No more tree.
Did the ole commute in record time- was at Peets at 9:30 and woke up at 8:45, got out of house exactly at 9:05, so 25 minutes, and on phone the entire time (job interview). They were ripping out a tree in front of the library :( The Joe DiMaggio playground does look great. I need to get a new basketball and practice more. The sun is amazing today, it's been day 5 of incredible sunshine. I realized a woman crossing the street in the Financial District was wearing a shirt, with no other layers. I felt bad in my courdoroy (sp?) jacket. Why must I layer when I leave home? The ever inclement weather? Yesterday the wind came over Russian Hill in sporadic gusts; fog moving inland.
update: not a tree, a streetlight, which we really need at that corner.
Up Grant Street and Labyrinth
I keep on finding interesting routes to common destinations. On the way back from Film Yard, the video store, this afternoon, I found a cool intersection. One alley between another, Pfeiffer and something (not on mapquest) between Chestnut and Francisco. Really charming! In a kind of undiscovered way (impossible since it is one block off the Babylon tour). Found the alley from Tales of San Francisco, off of Jones and around Vallejo: Macondray Lane (barely on Mapquest). A few blocks of just garages, but then it turns into a cute cobblestone path with really nice landscaping, by the neighbors I assume. The Mission had these two, but up on Russian Hill and Telegraph hill it's a bit more hidden feeling because the city here is so crowded and dense.
Yesterday walked around the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral- noticed Dede Wilsey was a main benefactor for the really nice Chapter House (so english though it's embarassing). Nice public space in general. Some people had the wrong idea with the labyrinth. Answering your cell phone then standing in the middle of the lines, talking to air, wondering why people keep on asking you to move (!!!!). Ah, be nice to tourists, they don't mean to be awful.
Driving to Civic Center
Ah, Jury Duty. It's over! Notes on traversing from North Beach to Civic Center:
- there are many ways to cross over Nob Hill/Russian Hill
- many people, though they live in SF, drive everywhere
- the observation above is not related to your income level
- the parks in Civic Center are very pleasant for napping around 1pm
- amazing schwerma place near Library!
- architecture very cool, very Classica, but also calming and orderly, in Civic Center
- I am sure i have gained 5 lbs by not walking 2.5 miles a day
- lethargy breeds lethargy!
In the news...
The walk to work today was kind of uneventful. They're still cleaning the Transamerica building. There's some project of painting the sidewalk grey and after a few days adding sand (Cafe Macaroni is the latest). Some guy was getting a tai chi stick lesson in the park. It was bright and sunny with a nice breeze. I almost clocked an Italian tourist with a camcorder (I really book on the downward descent).
Being a creature of structure and schedules, I always go to Peets in the morning, I always come in and read the news clippings from
bloglines. I've shared the quaint temperate beauty of SF's North Beach, now time for my strident political views! Nod to
mom who has more strident views than me.
From
Daily Kos: "Excuse me? This is ABC News saying that unless there is conflict at home, a war that killds [sic] dozens a day, including Americans, will not get coverage? That as long as people are "deferrential" to an unpopular president, they're not allowed to cover the carnage in Iraq?" Wow, I think the odd thing here is that ABC is
admitting they are tired of reporting on Iraq.
Since my nickname is Shaq and I read a long interesting article about his body fat (nonexistent), I have a soft spot for any news about him. But in reality, I side with Nash, who is just cuter. From
CNN""I love Nash," my friend Pat said in between making jokes about Jake Voskuhl, "but it's absurd that Shaq wasn't the MVP.""
Slave cabin being preserved in affluent black neighborhood south of DC. "It was later sold several times, and many owners listed slaves among their holdings. After the Civil War the building was used to house chickens and was later abandoned." Chickens!!! Awful.
slave cabin story. I could kind of do without the implied commentary on how affluent and of the same race the new neighbors are, but that's me. And it's my blog! Ha!
OK last news tidbit because I could do this all day.
Accuser has evidence - thing about these stories is that I don't necessarily tape record random conversations. Can Abdul claim entrapment? I mean isn't it a perk of her job that she can scam on the youngun's?
boycott norton's vault AND bad translator!
