San Francisco is My Home

27
Mar

The Legion of Honor

Author: kris, Category: Museums

I went to the Legion of Honor today to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. I always forget that the Legion is there, wonderful, waiting with hushed halls of art whenever I want it. (And free on the first Tuesday of each month, except for special exhibits.) The exhibit is great — actually, the non-celebrity photos turned out to be way more interesting than the high-gloss snapshots of the rich and famous — but the best part of any visit to the Legion is wandering the normal art afterwards.

I like the gorgeous furniture pieces they have displayed here and there throughout the maze of rooms that house the artworks. I like the grounds, manicured and smattered with statues. I even like the overpriced cafeteria, an important part of any museum visit. And I like leaving the museum and driving the quiet, winding streets back through the ritzy Sea Cliff neighborhood where all the most gorgeous homes are.

I recommend both a visit to this museum and seeing the special exhibit. But be warned: go early! The school field trips start showing up around noon and things get crazy and crowded.

27
Mar

The San Francisco drinking game

Author: kris, Category: Seen

Grab a flask of your favorite drink (and here we mean, obviously, some kind of lemonade, because this site does not support public drunkenness) and hit the streets. It’s time for the San Francisco drinking game. Ready?

Take a drink every time:

A MUNI bus driver uses MSL (MUNI Sign Language) at you. For example, they might give you that half-hearted wave as they speed by, refusing to stop and pick you up because they’re running late and there’s another bus behind them…somewhere. Or they might use the half-scowl and grunt MSL that indicates the fare machine is broken and you are to proceed onto the bus without paying.

You see someone walking around in a costume without any visible reason for it. Period clothing also counts.

You see two people standing next to each other talking on their cell phones who appear to be talking to each other (i.e. one speaks, then the other speaks).

You see someone on a Bluetooth headset talking to him or herself.

You see someone not on a Bluetooth headset talking to him or herself.

You see a sign in a house window for a losing candidate who ran in an election two or more years ago.

I’m still working on this game. If you’ve got suggestions, I’d love to hear ‘em.

27
Mar

Boulange de Cole

Author: kris, Category: Food

It’s a bit gloomy out this morning. Don’t worry, it’ll burn off. After all my blathering about spring yesterday, I know the weather gods won’t let me down. However, in the meantime we are left with an overcast morning, the perfect weather to cozy up in a smart little cafe somewhere with a soup bowl full of coffee and something recently out of the oven.

I recommend the Boulange de Cole. This is one of those SF bakeries with the perfect lazy morning vibe: just enough people rushing in and out on their way to work that you feel like you’re getting away with something, but enough people settled in for the morning with a newspaper and a brioche that you don’t get lonely. Plus, the food is amazing.

This place is good for: trying every baked good on the menu, playing hooky from work, giving yourself an inexpensive treat when you’re unemployed, blissfully wasting a morning.

26
Mar

When down under backs up

Author: kris, Category: Shopping

With the spring air and the jasmine scent comes the smell of backed up sewers. I was going to do a whole post about this problem, but then I found this:

It’s a rug! A manhole patterned rug! So weird! And…a little gross. Maybe useful if you’re having a party and want to subtly alienate your friends. Check it out here.

Ok, so then I was ready to get serious. But then I found this:

Urban Myth via Comcast: Robots in the Sewers

It’s not as exciting as you might hope. Just an article about Comcast using the SF sewers to lay fiber optic wires. Still, satisfyingly gross. Now you and your grandma can finally agree on something: there IS nothing but filth on the internet.

Ha! Sewer jokes. I am already tired of them. Time to close the windows and spray some perfume around the apartment, I guess.

26
Mar

Bocce ball

Author: kris, Category: Sports

My thoughts on avoiding spring cleaning made me think perhaps the best thing to do is avoid your filthy house altogether. Today’s suggestion for getting you out of your filthy house and into the springy air is…bocce ball!

