34 posts tagged “san francisco”
Like all good San Franciscans, we spy on our neighbors. Well, spy may be a bit strong. But we are familiar with them. We have nicknames, even. The nicknames started when Harper hurt her back and was largely confined to bed for a year. The neighbors became like her TV show, there being no TV in the bedroom. She was living Rear Window. Complete with our own cast of characters: the couple, comic book store guy neighbor, the girl who is always at home, the big oaf, and, our favorite, the boy. The boy started off as a normal college-age boy. He played guitar. He drank beer with friends, and grilled on his porch. One night, he almost got into a fight with The Big Oaf outside on the sidewalk. (I broke this up, by yelling out the window. "Shut up!" I didn't really care about he noise at all, truth be told. I did it to forestall a fight, re-directing their mutual aggression at me, rather than each other. The Boy would have gotten his ass kicked, and that would have made me sad.)
But then, at some point, The Boy quit being a boy, and started being a user. I'm not quite sure when that was, but it was certainly when Harper's back was still hurt to the point she was largely confined to bed, so at least a year and a half. He quit going out. He quit having friends over, and more and more of the time, he just sat motionless in front of his computer, for hours on end. Not typing. Just staring straight ahead, holding a mouse in one hand. I took the picture below on the left in March. The one on the right was taken last night.
He sits like that for hours on end. Typically, he's there from the afternoon at some point until the early morning hours. I wake up pretty early, it's often still dark out when I get going for the day. And repeatedly, time after time, I've woken up and seen The Boy sitting there. Obviously after a long night of staring straight ahead.
Sometimes, I like to think that he's not just wasting his life. That he's working on some super-important project. Some sort of code that's going to change everything. That will make us all honest and enlightened and happy and free. A comprehensive system, a unified theory.
But that, I suspect, would require typing.
The Boy makes me sad, and maybe he shouldn't. But there have been times when I've wanted to intervene. To throw rocks across the street at his window and say, "Hey, you, Boy! Look around you! You live in a great neighborhood, in a great city, in a great region, in a great state! No matter what you are into, you can find it here! There is all kinds of life happening, just over your shoulders."
And then I think it's none of my business, and I just go on about my day or evening or night. And I tell Harper, "The Boy is at his computer again." And she replies "All is right with the world."
Harper and I went swimming together this morning at Aquatic Park. It's our seventh anniversary today. she had never swum the Bay before, and it was a glorious way to start the day off.
As we swam, I looked back on shore, and saw this group go Segging by. I didn't really know what was up, but it made me chuckle. After we finished swimming, we were changing in the parking lot when they Segged past again, this time right by the car. It was some sort of tour group--the woman in front was speaking over a walkie talkie that broadcast over each Segway. They each wore a safety vest and helmet--because, as everyone knows, riding along on the sidewalk at three miles per hour can be quite dangerous.
It was, quite possibly, the nerdiest thing I've ever seen in my life. And not in a good way.
Jeremy Fish has long been one of my favorite artists--since I moved to San Francisco and started seeing his posters, really. He has an opening this weekend at White Walls, and Fecal Face previews it with a tour of his studio. I've dropped the videos in below, but click through to the site, which has some great pictures.
As I write this, it's not quite 8 a.m. on the longest day of the year, and I've already been to the pier and back for a morning swim in the Bay. I swam the perimeter again today, past my friend the Balclutha and the open gate of Aquatic Park that points directly towards Alcatraz. The water was exceptionally flat and still today, and cold as well, and I can only hope for similar conditions on Sunday. When I jump off that boat next to Alcatraz, and head in towards Aquatic Park, I won't care at all about the water temperature. Cold water does not bother me. But the currents are another matter.
It was a little sad for me today, when I woke up before sunrise for the last time this season. I've been doing it for so long now, and it seems fitting to me that I finished my open water training on the longest day of the year; that I got to watch the sun rise over the Bay for the last time on the day when we both showed up there earlier than either of us had all year.
I met my friends from my team--Maria, Melanie and Dave--and we plunged in together. They have all raced already. I'm still waiting. I hope we can meet like this after I finish. I like it, in the cold and the dark. I enjoy the camaraderie. As we swam, I looked ahead at Melanie, and behind to Dave, across and over at Maria, and was conscious that this was coming to an end. I'm not ready for it to come to an end. The next time I plunge into that cold green wet, it will be to race.
