It's trendy, it's updated sporadically, and it's a place to practice word artistry ! That's right, my very own shiny weblog—have a look-see if you'd like to find out more of my thoughts and whatnot. Also check out my software weblog if you're interested in that kind of thing.
Well, I suppose it's been a while since I've written here. What can I say, things get busy.
Cycling
I've been doing a lot of cycling recently. So far, a lot
translates to about 6
miles a day, since I ride to and from school four days a week, and to and from
aikido about three days a week. Nice !
Cycling is beautiful. I'm even learning how to enjoy it in the city. It's quite a rush riding alongside a car on a side street, racing against the gasoline engine with only my legs and some gears and ball bearings between me and the pavement. It's a bummer when it rains, though ; no biking when it's wet out ! In fact, it started raining a bit as I rode back from aikido last night, and I fishtailed trying to stop downhill for a red light at Grant and Bush (just in front of the entrance to Chinatown)... the brakes on a road bike get a bit sketchy when everything's wet out.
After arriving at home last night, I finally remembered to go downstairs to try to push my seat up a bit on the road bike—it's been about an inch too low for several weeks, and I just kept forgetting to fix it. So, with hex wrenches and lube in pocket, I headed downstairs and pulled down my bike. I then realized it was quite wet from riding in the rain, so I ran back upstairs to get my bike rag, came back downstairs, and started to wipe down the frame. At that point I found out the bike was quite greasy and dirty to boot, so I started wiping off the derailleurs and chain ... and then I remembered that the rear derailleur was a bit off kilter, and the chain needed a bit of grease ...
So, an hour or so later, I emerged back upstairs, the bike rag and my hands completely covered in dirty grease, but with a significantly cleaner and sleeker bike hanging up downstairs. Hooray ! Can't wait to go riding to school today.
Critical Mass
The day after Thanksgiving was the last friday in November : time for another Critical Mass ! I finally got off my butt and joined in the crowd. Unfortunately the road bike had a flat that night, so I took the touring bike. No worries, however ; no knee issues emerged from the event. We cycled all around the northeast part of town, including several loops around the crazily crowded Union Square (there was a Macy's tree lighting ceremony or something that evening). We rode up to North Beach, down to the Castro, up to the Haight, and back to the Mission. Our group was split in two a couple times, and both reunions were joyous and chaotic.
The ride was fun, and many of the riders, clad in their vote for Matt Gonzalez
paraphernalia, shouted out at onlookers to vote for Matt on December 9th !
But Critical Mass is admittedly of doubtful value. The cops at Union Square were
pleasantly helpful for us bikers, holding back the SUVs to let us flood the
intersections. But they justifiably referred to us as the children,
and it's
doubtful whether the riders accomplish anything except giving more fodder to the
anti-bike crowd. But in this town, so many people are biker friendly that
nothing seems to come of it, and the monthly tradition is more or less accepted
by now.
I'll certainly do more Critical Masses in the future, but it's more of a joyride
than any kind of concerted effort to create political or social change. As a
fellow biker said when we were both looking at the mass doing a traffic circle
at Haight and Schrader, Now we're just a bunch of roaming thugs.
Local politics
And, as the sun rose on the Bay Area on 10 December 2003, Matt lost the race for mayor of the great city of San Francisco. Or, rather, Gavin won the race. I'm surprisingly ambivalent about the situation, however : it seems like either candidate will serve the city well, but Newsom seems to be a bit more ruthless about it.
Our apartment is half left, a quarter nonparticipatory, and a quarter right. We've had some decent starts of conversations about the race over the past couple of days ; I hope I can reprint some paraphrases here without running into permission issues. :-)
Newsom, it seems, is a traditional posterchild of the moderate conservative : he worked his way to a position of moderate power in this society, and with his election I'm a bit worried about what's going to happen to the laborers here. Thank god Matt pushed the minimum wage increase through on the last ballot—even though $ 8.50 still isn't enough to make ends meet, it's better than $ 6.25 or whatever the minimum wage was before.
