feather2pixels

Indian summer is upon us.  It’s the only summer we get here.  This was the scene at 7PM last night at Ocean Beach.

And this was the somewhat exciting scene—it only happens once a year—this afternoon as our training ship made its way back to campus, fresh from a summer in the South Pacific and then in San Francisco for a drydock makeover.  More to the point, this is me awkwardly trying to make conversation with coworkers and it rarely goes better than this:

The Creative Geometry art show was a success. The gallery at the Museum of Children’s Art was the perfect size, the art looked great on the walls, and most importantly, people showed up. I think the students were in to it. It made me sorry that I did not extend personal invitations to my friends. Sorry everyone. As a consolation, I put together a really low quality three minute video from my digital camera clips. Behold as throughout the day I slowly drive Adrienne crazier. It’s just how we work together.

April 15th, 11:10PM at the San Francisco central processing station of the United States Postal Service.

“Gandpop, where were you when the cheap gas hit $4 a gallon?”

“Why, I believe I was at the corner of Guerrero and 16th.”

“Oh, near that new bar where hipsters can take their spaceships with no brakes inside to lock up?”

“Yes, son, that’s the one.”

“Sweet.”

On the drive home from work last night I got a text message from a student:

Approximately six seconds later, turning on to Cesar Chavez Street, I entered a plume of brown smoke quickly sweeping through the neighborhood. The smoke was coming from Valencia Street and before I knew exactly what was going on, there was a palpable sense of dread.

The fire was two blocks away, though. A full smorgasbord of citizens of the Mission-Valenica corridor gathered on the street to watch the scene unfold.

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Nothing brings the neighborhood together like a four alarm blaze. I even saw Colleen (a fellow survivor of the UCSF Puttlitz Lab) for the first time in over a year.

Saturday was good. Me and CW started the day at The Grubsteak, the old rail-car restaurant where dining options fall into two distinct categories: diner food and fine Portuguese cuisine. We got the greasy breakfast. Recently, CW has been revaluating how much of me she wants to see around. It is a complicated question and many factors, such as her new rescue dog who wants to devour my leg, are working against me. For the moment, though, I had the undevoured leg up on the little bastard for long enough for a waterfront ride along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building farmers’ market, where the determined cheapskate can fill up on locally grown organic miscellany, one quarter of an ounce at a time. And Pier 39. A more determined version of myself would have the energy to explain why the dude who jumps on glass reminds me of myself. Needless to say, there are some good things about Fisherman’s Wharf:

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And later, alone, I rode to the ocean, where it turned out to be one of those days you have to be kind of crazy to be there. I couldn’t keep my eyes open because the entire beach was engulfed in a small sandstorm and later in the shower I was rubbing the California Coast out of my hair for at least ten minutes. I needed it, though, and that’s what I love about cold, slightly disgusting and dangerous Ocean Beach–I haven’t done anything that deliberate in weeks. Plus, there were driftwood sculptures.

I’ll cut to the chase: the most important thing that happened on Saturday was Pitt’s dominating Big East Tournament championship. They were simply unstoppable. It was totally unexpected. Why, it was just two weeks ago that I was sitting alone in the Pinole Valley Applebee’s parking lot, sobbing to myself after a fourteen point spanking by West Virginia in what must be the most pathetic snapshot from the last couple of years of my life.

I’m happy now, though.

Some exciting recent multimedia content:

Tahoe:

The Ocean Beach Christmas tree burn:

Inner Richmond storm aftermath:

A few notes on the somewhat amazing 2008 Christmas tree burn at Ocean Beach.

From what I understand this was supposed to be a big event, but the rain ended up keeping people away. It wasn’t coming down too hard in the Mission, so I put on my ridiculous rain gear and biked down to the dark diner on Sloat Boulevard where everyone was meeting and everything was a lot wetter. It ended up being about forty-five people, maybe twenty trees. After sharing a joint with an old hippie, a different old hippie began thumping bongos. This seemed to initiate a single file march to the beach.

This dunes on this section of Ocean Beach are decidedly cliff-like and, flanked on the opposite side by the high tide, we were left with very little actual beach on which to start a bonfire. As a result, the combined forces of the surf and the rain set up a death battle of elements. At first there seemed to be no way to stop fire–the pile of evergreen went up in approximately half a second. Every once in a while a wave caught everyone unawares, but this didn’t seem like a group to be stopped by some soggy feet. Neither was fire.

At one point, two firemen peeked at the scene from the street above and seemed unimpressed. I guess they knew what we would find out soon. Fire packs an impressive punch, but there is not much in this world that can withstand the fury of pissed-off, rainy water.

As fire was dying down, a wave much bigger than anything that came before closed in on us. This time there was no escape. And this time the result was more than just soaked feet; I could feel the sensation of what would be coldness on my knees if my knees had not been numb from the rain. Or the fire. Or something. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that the wave carried the still-burning wood into the Pacific. For real: the dying bonfire fire floated into the dark ocean and it was one of the more outstanding things I’ve seen.

