in their amazon costumes.... Read more
October 21, 2005
In which we are not quite east of the ryan
Or, In which we party like it's 1996 At last night's Daniel Tortois show at the Independent, the two records to which I listened the most in 1996, "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" by Tortoise and "Wrecking Ball" by Emmylou Harris, came together. I never imagined that I would hear Johnny Machine and Doug McCombs performing a heartbreaking song by Emmylou! The Tortoise hour of the set was surprisingly good: these musicians show so much enthusiasm for their instruments (all of them, as each player switches amongst vibes, drums, electronics, guitars, and melodica with each song). They had nice visuals, too, courtesy a 12" Powerbook -- Greg, who who has big news, described them as "organic". They had a nice Rorschach effect, in much the same way that clouds do: I could imagine at one moment a crowd of people in Tokyo, at the next a quiet morning in Washington Square Park. Aram came back from the merch booth and said, "The guy who made these posters says he drove across country with you." And lo and behold, Lil Tuffy himself was selling the hand-screened gig posters. Indeed, Lil Tuffy and I spent three weeks rolling cross the great US of A, with the Sterns' "Roadfood" as our guide. We saw armadillos on the road in West Texas, stayed up three days straight in New Orleans, and played pool in just about every bar we could find on our lugubrioius route from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. Daniel Lanois noted that one composition was an homage to Samuel Barber, but without strings. After five or six minutes of quiet noodling, Tortoise launched into a tight lock-groove and Lanois rocked out on the guitar. Lanois ended with a brief encore, in which he played a waltz on the pedal steel. This was the second night running that I had the a particularly catchy song stuck in my head, both times prompted by drinking in the company of an Australian. The walk home did not clear it, either, so I would up listening to "A Digest Compendium of the Tortoise's World until the wee hours.... Read more
October 20, 2005
In which violent crime receives a reward
An Associated Press story relates how a basketball-obsessed would-be murderer received a numerologically-significant sentence just by asking. OKLAHOMA CITY -- A man got a prison term longer than prosecutors and defense attorneys had agreed to because of Larry Bird. The lawyers reached a plea agreement Tuesday for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But Eric James Torpy wanted his prison term to match Bird's jersey number 33. "He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird's jersey," Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be. "I've never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it." The approximate annual, amortised cost of housing a prisoner amounts to about $35,000, which means that this filip of judicial imagination will cost the ratepayers another hundred large. Usually sentencing guidelines mean that murderers behind the wheel of an automobile receive light or no jail time for wilfully navigating into a cyclist or pedestrian.... Read more
October 15, 2005
In which he has no-one, no-one but himself to blame
While walking from the Civic Center, mine eyes caught three F-Market trains lined up at Gough and Market. Flashing lights in the distance signalled an accident of some sort, and I walked over to take a look. A single man was being tucked into a paddy waggon, and one of the toothless junkies reeling against the building at the corner told me that the driver had come a cropper eastbound down Market St., hitting the MUNI platform and then careening the remainder of the block until he and the k-car finished up against a tree. Lucky bastard that he was'n't being taken away in an ambulance! I walked up towards Octavia, a woman from the neighbourhood association told me that a few weeks ago, a car speeding off the new Octavia Boulevard exit ramp crashed full-tilt into a F-Market train. When I reached Octavia, one of SFPD's finest asked if I had seen the accident, and I said no; he pointed to the debris scattered across that intersection, and said that the same driver had hit the kerb or centre divider there as well, and continued on his rambunctious path down Market St. The accident did a fair job of snarfling Friday evening rush-hour traffic coming off the freeway, as the police cordoned off the blocks of Market St eastbound between Octavia and Gough. I proceeded to The Orbit and had a cool glass of gin.... Read more
October 7, 2005
In which it is a walrus when it rains
I uncovered some good ol' snaps of our friend down at the Surf St Aquarium. More photos are at my website, but (warning!) they load slowly.... Read more
October 2, 2005
In which jimg and dawn get hitched
jim and dawn got married. Hotcha. ... and I should not let the event pass without noting that the delicious foods provided the opportunity to drink bacon (actually, serrano ham. Yum!). More photos here.... Read more
September 30, 2005
In which it has guitars and pills and windowsills
You know he's got your back when Jim Kunstler dings Harry Shearer and gas consumption: Harry Shearer with his attitude of moral superiority reminds me of my neighbor here in Saratoga Springs, the lady with the "War Is NOT the Answer" bumper sticker on her Ford Expedition. For people who want to keep on enjoying an easy motoring utopia, war is the answer. This, of course, is the predicament of the Democrats, my own party. They have no interest in modifying the nation's suicidal suburban sprawl lifestyle either, only in the easy pretenses of political correctness. Instead of twanging on WMDs and the depravity of the war in Iraq, I'd like to hear someone like Harry Shearer (or John Kerry, or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid) stand up and pitch for restoring the US passenger rail system. I'd like to hear some of these assholes propose some meaningful changes that Americans can make in behavior so we won't be so desperate to engage in military contests over the oil we need to drive for sushi in Los Angeles.... Read more
September 19, 2005
In which we have 23 minutes
At Spitalfields Market in the up-and-coming area off Liverpool Street, I saw a small coffee-coloured cart with the legend "He's so frothy" gaily painted on the side. A smiling young man was pulling espresso and frothing milk from a machine neatly installed in the back of the van. He made the best cappucino I have tasted in months: delicious, creamy milk-turned-into-foam, and just a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of chocolate. He laughed and chatted with customers as they came up, and when Anar and I had made the rounds of the market (including the purchase of a volume of obituaries from Wisden, and the tasting of some delicious olives), we returned to the coffee-cart. He laughed and chatted some more, told us that he was, alas!, out of pastries -- his regular customers claim them early every morning! -- and he made us another coffee. His compact setup, regular clientele, and bustling cheer reminded me of the coffee-shops that ring the Grand Marché in Casablanca, quite possibly the tastiest and most sublime coffee-drinking I have enjoyed. The men who run those stalls are delightfully personable, genuinely nice, and very, very good at making coffee. And although I vowed to limit my coffee intake to one, at most two cups each day, I yielded to temptation. I had already enjoyed an espresso at the Caffe Nero outside the Liverpool St Station, and then had a ristretto from the cart -- but after smelling Anar's cappucino, I had to have one for myself.... Read more
September 11, 2005
In which an illegally-parked vehicle is immobilised
The officer in this tidy little truck was in fact attaching a clamp to an L-car parked on the kerb near a pedestrian zone.... Read more
September 8, 2005
In which Aram gets a good one
Aram takes the concept of a 'straw man' to a whole new level. Man, I wish we worked at the same place: I do'n't have enough of a sense of humour around the office. ... not that I am there a whole lot. Today I stuck around the house to handle the usual assortment of inept, illiterate, under-informed, tardy, or totally incompetent contractors, sub-contractors, and workmen. The exception was, of course, the cheery carpenter who did not actually finish anything today but managed to put off what he needed to do ("Your parts are on order. We'll 'ave 'em in a few weeks."). I spent hours on the telephone: with customer service; with technical support; with billing; with product support; with premiere technical service; with billing; with customer service; with account activation services; et cetera. For confirmation, may I please have the last four digits of your Social? your mother's maiden name? your street address? your account number? Please press 1 for English. Do you mind if I put you on hold for a minute? How do people ever get anything accomplished? I do not trust any of these workers, these distant customer-service people, or these account specialists to actually effect what they claim they are. On the other hand, I have a better approach to telemarketers now.... Read more
August 22, 2005
In which junk food is evidence
Now I discover the truth about the "Twinkie Defense": The expression derives from the 1979 trial of Dan White, a San Francisco, California (U.S.) City Supervisor who shot to death Mayor George Moscone and fellow City Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978. During the trial, a noted psychiatrist, Martin Blinder, testified that White had been depressed at the time of the crime, successfully arguing for a ruling of diminished responsibility. As part of this testimony, Dr. Blinder cited White's uncharacteristic eating of Twinkies and drinking of Coca-Cola as evidence of this depression — briefly mentioning that this may also have worsened the depression. The unpopularity of the eventual manslaughter verdict (a lighter sentence which set off the White Night riots) gave rise to the interpretation that White's lawyers had used depression caused by Twinkies as his primary defense. Contrary to popular belief, however, White's defense in fact argued that this consumption was unusual for him and reflected already existing mental instability.... Read more
