304. La Cocina StreetFood festival

La Cocina StreetFood festival

My greening season is now over. The StreetFood festival was the last of our big events -- there may be a big convention coming up, but I try to avoid those. The La Cocina event was actually disappointing, though I’m not entirely disappointed by that. In its original form, on the streets of the Mission District, this was one of the most compost intensive events we’ve ever worked. The organizers exhausted themselves, stopped doing the event, then re imagined it as a smaller event in a more manageable venue. Even that was pretty overwhelming, but now it’s gotten even smaller on an even smaller site. Instead of having my hands full for eight hours, we were actually over-staffed for what work there was to do. I even volunteered to go home early at one point.

The few food vendors did uphold the reputation of their kind for failure to properly sort their trash. I’ve been trying to start a campaign to compel them to use only bright blue gloves, as these are easy to pick out of the trash. These vendors used white gloves with foods that were mostly white, making them almost impossible to find, while one vendor was using black gloves, which I’ve never seen before, and these were almost as hard to pick out. In part this was because it was after dark and this new venue has no area lighting. The good news was that there were no scavengers. So that was nice.

I did like the venue. It’s the site of an old power-plant just south of Pier 70. There is already a development plan for the old shipyard at Pier 70, and this parcel is projected to be the next phase of that project... though I doubt that this will happen this boom. It will probably sit unused -- and available for events like the StreetFood Festival -- for another decade. This is good as we are running out of venues like this.

Our dumpsters and trucks were positioned off to the side next to a huge old masonry building with no roof. The walls look to be four to five feet thick. If you look at the aerial view in Google Map you will see three huge oil tanks between the old Pier 70 venue and the new Power Plant venue, but those tanks have already been removed. I hope someone comes up with a plan to reuse the building with the massive walls, though I don’t have anything in mind. Well, I do, but it’s just the usual.

As I was working yesterday, I was thinking that I’ve come out of this year pretty well, physically. I have a bunch of things I do for my back, and my back has been fine all greening season. I have things I do for my right wrist, and, aside from a week or two, my wrist has also been problem free. My shoulder is still not right, and I will be addressing that as soon as this week, but it hasn’t prevented me from doing anything. What I occasionally do to my neck is a mystery, but I got through this year without any annoying nerve problems. Not bad.

One of our (much younger) workers started the season by getting hit by a truck while working in a dark parking lot. Then he had to leave HSB because he hurt his knee stepping into a gopher hole. He is still out. I can’t say that would never happen to me, but I’ve taken a number of steps (good boots plus exercises all year long) to help prevent just that sort of injury. I would say that I’m the most prepared of all our workers. This is partly because I’ve been doing this longest -- eleven years; partly because I’m older than all but one of them; and mostly because I’m me. The day after that guy hurt his knee I had cut the toes off a pair of socks and added them to the emergency stuff I carry in my backpack when I work. I discovered you could make an effective and comfortable compression support for your knees with toe less socks back in the ‘80s when I gave running a try. I quickly gave that up though it did serve to remind me that I had injured my knee playing football. That paid off the next decade when I started going to the gym and could tell personal trainers with ideas about hideous squat exercises that they were out of the question for me. I will probably die of a rare aliment that could have been prevented with squats.

One more thing about yesterday. Muni got me one last time and really good. We have a system that displays when the next train/bus is due to arrive. Sometimes it even works. For HSB, going home, I could catch different buses going different directions at the edge of the park. The first day the display for the line I was hoping to take was “Configuring” but never configured and worked. The Next day I decided to go with the other direction, and now that one did the exact same thing. The final day the display said a bus was coming, but it never did. I waited about a half an hour before the bus coming the other direction showed up and I took it. And then, while waiting for the next bus I needed to get home, I noticed that my bus was followed by three more buses on that infrequently serviced route within ten minutes.

So Muni had its hands full topping that. Especially as I was waiting for a streetcar instead of a bus. The display seemed to be working correctly. The next train was minutes away. Then it was Arriving. Then it was Departing. Only it wasn’t visible in this universe. So now we were waiting about fifteen minutes for the next train. Then twelve minutes. Then eleven minutes. Then ten minutes. Then twelve minutes. It continued to bounce around but never got to be less than ten. I walked three blocks inbound to the next station, and it was still the same message. So I gave up and hopped on a bus running perpendicular to where I wanted to go, so I could connect with a different train or bus. Took forever, but I finally got home. 