Tangent for the economy
In fact, let's do a little calculation. A typical day laborer working at, say, Green Apple Books (an excellent independent bookstore) or even Starbuck's, makes minimum wage. Most businesses today don't hire many full-time employees, since they would then have to pay benefits and retirement. So the typical laborer will be scheduled about 38 hours a week if possible. Assuming our typical laborer has no life, we'll say they can work 52 of the 52 weeks in a year. That's a total of 1976 hours a year. At the previous minimum wage, those hours translate to $ 12 350 (or about $ 1029 a month) ; at the new minimum wage, those hours will be bumped up to $ 16 796 (a hefty $ 1399 a month). Of course, these are pre-tax amounts, so our day laborer might conceivably be able to scrape by—assuming s/he can find a decent place to live in the city for $ 500 a month ; eats nothing but bean burritos ; and has no desire for cars, entertainment, or insurance.
If our day laborer has a family, this is a flat out ridiculously low amount of money. It's so little money that it's not even laughable any more—just sad. Where did America go wrong to leave its beloved citizens behind in the gutter like this ?
I find this more than unfortunate. Big thanks to Naomi Klein and No Logo for making these points more explicit for me.
Newsom and Gonzalez
So what does this economics stuff have to do with the mayoral candidates ? I've never explicitly realized this, I don't think, but I suddenly found myself discouraged that Newsom had indeed worked his way out of a single-parent family to a powerful position in city government. Don't get me wrong : it's admirable that he managed to do that, and a testimony to his personal drive. But I'm afraid for what that will do to his perspective regarding other workers, people like our day laborer above.
Gonzalez apparently comes from a wealthy family in Texas. He attended Columbia Law School and has generally been well funded, though he embraces the tenets of the Green Party here in town. What do the different backgrounds of these men say about how they will approach the problems of San Francisco ?
I'm afraid that Newsom will be like so many other conservatives who've worked their butts off and are now, somewhat justifiably, reluctant to share their prosperity with those who've got less. Newsom's own personal success might lead him to believe that all other people should be able to accomplish the same that he was able to accomplish. I used to think things should work like this myself, before I really started to think about the situation ; in an ideal society this would be a perfect approach. The problem is that ours is anything but an ideal society. Our America, with its absurdly large middle class and small economic elite, is a society that disturbs the fewest people who have voices. Those without voices—through ignorance, discrimination, or disenfranchisement—don't have enough advocates to find paths to power or even voice in our America.
In a world where hard work really did pay off with success and ladder-climbing potential, everyone could look up to Newsom and his hard work as an exemplar lifestyle. But equality is just a word here, and there are so many people who spend so much time working at minimum wage, trying to support children, who have no time or energy reserves for accomplishing such personal gains. Personal drive is not completely irrelevant here, but in the face of social oppression it takes a lot more personal drive than most people have to make it big.
I hope Newsom doesn't feel that his success as a white male with (I'll assume) good moral and social encouragement from family and friends can apply to all citizens. On the contrary, there is so much heartbreak and so little understanding—our day laborer would be screwed if s/he, for example, turned an ankle walking to work so they had to sit out a couple weeks before going back to shelving groceries again. I feel that Matt was better able to identify with struggles like these, precisely because he did not personally conquer them.
But we'll see how Gavin plays out his term.
The radio
Ahh, I've finally gotten the NPR station here (88.5) to play on my radio ! It's been too long, oh NPR, and I swear I'll never forsake you again. Even though you aggravate me in anything other than small semidaily doses.
imaginary numbers
today in class we started going over imaginary numbers. i'm not sure i've ever thought much about this topic, just more or less accepted it and moved on. now, don't get me wrong ; i'm a fan of the patented alex rosefielde smile-and-nod methodology. when faced with potentially upsetting new situations, it lets one pass along and not get too tied up on things that are probably not that important in the long run. but now, looking back a little on imaginary numbers, i started thinking that i need to get to a deeper understanding : just accepting the definition isn't really helping explain the concept to other people.
in particular, prompted by persistent questions from a couple of students in
class, i started thinking about what an imaginary number represents. perplexed
students in class kept pressuring the teacher to explain which number i
represents.
