San Francisco is My Home

12
Oct

Apres moi, le deluge

Author: kris, Category: News

It’s raining. Every time it rains, I think, oh so this is the beginning of the rainy season. I think it rained maybe six times last winter, and each time I was convinced the deluge was upon us. I’ll start ordering tweed skirts online, stocking up on cocoa and bubble bath…then the sun comes out. Again.

I remember when SF used to have a rainy season. It was the years I was walking to work every day, naturally. I worked on the top floor of the only tall building in the Mission, so we had these amazing views of the city. Every day I’d come in wearing my soaked squelchy socks and sit shivering, looking out at the grey sky. (The office was impossible to heat because of all the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the HR assistant used to commandeer the only space heater. Chilly times.)

Maybe those days are done. Global warming, eh? That is a weird phenomenon around these parts. We’re all green hippie liberals so of course we believe in it — that’s like asking if we believe in chairs — and in fact we take it so much for granted that it’s already made the transition from disaster to joke. I think it took about a year for anyone to make jokes about Katrina, and it’s still kind of iffy to joke about 9/11, but global warming hasn’t even come to its full power yet and already it seems like a thing of the past.

We’re taking a few steps towards environmental soundness around here, of course.We’re the first city to ban plastic bags (an awesome step until you consider the number of dogs we have living here who need to be cleaned up after). We’ve also got some excellent car sharing programs like City Car Share and Zipcar, which allow you to use a car when you need it and not worry about parking or gas or having a major financial asset parked on the street the rest of the time. And of course our stores’ shelves are overflowing with organic stuff and locally-produced stuff and green-friendly stuff.

And it’s raining, at least for today. I hope it stays wet for a while; California girl though I am, I actually missed the rains last year. Besides, how in the heck will I wash my neck if it ain’t gonna rain no more?

11
Oct

We will NOT kill your children

Author: kris, Category: News

The Chronicle online always has one or two headlines dealing with child-related news. If they’re not failing tests then their toys are being recalled, or they’re being abducted, or worse. (There’s a weird implication here that the city is crawling with parents eager to read the very latest about kid stuff, when actually we have more dogs living in San Francisco than children. That sounds like a statistic I would make up, but in this case it’s really true.)

Of course, the Chron is distributed throughout the whole Bay Area, where plenty of paranoid parents are eagerly awaiting their grisly child-trauma news to read with their morning coffee. Between the caffeine and the panic, the Bay Area must have some very headless-chicken mornings.

But I had a point here, which was that the Chron has outdone itself today with the following onslaught of headlines:

Kids’ cold medicines pulled

Richmond man accused of forcing teen into prostitution

Arrest in girl’s abduction

Prof charged in kid porn case

Mother questioned in death of boy, 9

Despite what you might think after reading the Chron today, the Bay Area does not mean certain death to children. We have many child-friendly activities. In fact, I’m going to make it my mission to write up at least three or four family-friendly activities each month. Because if someone doesn’t do something, our paper is going to scare everyone away.

Then again, maybe if it did I could finally afford to buy a house here…

10
Oct

Book nerds, get happy!

Author: kris, Category: Events, Literature, News

For this is the week of Litquake, the annual orgiastic celebration of the written word in its many published forms. The week is packed with local and nationally-recognized authors speaking alone and in panels at book havens across the city. But to my mind, the best part of this week-long festival is Litcrawl, the traditional Saturday night end to Litquake wherein a group of readers and the authors who live off their patronage embark on a mammoth bar-and-bookstore crawl across the city.

Are you an aspiring travel writer? Got a novel languishing in your drawer? Is erotic writing your true passion? Or maybe you’re just dying to sling back a beer with Amy Tan? Litcrawl has something for everyone. Check it out.

09
Oct

Fairy tale central

Author: kris, Category: News

Measuring seven miles by seven miles, this city is the perfect size to act out urban fairy tales in, and the local merchants help by obligingly offering fairy-tale-esque props. Where else but Bi-Rite Creamery can you get scoops of honey lavender and salted caramel ice cream? Where else can you find a series of impassioned love notes stenciled in paint on the sidewalks, like a trail of breadcrumbs left for one person to follow?

Your homework today is to play out a fairy tale of your own. You might lurk, troll-like, under the foot bridge at Golden Gate Park and jump out to demand a toll from the kickball team that practices there. Or try dropping your golden ball in a fountain at the Yerba Buena gardens and see what kind of animal retrieves it for you. Or make up your own tale: go on a quest to bike up Buena Vista, rescue a dreadlocked princess from her panhandling in the Upper Haight, or promise Newsom you can slay the pernicious, ongoing media stories about his hair in exchange for half of his city.

07
Oct

Castro Street Fair

Author: kris, Category: Events, News

The Castro Street Fair doesn’t start until 11 a.m., but already the terrible music has begun. I’m not sure what it is about this fair that attracts easy listening fans, but for whatever reason it is 10:10 and we’ve got synthesizers, people.

Actually, I have always admired the Castro Fair vendors. The night before, the streets are filled with revelers being kicked out of bars and hollering their guts out. (For some reason people are really inclined to hoot and holler in the Castro. You hear “whooo!” a lot, a noise I’ve never been compelled to make at the top of my lungs, myself.) By contrast, the street fair people show up early in the morning and proceed to set up stalls, erect barricades, display wares, start food grills, etc., all without disturbing my precious sleep. A hundred vendors erecting a temporary city make less noise than one drunk girl trying to fit her car keys into the door lock.