July 20, 2005
In which I commodify my dissent
This one's for Aram: The Chronicle reports that the widow of Huey Newton, Al Green, et al. seek to market their very special brand of hot sauce, named "Burn baby burn". "It was a catchy phrase, and I thought it would be reminiscent of the '60s," Fredrika Newton said Tuesday. "I sure didn't want it to be a call to burn anything other than our taste buds." Green said: "We have a number of different kinds, and some of it is really hot -- I mean, incredibly hot." The phrase is associated with the race riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965. Onlookers started chanting it after police arrested a young man for drunken driving. The confrontation triggered six days of rioting, resulting in more than 30 deaths, 1,000 injuries and devastating fire damage to the neighborhood. Each bottle of Burn Baby Burn Revolutionary Hot Sauce will come with a tag noting milestones in the history of the Black Panther Party for Self- Defense, which was formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and his college classmate Bobby Seale. Newton was fatally shot by a drug dealer in Oakland in 1989. The tags will highlight the group's social legacy, Fredrika Newton said. "I guess I want to celebrate the history and to let people know the actual facts of the Black Panther Party and how some of these programs are woven in today, like free breakfast programs and the call for free health care, " she said. ... but really, read the whole article. It is sort of post-ironic, in a post-modern sort of way. You know, swinging on the flippity-flop and all that.... Read more
July 18, 2005
In which I tune in an Experimental Station
Our old adventurer-about-town Lauren is building a brick oven at the site of the ol' Blackstone Bicycle Co-op.... Read more
July 3, 2005
In which a vague ethnic slur is made
Living in a city which does not feature an abundance of taxi-cabs, I often call a dispatch when I require a hackie to take me from point to point. The conversation goes something like this: Me: Yes, good morning, I need a cab at such-and-such number on Scott St. Dispatcher: What is your phone number? Me: (provides ditto) (At this point the Dispatcher usually says, "Fifteen to twenty minutes" and rings off.) Dispatcher: Ah, that's near Haight St.! Me: Yes. Dispatcher: You're around the corner from that crazy Indian guy? Me: I do'n't know, I just want the cab. Dispatcher: Oh, you just want the cab? You do'n't know the guy? Me: (click) Has a descendant of Crazy Horse settled in the Lower Haight? Are a lot of silly Sikhs in residence on Haight Street? Or worse: am I the crazy Indian guy? and what does any of this have to do with my getting a cab? Barely had I rung off when the door-bell rang and a stereotype with ruddy cheeks and a soft hat appeared at the door.... Read more
June 28, 2005
In which we creatively interpret the use of land
The houses of David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens have been demolished to create the Institute for Creative Land Use Interpretation. ... I was working on something witty, but Aram (and probably others) have beat me to it.... Read more
In which Mr Bolsinga throws a 'wild party'
I love police-blotter writing, especially in very local 'papers: Bay to Breakers Melee, 1900 block Fell Sunday, May 15, 12:29 p.m. A Bay to Breakers party got out of hand when some uninvited partygoers joined the party and started to spray the real guests with beer. A verbal argument quickly escalated into a violent melee with the host getting hit with a beer bottle on top of his head causing a severe laceration, which required sutures and hospitalization. The good quests chased away the villains who attempted to out run our very busy day watch Officers. The Officers caught the assault suspects in the panhandle and several eyewitnesses made the old positive eyeball identification. The suspects went to jail for felony assault, conspiracy, malicious mischief, and violation of their felony probation. Now that's what you call a wild party. This refers, of course, to the misadventure of Greg after Bay to Breakers '05. The miscreants pleaded guilty, and the primary assailant received six months in pokey, while the abettor is on probation. Greg was happy, and we were all duly impressed with the workings of the great wheels of justice.... Read more
June 27, 2005
In which I pick a fight with a five-year-old
At a café this afternoon (free wireless, my arse. That's the last time I get a crappy 32-oz Turbo Coffee) I was sitting quietly minding my own bizness when a warm, wet something thwacked most unpleasantly against the back of my neck. I turned to see two five-year-olds laughing hysterically at the moist banana peel that formed a collar at my nape. Worse, I saw their parents-or-guardians holding their collective sides and laughing. I maturely resisted the impulse to upturn the remnants of the massive iced coffee onto the stupidly laughing father, and instead turned th' other cheek. Mis-guided, for I imagine that some day these children will be seated before the big red button that leads to disaster, and will moronically push it. I cannot believe I walked away, but, really, what's the point of having an argument or a fight? Stupid parents beget stupider children, unto the seventh generation.... Read more
June 23, 2005
In which I wonder about the loquaciousness of cabbies
Each of the various cabbies has been tethered to a mobile 'phone, and, with the brief exception of nodding when we announced our destination (and, in one case, asking "Which way do you want to take?" in our quest to get from late-night SoHo to Midtown East), prattled endlessly in a tongue I could not identify. Occasionally I caught words of English, or French, but always wrapped into another tongue which was at one point subject to the expanding empire of one European country or another. My amazement continued: only one trip featured a native English-speaking, traditional-looking cabby (who would no doubt prefer to be called a hackie), and he did not sport a mobile 'phone. One driver rattled endlessly into a 'phone which had a most elaborate ring-tone (a Bengali pop song?), and switched off occasionally with another 'phone. Another driver took twists and turns through Ell-icey to avoid the bridge approaches, and navigated this all while enjoying a heated debate (argument? how could I tell?) in a tongue I could not place. In San Francisco this happens only occasionally, and somehow I feel more comfortable asking the drivers what language they are using, but here in Manhattan I simply sat quiet, in awe. And the airwaves crackle with three thousand different languages.... Read more
June 21, 2005
In which I need a camera
UPDATE: Anna snapped the sculpture on Steiner. This morning outside the café, an unsurprising Lower Haight tableau of faeces, -- canine, but I wouldn't make any assumptions -- was dressed-up with pictures of a smiling W, neatly pinned to the poop with toothpicks. I tried to photograph with my point-and-shoot, but it reported "Memory Card Error", and then I pulled out the cameraphone, but it crashed and restarted when I pushed the "Capture" button. On the subject of outsider art, the neighbours are marshalling to stem the tide of awful, amateurish graffiti tags. Despite semi-polite pleas (such as the posters placed on several Haight St. business windows asking to "Please stop tagging our windows") and the grotesquely-defaced murals (a few years ago, we lost the colourful mural on the retaining wall where Divisadero crosses Duboce to taggers: now ditto for the less-appealing, but still a carefully-considered piece of public art, on the side of the New Santa Clara Market at Scott and Haight), the taggers do not stop. There seems little rhyme or reason for the tagging: it recurs on some buildings, but almost never on others. Typically, buildings with large expanses of a single, light color suffer the most (with the exception of the Horse Love): Jack's Records, the large Victorian apartment building that houses Maire Rua, and the forlorn '50s cinderblock atrocity at Pierce and Haight. Someone tucked a flyer into the grate of my building last night, encouraging residents to appeal to our Supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi.... Read more
June 18, 2005
In which Greg wins.
Greg wins. (But, until he provides per-entry links to his not-a-blog, I cannot share with you the excitement that led up to this photograph.) Greg also sez: I'm a computer programmer. But I haven't bought gasoline for my car since sometime in April. I've driven it twice since mid-May.... Read more
June 11, 2005
In which I exit with an octopus.
Down at the Ferry Building, we saw Matthew making up all sorts of creatures (and hats, and flowers, and mediaeval weaponry) from ballons and a hand-pump. He bit off the ends of balloons, twisted lengths of the brightly-coloured plastic into odd shapes, and charmed the young 'uns, all while keeping the crowd of onlookers entertained with his patter. Asked by one of the crowd, "Where'd you learn to do this, kid?" he answered, without missing a twist, "Prison." He kept up his spiel while passers-by interrupted, and would occasionally ask somone waiting for a particularly elaborate hat, "Do you mind if I make a flower for the pretty girl?". And then we saw naked cyclists, once, twice, three times. Part of World Naked Bike Day in protest of oil-something-or-'nother, not quite as appealing as the good sports at The Fixed-Gear Enthusiass, a nicely-done site that may not be safe for work.... Read more
June 8, 2005
Marine trebuchet?