his best answer, which is more or less the one i would have given,
is that i is not a number that we would recognize. it's a different sort of
number.
coming from a math background, surely this which number
deal sounds at first
like a nonsensical question : after all, i squared is defined to be negative
one, plain and simple. but what, really, does an imaginary number represent ?
i wondered for a bit in class and abruptly came across a seemingly simple
example : a parabola with no real roots, i.e. one that doesn't touch the
x–axis. clearly such functions have imaginary roots, but can't those roots
somehow be displayed on the x–y coordinate plane ? perhaps something like the
magnitude of a vector from the origin to the base of the parabola ...
consider f(x) = x2 + 1. the roots of this equation are +i and -i. or a more contrived example : g(x) = (x - 1)2 + 1 = x2 - 2x + 2. this parabola's base lies at the point (1, 1), and its roots are 1 + i and 1 - i. how about the parabola whose base is at (2, 5) : h(x) = (x - 2)2 + 5 = x2 - 4x + 9. the roots of h(x) are 2 + sqrt(5)i and 2 - sqrt(5)i.
in these simple cases, the roots, though complex, contain the real numbers that locate the base of the parabola. interesting. is this always true ? i fear a symbolic solution is needed. not going to happen here in front of my computer though, stupid html.
aikido
last night i booked it over to the aikido dojo on my bike, just barely getting there in time to sneak on the matt (after class had started though). practice was excellent, though : lots of bokken work and concentration on moving from the center and such. it's really challenging to do this, and quite difficult to explain in words.
at the end of class we got out these dodgeballs and did a leg exercise against the wall : lean up against the wall, ball between back and wall, knees and feet about shoulder width apart, so your knees and toes point straight forward. lower your torso so your knees are at a 90 degree angle, then raise up 45 degrees, and lower back to 90 degrees. pretty tough on the thighs, but it's good to get some strength training back on these weak, weak upper legs of mine. the knees held up well, i really just need to get in better shape.
it's funny : in high school, being in shape was just one of those additional benefits of exercising, and the only real threat of injury was from exercising itself. now being in shape is becoming a necessity for avoiding injury during an otherwise exercise–less existence. hmm.
chinatown
i wonder if i can get my monthly food budget to under $ 100 a month. i just got back from this one store just off of pacific on the east side of stockton, where i bought a dozen eggs, 6 bananas, an onion, a tub of tofu (made in san francisco), a bag of snow peas, and a can of coconut milk : $ 4.75 total.
Air shows and jets
There's been some sort of air show in town for the past few days. For me (since I haven't actually been to the show), this has manifested itself—fairly alarmingly—in a bunch of military jets flying around the city all day for the past few days. Such contradictory emotions follow those screeching and booming metallic beasts ! I cower in fear, the drone of the engine a little too precise and powerful for comfort. But somewhere in there is a twisted sense of pride, that my country, my people, have come up with such fantastic inventions. I can't help but succumb to the raw power of the devices, awestruck in a primitive sense by the jets, precise systems of mechanical devices, all working together flawlessly, pushing thousands of pounds of metal, fuel, and explosives through the air. (I went outside yesterday and watched for a bit from our rooftop ; it's flat out amazing to see four Hornets flying within yards of each other as they turn directly away from the center of the earth and travel straight up several thousand feet.)
All these feelings are somewhat old, though. I remember going to an air show with my parents at Johnson Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington. I was probably seven or eight at the time, and the planes were simply fascinating. But now, especially after my increased attention toward our war in Iraq, I've started seeing these flying, screeching, booming contraptions from a victim's point of view. It's truly frightening to think of these smooth, pointy pieces of technology howling overhead as they effortlessly deliver explosives to the ground. They can't be heard until they're already gone.
Joints (knees and ankles, mostly)
Yesterday was my first day back at aikido practice, after probably about a month of voluntary absence. I've been forcing myself to stay inactive so my knee will heal up, and finally I've been able to get on my bike again ! This translates to aikido, more bike rides, and hopefully running as well. I need to get back in shape ... or at least more in shape. :)
I'm exceedingly grateful that my joints are all behaving themselves for the time being. I'm actually sitting in seiza (kneeling) position right now at my low table as I type, though my ankles start to complain about that after a few minutes.
