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Christmas Is Coming

Popped by the miniature Safeway on Jackson Street in the Financial District this afternoon on the way home from work. It’s my secret Safeway where I avoid turkey-crazed crowds on days like today. I’d never do all my shopping there, but it’s a great little hidden place to pick up things when I’m in the neighborhood. But even it was more crowded than usual today…

You can tell the holidays are brewing downtown. The Christmas Muzak has already kicked in at Embracadero Center, and the crowds on the streets look slightly less constipated than usual. They’re all still tight-assed suit monsters at heart, but around the holidays, they’ll sometimes actually even pause from their terribly important cell phone conversations to say “excuse me” when they ram into you…

Upcoming:

  • Food on Thursday, although I’m still firming up the details of where and with whom. Conflicting invites. Which is sort of flattering in a way.
  • Mark’s coming on Saturday. That’ll be much fun, as will the fact that I won’t be the one fighting the traffic on Sunday.
  • A visit from Mom in early December. Which means I should pay a little more attention to all that stuff that’s growing behind the toilet.

Stupid Muni Tricks

Annoyance du jour: being in a hurry and sitting on a non-moving bus for ten minutes while the driver argued with a passenger about whether or not her transfer was valid. Yes, I understand in theory how important it is for Muni to grab all the revenue it can. No, that understanding doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that 20 people with lives to lead and places to go could do neither for ten minutes because of a dispute over a fucking dollar…

Finally, another passenger walked up to the front, put a buck in the slot, and asked the bus driver if we could please get going. We did, eventually…

Why is it that every time I leave the SF for a few days I hate it even more when I get back? Why must every little thing be a hassle here?

Thursday Night

It’s midnight. I was restless and burdened with overabundant nervous energy earlier, so I cleaned up the house (so as not to return to a mess on Sunday) and then popped some Dragnet into the VCR. That did the trick. What is it about old police dramas that soothes me so?

In about 18 hours, it’s Fresno, Mark, and a much improved disposition…

Y’all have a good weekend now, y’hear?

Happy belated birthday to Becky. I hope you get what you want too. It’s amazing how effective bullet points can be sometimes…

Downtown Ink

Just think: if I’d actually pursued a career in planning, I could have spent all my time coming up with grandiose schemes like this one, which will probably never come to pass (and probably never should)…

What is this fascination so many small and medium-size sunbelt cities have with downtown stadiums and “grand pedestrian plazas” with cutesy little concrete doodads? They’re just like those stupid “downtown mall” schemes which blocked off main steets by the hundreds in the 1970s and are now being ripped up all over the country after succeeding at little but turning Main Street into a giant shooting gallery…

And why is it that municipal governments, when faced with lots of colorful sketches of ideas which have failed miserably everywhere else they’ve been tried, always manage to convince themselves that their city is the one place in the whole country where the scheme will definitely work and will “save downtown”, as long as enough money is poured into it?

If people decide to return en masse to downtown Greensboro (or Charlotte or Fresno or wherever), it will be beacuse an interesting culture has developed there over time which provides something not available elsewhere. It will not be because of some grand city-financed “master plan” which redesigns everything and assigns it a cute little name. And spending a fortune to induce white suburbanites to use mass transit is just plain ridiculous in most cities of the south and the west; it’s never going to happen…

They’ve already rebuilt downtown Greensboro about three times since 1970. Strangely enough, its most prosperous times have been the years before and in between, when they just left everything the hell alone…

If this sounds like a rather conservative viewpoint, it’s not really. I don’t mind cities spending money. What I mind is cities spending money on complete idiocy…

Movies and Rain

With all the rain and the cold, I was feeling sort of Pacific Northwest tonight, which sort of made me feel a little Gus Van Sant tonight. So I popped in Idaho, since I’d watched Drugstore Cowboy more recently…

I don’t think I was in quite the right mood, though. I’m not feeling terribly bleak right now. A little anxious, maybe, but definitely not bleak. All the same, I was amazed at how many obvious little bits and pieces I’d missed on earlier viewings which were crystal clear tonight. Bits and pieces so obvious that I don’t even want to mention them for fear of looking like an idiot…

More than anything, though, I realized how much I want to go back to Portland. It’s been over four years; I think it’s high time…

Anniversaries and Rain

My mom and dad were married 52 years ago today. An anniversary with a number that high seems to be a milestone I’ll never achieve, if for no other reason than the fact that I’d be at least 89 when it occurred…

The rain today was amazing. There was none of that wimpy, drizzly California crap; this was the real stuff like back east. And, on schedule, the fiercest downpour hit this morning just as I was on that three-block walk between the Ferry Building and work…

Which seems a sort of piddly thing to complain about in the face of the latest news from New York. Jeez, what’s next? Earthquakes? Locusts? New Yorkers must feel a little like Californians felt in the early 1990s with the SF earthquake, Oakland fire, and LA riots, although Californians had three years to absorb all the drama…

Anyway, if this week ever ends (not a good thing to be thinking on Monday), it’s off to Fresno to see Mark this weekend. It’s supposed to be raining there too, which is not really a bad thing. I like rain…

Tonight, it’s cubed steak and gravy. I deserve cubed steak and gravy…

Facelift

Yes, there’s been a little remodeling going on. It’s been a year and I decided it was time for a facelift. Hope you like it; I haven’t decided if I do or not. It doesn’t look as good (but it’s still functional) in Netscape 4.x, but if you’re one of the seven people still using that particular browser series, you’re probably already used to everything on the web looking like shit anyway…

I’ve also been babbling a lot here in the old web journal lately. Oddly enough, I haven’t been covering even half of what’s been on my mind. But it’s probably best…

Nakendness and Rain

I can’t exactly remember what I was doing lying on a stretcher in an office building elevator naked and trying to get my pants back on. Or at least wishing I could get the door to close so no one would see me.

Ah, the strange fitful and dream-filled sleep which comes from medication withdrawal or from installing new software until 2AM. Thanks Dan. Really…

 

It’s a gray day the likes of which I haven’t seen in months. While I’m sort of regretting my decision not to go exploring western Fresno county, I’m also really digging looking out the front window and seeing nothing which vaguely resembles sunshine…

I just wish I could drink coffee…

I have to say that a little Maltese Falcon on KQED was a passable way to end the day…