Given my new-found interest in anti-perspirant-based guided-starch-missile systems, one cannot be surprised that I found this news story about fishermen assailing Greenpeace activists with potatoes very, very interesting.... Read more
June 6, 2005
Dry as a wishbone
Had mighty hopes to put down a pint or two of the best at the Wishbone with Aram and Liz bright an' early this morning, but to our dismay the waiter told us that they do not serve Bloody Marys until 10:30. And there we sat, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at eight o'clock. I disconsolately tucked into the corn-flake-crusted french toast and thoughtfully reflected on the Eighteenth. Not to worry: Aram and I made inroads into addressing the Bloody Mary situation after a brief walk back downtown. And I should add that all of this happened around an early-morning visit to Millennium Park, which has the most stunning and creepy fountain. Like unto the Kabaa, were it come to Times Square. The drains at the edge of the fountain are gorgeous.... Read more
June 4, 2005
The Great Train Story
Overheard at the Great Train Story: "That combine is set up for corn, but you've got hay and wheat planted in that field." I bet that the next time I visit the exhibit, the combine will be changed.... Read more
June 3, 2005
"I am so totally entertained"
by the potato gun. As it turns out, this item, more a cannon than a gun, has a certain cachet. Several acquaintances claimed to have made one, and appropriately described the effect of a potato shot a few yards into a concrete wall as "liquefaction". This has very little to do with this potato clock.... Read more
May 30, 2005
A day to remember
This was the Rastafarian dog I saw out at Crissy Field: He looked the same, coming, going, sideways, top-wise, like a brush from a gas-station car-wash.... Read more
May 29, 2005
Miss Van on Fillmore
I was not a little surprised and pleased to see a door panel decorated by Miss Van on Fillmore St.. The coquettish girl is a familiar trope in Toulouse and Barcelona, and Miss Van had a group show in Los Angeles. How have I walked past this for the past six weeks!? I've stopped in the shops on either side of the door-way, waited for a bus, and gossiped with passers-by, but did not see the graff until this afternoon. Have I been asleep?... Read more
Miss Van on Fillmore
I was not a little surprised and pleased to see a door panel decorated by Miss Van on Fillmore St.. The coquettish girl is a familiar trope in Toulouse and Barcelona.... Read more
May 15, 2005
A walk through Looney Valley
While walking around the 24th St. area west of Church St., I saw a refreshingly anti-San Francisco storefront. The owner's hand-lettered -- or should I say hand-scrawled? -- posters reveal a fervent adherence to Republican principles. The decorations also included several vintage Reagan campaign posters, which led me to scour the internet for memorabilia of one of the "Founders of America". Not to mention the federally-sanctioned mug. There's something about the neologism 'insanitary' that especially appeals to me. And, speaking of politics in San Francisco: earlier in the day I had the good fortune to see Frank Chu in the flesh, part of the Bay to Breakers festivity.... Read more
May 9, 2005
May 3, 2005
May 2, 2005
You've got a head full of traffic
I have a fascination with photos of crashed cars, but I am not the only one (cue reference to J G Ballard). Aram's picture takes the cake.... Read more
May 1, 2005
Ro-sham-beaux
No fewer than six people have drawn my attention to this New York Times story on how a game of rock-paper-scissors settled a business deal. I employ this method for determining who rides shotgun ("ah, good old rock!"), who pays for ice creams, and myriad other daily decisions.... Read more
April 28, 2005
April 27, 2005
If at first you do'n't succeed
The U.S. Mint is hoping that the third time is a charm when it comes to dollar coins. Perhaps if women aren't featured these will catch on? Never you mind, the gold bouillion series will feature First Ladies.... Read more
April 15, 2005
These are the people that you meet Pt IX
While walking down to the bus this morning, I stopped in at the bank. I asked the cashier for some dollar coins, but she ruefully held out a hand filled with dingy Sacagaweas, and said, "How about some fifty-cents instead?" Good suggestion. I happily came away with a pocket full of JFK half-dollar pieces.... Read more
Some of them wear no pants
Stencil Revolution has an awesome gallery, great forums, and cut-the-crap tutorials.... Read more
April 13, 2005
That's it, that's the whole of the law
Cody wrote about a run-in with the law when he took a photograph of the new Mint. On the heels of the MTA's attempt to ban photography in the subways, this caused me alarm. The ever-present threat of terrorism, once domestic (viz., Eric Rudolph, who has just pleaded guilty to several bombings around Atlanta in the late '90s), now shadowy and international, has become a blanket excuse for ad-hoc delineation of the rights described in the First, Fourth, Sixth, and Ninth Amendments. So I took a stroll past the Mint this afternoon, and while I did so, took some snaps. Within thirty seconds (four frames!), two unmarked white cars pulled up in front of me, and a magisterial officer stepped out of one: Paul Cochlin, but I might be mis-spelling his family name. He surprised me by addressing me politely. He asked if I was taking photographs of that building, and I said Yes. He told me that it was a Federal Building, and that he was responsible for its security. He also said that it was not against the law to photograph the building, but that anyone taking photographs of this particular building aroused curiosity. He asked for ID, which I declined to present. He told me that he could not detain or arrest me, but then asked why I was taking pictures. I told him that I lived nearby, and am interested in how the neighbourhood looks. He nodded and said that was a common response (ha! that's what digital cameras have done: elevated sloppy graff and urban blight to art!). We then stood there and chatted for several minutes about the history of the building (I feigned that I didn't know the history of the New Mint), and he said that the corner down near the Duboce Yard was once a Standard Oil filling station. He was courteous yet firm: exactly the sort of clear-headed security officer I'd want guarding important installations. He also had a badge and a gun, and identified himself. I'm still uncomfortable that photographing a Federal building draws so much attention. The "new" San Francisco Mint (plenty photos online) currently produces only proof coins, according to a numismatic web site.... Read more
April 8, 2005
From little things big things grow
Container City's web site has an interesting FAQ covering the technical details of reusing shipping containers for such structures as housing, school buildings, and office space. Recently I saw Shigeru Ban's Nomadic Museum, designed to house a travelling exhibit of Gregory Colbert's "Ashes and Snow" photography exhibit. For the Nomadic Museum, 148 empty containers are stacked in a self-supporting grid. Fourteen containers will be used to ship building materials; the remaining ones will be rounded up at the museum’s next port of call. “The idea came from the fact that these can be found in every place the museum will travel to,” says Ban. “I have not made anything new. I’m just finding a new function for them.” A tentlike fabric fills in the gaps between the containers and serves as the roof.... Read more
April 4, 2005
Catch-up.
I'm back-filling blog entries for the past week, when I was strangely without computer and / or 'net access. I read: Mole People, something which made Anna turn up her nose in disgust; visited a few zoos, including the Aquarium and Coney Island; risked arrest for reading about riding a bicycle; and took it easy.... Read more
March 25, 2005
been gone nearly half the decade
Earlier this week: I bumped into a colleague as we were both rushing to and fro in the busy hallways at work: he asked me, briefly, to stop at his desk. When I finally did, he couldn't remember why. And then he cocked his head and asked: "You always carry a camera, don't you?" and said that he wanted a photograph of himself to send to his mother. I obliged, and wondered when he had last seen her. "Oh, about 8 years ago." (According to his mother, who just looked at the photos, it was more than 10!) In the always-connected circles he and I run in (bluetooth! tri-band! jabber! two-way pagers! macstumbler!), ten years of not seeing someone, not even a photograph, seems an impossibility. I was very very happy to take that photo.... Read more
March 12, 2005
Slint Sold Out
Last night, at the long-awaited Slint show at the Great American Music Hall, Joseph asked about seminal shows I've been to. I think that the Gastr del Sol/Unrest/Stereolab show at Metro, apparently the same show that prompted Number One Cup to get together as a band; the 9 AM Shellac show also at Great American, perhaps because their stage presence was so phenomenal; and the BBQ Killers/flat duo jets/Animal Time show that happened at some warehouse in the Strip District after the American Legion closed down (was shut down?). They are all important because they exposed me to different music in a different setting. I've seen lots of great shows. Last night was one of them: Slint, tight as a drum. Greg has a great write-up from Wednesday. He'll probably post Friday as well.... Read more
March 7, 2005
Six hits of sunshine
the LA Weekly has an article on the Orange County Museum of Art's display of "Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture," which is more than paintings on skateboard decks.... Read more
March 3, 2005
The tide is high
Mavericks took place today: Greg and I took a jaunt down there in the beautiful, sunny, warm morning to stand on the bluff and watch 30-foot waves break over rocks (and the odd surfboard). Greg's hungover humour ("that's a hellacopter!") notwithstanding, the morning was completely awesome. I was at the jetty about a year ago, but didn't see these sort of waves.... Read more
February 26, 2005
Puzzling and refreshing
It's Scottish, but not whiskey. Hendricks Gin also comes in a very nice bottle, evocative of an apothecary's shop.... Read more
February 16, 2005
My retirement plans
Although production of natural cork may be declining, I still want to retire to the south of Portugal and farm cork trees.... Read more
February 15, 2005
Don't ask
I received as change this single, and obediently visited the URL stamped on it.... Read more
February 13, 2005
ETA for a new pizzeria?