Similar to lawn bowling, bocce ball is quite the fun. Gather a small group of pals together and visit one of the courts on this list. (You may need to bring your own bocce balls, so check before you go.) Or combine your playing with copious drinking: check out this list of Napa wineries that offer bocce ball courts.

Remember, you don’t have to be old to like the things that old people like. This is your lesson of the day.

26
Mar

How to escape spring cleaning

Author: kris, Category: Shopping

The air warms up, the birds chitter-chatter, and I can say almost definitely that spring has arrived in San Francisco. If you’re like me, you’re probably being hit with a longing to engage in spring cleaning, which is conflicting with your deep hatred of actual cleaning. When that happens, I say buy a bunch of bright, fresh little touches for your house that conveniently hide the dirt you’re not removing.

Flowers

The obvious spring touch is fresh flowers. My favorite spot is the Flower Mart, where some families have kept their flower stalls through multiple generations. It’s a visual feast, and a good place to go if you can’t afford to actually buy flowers because you can sate yourself on the scent alone. This is also a great place to go to buy in bulk (weddings, a really big house, etc.).

If the Flower Mart seems overwhelming, you can find your blooms at the best-known (but not necessarily the best) farmer’s market in the city. This, of course, is also the place to pick up some fresh, seasonal produce so that you can clean up your mouth as well as your house. (Note: I do not recommend veggies as an alternative to brushing your teeth.)

You can find pretty vases for these all over the place, of course, but I feel like vases are an ideal thrift store item. You’ll get a mixture of pretty and funky, they’ll be cheap as all get-out and they’ll look great when not surrounded by all the other chipped and dusty glass on the thrift store table. Good Will usually has a good selection of colored glass stuff, and a quick wander through the Mission junk stores can sometimes turn up a treasure or two.

I found these tulips here.

Fabric

I found a great list of local fabric stores here, which explains the pros and cons of each one in detail. My favorite on the list was Far Out Fabrics, but you of course can choose your own. Use cheap fabric to drape over a ratty chair, make a throw pillow, cover a table, or make yourself an outfit. If you’re sew inclined (heh), you can sew up the edges and make fitted furniture covers and hemmed tablecloths and so on, or you can rock it dorm style as I do and just fling stuff around. I think you know which one Martha Stewart would approve.

I found this image here.

Fun stuff

You’ve been stuck in your house all winter (or…at least for those three days of rain) and you need to liven things up a little. Grab pink elephant shot glasses at Cliff’s, or some expensive hand painted plates from Anthropologie. Get a few vintage postcards from Quantity Postcards and cheap photo frames to stick them in from the Ikea in Emeryville. Scatter your new tchotchkes around the house to spruce up a room without having to, you know, dust it.

25
Mar

Still carrying a torch

Author: kris, Category: News, Politics, Sports

Lots of uproar over the upcoming passage of the Olympic torch through San Francisco. The i.m. Newsom and his posse of city administrators are being tight-lipped about the planned route, which is getting the ACLU and associated protesters hot under the collar. There’s a lot of talk about protesting China’s crimes against Tibet, especially if Chinatown is part of the torch’s route.

I don’t know what to think about all that. On the one hand, I am firmly against the way China is handling their involvement in Tibet, obviously. On the other hand, there’s a nice ideal attached to the Olympics, that pretty image of there being one place where we all meet up. Even those of us committing atrocities against innocent Tibetan monks.

It’s like a family, I guess. Your brother and cousin may hate each other, or maybe your great-aunt is a racist windbag, or who knows what. Still, you all get together on Thanksgiving. Maybe pointlessly, maybe not.

Then again, China is more than an impotent windbag at this point. Maybe even in a family you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

Thoughts?

25
Mar

Tuesday profile: Local ballparks

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks, Oakland, Sports

I don’t write about sports much on this site because, well, I mostly find them boring. But I do enjoy baseball. Not in the sense of following it or understanding it in anyway. I just like going to games. And for this reason, this week’s Tuesday business review deals with the two baseball stadiums available to a local fan.

