Yay! Summer!

It’s freezing cold, windy, and foggy. Summer has arrived in San Francisco. I love it.

I can always tell a holiday weekend has arrived. The hits on the web site go way down starting by about 3:00 on Friday afternoon. And by Saturday evening, I’m drowning in spam. It’s a very predictable pattern, repeated over and over throughout the year.

All in all, it’s been a good weekend so far. Had dinner at Tad’s with Dan on Thursday night, followed by a relaxing drive through Bayview/Hunter’s Point (no irony intended). I crammed a lot of work into Friday so I wouldn’t have to think about it on Saturday and Sunday.

After a really fitful sleep of mildly disturbing dreams, I had Saturday morning coffee (OK…I had a Coke) at Brainwash with a gentleman from Todco (a non-profit which builds affordable housng South of Market) and discussed the ramifications of Loftomania.

And then it was off to the Doggie Diner for Sarah’s birthday burger, followed by a trek to The Attic, my favorite junk store in the Sunset. Sarah bought old postcards, and I scored two old San Francisco telephone directories (vintage 1962 and 1978). I can’t quite explain how excited I was to find these, and I really don’t expect anyone else to understand. I’ll expand on it later, but you’re allowed not to care.

Best discovery of the weekend is that Bringdown #5 is now available on a World Wide Web near you.

Feeling suitably bitter, I’m now about to go out in search of some memorable tourist dick to celebrate Memorial Day. Wish me luck…

Come Join the People of AARP

I’ve been invited to join the AARP.

This is pretty amazing, considering that (a) the minimum age for membership is 50, and (b) the AARP were early pioneers in the use of invasive, privacy-compromising monster databases, and thus they should realize that I’m not even CLOSE to 50.

I’m torn. Should I lie about my age and send in my eight bucks, so I can get all those fabulous discounts at places like EconoLodge and Denny’s and Wal-Mart? Or should I just hang on to my invitation for fifteen years until I’m really eligible?

In an effort to stave off senility for a few hours, I took a really long walk on Sunday. When I say “long walk”, I mean a five or six mile mega-hike around the city, from China Basin to Chinatown, from the Financial District to Union Square. A couple of realizations in the process:

The Financial District is boring just about any day of the week and provides an unpleasant lull to any stroll.
A disturbing number of German tourists eat at the Burger King at Powell and Market.
An encouraging number of skateboarders still ignore the “no skateboarding” signs along the Embarcadero.
It’s damned difficult to find a Coke on certain streets in Chinatown.
A mildly sunburned scalp is a very unpleasant thing.

More exciting missives to come, I’m sure…

Car Alarms and Such

I laugh when car alarms go off in the middle of the night.

I laugh because the alarm means there’s a good chance that the idiot who owns said car alarm will return to his car and find a broken window, or worse. At this point, he’ll be getting exactly what he deserves.

What the hell are people thinking when they install loud, repeating car alarms? Do they have some fantasy that complete strangers will hear the alarm and immediately run outside and body slam the perpetrator? Here’s a clue: when a car alarm wakes me up at 4AM, the only impulse I have is to go out and finish whatever was started. If the crook broke a side window, I’m tempted to do the rest and demolish the windshield.

Any individual with the paranoia which makes him believe a car alarm does anything but inspire homicidal rage in his neighbors has no business parking his car on the street in an urban area. Period.

That said, I’ll reveal that I actually went out in my neighborhood on a weekend night (again) and had good time (again). Twice in three weeks. Pretty amazing, huh? The crowd at Hole in the Wall was incredibly tolerable. Once again, it seems the tweakers and the slumming yuppies opted for a different scene for the evening.

I’m not about to get my hopes up and believe this is a developing trend, alas. There’s too much potential for disappointment. And too damned many BMWs with car alarms parked in the neighborhood.

Apologies to Eugene for the positive tone of one of the paragraphs here. I hope the others made up for it…

21 May 1999

My onions have sprouted.

I don’t know whether to be horrified or excited. It seemed to happen overnight. I bought a bag of onions, left them on the counter for a couple of days, and then, this morning, there were these green things shooting out the top. That’s what I get for keeping them out in the fertile ground my kitchen seems to have become.

Can I still use them? Or should I just plant them?

So all kinds of invites have arrived from people to hang out with in Seattle, assuming I can get off my butt and plan a trip there soon. Maybe around the 4th of July would be good: I’ve been informed that it ALWAYS rains then.

About this rain thing: long-timers know that I’m not really happy unless I get a couple of rainy (or at least overcast) days a week. The problem with San Francisco (and most of California) is that it just doesn’t rain AT ALL between roughly April and October. So by mid-May, I already miss it.

Soaking up sunshine is not among my favorite pastimes. Getting a tan? You gotta be kidding. Strangely enough, though, I have always fantasized about owning a convertible. Not just any convertible, but a 1966 Corvair convertible.

Completely unrelated: number one on the pop charts this week in 1966 was “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas…

18 May 1999

Aaahh, Tuesday. Thanks to a lack of new and exciting sweeps programming on Fox, I get an extra primetime episode of The Simpsons, bringing the daily total to four. Heaven…

Sick…

So after threatening to get sick for a couple of weeks, I finally went ahead and did it this past weekend. It’s pretty much over now; I’ve arrived at the phlegm-purging phase now. Sorry if that was a little more detail than you were looking for.

Suffice to say I’m going through kleenex at an alarming rate. And lest there be trademark issues over the use of the term “kleenex”, let me make it clear that I am in fact using that particular product (Kleenex Cold Care with Lotion, to be specific) and not some other brand. This is not a paid testimonial.

Road…

This week I’m re-reading both “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac (in the bathroom) and “Mad Monks on the Road” by the Monks (in the bedroom). I sense a theme developing here. I haven’t spent any time out of the Bay Area since Christmas. I haven’t done a major road trip since last year’s second annual US Tour.

I need to be on the road. Soon.

I’m not talking about a huge road trip here; I prefer to do those in the fall. But Portland and Seattle are coming to mind. It’s been a couple of years. And my spies tell me it’s still raining in Portland. Yes, that’s a plus…

Link…

Link du jour, which might already have been a link du jour, is Nightcharm. It’s sort of a thinking man’s porn site. After all I really DID read “Playboy” for the articles when I was a kid. It’s not as if cared about the pictures…