Greg cast a pall over the gathered co. th' other night when he said that the former Powell's storefront on Hayes St. was not becoming a Zachary's Pizza location. From the latest sign in the window, looks like a Basque pizzeria might occupy the location.... Read more
February 7, 2005
The roars of the masses could be farts
THE SAN PEDRO FILM SOCIETY AND ROCKET FUEL FILMS ANNOUNCE THE PREMIERE OF: WE JAM ECONO - THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 4, 2005 For more information, contact Keith Schieron press@theminutemen.com The San Pedro Film Society in association with Rocket Fuel Films is proud to announce the premiere of WE JAM ECONO - THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN at 8PM on Friday, February 25, 2005 at San Pedro's historic Warner Grand Theatre. Minutemen Mike Watt and George Hurley along with Director Tim Irwin and Producer Keith Schieron will sit for a question and answer session with the audience after the screening. Michael Halloran from San Diego's FM94.9 will moderate the question and answer session. WE JAM ECONO - THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN is a feature length documentary chronicling this ground breaking, early 80's punk rock band from their humble beginnings in the harbor town of San Pedro, CA to their untimely demise when lead singer and guitarist D. Boon was killed in a van accident in December of 1985. Told by those who were there, WE JAM ECONO - THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN weaves together footage from over fifty newly shot interviews with archival interviews and live performances to capture the dynamic energy and do-it-yourself spirit of these punk rock pioneers. Newly shot interviews include Minutemen Mike Watt and George Hurley as well as Flea, Greg Ginn, Richard Hell, Ian MacKaye, Thurston Moore, and Henry Rollins among others. The Warner Grand Theatre box office will open at 7PM. Advance tickets are available at www.theminutemen.com General Admission is $10. Students, San Pedro Film Society Members and Grand Vision Members can buy tickets the evening of the premiere at the box office for $8. For more information including trailer, press kit, and ticket information: www.theminutemen.com www.thesanpedrofilm.org www.thewarnergrand.com... Read more
February 3, 2005
La gorra del presidente
A colleague accosted me today and said: "You. You like hats. Try this one on." And indeed, the hat looked lovingly handmade, and felt wonderfully soft. I wore it the rest of the day and received many compliments. "My mom sent it to me, but I've got a melon head" he said by way of explanation. Apropos of explanation, skullphone goes a little way to clearing up how I've seen these awesome wheatpasted posters in San Francisco and London (don't have a photo of the latter, sorry).... Read more
January 31, 2005
Another adventure for Sprout
Sprout had an exciting weekend.... Read more
January 25, 2005
Of swahili lessons and Nyquil doughnuts
A reminder to plan your doughnut heists more carefully. For crying out loud! What hare-brained thief would think to rob a doughnut shop? Didn't they learn anything from that song*?... Read more
January 24, 2005
Graf ain't got no home in the city
Gothamist's Jen Chung writes about the latest graffiti arrest in New York City, which is tough on "seedy culture". I love graffiti, and, judging from the tag's popularity on flickr it looks like all the hipsters do. Downtown San Francisco boasts murals and large works by graf artists from Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and London (although we don't have any appearance yet by Banksy; we do have our own Twist, ditto). Back to fixed-gear bikes, trucker hats, and down vests, I suppose (Note to self: can I get a Coach chain wallet?).... Read more
Strike one, strike two, ...
As the 60-day cooling-off period for striking San Francisco hotel workers draws to a close, the unstable, Wal-Mart-induced predicament of Northern California grocery works comes to a head.... Read more
January 17, 2005
Compare and Contrast
Bleagh, I lost this entry because of kerberos. Specifically, because the backend server for this blog engine couldn't talk to the frontend: their clocks had skewed. For kerberos, which depends on a 5-minute window (which in itself is kind of hokey, if you ask me), this didn't hold water. The webserver refused to coöperate, and I had to manually reset the clock yesterday. In the mean-time, the POST had expired from my machine's cache. Grumble. The post was about the relative cost of traffic infrastructure in Seattle, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Per mile, the 2km Caltrain extension weighs in at an order of magnitude more ($1.5 bln) than the $180 mln/mi Seattle light-rail; Phoenix is developing a multimodal approach, which includes long-term traffic planning, highways, and a possible light rail.... Read more
December 30, 2004
Get the audience in action!
From Audience in Action (I can't help it: the name reminds me of a song): Dear Castro Supporters, We need people out in front of the Castro Theatre from January 1-5, at each showtime, to let the Castro owners know they've made a big mistake in firing Anita Monga and messing with a one-of-a-kind San Francisco treasure. Now is the time to show your support! It could make a big difference. While in both private conversations and media interviews owner Ted Nasser has continued to claim that there will be no change in the kind of films the Castro shows, his actions have contradicted his words at every turn. A few examples of the Castro's new direction: --In a recent San Francisco Bay Guardian interview (http://www.sfbg.com/39/12/x_script_doctor.html), LA-based booker Richard Blacklock, who was hired to replace veteran programmer Anita Monga, admitted that he works primarily with first-run theatres and that the Castro is the only repertory theatre he's booking for. --The new Castro theatre website (http://www.castrotheatresf.com) shows other changes in the wind. While the Castro has always been available for rental for film festivals and special events, it's now being offered for weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduation ceremonies, plays, fashion shows, fund raisers, photo shoots, and more. Films are no longer of primary importance at what has been called by some "the finest cinema in the United States." For these reasons and more we need to continue our fight to save the Castro Theatre. If we can hurt the owners in their pocketbook, maybe they'll see the error of their ways. That's why we're asking everyone who cares about the fate of the Castro to spend a few hours from January 1st through 5th picketing. It's a great opportunity to continue educating the community about why a good programmer is necessary to preserve the cultural treasure that the Castro has been for the past 28 years; it's a chance to keep our cause visible and in the news; it's a time to get together with other film lovers who feel passionate about preserving the Castro. Please reply to this email with your availability for any of the movie times below. Please include your phone number--we will only use it to remind you of your shift. To picket one screening will take less time than a feature film. You'll need to show up about 45 minutes before showtime, and be prepared to stay about half an hour after the show begins. Bring a friend, bring your passion--signs and fliers will be provided. However much or little you can do will make a difference. Showtimes: January 1st - 1:30, 4:15, 7, & 9:35 January 2d - 1, 4:15, & 7:30 January 3rd - 7:30 January 4th - 7:30 January 5th - 2, 4:30, 7, & 9:30 Can't picket? Don't worry there are other ways you can help! We need people to drop off fliers at theatres and video stores around the Bay Area and help spread the word. We're also looking for folks who can help make copies, or donate a few dollars to help pay for the sign materials and copies we've made. Drop us an email at rehireanita@yahoo.com and let us know what you can do. Gary Meyer (of the The Balboa Theatre) has some thoughts on the matter; he and the Balboa have stepped in to take over some of the orphaned Castro series.... Read more
December 27, 2004
Graffiti / Archaeology
The archive at Graffiti Archaeology contains one of the most beautiful pieces of SF graf I've ever seen, of three elephants. Seismic construction to the 101 (overhead) and Mission Bay project (adjacent) probably obliterated it, but for many years it was visible just before the first Caltrain tunnel after the SF terminus, strangely permanent in the evanescent world of graffiti. "The tunnels in Leeds are perfect for dirt graffiti. All you need is a sock and an idea," says Moose on his web site (I can't find his web site, so I've linked to Google search results for [Moose graffiti]). Ah, graffiti! beloved graf, trendy "street art" (this last site has a terrific gallery of Barcelona murals, stencils, and collage) .... Read more
December 19, 2004
Expectation and resignation
I met several friends for a meal at a chic, well-established café. We didn't know whether five, or six, or seven would show up; five of us cconverged on the café at the same time. But the hostess would not seat us, pointing to the restaurant's policy that "We will not seat your party until everyone has arrived." This underscores the bottom line: money. Instead of focusing on their clientele, the restaurant focuses of seating as many people as possible in as short a time. A counter to this is that they are in fact focusing on the guests: they focus on the guests who are there. But they fail to extend the convivial nature of eating to their diners. It's a tough algorithm to satisfy. I asked the hostess to seat all five of us, that we were five only, but she smelled a rat: "I won't add another chair if someone else shows up," she said (I would add haughtily, but that's editorializing). We ended up with a table for six, and the waiter kept forgetting items, did not bring our entrées all together (in fact, in two batches twenty minutes apart). But we had a great time together, all six of us. My wallet speaks louder than my dissatisfaction, and I will not again go to this café.... Read more
December 18, 2004
Death row or bike path?
Would you rather spend $250 million perpetuating the death penalty in California, or develop an urban center complete with high-speed ferry, pubs, natural wetlands, and spectacular views? California chooses the former.... Read more
December 15, 2004
He-who-brings-iced-cream
I completely forgot to mention that Aram is now known as He-who-brings-iced-cream. And, about the adventure of bringing McConnell's ice cream to the north-bound, he writes: Stopped for McConnell's ice cream on the way back north and ate/drank the melted remnants with Salim and Anna in SF when we returned. two thumbs up despite the bimbo who answered "yes" to the question "do you have dry ice?" becuase should could give us ice without any water/soda. I am not kidding. bless him and the MDMD for bringing the deliciousness of Santa Barbara (there is good in that town!) to us.... Read more
December 9, 2004
"Transforming milk into milk"
Wm Carlos Wms was Allen Ginsberg's paediatrician; AG took this photo of Harry Smith; .... Read more
December 5, 2004
Anar visits Roman ruins in Northern Jordan
.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Roman ruins in Northern Jordan, originally uploaded by Anar Virji. Anar visited Roman ruins in Jordan!... Read more
November 25, 2004
Now playing at a XXX theatre near you
Maureen Dowd feels my pain.... Read more
November 24, 2004
X-Ray OJ
File under: Travelling While Brown. I wear shoes that don't have any metal in them, so that I don't need to remove them when passing through airport security areas (Typical exchange: "Sir, we highly recommend you remove those shoes," in the same sotto voce a sommelier might use with the cuvée primiere and a sole meuniere; me: "These shoes don't contain any metal." and thinking to myself, "Can't they just violate me once the metal-detector / explosives-sniffer sounds the alarm?" But instead I'm summarily pulled aside. First the shoes come off (and, as I refuse to stand barefoot on carpet, a supervisor is summoned); then they ask me to remove the jacket, the sweater; then the belt; then "please unbutton the trousers." This is too much. They've put two different metal wands around my body, patted me down, and passed me back and forth through a metal detector. My OJ goes back through the X-ray machine, my laptop undergoes further scrutiny, and we all make our way to a small closet behind the line of waiting passengers. Here my shoes are screened again (because, they explain, I put them back on in order to walk to the closet; But, I point out, you were with me the whole time. Yes, but this is the procedure. That phrase recurs.); my belt, trousers, and sweater are again patted down and a wand sweeps over my body. The underlying agony lies in the boring, boring manual nature of all this: after a mad scramble to install automatic explosives-sniffing devices, advanced metal-detecting scanners, and all sorts of traveller-profiling systems, where are we? In a back room at SeaTac, at Sky Harbor, at LAX, with two surly naturalized citizens triple-checking my travel documents and looking for any reason that I should be further detained.... Read more
November 19, 2004
"... later eat their ears for dessert."