First, walking to work right outside of Bikram yoga/convenience store, saw cable car stopped, and brakeman leaning out asking a small, elderly Asian man if he needed an ambulance. Man and woman were huddled on the sidewalk with a 20-something blond (turns out British) woman who is on the phone with ambulance. She showed me her pad of paper with the license number and make/color of the car that hit hte man. He was wiping blood from the crown of his head down around his neck. Both were agitated (man and woman/wife) and didn't speak English. I said some stuff like, do you speak chinese, are you chinese. They didnt' respond. They sounded southern asian, it was hard to tell. Finally another younger Asian person came up and he could translate from Mandarin to Cantonese. So it's this daisy chain of british girl to me, me to this Asian guy, Asian guy to the couple. english-> mandarin -> cantonese. Motorcycle cop comes up and confirms, when I ask him, that he can bring a translator.
Read an article in SJ Merc times that finally the translation staff at hospitals will be stepped up. What I experienced in the NICU was awful. Parents having to wait more than a half an hour to get a Spanish (!) translator in to confirm dosages for their daughter, and during that time the infant daughter is lustily crying on the operating table waiting for food. Reflugio! That's Spanish for reflux, the question of whether the kid needed reflux medicine.
The cop just needed to say "Ying yue?" I mean, how hard is it to ask if someone speaks your langauge? I could learn "do you speak mandarin" in cantonese, I guess.
Part II: boycott Norton's Vault
Where I play trivia every week, Norton's Vault, has a new low in management and bartender staff. Some guy who trips hismelf out as obnoxious and funny is just obnoxious. I come with a passel of people each week. Well, this week, I got a lecture from the bartender that "you girl" who "brings tons of people" and "doesn't make reservations"... does he not want business? And, after making these comments, doesn't listen to me respond. Well guess I'll have to bring that passel to their competitor. I can't understand why an SF bar would *not* want patrons, I mean, figure that out. And on the reservation topic- they never have availability, so why bother? Also friends are varying degrees, sometimes 2 people sometimes 8. It's a bar. Whatever. Lame.
the fan dance
Two women were doing tai chi in the park today- the fan dance. My mother informs me that there are many tai chis, with swords, fans, etc. One woman was really, really good. She could balance and seemed to kind of know the next steps. The fans made such a big noise (big, red fans) that you could hear them 2 blocks away. The dancers kind of "snap" them in key poses, I guess. The woman had the ability to look graceful, and kind of menacing, besides also looking strong. They were wearing (because I will always talk about clothes of course) those padded coats and regular slacks, with multi-purpose tennis shoes. Been thinking lately about how Chinese will not get into sweats no matter how hard or casual the surroundings may be. Not a huge advocate of sweats, mind you. Today I was wearing my Western Cowboy outfit, and felt German. All denim, all the time!
end of the blog?
It's true, this blog may change or die soon, not sure really. I wish I did!
There was an interesting cloud pattern above Coit Tower and Peter & Paul church this morning. I thought of taking a photo, but sometimes photos reduce the beauty of something. You have to work so hard to get it exactly like you think it should be.
The philly cheesesteak place is still pretty gross, and in the morning when they bring otu the rugs and mats to wash, it just compounds the problem. VXN is the club I went to last Friday, it does absolutely nothing to prepare for the big Friday onslaught. The new look is bare white walls and white cubes, so I guess there's just not that much to upkeep (besides liberal use of Windex).
Two Random Characters
This site is also a kind of novel-journal where I make notes on characters that I want to include in novels. So these are the results of character analysis this morning on the walk to work.
RECENT EMIGRE FROM CHINA
A guy was in front of me and came down Stockton/Telegraph Hill and walked almost all the way down to Financial District. He was a tall man, Asian, with large feet and kind of skinny overall. He was dressed in a nondescript way- tan slacks, dark button down (even though it was drizzly). He had a cute little red shopping bag from something like Pink or other couture, and it had an umbrella in it. Now, American guys would freak out in machoness if their wife said, "grab an umbrella before you leave today!" and you put it in a cute little red bag with an umbrella. But French guys, and maybe Vietnamese, wouldn't think it was so fey. Or maybe they would compromise for the weather? Thankfully he jsut had loafers on, a non-descript inexpensive kind. I couldn't place where he was from. I thought northern China since he was so tall, but he didn't seem like a recent transplant since he seemed pretty comfortable in North Beach. (In re-reading htis, maybe he's gay?)
