The Chronicle reports on a plan to "ruin" the Albany Bulb. This is the best (and most affectionate) portrait of the Bulb's current state that I've seen in the mainstream media. I will never forget my first visit to the Bulb (back in 2001, when the Sniff pieces were in much better shape and not, it seems, as well known), and the place has grown quite dear to me since then. I hope that its freewheeling nature — indicative of much that is special and good about the Bay Area — can be preserved.

Over in the City, at the Buena Vista — the tavern that introduced Irish coffee to these shores — they've changed the whiskey they pour, actually moving away from their own private blend. The owner sez money has nothing to do with it. He just likes Tullamore Dew better, and claims that was the stuff they used when Irish coffee arrived here in 1952. Hmm.

My alma mater's longheld desire to renovate its football stadium has hit yet another unexpected snag: It appears that the current plans would effectively destroy the longstanding Golden Bears institution known as Tightwad Hill. I've never watched a game from up there, but I've always liked the idea that it was a possibility. My hunch is that the university will destroy the Tightwad tradition, just as surely as it has quashed decades of tradition at nearby Bowles Hall.

The Telegraph Avenue location of Cody's Books closes today. It's big news. People are sad. I was feeling the same way until I read these latest words from owner Andy Ross:

"Students today, they use the Internet. They read their textbooks," Ross said. "In the '70s, they had wide-ranging intellect."

This is not the first time Ross has blamed his clientele (and elsewhere, the city of Berkeley) for the fact that he failed to adequately respond to changes in his own industry and in his business's immediate environment. Your bookshop is not shutting down today because 21st-century students suck and don't read books, Mr. Ross. Your bookshop is shutting down in part because your mindset shaped your business, and that mindset has become a lot more friendly to the yuppies who inhabit your store on Fourth Street than it has to the university students of today, plenty of whom have wide-ranging intellects and might have kept your store alive had you not been so dismissive and scornful of them.

[image stolen from telegraphshop.com]

When I arrived home yesterday, the following was taped to my front door:



Hell yeah I'm excited! The Man burns in 28 days!

[So much to do, so much to do!]

Also recently spotted in my neighborhood. (Click to embiggen.)

Recently spotted in my neighborhood. (Click to embiggen.)

There was a really great piece in the Chron this weekend about my favorite Bay Area street musician, the self-described Artist General and Global Village Idiot Savant, the master of the cymbalom, Michael Masley. Whenever you see this guy out on the street playing, it's fun to stop and watch people have their first encounter with his music. You don't have to wait long before you spot a jaw or two just hanging open in awe and wonderment.

You recognize this sign, doncha? Sure, Marquard's has been at the corner of O'Farrell and Powell just about forever. Well, walk on by and take one last look, and maybe pick up one last paper: the Chron reports that Marquard's is soon to be replaced by Hat World, "a huge national chain specializing in logo caps," which the residents of SF have clearly been clamoring for. And thus the entire Union Square area is one step closer to being just another mall, albeit one that doesn't share a common roof.

Combine this sort of news with the word from Sacramento that Governor Ahnold is going to force Caltrans to switch gears mid-project and build us an ugly-ass viaduct to replace the eastern half of the Bay Bridge, and you begin to think it's only a matter of time before our entire environment is nothin' but chain stores and concrete. Sigh.

[Yes, 'tis true, institutions die all the time. Change is constant and unavoidable. Acceptance is peace. Namaste.]

There is an abandoned train station in Oakland, near the 980, that I have been meaning to surreptitiously enter and photograph for more than a year now. But I haven't, because I don't have any experience with trespassing, and a few drive-bys seemed to show that getting into the place would be a colossal pain. Perhaps it is, but apparently it's doable, because pics of the place showed up at Satan's Laundromat this morning. Color me terribly jealous.

Budget Travel magazine has some thoughts on where to grab really cheap meals in San Francisco. I can personally report on a few of their picks: Nirvana, Home, and Eos are fantastic, while Red's Java House is not everything it's cracked up to be. At the very end of the article, they tease me by mentioning a riceless carne asada burrito available in the Mission, which is definitely going to merit further investigation. And soon.

There's a lovely little piece over at SFGate today (no, you won't find it in the printed Chronicle) about the folks who work the tollbooths at the Bay Bridge. I'm a FasTrak user now, so I don't hand bills over to these people anymore, but back when I did, there were faces I recognized, and I even had a couple of favorites who were always cheery and pleasant and remembered me and my Beetle. Now I just cruise through and listen for the FasTrak unit's double-beep. Easier. Quicker. But a moment of human interaction that was part of my daily routine is lost forever.

Ten minutes ago I knew very little about SF's Treasure Island. But now. . .