Wait, Muni got me one more time. When I transferred to the bus heading where I actually wanted to go, I discovered that the bus stop had been moved -- just this month -- and so I had to find where it had been moved to. I can only assume that muggers had complained that the old bus stop was in a too well lit and public location. The new location is far superior for muggings.

Transitioning

People always talk about spring cleaning but I’m in the midst of fall cleaning... and stuff. This is partly things I want to get in order before the rains start but mostly just transition stuff from greening season to non-greening season. Half of this is HOA related and the rest is personal. I’m even attempting to make my annual appointment with my barber. I have to remember to ask her what color my hair is. How’s that for a strange question. But my hair seems to be at least three different colors. Perhaps my drivers license should say, “Neopolitan.” (My barber suggests "salt and pepper.")

One of the errands on my list for today is a trip to the chiropractor to get advice about my shoulder. The tricky part is that I don’t want an adjustment. My back and neck are so unprecedentedly good I don’t want to mess with them. I’m currently on my way there, which is to say that I’m in a crepe restaurant in that neighborhood where I never get to anymore since my favorite cafe in the neighborhood closed at least a year ago, probably longer now. The cafe’s space is still vacant and their sign is still up. This is what my rent tax would prevent. But a block away is a much bigger building that has been vacant even longer because the neighborhood has issues with the new tenant. I can only hope that if the rent tax was stopped while these issues were being “negotiated” the process would run quicker. Though I have a hard time imagining that.

I’ve been working at the newish Peet’s at 10th and Mission lately which reminds me that the ground floor retail spaces in the Uber building are finally filling in. There are still more vacancies in those blocks than there were when the construction process for the big building on the corner started, but at least the trend seems to be heading in the right direction. Which is more than I can say for many neighborhoods of the city.

Riding the train on the way to my event on Saturday, I passed through Mission Bay which has, once again, changed beyond recognition. I really need to make another trip there to look at all the new construction.  I think it should be more evident what the new building flanking the Warrior’s new home will look like. What surprised me even more was the number of cranes rising above Dogpatch. I thought the infill there was about maxed out, but I guess not. And I didn’t see anything happening at Pier 70, though I really didn’t have the best angle.


I’m discovering new levels of random because I don’t have WiFi at this cafe. The other evening I performed my twice yearly test of the security light on the back of our building. This involves going out through the alarmed door and waving an arm around the side of the building to see if the motion sensor turns on the light. It did. But what impressed me was that the dog, belonging to the owners of the unit down there, heard me coming down the front steps in my quiet shoes and sounded the alarm. This is the dog that doesn’t make a sound when her owners are away because she’s off duty. 

Some time ago, when there was a question of rats being in the building (there weren’t) I enlisted her to inspect the little deck outside that lower unit. She sniffed around and didn’t find anything interesting. But I had no idea her hearing was this keen. If the neighbors above ever complain about her barking we will probably have to close the door between the hallway and the stairs, but for now it seems safest to keep it open.

I’m way early for my chiropractic appointment.

303.Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

HSB 2018

The weather was perfect. The music was great (at the stage or two I could hear). And, best of all, the plan I came up with, the day after the 2017 event, to handle load-out at Arrow worked perfectly. 

Friday and Saturday went smoothly, aside from our losing one worker to a gopher hole, and several others to reasons. One new person was supposed to work with me to be trained but, before we could even start, decided this wasn’t for her and quit. 

Sunday was just the perfect greening day. I went through three rolls of compost bags (30 bags I think) plus a number of heavier clear plastic bags for really heavy food vendor compost loads. Besides keeping the vendors in order, I also was able, with one assistant, to keep the entire west end of Hellman Hollow in order all day. We were even able to take down the two busy mega-stations (four compost, four recycling, two landfill cans each) directly in front of vendor row. This means that virtually all the waste from the field was properly sorted and bagged.

Last year I was surprised by the vendors loading-out immediately after the concert ended, instead of the following day. All our eco-stations were surrounded by vendor gear ready to be loaded into trucks so that no one could get to them. I finally just left because there was nothing more I could do. But my clever plan for this year was to move all our stations across the cart path at 6pm, before they started disassembling their tents. By the time we returned from shutting down the mega-stations, after 7pm, the vendor trash was beginning to come in. They didn’t like having to carry bags or cans a little further, but the new station locations stayed clear and usable. By the time the trucks came in to load up all the gear we had sorted and bagged virtually everything. We were gone by 9pm, though the loading-out was still in progress. The only real problem we experienced was because I wasn’t given gear I had requested. 