This morning I stood shivering in the dark in front of the heater. For six months I've been getting up before dawn to push myself as hard as I can, before the day even begins for most people. Today that ends.
I'm going to miss it.
Yesterday, I swam 1.75 miles and then ran another 15. (wtf.) Running down 20th, I passed a really short person, walking the other direction, with a black sweatshirt pulled over their head, so that you couldn't see a face. As I ran by, they dropped a syringe on the sidewalk, I skipped a half-step sideways and glanced at the fistfull of needles and kept on going.
I don't usually run on city streets; I stay in the park. When I left the Koret Center, though, on my way to the park, I looked to my right, and saw an endless fogbank consuming everything in the distance. To my left there was sun. And junkies. And traffic lights. I felt better on mile 7 in the park than I did on mile 4 in The Mission.
Somewhere around mile 12.4 I felt terrible. Hungry or sick or just stomach drilled from a Clif shot I couldn't tell. But I had to walk for a while, and I ran the rest of the way slowly. I ended at the Koret Center, grabbed my bag and walked another mile or so back to our apartment. When I got home, I was dehydrated and dizzy.
I'm thinking of running the San Francisco Marathon in July.
And I'm pretty fucking nervous about it.
u p d a t e : just to be clear, my tri isn't tomorrow. I'm just going to be swimming from alcatraz.
Once again, I had a great time at the Rave Awards. Once again, I became as unto a ridiculously drunk person.
Bonus Six Apart / Voxery trivia: I saw the esteemed Mr. Anil Dash there (Look! There's Anil Dash),
but could not talk to him due to loud Girltalkery. And I believe I saw
a glimpse of the Trotts, but I'm not positive about that one as I
didn't say hello and then never saw them again.
Uno
This morning I woke up before dawn, dressed quietly, and drove off into the cold dark city, blue and green lights shining from my dash. NPR. At the terminus of Van Ness, where you can go no further without driving into the deep green drink, I parked and shuffled down to the concrete bleachers in flip flops, my toes cold as joggers and cyclists passed me by going the other way. It's getting light now, but the city is still asleep, and shrouded. There I met Nate, Maria, Dave and Melanie, they are already dressed and have their blood up to get it on. I told them to go on ahead; I'd catch up. I take off my shirt and warmup pants, and shiver in the fog as I pull on my wetsuit. A runner stops and asks me the water temperature. I tell him I don't know, but that two weeks ago it was 53 degrees. He asks me if I'm training for a triathlon, and I point to The Rock off in the distance, floating in the Bay. Then I ran down the beach and plunged in. No fucking around this time, I tell myself. I threw myself under the water and swam holding my breath for as long as I could stand it, trying to use brute force to acclimate to the temperature.
Mind over body.
Fuck it's still cold. But I'm prepared for it this time, and I plugged away. No allowances for gasping. No floating on my back. When I try to look around I feel slightly dizzy from the motion and temperature of the water. At the end of the first length I stop and rest, adrift in the current. I breathe through a cramp and swim again. On my third length, I hear a shout ahead of me and pop up to peep. There's a seal just in front of me, facing Dave, just feet from his face. No. No. It's not a seal. My goggles are foggy, and I'm slightly disoriented. But I realize it's a dog, a yellow Labrador. Everything shifts into surrealism for a moment, as I try to understand. It's cold. My brain is cold. And I realize the dog is swimming with his master; one of several people out swimming in nothing but trunks. I'm impressed, and I start swimming again.
A half hour later I swim up on the beach. Nobody else is here yet, I needed to leave a little early to pick up Harper who has worked the overnight shift. I peel off my wetsuit, and strip down naked under my towel. I stand for a moment and look out over the Bay, enjoying the sensation of being cold and feeling the air across my skin. I pull on my pants and sweatshirt, and take a deep breath.
My body feels so good, so alive. Have I ever been this alive? Yes. But I am reminded of life all over again. Fresh. Anew. It is Springtime, and I am strong and alive.