File under seafaring adventures: BoingBoing has a nifty post about the outlaw sea.... Read more
November 14, 2004
One thing leads to another
This is what I look like after using all of these.... Read more
November 13, 2004
hax0r pub|1c trnzt
The New York Daily News reports that pretty girls don't ride the subway: A scrolling marquee sign in the West 4th St. station was even less helpful than usual, after it got pwn3d by some hax0rs. Sez one rider: "I'm pretty, and I take the subway every day." Word. And you're probably also rich. UPDATE: This meme turned up everywhere: engadget, Gothamist, usw.... Read more
November 12, 2004
A change of clothes
Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, and others all receive credit for this 'un, but today I was singing it on the way back home: "I need to slip me out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini." And so I did, parking the ol' bike in the Mission and downing a cold glass of Hendrick's.... Read more
November 9, 2004
Read my lips. More new taxes
Advice delivered from the stoop to the newly-elected President: One lesson yet unlearned involved the nation's growing debt. Through the eighties the United States had been unwilling to take action to reduce its rising debt. If the U.S. Government had placed a tax of one trillion dollars on wealth of Americans before the crash and designated half of that trillion dollars to reduce the national debt, Americans would have been outraged. Yet the markets, in their brutal, inexorable fashion, had taken exactly that action and confiscated half a trillion dollars in national wealth. And the debt still remained. from Haynes Johnson's Sleepwalking Through History.... Read more
November 5, 2004
Not just because I like the logo
I'm installing Knoppix Security Tools Distribution to old laptops that I have lying around. I've uncovered vast amounts of old NICs, power supplies, hard drives, dongles (!!), and random computer crap in my apartment. Every time I think I've cleaned up, there's more.... Read more
November 3, 2004
Maybe partying will help.
Today I could not marry. Today I did not obtain reasonably-priced drugs to treat my health problems. Today I bought an assault rifle. Today I did not have an abortion. Today I have no health care. Today the library was closed (but the Wal-Mart was open). Today the French spat disrespectfully in my general direction. Today my children learned nothing in school, because the schools have no money. Today the government failed to audit big businesses. Today the 1% of Americans who have a lot of money got to keep that money; the rest of us are paying more in taxes for fewer public services. Today the bus broke down, the highway was in disrepair. Today the pollution from the factory clouded the air. Tomorrow you will have no health care. Tomorrow you will not be able to marry1. Tomorrow your neighbour will have an assault rifle. Tomorrow you will have no friends overseas. Tomorrow you will have no friends in your neighbourhood, because you distrust everyone. Tomorrow the exhaust from cars moving slowly choked the air. Notes. 1. Unless you are ChristianTM.... Read more
November 2, 2004
Electioneering.
Google has information on how to find your polling place, as well as blogs about election shenanigans. The photograph above doesn't show the line that stretched down the block, past the placard-waving idealists, in front of the honking cars, around the vandalised taqueria, and ended with an old woman sitting in a lawn chair. Once inside the polling place, people were pushed up into every corner, furiously filling out the four voting sheets. Some people didn't know to remove their voting receipt from the ballot before feeding it into the Eagle vote tabulator, and did not receive proof of voting as a result. The official Board of Elections sign above the tabulator had the cart before the horse: "Insert ballot into Eagle / Remove receipt" it read in three languages, but really one had to remove the receipt first, and then feed the Eagle. I've voted early and often in the San Francisco General and Consolidated, but never have I seen this energetic and this involved a line. The day-labourer election officials were, of course, overwhelmed and even more flustered that usual. Voters were well-behaved, but it's early yet (writing this from a phone while waiting in line!).... Read more
October 30, 2004
More trouble than it's worth
My shoes have worn through -- my feet poke through the sole, the heel has splintered -- and I thought, aha, perfect! I'll simply order a replacement pair over the internet. That was a month ago. Dozen of shoe specialty shops later, and no go: if I'm fortunate enough to find a merchant which carries the Adidas Samba or Samba Milennium, they certainly do not have a size 46 2/3 / US 12. I tried ordering from my local shoe shop, Harput's (Motto: "We Love Adidas!"), but they don't love their customers. No-one returned my calls; I went to the shop, and placed a special order. No call, two weeks later. Finally, I found Sunset Soccer, who stock the shoe I want in the size I need, speak politely, and even gave me a 10% discount. Sunset Soccer rocks. Phooey to Harput's.... Read more
October 16, 2004
Numismatic feminism
vs I stopped in at the bank to pick up some of the new fifties th' other day. The sprightly young branch manager directed me to a window, where a grandmotherly woman addressed me: "Slide the card, dearie," and, when she learned my stats from the computer, she called me by my first name. I asked for a couple of the new bills, and she was excited: she unwrapped a package, and began doling them out. I then pressed my luck, and asked if she had any $2 bills. She wandered to each of the other tellers, asking if any had some Jeffersons. She returned, disappointed. "But I'm sure they'll be glad if you give them dollar coins," she suggested. "How old are the children?" And then we decided that I'd give the kids (which kids? She was assuming some bouncing nieces and nephews, no doubt) some Sacagaweas and a few Susan B.s. " ... though the Anthony dollar is not widely used, many operations such as mass transit systems and vendors currently use it." She and I chatted some more, and she asked me why I didn't keep more money in short-term CDs. "It's liquid, but it earns interest!" she told me energetically. I wished her a good day while the bank manager glared -- during our exchange, the queue for the tellers had grown four-deep. My next-door neighbour (also grandmotherly) gave me a dollar coin when I met her, in 1979. Why are the only two pieces of U.S. currency to feature a woman relegated to short production runs and a usefulness only in mass-transit vending machines? I suggest we put Harriet Tubman on the quarter-dollar. Washington's played.... Read more
October 6, 2004
The call of the wrecking ball
In a half-hearted attempt to save San Francisco's disappearing single-screen theatres, the Board of Supervisors approved a temporary, 45-day reprieve for the demolition of independent movie houses.... Read more
October 2, 2004
L'art du zoömorph
Wayne is appearing on national television to promote his new toys. These toys started when Wayne hung mobiles down at Bar Reis, a once-dank wine bar in Park Slope. The mobiles caught the eye of an entrepreneur, who marshalled Wayne's phenomenal sculpting and painting skills. Some years later, through the travails of fund-raising, suffering through the demise of several large toy-shops, the models went off to the Far East to be cast. Now the first shipment of toys has arrived on a container ship from China, and Wayne & Co. are on tv!... Read more
October 1, 2004
Once more, with attitude
Now, if you happen to have £2000 burning a hole in yr pocket, you might want to scope out the view from these webcams. iamevilgordon and his beloved Belinda are in town for nuptials, and brought Aram a fine bottle o' Islay malt. I like their motto: "Bruichladdich - The distillery with attitude" Malt does more than Milton can to justify god's ways to man... Read more
September 30, 2004
Re-used green space
UPDATE: Now that the summer's ending, San Mateo County reopens its parks. I wrote about this earlier because I like public space (and public clocks).... Read more
September 13, 2004
These are the people that you meet Pt VII
Today was the SF Gran Prix. Greg probably got the best photo, the front of a fixie with a sleeping baby perched in a child seat.... Read more
September 6, 2004
Ready for Noël?