Bicycle
It's also pretty amazing how much more quickly one can travel around in this city on a bicycle. For example, it's about 3 miles to the school where I volunteer. This translates to about a 50 minute public transit ride (provided all the connections work out more or less well), but riding my bike the other day took only 30 minutes. And it's cheaper to ride a bike.
So my recent purchase of a 1998 Cannondale road bike (fire engine red) turned out to be a good one ; whenever I don't have to take much stuff with me, I can hop on the 15lb toy and GO ! It's so much fun zooming through the streets of San Francisco.
Oakland
A couple weekends ago I headed over the bay to a party at a friend's house in Oakland. On the way there, though, I thought I'd stop at Home Depot to get some mounting hooks to hang my bikes from the garage ceiling. So I took the BART a couple stops further than this party place, and walked the mile or two from there to Home Depot. An hour later (I always get distracted in Home Depot for an hour or so, which never fails to anger me) I left the building just as the sun was dipping into a beautiful radiant sunset, and already half an hour late for getting to the party.
Having glanced at a map before I left, I figured I'd take a prominent avenue from Home Depot (technically in Emeryville) towards downtown Oakland, and along the way I'd pass my peeps' place. Or so I thought ... it turned out to be about two miles further than I had realized, but I made it to their place no problem—even walking down the street in Oakland at night. I'm still not so sure what the deal with Oakland is.
Changing
Anyway, along the way I passed a billboard for Bank of America, written entirely
in Spanish. There are many of these in the Bay area, and I'd probably
subconsciously registered them elsewhere. But suddenly I wondered if I'd ever
really seen a billboard in a language other than English elsewhere in the
States. I can't ever remember so, if I have. I thought to myself, Wow, that
billboard isn't in English, but I'm not in a foreign country.
I suddenly had a
realization : our country, my country, is changing ! And I'm going to change
with it, dammit. I'm pleased that non–English langauges are finally making
their way into this country (other than inside the usually small, close–knit
communities of immigrants that seemed to characterize the 19th and early 20th
centuries in the States).
It's a sign of change, at least for me, and change means metamorphosis, opportunities for growth, healing, expansion of ideas and possibilities. Change can also mean fear, exploitation, retreat into the familiar, but I hope that the people who call themselves Americans can hold themselves to the higher ethical ground and embrace the newness.
I just finished Kathleen Norris' Dakota, which addresses change in the tiny farming communities of the Dakotas. Norris notes a few times how the farmers who make it are the ones who aren't afraid of changing, of following the new global economics, of being able to understand the complex world of international grain trades and price fluctuations. Somehow I feel this message applies to more than just farming ; we have to accept and move with change, possibly adapting it to our personal tastes, but never trying to counteract the flow with our own opposite energy. As in aikido, we can only blend, grow close to the center of the movement, and then possibly grasp and act on an opportunity to make our own desires heard.
Today I rode my bike to precal class, which was about 3 miles. It took me 30 minutes and $ 1.50 less than it takes to use the bus. Plus, it's hard to put a value on the adrenaline rush one gets riding in traffic downtown.
It's so nice to be bikable again. I hope my knee continues to improve. It's a wonderful feeling being healthy. : )
i've been having lots of thoughts that i've wanted to get written down ... and unfortunately these episodes almost always coincide with those times when i'm too scattered mentally to do so.
but here i am, on a saturday night, sufficiently infused with mathé to be interested in typing rapidly, and having been sufficiently reflective in the past couple of days to have something to type. i just ate dinner at the house of nanking, a chinese place on kearny a couple blocks down the hill from my place. this particular restaurant was listed in my friend's lonely planet, so there was a line out the door when we arrived ... the wait wasn't too bad, though, and the food was excellent and decently cheap.
