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San Francisco 100, Me 0

So this past weekend, after several years of fights and struggles, San Francisco finally won and I was ready to admit that the city had finally sucked all the life out of me. It wasn’t a big deal, really, and I don’t even care to elaborate. It was just one more weekend’s plans and excitement thwarted by various factors that normal people living in normal cities don’t have to deal with, and I finally just cracked…

I know a lot of completely reasonable and rational people who like it here. I wish them well as I prepare to free up one more mildly substandard and somewhat overpriced apartment in a couple of months…

Thanks to my wonderful husband for putting up with my breakdown this weekend. I promise I’ll be better as soon as the doctor ups my thyroid medicine just a little more, baby…

January Past

The Ghost of Mid-January Past:

  • Twenty-five years ago today: I was in high school, worried about getting my first “D”…
  • Twenty years ago this week: I was depressed about unrequited love and that sort of thing…
  • Fifteen years ago this week: tearoom sex at UNCG…
  • Nine years ago yesterday: This website made its debut, albeit under a somewhat different title, URL, and format…
  • Five years ago Sunday: I bought my current G4, and it’s definitely due for a replacement, despite being very dependable and in damned good shape for its advanced age…

I feel like I should do something important and journal-worthy today, but I’m not sure exactly what…

Randomly Monday

Saw the new Sylvan Learning Center commercial this morning, featuring yet another annoying, doe-eyed, blonde Mormon child and his annoying, doe-eyed, blonde Mormon mom. When will they just go ahead and start using the tagline “Sylvan Learning Centers: Fixing all the damage those horrible brown-skinned children have inflicted on your child’s education”?

Or maybe: “Sylvan Learning Centers: Cheaper than White Flight”…

—

Every time I walk by the old Pacific Stock Exchange and see how it’s been stripped of all its dignity and transformed into an upscale gym, I think about how I’d almost rather that they’d torn the damned thing down. Even if you aren’t a supporter of capitalism — and I realize that a significant number of San Franciscans are rather ambivalent about this particular economic system — you have to wish they could have found some better use for a building with that much history than to turn it into a trendy latter-day sweatlodge for vain, self-obsessed yuppies…

Alas..

—-

I finally asked around and found out that yes, there is in fact a San Francisco city ordinance responsible for the fact that every building in the whole bloody city is freezing cold all winter long and stiflingly hot during September and October.

Enacted a year before I arrived in the city, the Structural Temperature Equality Ordinance of 1991 required that no heating or air conditioning system of any sort be employed in any San Francisco building unless said system were designed to REDUCE the temperature during the winter and ELEVATE it during the summer. It further stated that no variance of more than three degrees shoud be allowed between the outdoor and indoor air temperature within any building designed for human occupancy…

I think it had something to do with preserving the sensibilities of homeless people without heated or air-conditioned shopping carts…

And yes, I’m making this up. However, keep in mind that (a) there really DOES seem to be no discernible climate control anywhere in this godforsaken city, and (b) our Board of Supervisors is NOT above passing really silly and pointless legislation…

More People I Hate

More people I hate:

  • Stupid Bay Area soccer moms who are intimately acquainted with the struggles of starving children and oppressed peoples on the other side of the planet but who somehow remain completely and woefully oblivious to the people two feet behind them in line at the store while they start searching for their credit cards or checkbooks AFTER their stuff is rung up and while they stand there rearranging their purses and blocking the ATM terminal for half an hour after paying so no one else can check out…
  • Corvette-driving, ugly, old men with bad hair who tailgate people driving in the slow lane on the freeway. Does anyone under 50 (or with good hair) EVER purchase a Corvette? No. It’s marketed to a”rebellious” old white guy in the midst of a major mid-life crisis who wants a “hot” car but also still wants the familiar GM/Delco stereo with all the buttons in exactly the same place they were in the Oldsmobile he traded in for the Corvette. These cars are apparently designed for people who want to drive really aggressively but are too wimpy to do so anywhere other than the far right lane…
  • Newscasters who repeatedly refer to rain as “bad weather”…
  • Rachel Konrad, for no other reason than allowing a word like “exergaming” to be used in a legitimate news piece and thus potentially to be used again by someone I might actually have to HEAR saying it…

Dreams: The Bus

It was a really long and very cold San Francisco day, and I was glad to see the 12-Folsom finally coming down The Embarcadero. Once I finally got on the bus, I realized I only had a five dollar bill. We were almost to my stop on the edge of downtown Greensboro before a nice platinum-blonde lipstick lesbian (who was strangely flirty) gave me change so I could pay the fare.

I got off the bus and walked a couple of blocks toward Elm Street. For some reason, the stop wasn’t at its normal place, but I didn’t find this terribly odd. I was, however, surprised by all the clutter in the streets: barricades, concrete barriers, etc. Then I realized that I was in a roped-off area along with an older lady who had been on the bus with me. And all of a sudden, there was a crowd of onlookers by the ropes – hundreds of them.

I heard a pop like a firecracker, then a horn and a bell, and a shout. Instantly, I knew what was going on. I turned around, and within seconds, a 12-story building a block a way was being imploded. Thinking fast, I suggested that the older lady and I run away quickly before we were enveloped in a cloud of dust. I was particularly worried about the dust, because I was already a little stuffy. We ran across all the debris in the street, debris which didn’t come from the building, but which had already been there when we arrived.

A couple of blocks away, we figured we’d safely outrun it all. There were still lots of spectators milling about. Everyone looked a little lost because they apparently had torn down a different building than the one everybody was expecting. We waited a while to see if they’d go ahead and bring down the right one too, but I got bored and decided to walk home.

After hiking the three or four miles down Spring Garden Street to my parents’ house, I found Mark there waiting for me with several friends I hadn’t seen in years and whose names I couldn’t remember. Mark and I decided to go to bed.

And I woke up with him this morning back in San Francisco, ready for another day at work. I hope today and tonight will be slightly less eventful. I’m rather tired.

Christmas Butter

Somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000 people live within the city limits of San Francisco. Approximately twenty-six of these residents were born and raised and have roots here. Thus, San Francisco is one of those cities that people leave in droves for the Christmas holiday. one happy result of this trend is that it often makes last minute Christmas shopping relatively painless…

On the other hand, buying groceries can be a rather monumental task, what with the supermarket-to-humans ration here being about a third of what it is anywhere else in the country. I headed to the Safeway about 6:30 and was horrified to find that they were out of butter. Not just out of the butter that was on sale, mind you, nor the butter of the type that I wanted, but completely 100% out. There wasn’t a stick of butter (or, this being California, a cake of butter) in the entire store…

On Collecting and Emperors

Y’know, if it doesn’t involve another design change nor an additional 15 or 20 years of waiting for the damned thing to be built, I’m just as happy as a clam to have the Bay Bridge named in honor of Emperor Norton…

And while I’m still reading today’s paper, I feel compelled again to mention how Tim Goodman just gets it, completely and totally:

But I realized, as I bought a bunch of TV series on DVD that I’d already seen, that it’s not about the watching. It’s about the owning. Rare is the person who says, “I’m going to buy the first season of ‘The Simpsons’ out of curiosity. But not the next four years. And not the 12 to come.” Ours is not that culture. “I really loved the first two seasons of ‘The Sopranos,’ but I wouldn’t dare buy the next three seasons. Oh my, no. Who has the time?”

As consumers, most of us say, “I’ll take all four of these seasons and I’d like to be wait-listed for Season 5 and the yet-to-be-shot Season 6. Here’s my Visa with Uncle Junior and Bacala on the front.”

Americans are collectors. And worse, completists. Count me among you.

Me too…