A woman in Girona has a nice online store for her caganer figurines. What are caganers? They caused a stir when some appeared in the opening exhibit at Copia. The woman who runs the toy museum in Figueres was so excited when I was excited at their display of caganers, and gave me a nice poster commemorating this peculiarly Iberian Nativity character. (It now hangs in my bathroom.) The museum's web site has a nice Flash dealie.... Read more
September 4, 2004
Swinging on the flippity-flop
Sometimes I do get the feeling that reporters are lazily picking up memes and framing stories around them. "Rock Paper Scissors: The Movie," a documentary about the 2003 world championships in Toronto, is to be released in January. I feel so culturally cool: Tom Frank and I use the same logo for our "Contact Me" pages.... Read more
August 5, 2004
Meta-blogging
Sigh. Meta-filter has the bomb thread on Banksy's latest shenanigans. In my bag I have a sheaf of articles from the New York Times (of all places! so establishment) on Twist and graf in general.... Read more
August 4, 2004
Steps to a better
From the City of Seven Hills (and Three Rivers) to the City By the Bay (the Fog City), we love taking steps. More than five hundred sets of stairs, some extending hundreds of steps, grace the hills of Pittsbugh. and more than three hundred stairs in San Francisco.... Read more
August 1, 2004
Soundex and the Infury
About two years ago, during a round of greasy fish an' chips down at the Edinburgh Castle, I found that the Soundex algorithm more interesting than I had previously imagined; it was developed over a century ago for use in the U.S. Census. And it was recently abused to disenfranchise voters in the 2000 national election in the U.S.... Read more
July 30, 2004
July 23, 2004
Use it or lose it.
Thinking more about unused green space and its worth to the community, I read an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle about celebrating the Great Outdoors: claim lots from "urban oblivion" and provide shared, community space for neighbours to enjoy together. This happens in Chicago: parklets, small previously-vacant lots turned into vegetable gardens, walking paths, or landscaped areas with benches. Meanwhile, Contra Costa County needs to put its money where its mouth is.... Read more
July 19, 2004
Unused green space
If you could save $300,000 by shutting your county parks, would you? San Mateo County thinks it's a good idea, and has been cutting the budget for years to the point where no rangers actively patrol, nor do staff routinely maintain or clean the park facilities. Several times each month, I cycle through the parklands of San Mateo County. I'd wager that in two years, a developer will sneak in under-handedly: complain to the County that the parks are under-used, and that they should be the site for for new (and subsidized) development.... Read more
July 18, 2004
It doesn't shit in the woods.
Went for a walk through the Marin Headlands with Anna, wildlife educator extraordinaire, who pointed out some black bear scat on the Coastal Trail. Several dried patties appeared in a hundred-yard stretch, leading to a theory of a bear with diarrhea. When we got back to the trailhead at Muir Beach, we saw that rangers have in fact posted warnings of a black-bear sighting, the first in 75 years. And this is as good a time as any to mention my favourite online bear. It doesn't shit in the woods, either.... Read more
July 8, 2004
It's all about the meta
This is not a blog entry. It's a test to demonstrate that I've finally fixed all of the CSS errors that have plagued the site. My problem? I was using @#$@#$ perl-style # comments, rather than C-style /* */ dad-gum-it. On the other hand, I got a biscuit: I re-wrote the stylesheet so that I can apply CSS to other parts of my massive web property.... Read more
July 7, 2004
roads vs schools
Does California spend more on education (k-12) or on roads (highways, I suppose)? If six million U.S. workers commute via public transit each day, how many are in California? Which state has the highest per-capita commute via public transit?... Read more
June 5, 2004
'til the fat lady sings
Took in a performance of Master Class at the Odyssey Theatre with Nico and Anna last night. Saw McNally's play with Anar a few years ago; Patti LuPone played the Callas role. The last professionally-staged opera I saw was with Nico: Die Zaüberflöte, a story I love, in San Francisco.... Read more
June 3, 2004
2 Are Hurt in Bizarre Motorcycle Collision
-------------------- 2 Are Hurt in Bizarre Motorcycle Collision -------------------- A Costa Mesa officer and another rider are knocked onto other bikes, police say. By David Haldane Times Staff Writer June 2 2004 In an accident reminiscent of an action-movie sequence, a Costa Mesa police officer and another man were injured Monday when their motorcycles collided, causing a game of "musical cycle seats" on the San Diego Freeway, authorities said. The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cycle2jun02,1,7833246.story... Read more
May 23, 2004
May 21, 2004
Shifting gears
Events rolled neatly one into th' other today. Got up and rolled out down Market St., expecting to see crowds for San Francisco's Bike-to-Work Day. I grabbed a banana and a sticker, chin-wagged with a few cyclists, and then scooted down to the Embarcadero BART station. The motto for the event was "Shift Gears, Bike to Work". I was riding the trusty ol' Dutchess. A volunteer for the SFBC tried to get me to sign something in favour of the Jefferson St. transit plan. He was surprised to hear me offer an objection ("There's another point of view?" he asked naïvely, disingenuously, stupidly). I jumped down into the Embarcadero BART station, where I met up with Peter; we rode down to the Union City station, met up with Lupe, and then rode through the baylands, over the Dumbarton, and through the bird preserve in to work.... Read more
May 19, 2004
The Boxer of Berkeley
Jen and Pete complete their domestication trifecta with Maxx, the handsome four-year old boxer they rescued.... Read more
May 13, 2004
The Dude abides.
Heading down to the ol' corporate shuttle (as the steelworkers had the inclines, so have we our company transport), I hopped on the J-Church. For the second time in as many weeks, the driver had taped newspaper over the window and pulled it to: the fare-box was broken. Unsurprisingly, because the guy who repairs them was indicted for pilfering last week. On return trip, I jumped over to the ever-expanding BART and promptly ran into Celeste, who was riding a bicycle saved from my basement (she has recently added a spiffy new saddle). Then I walked up to the front car and saw Anna! And the whole excursion took us over to Chez Shumariley, where we, along with Jender and He-Who-Is-Full-of-Wrath, took in The Big Lebowski. Although I still don't care for the movie, I did enjoy hearing The Monks as background music in one of the early bowling scenes. This led me to a side-trip through the M section of the ol' iPod: The Minutemen ("West Germany"), Mission of Burma ("This is Not a Photograph"), and, of course, Modest Mouse ("Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset"). How full of vitriol the Ms are!... Read more
May 2, 2004
For king and country
I'm trying to figure out whether I have to show up at the Superior Court on Monday: I received a summons for Jury Duty in the City and County of San Francisco. The phone system tells me (after I key in 1,1,1,my juror badge #, and 1 to confirm) that "No-one is available to take your call. The next time Jury Clerks will be available is May 3rd at 8:00 AM". And the web site doesn't offer an interface to this information.... Read more
May 1, 2004
Who da man?
ADDENDUM: According to Google, Tilney da man. What timing.... Read more
April 25, 2004
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.... Read more
April 21, 2004
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.... Read more
April 17, 2004
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.... Read more
April 16, 2004
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.... Read more
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!... Read more
April 15, 2004
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.... Read more
April 11, 2004
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.... Read more
April 9, 2004
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?... Read more
April 6, 2004
Yeah, hell has frozen over.
I'm going to punch you in your glasses.... Read more
March 14, 2004
Return to Pirate Cove
... sounds like a Hardy Boys mystery title, doesn't it? For Anna's birthday hike, we went over to Muir Beach and met a good group of hardy walkers. Up the hill and over the ridge we traipsed; on the beach we walked; and up a rock for a little picnic overlooking the quiet surf of Pirate's Cove. Afterwards we came back home and had some cake and tart. With rhubarb sorbet! Happy Birthday Anna!!!... Read more
March 11, 2004
We've got questions / in our school!
This afternoon I took off from work and headed up to Jender's high-school classroom. She had asked me and Aram to speak with one of her classes, to talk about our jobs and careers. She student-teaches at a charter school which has since become a part of the San Francisco Unified School District. As you know, I am currently student teaching as I make my way toward a teaching credential slated to be in hand come June . As part of that process this semester I am solo teaching for 8 weeks. Right now I am at the International Studies Academy High school in San Francisco in Potrero Hill teaching Advanced ELL (English Language Learner) classes. Most of my students are 17 to 19 and have been in the US for 2 to 5 years. My eight week unit this semester is about work, why we work, the jobs we do and how we navigate work in our lives. Since many of these students are new to the world of work in the US and they will be soon trying to determine their future careers, one of their unit projects is interviewing someone about their job and creating a paper from that interview. These students need lots of practice before actually leaving the classroom and doing activities on their own. I want them to interview a person in class as I class before they venture out into the cruel world. That is where you come in. I need two brave volunteers to come into my class and be interviewed by my students. Don't worry, these students are more intimidated by you then you could ever be of them and I will supply you with a list of possible questions before hand. I, personally, think all of your jobs are interesting and believe that my students would enjoy talking to you Many years had passed since I last walked in the halls of a high school: it was nice to hear Aram's familiar voice echoing against the tile when I walked in.... Read more
March 9, 2004
106 beets, that.
I spilled beet juice all over today's newspaper. Or, more precisely, I had cut and marinated beets to use in a salad, and wrapped the faulty Tupperware container in the morning newspaper. The front-page obituary was marked with beet juice, and a corner of my commuter Timbuk bears a deep maroon stain.... Read more
March 7, 2004
February 8, 2004
The south takes what the north delivers.
A quick trip to Mitchell's for the chocolate-dipped, and then a visit to Twin Peaks on one of the clearest days I can recall. From the heights we could see down to Moffet Field, across to Mount Diablo, and out past Sutro Tower to the Farallon Islands.... Read more
February 6, 2004
Shook me all night long.