Here's what the Big Game bonfire looked like last night at Cal's Greek Theater. Walking back down southside, we passed under the Campanille, which was lit up in blue with gold graphics on each side, like this representation of the coveted Axe.

It took Cal two quarters to heat up today, but the result was sweet, sweet, sweet. Cal 28, Stanfurd 16.

Things are always strange when we visit the Farm but there was something especially strange (and, though it pains me to admit, cool) going on down there today, as you can see in the shot I took of the Stanfurd Band doing their moronic bit before the game. Look back there on the sideline, and you'll see a large Trojan Rabbit, straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We never did find out what the deal with it was. It left before the end of the game.

Most of the country celebrates Columbus Day today. Berkeley wishes you a happy Indigenous Peoples Day.

Being a California Golden Bears fan is a bit like being a Cubs fan or a Red Sox fan: Your team never goes all the way and seems to have a problem with bad luck, but every now and then they pull off something that makes all the heartache worth it. I can't say it any better than the team did in an e-mail I just received:

The California Golden Bears upset the #3-ranked USC Trojans on Saturday evening before 51,208 fans at Memorial Stadium and a national television audience. The win marks the first time the Bears have defeated a Top 5 nationally-ranked team in more than 28 years.

Let me add that the game was won in triple overtime. It was amazing, and I'm psyched to have been there. I also think I know what gave the Bears an edge: One of the first things the super-obnoxious Trojan band did was play Stanfurd's fight song, "All Right Now." I'm sorry, but if you're going to pull shit like that, you deserve a trip to the shed and a long bus-ride home.

I took this picture back in August but forgot to post it.

Wandering ever-so-slightly off the beaten path in southwest Berkeley last Saturday, I found a building that was really a ghost.

You see the damnedest things on the streets of San Francisco.

. . . between all the goings up and the whole of the comings down and the fog of the cloud in which we toil and the cloud of the fog under which we labour, bomb the thing's to be domb about it so that, beyond indicating the locality, it is felt that one cannot with advantage add a very great deal to the aforegoing by what, such as it is to be, follows . . . (Finnegans Wake, 599: 29-34)

Yesterday I went wandering, and found myself at a place I have not visited since I was a different person. Come. I wish to show you this place.

I generally skip Mark Morford's columns on SFGate. I find his writing shrill. He's especially over-the-top as he sings the praises of San Francisco ("perfectly climated"? come on!) but it is still a good read that captures a lot of what I love about living in the Bay Area.

A lot of what Morford has to say about SF is also true for the more dynamic and spirited parts of the East Bay. Let's not forget that Oakland beats the pants off the City in terms of diversity, and that Berkeleyans can wonderfully outweird their peninsular cousins any day of the week. We have better movie theaters and better pizza over here, too. And much less of that damned fog.

Today, I observed Easter for the first time in years, accompanying A&B to morning services at San Francisco's Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. This ain't church like I've ever seen it. Glide is the lifework of the Reverend Cecil Williams, who, over the past four decades, has built one of the most diverse, all-embracing, active congregations in the country. They are ten thousand strong. They are a tremendous force for good, and when you are in their midst, they seem to you unstoppable. more...

A week ago, the tree outside my bedroom window was still bare, and I looked out at it, wondering when the green would start to emerge. Today, its skeleton is covered in bright shoots. In another month it will be lush and once again keeping most of the sunlight out of my room — the only drawback to its being there.

Today was one of those warm, crystalline-clear days that makes the Bay Area just shine. I spent several hours in the City, neighborhood-shopping for my impending move. It was unusually warm over there. I'd worried about being chilled by the usual SF breezes. Not today.

Returning home on BART, I looked out one side to the tree-lined East Bay hills, and out the other to the sparkling bay. And I thought to myself, There is no place I'd rather live.

I have started listening to KFOG with some regularity. It is one of the treats of being a Bay Area resident. This is old-school, stuffed-full-of-talent, independent, local rock radio. Dave Morey, the head deejay in the morning, is a legend.

Each night, KFOG does the "10@10" — at 10:00, ten songs from one year. Tonight, they did 1992. That's high school for me. That's a lot of memories that came flooding back all at once: memories I very rarely touch. I listened. The music was amazing. But most of the memories were a visceral yuck. They started up when Kurt Cobain did: I'm so happy, 'cause today I found my friends. I remembered the day we heard he killed himself. The memories grew more pesonal from there.

They finished the set with U2's "Even Better Than the Real Thing." The Achtung Baby album is one hundred percent terrific, just incredible stuff. One of the best albums of the 90s. But to me, forever, it will be entirely tainted with a certain memoryset that simply is not and cannot ever be pleasant.