For the record, I do not hate the 2 a.m. whoo kids. I love them. I love that this neighborhood is awake and crawling with people late at night; it makes me feel safe when I’m out on the town. And after five years in the city it’s hard to sleep without the noise of partiers and of Shakira assuring me, for the umpteenth time, that her hips are the soul of honesty.

But the point is, Castro Street Fair. It’s fun to wander around and you might find a few Christmas presents for people. If not, the food is always pretty great, and there are many, many options. So I’ll see you there.

Whoo!

05
Oct

Smile, you’re on TV

Author: kris, Category: News

Our illustrious mayor, on whom I have a bit of a crush, is threatening — er, promising — to put 25 new crime cameras on the streets. We’ve already got 68 cameras out there, which have been recording our street crime for two years and have led to exactly one homicide arrest.  Newsom (illustrious mayor) argues that it’s hard to measure the real impact of the cameras, because their very presence deters crime and makes people feel safer.

This is kind of a typical Newsom statement. It’s like Butch Cassidy saying grimly “I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals.” As a freelance journalist, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing our i.m. speak at a number of venues and one consistent trait about him is his anger. He’s angry with the press for writing about his hair instead of his deeds. He’s angry with the Board of Supervisors for not hitching their wagon to his grand plans. He’s angry with the citizens for voting against taxes that would pay for the services they demand.

This sounds like a criticism, but it’s not. All this anger is so obviously motivated by a genuine, fierce love for this city. He’s really got a vision of the way things could be, and it maddens him that he has to work with other people, slower people, reactionary people, to make it happen.

Although I think he’s on the wrong track with this camera thing. Real live policemen make me feel safer on the streets at night. A camera will just watch me get mugged, and on a dark street it probably won’t see much. Besides, I hate having my picture taken.

The president of the Police Commission won’t put the request on the agenda until she gets more facts. The city is currently negotiating with UC to perform a study of the cameras’ effectiveness.

04
Oct

It’s what, exactly?

Author: kris, Category: News, Shopping

I have a friend who periodically stops in the middle of conversations to say aloud “It is so awesome that we live in the Bay Area. Because this is the home of It’s Its.”

It sounds like he’s being paid for product placement (or I am) but nope. I think what fascinates him (and me) is that there is something actually being made in our part of the world. We know lots of things are grown here. And lots of things are imported to here. (Sometimes we import the same things we grow, but that’s a rant I’ll save for another time.) But nothing comes near It’s It for gooey manufactured goodness, and we are its hometown. It’s especially exciting since Mother’s Cookies, a longtime Oakland brand which made the best oatmeal cookies not actually baked by a mom, was recently driven out of the area by rising prices, moving their factories to one of the cheaper middle states. Possibly Iowa.

(If you are wondering, my friend also used to interrupt conversations to muse on how lucky we are to live near Mother’s Cookies. No more, alas.)

So if you are in the area and looking for dessert, something really messy that will get all over your hands and your date’s sweater, look no farther than the It’s Its waiting patiently in the freezers of every corner store.

04
Oct

Fleet Week

Author: kris, Category: Events, News

Tourists visiting this weekend might notice a battalion of fighter jets swooping over the city. Fear not, friends: it’s just SF’s annual Fleet Week, showcasing the Navy’s Blue Angels, a squadron of crack pilots with mad skills and, you’ll notice, very loud engines.

For the most part, SF is anti-war. A 2004 bumper sticker census* revealed that the Bay Area has a larger per capita percentage of stickers saying “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber” than anywhere else in the nation. We worry about high defense spending in this part of the world, and generally we are agin’ it.

But the Blue Angels are just cool. They swoop overhead in nifty formations, they do barrel rolls, they make that sonic boom noise. Sometimes they make smoke trails in patterns. When Fleet Week comes around, rooftops decks that haven’t been used since foggy Fourth of July parties are suddenly covered with San Franciscans swilling local microbrews and squinting at the sky.

So come on out this weekend — which promises to be warm and sunny, as Fleet Week always is, which just proves that the Armed Forces have secret devices they use to control the weather — and support our high-flying troops.

*Note: I made this census up.

02
Oct

A mighty fine show

Author: kris, Category: Events, Music, News

The Hobohemians put on a mighty fine show on Sunday night. As a band they were excellent, but for my money the best part of the evening was when the rest of the band took a whiskey field trip to the bar and guitarist Ivan Cooper performed a solo number.

As the band left the stage and the audience relaxed into chatter, Ivan started singing an a capella Irish ballad that silenced the room. It was like something out of a movie. Everyone got rapidly quiet, and then everyone got rapidly goosebumped, and then everyone got rapidly teary-eyed. Something about sitting in an Irish pub, listening to an Irish ballad (about heartbreak and death, as all the best ballads are) really brings my sentimental Irish blood front and center. Luckily, the band closed with a comical country song, also sung by Ivan. Thank god, or I would have gone home all maudlin-feeling.

The Hobohemians are playing again soon at The Brainwash, the laundromat/cafe/open mic that every performer in this town is required to perform at. It’s like the tax that every artist must pay. I sort of love it.

28
Sep

The Hobohemians

Author: kris, Category: News

The debut show of local band The Hobohemeians is coming up this Sunday, September 30, at Irelands 32 on Geary. The band describes their music as “old-timey blues folk rock”…well, they’re not really sure what they are. Audience members are invited to assail them after the show with genre suggestions.

The Hobohemians will be sharing the bill with jazz singer Hanna Rifkin and a band called 5 Cent Coffee who play “neo-skiffle blues.” I haven’t even heard the old skiffles yet. What IS a skiffle, anyway? Come to the show and find out.

Show starts at 8 pm and it is free free free. See you there!