anyway, with a yummy post-meal gingersnap from mama wingo and a healthy dose of tea, i find myself sitting here on my mat in front of my laptop, typing. toaster leans agains the wall next to me, and somehow i managed to tune my radio to the classic rock station. (toaster is a computer, composed of the old innards from fridge—currently mounted on a piece of plywood, but slated for future movement into a custom built lucite enclosure).
places and where we are
this week i finished reading dakota, an excellent collection of essays on spirituality and the influence of the land in the western dakotas. the norris book was actually a quick successor to ivan doig's slightly more impressive collection of memoirs, this house of sky, but both tomes are beautiful webs of images gathered in the harsh land surrounding the missouri river (dakota for norris, montana for doig).
as kingsolver says more explicitly in her own essays, the land is such a complex and hardly acknowledged part of our lives ; it supports and guides us, but also ties us down. we unwittingly wake up on a breezy morning and long for the forests of northern idaho, for the elk and moose that were hardly ever seen but whose presence was nevertheless an essential part of the environment. or maybe we'll be walking home one day past the chinese marketplaces, maneuvering among the pedestrians and vehicles, when a glance skyward yields a chalky moon rising in the late afternoon next to a skyscraper. the impression leaves us with an unspeakable desire for stars, millions of them, coming out of the sky as the crickets chirp and the trees whisper in the night.
today i rode my bike out to a bluegrass festival in golden gate park, a distance of about five miles. it was a nice ride—my inaugural ride on my shiny red road bike—but i can't wait to get that bike out on the open road to really let it soar. there are too many stop signs in town. thankfully, the ride left me physically exhausted, legs throbbing with complaints about being out of shape, but my knee held up beautifully. i feel like it's getting in better shape ; let's hope the previous incidents were just early warnings, and that i can heed them. : )
land be damned, i like the city
today was also about the seventh day in a row now where i've thought explicitly
at some point during the day, i really enjoy being here.
on monday i went to
precal class and got to do a mini-lecture on asymptotes, which wasn't wholesale
rejected by the students (yay !). then i let my bus transfer expire, so i walked
back home from central and hayes (about 4 miles ?). the weather was beautiful,
and there are so many different things to see and do here in the city. every
neighborhood—almost every block–has something different and unique to offer.
what an exciting place. similar thoughts followed throughout the week, so i'm
feeling quite comfortable here in san francisco.
being a child of the rural areas, i can certainly sympathize with kingsolver, doig, and norris on their common thesis of land being necessary for shaping an individual, for providing some definition in our collective lives. i personally thank every minute that i've had the chance to sit and experience the rhythms of the natural world, in as many as i've seen of their constant variations. but dammit, i like the city, and it too has rhythms and is a place.
although i envision myself eventually settling in a rural place, i certainly enjoy the stimulation, the community, the opportunities available in a place like san francisco. i find it difficult to embrace the rural thesis entirely, simply because there are so many people out there. as kingsolver argues effectively in small wonder, we ought to preserve at least some places in our natural world and disallow any intervention in those places at all. they'll be fantastically valuable for the creatures of the earth. so i don't find cities that bad, provided that people understand that their roots still lie in the rural territories of the earth.
Inaugural bike ride
After my bike arrived in a UPS box, I reassembled it Thursday and took it out on Saturday (a week ago now—how time flies) and rode out ... I had wanted to get to the Muir Woods, but as I rode up over the Golden Gate Bridge I found out a bit more of just how in shape I am not. So in Sausalito I rode a bit on a flat, windy, nice bike route through some low marshy territory, and then decided to head back to San Francisco.
Sausalito is down a considerably sized hill from the north end of the bridge. On the way down there were many Sunday bikers completely taking up the shoulder there, going about 10 mph. Frustrated, I rode around them, reaching about 25 mph in the road. But it didn't dawn on me until I'd reached Sausalito, exhausted already, that I had to ride back up that hill to get back to San Francisco.
Thus having expended most of my energy, I stopped at a bike shop at the start of this bike path in Sausalito, got a huge, wonderfully greasy club sandwich at a convenience store called something like The Bait Shop, and hungrily snarfed down half of it along with most of a bottle of Gatorade. Thankfully, that was enough energy to get me back up the hill and onto the bridge. The view of San Francisco from the hill at the north end of the bridge is quite nice ; maybe the next time I ride over there I'll get a photo.