UPDATE: While San Franciscans pull for a later last call, New York City's mayor is pulling for an earlier last call. The New York Times writer described the propsal as " turning New York after dark into Riyadh after noon". From the text of a San Francisco Late Night Coalition press release: Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced a resolution at the Board of Supervisors encouraging State Assemblymember Mark Leno to develop legislation to extend the last call for alcohol in bars, restaurants and nightclubs in California's largest Cities. The SFLNC has previously introduced a similar resolution at the Entertainment Commission, which voted unanimously to support it. The SFLNC supports this resolution in part because "National Traffic Safety Association data indicates that later last call hours do not increase and may actually decrease the number of alcohol related traffic fatalities"; but what of the potential increase in police, fire-fighting, and EMS personnel costs due to later business openings? The cost of having restaurants open later may not be offset by additional tax revenue. After adoption by the City, the State Senate will need to take up the issue.... Read more
January 26, 2004
Permutation for a taxi.
From Joe Rogers' Metropolitan Diary column in The New York Times: Dear Diary: It was one of those super-frigid evenings recently. I left work about 8 p.m., desperate to find a taxi to get home and out of the cold. There were plenty of taxis heading uptown, but all were occupied. Suddenly, one pulled up to the curb about a half-block away, the medallion light went on and I dashed over to grab it. Just as I arrived at the taxi from the downtown side, another fellow arrived from the uptown side. The following exchange then took place between two seasoned New Yorkers: Him: "Gee, we arrived at the same time." Me (hoping we can just share the cab): "We sure did. Are you heading uptown ?" Him: "No, downtown." Me: "Let's choose for it. Odds and evens?" Him: "No. Rock paper." Me: "O.K." Him: "O.K., on the count of three." Both: "Once. Twice. Three. Shoot." At which point he held out two fingers (scissors) and I held out my hand, palm-side down (paper). Scissors beating paper, he jumped into the taxi with nary a word, and off he went. I ended up taking the subway home. This on the heels of a recent piece in The New Yorker about an obsessive taxi driver who cruises midtown in a vintage Chcker. I like to remember how I wanted to pay for graduate school by being a hackie, aka Fountain of Wisdom.... Read more
January 25, 2004
Would I? Would I?
This afternoon, saw a man energetically applying himself to a recently-decapitated tree on Haight St. This Wood Carving Fearlessly Resuscitates Faith Into Tree Medicine For The Purpose of Cherishing Indigenous Teachings and Life In The Fillmore... Read more
January 22, 2004
A movie not yet made.
Published in Planet Online comes this tit-bit: "It would have been more likely that the two blond-haired, blue-eyed surfers who got off a plane in Sana, the capital of Yemen, about eight months ago had their flight to Bali rerouted. But Californians Charlie Smith and Jay Winters, both in their mid-20s, were actually in Yemen to catch some waves. Far from a surf destination, Yemen is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist nations and is fraught with warring tribes and radical Islamic fundamentalism. So Smith and Winters, both with degrees in Middle Eastern studies and fluent in Arabic, were either diplomats on surfboards or just out of their minds. Traveling with a bodyguard, a photographer, loaded guns, food, medical supplies, and surfboards, they spent two months tracing the coast of the Indian Ocean. Sometimes an entire village formed on the shores or cliffs to watch the first surfers ever seen. Out of the water, they explored a culture whose architecture, dress and cuisine blend Indian, African and Indonesian influences. "They encountered people who spoke openly about American policy without disdaining Americans. Trouble at frequent armed checkpoints and machine-gun toting tribesmen . there are more guns per capita in Yemen than anywhere else in the world . were often quelled by the Americans' ability to speak Arabic. Whatever metaphors on diplomacy and peace can be drawn from their surfing, Smith and Winters did trigger a dialogue in Yemen and now back at home on how misunderstood cultures can communicate with one another. This month, the pair is surfing the winter swells in Southern Lebanon with Hezbollah, considered by the US to be one of the most dangerous anti-Israeli terrorist groups. "It's about taking one more off-limits or unknown place and making it real and available," says Winters. "Danger is only a matter of perception." "... Read more
January 20, 2004
They all look homogenous.
Sitting on the 8.37 train: a row of four young men, three listening to iPods, three working diligently on 15" PowerBooks, three with goatees and shaved-bald heads. Behind us are full racks of bicycles, including four fixed-gear (two back-to-front with pursuit bars) and one single-speed. Do I notice because these are my traits and I'm amused that others share them? So exquisitely grand. Listening to Palace{Brothers, Music}. Last week Sara(h) was playing The Fall at the Edinburgh Castle, this week she was listening to Bonny Prince Billy.... Read more
These are the people that you meet.
This morning stopped for the usual at Coopers, where Jeremy was working solo. He knew my favourite mug already (!!) but asked whether I like the espresso "short" or "medium." I paused; I've never confronted that question, as the cheery baristas behind the counter have always pulled the coffee just right. "Medium?" I hazarded, remembering that the mug looks right when it's about 2/3 full of foamy espresso. And indeed medium was the ticket. Missed the 8.07, so I lingered in the chilly air and read the newspaper (singular: the Chronicle hasn't been appearing regularly on my doorstep the past week. I arrived at the Caltrain station just as the 8.07 was pulling out -- fifteen minutes late?! and sat on a bench to read the Examiner, the funny pages of which become shorter each week (at least they still carry Luann). Alas for the two-newspaper town! An elderly woman on the bench next to me was ringing someone, trying to find a phone number. The voice on the other end started dispensing the digits, but the woman scrambled for a pen and paper. Handy with the Sharpie, I handed her the pen and the newspaper, and she shakily wrote down the numbers. She said into the phone: "If I miss the train, there's a nice young man with a bicycle who will give me a ride." (She got off in Palo Alto.)... Read more
January 18, 2004
The last laff?
The Chronicle reports that several suitors are in line to acquire Laughing Sal, a twin to the manic mannekin who welcomes visitors to the Musée Mecanique and, once upon a time, to Playland.... Read more
January 13, 2004
What time is it?
While German police are investigating for fraud a man who sold potatoes as computers, even more enterprising youth are installing sound systems run by russets and building a tuber-powered web server, which feature a 220uF capacitor which " ... can power the server for about 10 seconds, long enough to swap in a new potato or simply stab one of the nails or copper wires into a fresh, juicy area." So much for my gags about a potato clock. UPDATE: Down at the pub, Aram set up a full-scale potato clock while we quaffed whiskey and ate tiramisu with a bar spoon. Reading found the scientific explanation for all this tomfoolery.... Read more
Autumn suéter.
This morning experienced, perhaps for the first time in years, the dilemma of "what to wear." I was stuck on wearing blue-grey trousers, and don't have a suitable flannel shirt that matches. The solution presented itself as I opened a package sent by my mother: it contained an assortment of study woolens, including a cosy-looking grey cardigan. Perfect!... Read more
January 11, 2004
The feral donuts of Santa Cruz.
Aram, Mary, Anna, and I trekked down early (although not too early that we weren't able to enjoy a Coopers coffee and Aram&Mary's famous granola on the benches at the corner of Duboce and Sanchez) to Año Nuevo State Park. At this park, northern elephant seals come to calve and mate once each year. Much to our delight, the new management of Ferrell's Donuts on Mission St. have merged operations with Marianne's Ice Cream. The cones were a little stale and the ice-cream delivery slightly underwhelming (although we got two huge scoops when we asked for one), but this was a tasty end to a nice trip to the area. An end, because as we were heading from our Marianne's stop to the Mushroom festival, we were recalled to San Francisco with an urgent invitation to dinner at a freshly-remodeled La Mooné (now Bistro ditto).... Read more
December 30, 2003
Still life with dogs.
While gambolling through the 'hood this morning, saw a tow-truck pulling an out-of-state car away from the kerb on Haight St. Much to my surprise, two dogs were still inside; the meter maid, unaffected, said that they'd be taken to the pound. A woman rushed out of the café across the street and said that the car had been parked in the same spot for a couple of days, dogs and all; she managed to unlock the car door and let the two dogs (a huge black lab and a cheery golden retriever, both healthy-looking if somewhat stir-crazy) out. She took them for a walk; they were champing at the bit, eager to not be in the car. The tow truck drew away a moment later, unrepentant, taking the car to the City Tow. Walked through the park to the California Academy of Sciences, which is presently moving digs to Howard St. The Concourse at Golden Gate park is being torn up (again), and the cherished pedestrian underpasses, home to many a saxphonist's rehearsal, will be filled with cars and a parking garage. Saw the beautiful Skulls exhibit, in which I learned that the halibut is born with eyes one on each side of its head, but that ultimately both end up on the same side. Anna sez, "Eyes on the side / I like to hide / Eyes in front / I like to hunt".... Read more
December 16, 2003
10.15 on a Monday night.