Which is not to suggest that the vendors were at all helpful. They sorted almost nothing themselves. Working with food vendors is like working with that guy in the movie “Memento,” no matter how often you tell them where something goes, a few minutes later they’ve “forgotten.” This is really only a problem for me on the rare occasions when they contribute waste to our stations -- usually they use the cans inside their tents. It becomes a problem for me when I can’t grab and sort their cans before they decide to dump them randomly in our stations.

I thought I had seen it all, in terms of bad vendor behavior, but this year I saw something new. In our “lingo” a “vendor bag” is a garbage bag, usually black, filled with a near perfect blend of compost, recycling, and compost. The compost, while mixed throughout, often is mostly at the bottom of the bag because it’s heavy and slippery. One of my vendors was producing perfect vendor bags only they were, for a reason I couldn’t determine, in green compost bags instead of the usual black bags. Compost bags are both more expensive and more likely to tear (or compost) so this makes no sense.

The sheer volume of food that gets thrown away at an event like this would be shocking if I weren’t so used to it. We ended up with a stack of unopened boxes of pizza crust. Both this Friday (the first day with the smallest attendance) and Friday 2017 we had to deal with an entire garbage can full of excess paella. (This is where the small toters I had requested would have been invaluable.)

I think this is the first year that I have no plans for improving things next year. Everything (under my control) went as well as it could have. Okay, I thought of one thing. If I had thought to bring enough cash, I would have taken a taxi home Sunday night instead of letting Muni dump on me. Earlier in the Summer, this occurred to me and I planed to do it, but forgot and didn’t remember until I was waiting for the bus that never came. I should write that down now before I forget.

Random

I’m having lunch at my second favorite neighborhood pizzeria -- owned by a former unit owner in my condo and staffed by mostly East Asian students from Academy of Art University -- and I just got a waitress “dear” from a new hire. Charmed.

Random 2

Today I received a postcard offering to pay cash to buy my condo. I don’t want to sell, and they couldn’t buy it even if I wanted to sell it to them, but what interested me was the cursive typeface used on the postcard. It is really convincing. There are multiple versions of the same letter, like “i,” depending on what character comes before. So it has to use code to translate text into what looks like cursive handwriting. I can imagine how it works, but I’ve never seen anything so convincing before. I can also imagine how I would write the code to do an even more convincing version where you would “randomly” pick from several options for each letter in every context. I put “randomly” in quotes because “true” randomness is hard, or impossible, to manage on a computer. But this is actually a meaninglessly fine distinction that only annoying people pay attention to. Still, I would include some debugging code to show what “random” was generating to make sure it wasn’t obviously failing. Says the person who hasn’t written a line of code since the ‘90s.

302. “The ‘50s never die.”

The Impossible Burger at Mel's

I have read, with mild interest, about the search for a better veggie hamburger substitute. As with most things this trendy, much of this development is taking place locally. While I think the effort (time and money) could probably be better spent. And while I would be more interested if it was the search for a better BBQ ribs replacement. I wouldn’t object to a veggie burger that tasted more like the burgers of my youth. One of the candidates, in this competition is the “Impossible Burger” which I just ate at Mel’s Kitchen.

Mel’s is a famous local diner chain, it was featured in the movie "American Graffiti" -- still the best film George Lucas has made, in my opinion. One of their locations here, on Van Ness, has undergone an upscale transformation at the request of their landlord, a hotel also undergoing an upscale transformation. Instead of being a “diner” it is now a “kitchen.” There are still photos on the walls of "American Graffiti" and of the ‘50s in general, and there are some at-table jukebox controllers scattered about, but the actual music being played is not of the period. This would seem to be the decorative equivalent of façadism. But, then again, ‘50s music is problematic, so I’m not really complaining.

At any rate, I read in the paper that they were offering the Impossible Burger, so I took advantage of the opportunity to try one. It certainly isn’t the worst veggie burger I’ve ever ordered, though it’s close to the most expensive at $16. Without fries! Surprisingly, I would describe it as having the consistency of an uncooked hamburger patty. It tastes fine, but it does make me wonder what exactly they were aiming at. It is served at Mel’s with sliced pickles, a pesto sauce, and the usual lettuce and tomato. The bun was good but didn’t really add much to the experience.