I stopped for a few minutes to eat the second half of my sammy on the south tower of the bridge. As I munched, I noticed some flickerings down below the bridge, so I approached the railing and looked down to see three folks kite surfing along the water. Looked like a lot of fun, somehow a nice combination of walking on water and flying. I plunged onward, though, at this point quite eager to make it back home for a beer.
Thus was the inaugural bike ride in San Francisco completed. It was a pretty long one for me, about 25 miles according to my little bike computer, and it took me about 2 hours of cycling time (but about 2 hours 40 minutes including those necessary rest breaks !). I definitely need to work up to these long rides in the future ; this one took most everything out of me.
The Race
The next day I got to see some of the T–Mobile International (formerly the SF Grand Prix), a pretty cool bike ride that went right up Columbus and bragged several members of the US Postal team, in addition to some other famous pro cyclists that I'd never heard of. Surprisingly, the race also brought out a number of spectators with really nice road bikes, the likes of LeMonde and Pinarrelo (or something like that) and other random Italian bike companies. I'd never seen so much money invested in bikes in one city block of space before.
The race blocked off traffic pretty much all day, much to our frustration, since we were eager to get out and do some furniture shopping. The joys of city life.
Programming and settling
I'm getting a bit more settled here. Our house is quite the place, a nice combination of energetic and relaxing. I've been trying to get more focused on doing some real programming, especially after I checked the bank account balance and realized I need to work in order to make money. Nice. But for the time being I'm enjoying being here, coding when I can, and generally experiencing the city.
Volunteering
I've been going to do some volunteer work as a precal TA at a high school here. It's a fantastic experience, and the kids in the course have really impressed me so far. They're much more motivated than I expected. It's phenomenally difficult for teachers to address the ability gap in these classes, though : some students are capable of moving so quickly through these mathematics concepts, while some others really have to work at each one before they can move on. It's a challenge for anyone to address effectively.
Teaching at last
Some good news on the teaching front. I suppose I should say tutoring at
last
... but it's good. I have started the process of volunteer tutoring at
Gateway High School, looks like I'll get to start for real
sometime next week (following the requisite volunteer orientation, TB test, and
background check).
But the news keeps coming, and gets better : Gateway has a really large precal honors class this year, and the principal asked if I could help out as a sort of volunteer TA. Nice ! So, again after the requisite formalities, I'll get to help out in the classroom, in addition to getting some nice real classroom observation and semi–participation time. I hope I'll have a much more solid foundation after this semester/year so I can feel out for sure whether high school teaching is something I'll want to do more of in the future.
Purchases
Spending money is, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, all too easy in this crazy town. I just left Amoeba records (south side of Haight just east of Stanyan) and managed to escape with 4 used CDs : Best of Doc Watson 1960–1964, 2000 Millennium (Carl Cox), Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Mothership Connection (Parliament). That store's going to expand my music collection considerably, but, as always, at a price. Though it's a lower price than most other places.
I also just invested $ 30 in a wireless card for the laptop. A nice purchase, I think ; wireless is so nice. And, to make it even more beautiful, wireless under Linux just works, in the best sense of that term. Thanks, everyone, for writing solid drivers, documentation, and support tools !
UPS
The UPS delivered a sizeable chunk of my stuff from NC yesterday : bike, books, CDs, computer-on-a-board, photos, Nepali thankas (medidation paintings). My room quickly jumped over the fence between sparse and crowded ... must find a way to get rid of some stuff. Sigh, the eternal battle rages on.
just got back to san francisco after a nice extended labor day weekend in north carolina. i got to participate in my father's wedding, which was really nice despite the weekend–long rainstorms. it was also, as usual, great to see the raleigh peeps (those that have remained in raleigh), and eat at lilly's.
you know, now that i'm thinking of it, being back made me think more of the things that i really appreciate about the triangle area. i've been meaning to write these down for posterity, so here goes.
