Month: June 2000

San Francisco Sanity Breaks

Had dinner at a place called The Dead Fish in Crockett Friday night with Dan and Jamie. It was a good place, but not the dive that the name and building suggested. We were all suckered in. Thinking it had been there for ages, we asked the waitress when the place opened. “November 23,” she replied.

Oh well. They had great scallops anyway.

Afterwards we drove through downtown Crockett and Port Costa. Great un-yuppified river towns, both of them. Not a Starbuck’s nor a smoothie shop in sight. Only a half hour out of San Francisco and you can completely forget you’re in the Bay Area. Which is often a very good thing.

I have a few friends here who are proud to say they never leave San Francisco except maybe on vacation. I don’t understand. Getting out of the city occasionally is almost essential for maintaining sanity. And I say this as someone who doesn’t much care for the country.

I leave San Francisco at least once (and usually two or three times) every weekend, to enjoy things like pizza in Hayward, thrift store runs in Redwood City, bookstores in Santa Rosa, doughnuts in Union City, and the sheer magic of driving through just about any part of Oakland. Half the fun of living in the Bay Area is that there is so very much intersting stuff surrounding it.

A car helps, but it’s not essential. Take BART to Berkeley. Grab a CalTrain to Gilroy or a ferry to Vallejo. There’s a whole interesting world out there despite our snobbish dismissals of “the ‘burbs”. It might do many San Franciscans a world of good to realize this fact and experience the rest of the planet (or at least the rest of the Bay Area) once in a while.

Pride 2000

I’d like to announce the first annual San Francisco Brunette Chestnut Auburn Dirty Blond and Multi-hued Pride Festival. Members of the BCADBMH community from around the country will be participating to celebrate our pride in our pigmentation and our glorious brunette culture.

Several brunette bands (chosen for their hair color rather than their talent, of course) will be playing at the center stage. You can buy “I’m not a brunette but my boyfriend is” T-shirts along with miniature brunette pride flags just across the street in the Marketplace.

We expect a turnout of several thousand of our BCADBMH brothers and sisters, not to mention a few hundred supportive blondes and redheads. We anticipate a few protestors from the Ex-Brunette Ministries armed with Clairol, peroxide, and the like, but our security forces will keep them at bay.

The festival aims to be inclusive. There will be marchers from many individuals and groups who define themselves solely in terms of their hair color. Participants will include groups such as the PBBEG (Pacific Bell Brunette Employees Guild, PFAB (Parents and Friends of All Brunettes), QOHC (Questioning Our Hair Color) and the LGHBL (League of Gray-haired Brunette Lovers). Floats from several of San Francisco’s BCADBMH bars and nightclubs will also be featured.

So come on out. Celebrate your hair color and the fabulous music, art, and fashion which naturally spring from this inborn characterisitc. Show your stuff: hats are allowed, but not encouraged.

The festival is sponsored by Acronym Power, Inc.

Scenes from Hell

Scenes from hell:

  • It was as hot today in San Francisco as it’s ever been, at least since they started keeping records in 1871. That’s a milestone I could have missed, thanks.
  • Today’s high was 103. The normal high for today is 71.
  • The power went out just as I was typing this entry before. I imagine it’s because I turned on the TV, giving the whole west coast power grid that last push it needed before collapsing.
  • I was scared to turn on the microwave earlier for the same reason, but I did it anyway when I considered the implications of turning on the stove.
  • It 11:30 at night, it’s almost 90 in my living room and I’m sweating as I type. And I don’t type very fast either.
  • Any of the seven San Franciscans with air conditioning could easily have his way with me tonight.
  • I skipped dinner with Dan and Jamie tonight rather than risk being on a crowded bus or (God forbid) walking to the Mission.
  • Instead, my neighbor and I hung out at the deli case at Safeway. It was nice.
  • It’s ironic that my trip to LA next week may actually expose me to better weather than we’re having here.

On that LA subject, thanks for all the tips, dinner invites, etc. Next week’s trip will actually be a bit of a quickie, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll have. The “official” Planet SOMA LA Road Trip will be later this summer. I may even make it to San Diego, although I must admit I’d be doing so only to visit a few friends there and not because of any particular affection for the place.

More to come. I’m going to bed now. I harbor no illusions that I’ll actually sleep…

Radomly Tuesday

I have to say this. I don’t believe that Steve Young’s retirement from the San Francisco 49ers is really so newsworthy as to merit consuming a good third of the 6:00 News yesterday. He’s a football player, for God’s sake, which makes him essentially nothing but an overpaid entertainment personality.

They didn’t give Joe DiMaggio that much airtime when he DIED, and he was even multi-talented. I challenge you to compare his Mr. Coffee commercials to Steve Young’s half-assed Toyota spots any day of the week…

More non-news: Sinead O’Connor is officialy a lesbian. I imagine she’ll stay true to her track record and approach this development just as annoyingly and self-righteously as she does everything else. Molly Ivins’ quips do more for progressive politics in any given single day than Sinead’s tortured whining will do in her whole lifetime. Why, pray tell, do so many of my fellow leftists feel that having any discernible sense of humor somehow detracts from their message?

Enough of this. I’m now being excited that, a week from today, my pal Duncan and I will be tooling down Highway 101 to Santa Monica to stay in a spiffy, expensive hotel by the beach. We’ll be doing other things too (I, for example, plan to be seducing several of The WB’s male stars), but the hotel is what I have a link to right now…

We may hit Fresno on the way back, but I’m not sure, as I’ve already done my laundry for this month. And if you don’t know what the two have to do with each other, you haven’t been reading long enough…

Besides, Fresno can’t be much hotter than San Francisco feels today. Second ugly heatwave so far this year. I am not enjoying this summer…