While eating, I was thinking back on the outstanding burgers of my youth, starting in the ‘50s with White Castle. There the thing you recall is the bun, not the patty. My early ‘60s favorite was from Harvey’s on Colfax in Denver. There the primary taste ingredient was the secret sauce. I don’t recall much about either the bun or the patty. My final, late ‘60s favorite was from Whataburger, and I can’t recall anything specific about that one. So, at least for me, the bun and the sauce was more important than the actual burger patty. If I were interested in this search for the perfect veggie burger, I would ignore the patty entirely -- well, I’ve had Garden Burgers that were seasoned and tasted much better, so I would look into that. But I would just play with the bun and sauce and other toppings. A little avocado tends to make everything a little better. And even then, the only reason to even include the patty is to add some protein to the delicious mix. A “patty” of baked or sauteed tofu would work just as well if it had all the rest going for it.

Grease: Sundown Cinema

Last Friday I had to fill in for someone at the last minute. This was for a small event in our other big city park, McLaren Park. This was the first time I've been on foot in that park, but it was quite nice. This was for a public showing of the movie "Grease" -- which I realized I had never seen. There were only a few hundred people in attendance, probably because the weather has been cold and overcast, though it was surprisingly pleasant that evening. There were several food and drink vendors and a large security force, for some reason. The sing-along and dance-along aspect of the event would probably have worked better with a larger crowd.

I only caught a few scenes from the film, not my cup of tea. What I did like was the mostly ‘50s music that preceded the film. The DJ was a young woman with a box of LPs. She did a great job selecting music to play, there was very little I knew, but everything sounded of the period. If I had a tape of what she played, I would listen to it again. Which is a surprise considering my normal aversion to music from that decade.

The event was pretty boring for us as there was hardly any trash to sort. We were all done by 10:30pm though we were scheduled to work longer.

TMM and STC and "enki"

I’m caught up with my TMM blogging, I’ve done what my book club is reading this month (I cleverly specified the end of "Snow," rather than the end of chapter 6, so that we will focus on the philosophical debate and not get sidetracked by poor Joachim. I think they are regretting letting me be the “guide” for this book). I need to go over what I’ve blogged again, but I’m quite happy with it. I’ve linked material from all three of my active blogs. Everything is tying together nicely. And it occurred to me the other day that this will almost certainly be my last reading of TMM. Fortunately, there are one or two other things I still need to read.

On my recent Staycation trip to exotic Emeryville, I picked up yet another stylistically stunning design magazine from the UK, “enki” by name. Since I’m not quite ready to jump back into Genji, I’ve been amusing myself with “enki.” Mostly I love the typefaces and the overall graphic style of the mag. There is at least one instance of a room painted entirely in a dark gray, so popular in UK magazines and so very tempting to me. I’ve pretty much decided to go with the bright white look when I next paint my place, but whenever I see a photo of a room like this I fall in lust again. I just don’t think it would work in such a small space. I don’t actually plan to paint for nine years, so I have time to change my mind a few thousand times.

The most interesting house in this (September 2018) issue of “enki” is a modernist houseboat in Haarlem. It checks all the boxes, sustainable, modernist, climate-change resistant. It looks better on the outside than on the inside, which is nothing special, but I don’t understand why houses like this aren’t everywhere. Or at least everywhere there’s flowing water. Too big for me, of course. And I still have yet to see a multi-family floating project. I hope the Netherlands leads the way with this as the USA almost certainly wont.

There’s been exciting local news about the STC, our new multi-billion dollar bus station. Someone noticed that two of the steel beams, that hold up the part of the structure where I was catching the NL bus to Oakland two weekends ago, are cracked. The entire facility has been shut down and the buses returned to the Temporary Terminal. The beams must have been right above my head as I waited to catch the bus. I can’t wait to see how they shore it up while inspecting and repairing/replacing the beams. Seems like you would need a temporary beam that runs the width of the building and out over the street below, and then three-story posts to hold that beam in place. But how would you maneuver such a beam into place? (Instead they've opened holes in the bus level deck so the support posts run directly down to the street.)

There’s already a huge amount of litigation concerning the nearby residential tower that is sinking and tilting, and now we will get another layer of litigation to determine who is responsible for this SNAFU. And we lose the use of our lovely new park until the structural part of this problem is resolved.