lilly's pizza, the best pizza restaurant i've ever been to. even if part of my enthusiasm is nostalgic, the pizza at lilly's is, as claimed, damn good. and the music is rad, too. lilly's is near five points on glenwood avenue, next to nofo and the wachovia bank there across the street from that big church (not exactly a unique landmark in the south, but hey).
the rialto is one of the last great theaters in raleigh, and it's pretty much the only place left in raleigh to see slightly non–mainstream movies. it's on glenwood at five points.
the nc state library. wow. it's amazing how much more i started to use the library after i gradumicated. and how much more valuable fiction became to me after i didn't have to write papers about it. and, for that matter, how interesting it is to write papers about fiction when one isn't required to do so ...
cup a joe, on the corner of hillsborough and daisy. what a great place to go and have a cup of coffee. they even have tables outside !
the north road cyclery, a great bike shop that i just recently started to appreciate. it's on north road (which runs east–west) just east of glenwood, in that trendily industrial glenwood south area.
go ! rehearsals, in carrboro. what a rad little club. i love small punk bands. the cat's cradle is nice, too, but go just kicks ass.
places
i've found many really quality stores here where i can spend lots of money i don't have. i'm glad i don't have a credit card. some places that i've found and remembered :
there's a goodwill on haight and cole, with lots of quality old navy, gap, and j. crew in the men's section. they also have nice electronics, like 5 disc cd changers and such, and a decent selection of books (particularly if you're into john lecarré ...).
a rad japanese futon shop called momen futon, on the north side of union between gough and octavia. this one woman owns the place and makes pretty much all the futon and pillow covers in the store ; they are beautiful. it's certainly not a bargain store, but the aesthetics just seep out of the walls. i'm such a sucker for powerful design.
green apple books, on clement at 6th, is a used book store that's just bursting at the seams with good stuff to buy and read (and i haven't even been to the
fiction and music annex
next door ...). it's really insane how many good, used books they have.
cookin is a used gourmet cooking stuff store on the west side of divisadero between page and oak. they have tons of pyrex, cast iron, glasses, plates, and cups. the store doesn't exactly boast goodwill prices (self–described as a place to get
used gourmet appartenances
) but the goods are very nice as kitchen equipment goes. they even had an old, all–metal, kitchenaid mixer.
a ninja supply store that i haven't actually gone into yet, on the east side of mission between 16th and 17th.
san miguel is a really good guatemalan restaurant on the east side of mission just north of 29th. the woman working when i went there with a friend seemed pleased to speak spanish, even with a couple of poor–spanish–speaking gringos, but she was also very good with english when we got into unknown spanish territory.
bob's donuts, a donut store of the 1950's persuasion, on the west side of polk near sacramento. i didn't get a chance to sample the fare, but it looked very homemade, very authentic, and acceptably eatable.
the view from the intersection at jones and green is quite nice, with alcatraz dominating the bay and (when i was there) cargo ships and sailboats coming and going. pretty cool place.
i've checked out three aikido dojos in a small area here : the aikido center is on laguna at bush, the san francisco aikikai is on bush at *van ness*, and city aikido is on eddy at van ness. all of them are pretty quality.
the view from the west end of the number 6 bus is fantastic. don't remember the streets offhand.
i've been hanging out a lot at the coffee shop on the corner of central and hayes. it's a quality place, with lots of employees who enjoy different, and good, music. they also have free internet access, if you have a laptop.
hiking
there are a couple streets i've found that i'm just pleased to walk up and down. for a real cross section of the northeastern side of san francisco, try starting out at polk and market and walking north on polk. i'd do this one during the day : there's more to see, and the southern areas of polk are a bit sketchy at night.
another quality walk is longer, but gives you a good idea of the size and diversity of san francisco. start at market and geary and walk west on geary. this street is probably 6 miles long, and it's a large 4 lanes for most of the way. nonetheless, it contains a fantastic array of restaurants, mattress shops, and bars. if you want a slight change of pace walk north one block between 1st and 12th to check out clement street.