I am 34 years old. I will be 35 this year. I have already taken half of my threescore and ten. To what end? To what meaning? What have I done?
When I was younger, there was so much I wanted to accomplish. I was going to write and publish a book by 30. I was going to be a famous-in-certain-circles author. (But not widely! I was to be Bukowski, not Grisham.) I wanted to be lazy and to get wasted and lay around the house watching TV. I wanted money. Money, money, money. I wanted so many things that seem very trivial to me now.
Instead, today, I want to be a good husband and citizen. I want my life to be an adventure, to be exciting. I want to love my work, and to feel fulfilled by it. I want to be healthy and strong, mentally and physically.
I don't want to live my life in front of a television, nor do I care to be on television. I simply want to live as long as I can, as healthy as I can, in the great company of my wife and best friend.
Tres
When I was about six years old, in our new house, in a new city, a new state, a new nation, I was playing in the backyard when I met the neighborhood. They yelled over the fence at me, hello, hello, and then came climbing-swarming over. Boys, four or five of them, American boys. I had never been friends with any American boys up until that point, only girls, as that's all there were in our apartment building in Tehran. There was some sort of antagonistic air about them that I felt. Or maybe I just thought I did. I don't remember how things started, but at some point I decided to show off my plastic Spiderman handcuffs.
I put one boy's wrists in the cuffs, and locked his arms around the pole that held up the awning. I told him to try to get out. With a quick yank, he was free, the broken plastic cuffs dangling from a single wrist. Everyone laughed, and I told my father, who was working in the back yard. I think I was crying. He told me, more or less, that I had told the other boy to try and get out, and that's what he had done, and that I needed to work it out for myself. This was good advice, though at the time it only made me angry. If I had taken it to heart, I would have had a much easier go of it for years to come in Alabama. But I did not. Instead, I was a sissy. I wanted my parents.
The other kids laughed at me. When my back was turned, one of them hit me with a tennis ball. I spun around, really pissed now, and they laughed more. One of them, the boy, Benji, who lived in the neighboring home, called me a helicopter and they all went swarming back over the fence, mocking me while I wailed at the sight of my broken plastic handcuffs. Benji was a year older than me, and for the remainder of my childhood he would be my nemesis--though I doubt that he ever saw it that way, or gave me much thought. Years later, when I was 15, we would become friends while working together in a warehouse over the summer.
He liked Hank Williams Jr., and I listened to The Sex Pistols. We never talked about the handcuffs.
Wow. Cold.
The water was 53.2 degrees F / 11.8 degrees C. Or: Cold.
I'd splashed around some in the Pcific on my three ill-fated surfing adventures, and of course I've taken a quick dive in the water before. But there's a huge difference between doing that and continually sticking your face in the water to swim. Making myself do that, and then breathe normally while swimming, was one of the hardest things I've done so far during this training: Not physically, but mentally. It took me ten minutes or so to begin swimming normally, and even then I had trouble with sighting and swimming a straight line, and bumping into others. I also swallowed a ton of water. A ton. Of Water.
When they called time, I almost didn't want to come out. I was just coming up on 2/3 of a mile, and finally getting into a groove. Although the coaches said we had to warm up, I think the real key was to let my face get completely numb--as you can maybe tell from the rictus attempt at a smile I made as I emerged.
Finally, I'm a mere $54 dollars away from my Team in Training fundraising minimum. (Though I still have another $1200 to go before I hit my goal.) If you'd like to make a contribution, please check out my fundraising page. You can find a link there that shows how the money is spent.
This morning, riding the N-Judah on the way to work, I was listening to an IndieInterviews session with John Vanderslice that has been sitting on my iPod for way too long. (Next up: his interview with Merlin Mann). I expected he would be pretty interesting, and he was. And it also made me wonder why Pixel Revolt didn't cause more of a sensation.
his earlier albums are filled with great songs, but none seem as album-oriented as Pixel Revolt, which is filled with gorgeous songs from start to finish. And it's not just the melodies; the lyrics are heartbreaking, introspective, political. All albums should be this good.
In any case, I thought I might upload a few of his tracks from various albums, plus an Alias remix of "Exodus Damage" (AKA: Dance Dance Revolution).
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