LAW STUDENT SLUMMING IT IN 30s
I work near a law school that's not super prestigious. When I take the pedestrian walk through the block to my building, I'm usually outnumbered by really annoying little briefcase-on-wheels strollers that make a really loud awful sound. Similar to when you take your shopping cart across brick. In front of me was a woman in light weight black track pants, very flat trodden-to-the-earth flip flips (I was disabused from calling them thongs when thongs-the-underwear came back in), badly streaked long brown hair in a pony tail, and an unshapely large sweater. I'm thinking: rolled out of bed? Had to go to class? Had to bring her civics books volume four and five to class? Has a student meeting? Walking around MUNI with flip flops makes me hygenically cringe. As well as the arch damage going on. Then more motivation questions: did she re-enter this phase of her life, quitting a job and going to school, and regret it? Were the early mornigns (it was 10am) just too harrowing to put on a real pair of sneakers, or dress like Julia Roberts in Pelican Brief etc. Maybe that was the motivation, the tousled, "too busy to use hair product" look?
Also had a good idea for a short story about my very hip 80s friend Christine.
washing the pyramid #2
So I took a photo and will upload it soon. Do they raise up the platform and just leave it there for a week or what? It's been in the same place, I swear, each morning.
Monterey, Sutter street
My ongoing doctor & dentist visits during the day compose the new commute, the "Sutter Street" walk. You go by about a million Academy of Art buildings. They have started renting out about a fourth of San Francisco. Lots of diminutive men and women in post-high school bohemian rhapsody, wanting to get into fashion or, who knows, cosmetics. I was getting into the artsy (as mommy and daddy pay for it) vibe until I saw something so utterly awful in the window of one of the student showcase galleries. Terry Schiavo! In Oils!
I longingly walked by two great cafes, and text messaged my friend who lives and works nearby frantically to see if she could pose, I mean, hang out with me in them. Nope. There's a bar on Bush stret I want to pose, I mean go to as well.
The best place though was, and is, Sutter Street Bar and Grill. You can hang out at Larkin Youth center, go thrift storing (jacket- 1$!!), then get a %2.50 well drink OR beer. That's fun for 5 dollars, close to my "fun for 5$" Chinatown tour. It involves looking through all of the hardware stores trying to find the ideal plastic bins for your extra computer cables. Or, shopping all afternoon for a money tree (1.50$) for your mom and/or relative, and getting lunch and a snack on the way. Fun for 5$!!!
The other great, great place that I have to take photos of is the deli on Sutter at Market. I finally decided to share my great find (always fearful of something becoming popular and therefore impossible to access). I timidly invited my only friend at work (OF@W) to go there for lunch. When he finally figured out what I was talking about he breezily answered that he goes there once a week. Something about this place is so Old San Francisco. The fact that it's buzzing and popular though without any real attempt at conservation is what I really love about it. Cafe chairs, tons of windows, really basic deli fare, people are in there all times of the day. Older, kind of downtown working people hang out there.
Spent the weekend in Monterey. I took some amazing... ly bad... sunset shots Sunday night, from the car, while driving, in dusk conditions on a narrow road going 60. Earlier that weekend, without camera, walked a 3-4 hour hike around Asilomar (the peace treaty was signed there) a beautiful Julia Morgan kind of estate and community hidden in the dunes. This kind of walk has a huge break for beer and apps, of course, at the deck of the Spanish Bay Inn. Despite ridiculously boring conversations about golf- and I even like the sport- the scenery is great. You sit on big benches with your legs on pit fires, and look out over the Pacific Ocean, some fairways, a deer or a bunny, and some poor girl being dragged around by her boyfriend in his Bermudas. Ah.... the wealthy life.