"I was in the back of the bus. The next thing I know, I'm flying through the air," said a man who declined to be identified. "It was a big bang. No brakes, we went full speed into the building." A 14-Mission slammed into a porn shop at the intersection of Sixth and Mission last night, injuring a score of people.... Read more
December 11, 2003
Big on the Caltrain scene.
Just as the inbound N-Judah rolled up to Duboce Park, my mobile rang. Aram said, "I'm about o hop on the BART." We met at the MUNI / BART interface, had the cloak-and-dagger exchange of some fresh Oakland-made granola. As we were walking on to the next outbound N, Ted stepped out of an M and we talked about the new Gehry-designed Brooklyn Atlantic Gardens, which Herbert Muschamp immediately hailed as the most important civic development in New York City since Battery Park. Once again outbound, we reached the Caltrain station and stood around the courtyard enjoying some commuter-hour sunshine with a paper demitasse of espresso.... Read more
December 7, 2003
That's why they're called waiters.
After making peace with the ill-tempered waiter at Kate's Kitchen, we headed out to the beach equipped with a bag full of fresh chocolate-chip cookies and a copy of Linton Kwesi Johnson's Independant Intavenshan. The wind was whipping through the razor wire at Mavericks, but the waves were closing quickly and only windsurfers were out on the water. The question of the day: Why do mermaids wear seashells?... Read more
December 1, 2003
Red is the colour of love.
The New York Times always run interesting obituaries. When former University of California president Clark Kerr died, this romantic anecdote appeared in the last column of the obit.: In 1934, while at a student congress, he met Catherine Spaulding. She passed him a note: ``Are You a Communist?'' He replied: ``No.'' She wrote back: ``I'm not either.'' They were married nine months later on Christmas Day.... Read more
November 4, 2003
¡Voto temprano, voto a menudo!
I wasn't first at the polling place this morning: two other young men were waiting at the door, breath steaming in the early air. The election official opened the door, we charged in, connected the arrows, and found that we got to vote a bonus round. Since the fancy Eagle-brand tabulator wasn't correctly aligned with the stars, our precinct used the manual override. We got to dump our second set of ballots into a big ol' bin beneath the Eagle, while the first set of ballots were marked "SPOIL" by the election official.... Read more
October 31, 2003
Give yourself a better life.
8 Nov 2003 UPDATE: A similar report landed on the New York Times, this time in Manhattan. An 8'x10' vault on a plot in the East Village may be available, for an estimated quarter-million dollars. San Francisco slowly moved all cemeteries out of the city boundaries; now the long-buried turn-of-the-(last)-century élite may have their earthly revenge. It was the impermanence of permanence that gave rise to Mountain View in the first place. From the mid-19th century onward, San Francisco real estate was so desirable that it was difficult even to find permanent room for the departed. "The dead kept getting kicked out of the city," said Gray Brechin, a historian who wrote "Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthy Ruin" (University of California Press, 1999). As cemeteries were cleared for development, the well-to-do realized that nothing was secure. They chose Oakland for their eternal resting spot. I have long wanted to write a story about the City of the Dead.... Read more
October 12, 2003
Isle of Skye.
Belatedly on the heels of Am I Hot Or Not? comes this foo or not generator. Still not as much fun as going to the Edinburgh Castle.... Read more
October 9, 2003
American Cyc-o.
The roundabouts are really irritating. I was walking through the intersection of Scott and Page this evening, and two cars didn't even slow down as they drove around the temporary traffic circle. I hucked a copy of American Psycho at the second car, a BMW. The smack of the paperback hitting the lacquered car was satisfying, but the car still didn't slow down. At all. I cracked the spine of the book, which I'd just found on the sidewalk.... Read more
October 6, 2003
I'm a great big nincompoop.
Headed over to the 510 today and checked out the action at Scharffen Berger chocolates with mum, dad, Aram, and the Birthday Girl MD MD. Saw the astonishing melangeur, and marvelled that these chocolate makers are so confident in their ingredients and methods that they open their factory to everyone.... Read more
September 29, 2003
A day without a camera.
After a lunch-time trip to Rosamunde's and a pint of Drake's at the Toronado, Arshad and I headed in a roundabout way through the Inner Mission and out onto Highway 80 over to the Pick'n'Pull to find a new motor for the radiator fan on his (other) car.... Read more
September 22, 2003
Dear diary ...
From Joe Rogers' "Metropoitan Diary" feature of the New York Times comes this: Dear Diary: I work downtown, and on Water Street in front of Fleet Bank, I often buy my breakfast from the sidewalk vendor. Recently I approached the cart, nodded to the proprietor and waited by the side while three other people came to the window, one at a time. One was given a coffee, the second a coffee and a danish, and the third, coffee and a bagel. I just laughed when the vendor handed me my scrambled egg whites on a roll with orange juice. While each of us said thank you and paid for our food, not a single one of us had actually spoken our orders. David A. Sifre... Read more
The other side of summer?
Drove out to Mount Tam to check out the New Music on the Mountain, with the Rova Saxophone Quartet. Had I sensibly checked the web, I could have read that the event was cancelled due to high fire hazards. But I didn't check, so Larry and I drove all the way up and up and up the mountain, stopping at a Central Valley farmer's stand for some figs, peaches, and plums. We reached the ranger post and found the road blocked off with orange plastic barrels. A small hand-written sign read "ROVA: New Music cancelled." We grinned and turned back down the mountain. Even more exciting was the subsequent drive to San Rafael to visit Josh, Alisa, and Max. Just as we were pulling off the highway into downtown, Winnie started spewing thick white steam from the hood. At the signal, the car stalled completely; as I put on the flashers and motioned for people to move around me, a wiry man hopped out of his car and said urgently "Can you steer? I'll push!" and energetically heaved his shoulder against the back of the truck. Larry looked bewildered (I later found out that he doesn't drive), as a woman and then another woman leaped from their cars and aided in the pushing. We quickly relocated the car to the filling station at the corner and assessed the damage. One of the helpful women and her boyfriend cheerfully offered us a ride to our destination, and then asked "Are you going to have breakfast?" (I started to laugh, and then swallowed it: the time was 2:30 pm, and I'd eaten breakfast seven hours earlier. But this was Marin, and things are different there.) A quick visit to Chez Raymond-Blatter and then a long wait for a tow back to San Francisco, and we were in apple-pie order. So much for the last day of summer!... Read more
September 14, 2003
Goril.la goril.la
Sad to see a headline that Floquet de Neu, or Snowflake, the beloved albino gorilla at the Barcelona Zoo, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.... Read more
You can read me the riot act.
Strolling down Alberta Street, saw a yard full of chopper bikes, a porch full of punkrock, and a street chock-full of food vendors. Belly-dancers and oud players, glittering pink-bedizened ballerinas, six-foot-tall choppers, endless steel-drum barbecues, jigsaw art ...... Read more
September 12, 2003
What a good name for a city!
As I was thinking fondly of PDX, was thrilled to receive a phone call from Justin. He shares my high opinion of The Kells, where happy hour extends to tasty burgers, plates of oyster, and Jameson's-battered wings. Sitting out front, one can watch bicyclists heading home.... Read more
September 9, 2003
The Stoop Report.
Unlike anything else, the stoop provides a respite, my place. This morning I stepped outside and as I stood looking up and down the street, Stan the UPS man drove by and waved; three women with strollers and ambling toddlers walked by, smiled and said "Good Morning"; Kilby the real-estate agent drove past and waved; and the old man with a cane -- who always sits on his stoop on the next block of Scott -- recgonized me and smiled. Joy comes from the stoop. Merriment flows. And sitting on the stoop makes me quite happy indeed.... Read more
September 6, 2003
September 5, 2003
With glee she eats the lil' buggers.
Saw Insectivora at the Sideshow by the Seashore last month when I was traipsing around the Island of the Coneys. Smiling mischievously, Insectivora devoured worms and crickets with a huge smile on her face, but that wasn't as startling as the immediate and visceral reaction of a woman in the second row of the bleachers. She gagged and made a strong retching sound, causing the man sitting immediately in front of her to leap from his seat with alarm.... Read more
August 27, 2003
I'm going to hell.
In a handbasket, probably. You've always suspect it, but I now know for certain thanks to this little test. I've read several different editions of Dante's Inferno, although I've only read Bickerstaff's and Musa's editions of Purgatory and Paradiso; Inferno is by far the most exciting (in a stuff-blows-up kind of way) of the three, although the symbolism of the entire poem is phenomenal. I have editions translated or edited by Dorothy Sayers (one of my favourite authors, who has written exemplary novels: Murder Must Advertise is in my bag right now, and The Nine Tailors is another); Mark Musa (in a wonderfully-annotated Penguin ed.); Allan Mandelbaum, a hefty illustrated ed.; and Ciardi. [Sunday] Also a nice Briitsh edition of the American poet Laureate's translation; I do'n't think I have an edition with Wm Blake's illustrations.... Read more
August 26, 2003
Scotchday.
Arshad had his first Scotch Day. Sara made delicious, delicious tapas, which (amongst many other thoughts) spurred me to work on getting my food blog in apple-pie order.... Read more