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Let the precipitation begin:

The temperature keeps dropping and the family visits keep coming. On a cold Friday night, I hopped on a BART train to SFO and found Mom at the U.S. Air terminal. She was wearing wooden shoes with a trim blazer and it would be the nicest she looked all weekend. The next day she put on a borrowed baseball tee-shirt and found a way to pedal a borrowed bike all the way out to the Pacific Ocean and up to the Dumpling King. Of course I didn’t mention it, but I was proud of her. And over a BYOBed bottle of Shiraz, she also also helped me settle a longstanding internal battle: Tajine on Polk Street does in fact make the best lamb ever. Unfortunately, the photo booth at Lost Weekend Video was out of order, but they had plenty of working copies of Knocked Up (Is it just me, or was this Judd Apatow’s vaginal counterpart to his dick-centric Superbad?). Mom’s jet lag got the best of her, but at least she found my Mission apartment comfortable.

The Mission was in top form for last week’s Day of the Dead. The procession traversed a couple of blocks about twenty-fourth street and there were lots of the following:

-candles
-faces painted white
-drums
-(bacon-scented?) incense

To-shi-o, Corinne and I stumbled down the street to take it all in and I’m now convinced that all parades–even non-occult related parades–should take place at night. The darkness enhanced everything good about it: the intrigue, the seemingly controlled chaos, the sense of the familiar becoming unfamiliar. The brown bagged beer also enhanced these things.

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Oh, and the oil spill. The fucking oil spill. The Chronicle led the next day with a 140 gallon estimate and at an actual figure of 58,000 gallons, as usual, the Chronicle was 0.8% correct. Or 99.2% wrong. Depends on your perspective I guess. Of course, the error isn’t really the Chronicle’s fault (although a six block walk to the bay would have confirmed this number as ridiculous), as everyone is now sorting through the explanation of the USCG’s now famous slowness in getting its story straight (it now appears that at least part of the explanation involves damage to the sounding tubes used to measure tank depth).

Overall it just sucks. Every major beach in the area is closed except Ocean Beach, the greatest of the beaches, and it’s unclear when they will be safe or even if they will ever be truly safe–even small amounts of benzene are enough to can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness. Anyway I was on the beach today and it was very unclear what was going on. There were ominous looking signs and loads of workers in white haz-mat outfits picking at the sand, but there were also plenty of surfers, dogs, and general beach miscellany. Are we safe or are we unsafe?

As the media hunts for prey to satiate its never ending bloodlust for blame, the people around me seem to be reacting with varying levels of defensiveness and xenophobia (“Down with Hanjin!”) across party lines. The old boys club at the Maritime Academy (which may actually turn out be the alma mater of the pilot in question) has been decidedly defensive. If you are asking me, they are giving way too much attention to the reactionary nonsense of the first 48 hours, which has included everything from “no single hulled ships in the bay” to “no ships in the bay.” Right. Also, they were really pissed about the front page pictures of oiled birds on day two of the Chronicle’s coverage. One thing conservatives have grown to hate, I’ve noticed, is any level of insinuation that non-human life may be as important as human life. Or human money. Or human jobs.

Wow, for ten minutes I didn’t write on endlessly about myself! (Though you should know I printed some really shitty new postcards this week) Here are some pictures.

Halloween in the Mission District took the form of a mass of costumed nine year olds, most with pumpkin buckets and parents in tow. The sheer number of kids in the neighborhood was fairly amazing to me and seeing them all dressed up made Mission Halloween that much better—it all seemed worlds superior to the non-celebration going on in the Castro, where an armada of cops was apparently deployed to ensure that nobody was having too much fun. I was disappointed that our apartment didn’t receive any trick-or-treaters, but apparently hitting up the local businesses rather than residences is more in line with tradition. For the sake of variety, this probably makes more sense and an informal survey discovered vegan mini cupcakes being distributed at Ritual Coffee Roasters, peanut butter cups at the Bartlett/24th liquor store, and mint flavored toothpicks at the take-out Chinese place across from the BART station. As usual, this area was the center of activity.

After a bit of aimless wandering, I put on my biking gloves, climbed up to our back balcony where nobody can see me, and played songs into the cool night air. This is becoming a routine during these solitary times. It finally feels like Fall.

At one point the city was my best friend. We spent a lot time alone, made each other feel good, and I have many memories of being intoxicated with her beauty. (I think I almost got her pregnant back in the spring of 2004). Now I wake up at five to spend my days in Vallejo and there is the sense that SF and I have drifted apart a little. But it was a sunny weekend of wandering around town around and it felt good to remember that old, mischievous spark.

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And then, while I was wading along Ocean Beach, two tall guys from Amsterdam asked permission to photograph me for their Dutch design magazine. “We take pictures of people in the park,” they said. They had bad teeth. For fifteen minutes I posed.

And then we surprised A-kik-o (trivia team: general knowledge, handicrafts, geography).

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And then Joe and Ana arrived in town for the final leg of their honeymoon.

And then I skipped my open studio show completely because who cares about a bunch of postcards?