We begin with AT&T Park* in San Francisco. With its sweeping views of the water, this is a gorgeous place to hang out even if you hate baseball. It’s especially nice on sunny days when the water gets all gemstone-sparkly and all the colors seem crisp and new. The drawback, of course, is that tickets are expensive, even for the cheap seats.

For cheaper and less classy game, I like to head for McAfee Coliseum, current home of the Oakland A’s. I like this place because of the cheap Wednesday night games. For a while, tickets to these games were $2, but I think they might be as high as $4 now. That’s in addition to the cost of ten or so dollar hot dogs (now raised to $2 I think) which are an integral part of the experience. A cheap baseball game isn’t a cheap baseball game unless you sneak in your own hooch and make yourself sick by eating way more hot dogs than you wanted simply because you can pay for them with the loose change you find floating around in your car. This stadium is especially exciting because of the side games being offered such as dot racing (three dots “race” on the message board; every guy I know explodes in a frenzy of ridiculous wagering). It’s like even the people who work for professional baseball know that you need fun distractions when watching professional baseball.

Rumor has it that the A’s are making a bid to move to Cissy Field in Fremont, which will be a great sadness for everyone. Get your cheap games in now, because later you might not have the option.

*I’m sure real baseball curmudgeons have covered this much more adroitly and ad nauseam on the internet, but don’t you hate the branding of sports fields? I don’t even like sports and I hate it. You strip the poetry from sports and all it is is big business. What about the little kid who plays on a Little League team and still dreams about making the major leagues, not because it pays well but because he loves the game? What does the branding tell him about that dream? (Don’t get me started on what’s happening to the little girls who love the game.)

This view could be yours.

24
Mar

The 680 Murder…

Author: kris, Category: News

I usually hate reading articles like this one, stuff about individual murders and other crimes that only seem relevant to the people involved. But I have to say, I’m a little intrigued by this. Maybe it’s all the Agatha Christie mysteries I’ve been reading lately, but this does sound like the beginning of a good mystery plot. An 18 year old girl killed on a freeway. The car she was driving was registered to a much older man, later found shot to death in his own driveway. What’s the rest of the story?

My interest becomes ghoulish in the extreme when you remember that these were real people. But hey, at least I don’t watch reality TV.

24
Mar

Library Science

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks

I rhapsodize about the SF Public Library at the drop of a hat. The main branch — so lovely! The winding staircase drenched in light, the many book-filled floors, the friendly people, the cheerfully burbling anti-theft detectors at the door! As if this weren’t enough, a recently approved ballot measure is allowing the library system to clean up their act, systematically upgrading the libraries branch by branch. Check out the newly renovated Noe Valley branch to see the results.

In addition to this, I want to share some library wisdom I’ve learned. A lot of this is probably true for all libraries, but in any case it is cool:

• You can request any of the check-out-able items that the library has system-wide. These are added to a wishlist in your account, and you’re notified when the item becomes available. You can request that the library send it to your local branch, and then you have about a week and a half to come pick it up.
• Having an SF library card gives you access to all kinds of cool stuff, including the online Oxford English Dictionary, the best and most complete of all word compendiums. Buying access to this yourself is (for me, at least) prohibitively expensive, so the fact that I can get at it for free is terribly exciting. Also, I am a big nerd.
• In addition to books, the library also has DVDs and CDs and stuff. This is not news to anyone but me, because before I got all library-happy this year, I think I had not used a library since 1988. My how things have changed. I wonder if I can get the new Vanilla Ice single on these round shiny discs that play music just like a record?

If you find all this as exciting as I do, you might want to check yourself into San Jose State University, which provides the only local program offering a Master’s degree in Librarianism.  I, too, thought it sounded boring, but since my best friend started working the program my eyes have been opened. Her experiences with digital archiving have taken her to Juvenile Hall, the local Maritime Academy, and will perhaps (fingers crossed for her) take her abroad to Kenya and beyond.

And…that’s all I have to say about libraries. For now.

In case you’re wondering about this fabulous painting, this image is from here.