if you're more into the cheesy scene, try walking from market and haight up west on haight. the lower haight is quite interesting, and the upper haight is an almost comical mix of tourists, tourist traps, and quality random stores and apartments.
life in north beach
around the corner from our apartment are a few streets lined with typical chinatown stores : i went out looking for rice noodles and dark soy sauce yesterday but couldn't read any of the signs in the store and had to settle for just the things that i could identify by sight. i'm going to have to get a chinese–english dictionary to go shopping with.
last night we went out to a place just down the street (amante, on green just east of columbus) to see a friend of nicole's play bass in a `rock and roll band with soul' : good stuff, that band ... the pbr street gang. but it's too easy to spend money here. one martini down seems to hamper communication with the bartender ...
this neighborhood is trippy. between about 11 in the morning and 2 in the morning, the streets are packed with tourists. it's funny, though, how the tourists here don't annoy me as much as the ones in small tourist towns. something about there being so many of them makes me just want to shrug. and i'm new here myself, so i can't really get mad at folks for not knowing what the heck is going on. but, especially at night, there are an absurd number of toolboxes (as nicole brands them), stupid white guys who are essentially out to get their look on at one of the numerous strip joints that line the east side of columbus. odd, that, living in between strip joints, classy italian restaurants, and chinatown markets.
on sunday i was feeling quite a bit homesick. the homesickness was striking because i've lived in quite a few places over the past 10 years, mostly without my blood family around, and never really felt that homesick. there's something permanent about moving here, though, to the biggest city i've ever lived in, with no friends in sight ... yet.
so, suddenly realizing that i'd been standing around in the kitchen staring at the linoleum for fifteen minutes, i decided it would be a good time to see the ocean. on saturday i'd gotten a good glimpse from the campus of the city college of san francisco. but seeing it up close is now a realizable goal : i'm living in san francisco !
the trek down there bordered the golden gate park for about 3 miles. (my flip
flops held up admirably and only nose dived a couple of times.) it was quite
windy at the beach, and there were somewhat alarming signs at all the entrances
stating quite clearly : people swimming and wading have drowned here
;
plaques in four different languages—two of which don't use the latin
alphabet—said dangerous currents
. quite the encouragement. i'd imagine the
water is really cold anyway, but there were a few folks out windsurfing, which
looked pretty fun (and really difficult). i stood around for a bit and then
scoped a kind of castle turret up on a hill, so i went to check it out. turns
out the mayor of san francisco built an elaborate mansion up there in the 1890s,
but it fell into disrepair after he died and was eventually torn down. all
that's left now is a neat park with lookout tower that looks like a castle
turret. the wind was blowing in the palm tree leaves overhead as couples
wandered past the lady cleaning the bird bath. i sat and talked to mama on the
phone for a while.
i checked out the map at the muni stop when i left the park and saw that i could walk pretty much all the way up geary and get home. geary is a really cool street. it includes the following landmarks :
sushi restaurants (kind of scattered all over, but there were quite a few around 21st, including one that got a favorable review in the local indy paper last week)
russian/jewish restaurants and delis (scattered between about 10th and 30th)
a store called
computers and music
(maybe around 11th or 12th)a farmer's market (4th)
family billiards
(wood)bike shops
thai restaurants scattered all up and down the street
mattress and bed stores
further east on geary are chinatown and japantown, where at least two of the aikido dojos are located. exciting stuff. when i got back to the apartment, joe told me there are a lot of farmer's markets a couple blocks north of geary, but i forget the street name. so many places to remember.
today i went to the dmv to see about getting a california license. there were a lot of people in this building ... probably about 250 based on the number that i got at the welcome desk (which was g538 ; they were currently serving g332). i left.
right now i'm at the horseshoe cafe on haight street. it's kind of cool, they play nice music, it's just across the street from the futureprimitivesound, and i can plug in my laptop to get internet access (at least in theory ... the dhcp server or something with the network seems to be down today).
later on i'm planning on scouting out said computer music store and checking out some bike shops. i'm trolling for a cheap road bike. wish me luck.