344. More Greening 2019

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Greening

Opera In the Park
I thought I had written about this but apparently not here. This is an event I work every year so I have it down, but I don't much care for it, even though it is in Golden Gate Park. And the weather was perfect this year. The problem is the music. I;m not a fan of opera. But this year there was a change for the better as one of the opera singers sang a Queen cover: Someone To Love. That was pretty great and the crowd loved it. Maybe, moving forward, we can have more Queen and less opera. I can dream.



This Never Happened
I worked a rave! It was pretty damn dull. Frank Ozawa Plaza in the heart of Oakland was fenced off for this afternoon into evening, outdoor event. It was supposed to be the last day of our little heat wave, and in fact the heat wave was over in SF, but it was still sunny and warm in Oakland.

This is part of the “venue” for Art and Soul, but the audience was much whiter. Still diverse, but primarily white. The music was monotonous -- if you’re not on drugs, anyway -- and I didn’t have a good angle on the light-show projected on City Hall. What I could see were the people dressed to attract. There were enough women who looked unbelievably good to make up for the other shortcomings of the event.

And the main shortcoming from my perspective was that there was nothing to do for the bulk of the time. Nobody was generating a lot of trash. I grabbed the food area, but even there the pickings were slim. And then the event went about ten minutes long, which doesn’t sound like much, but I was supposed to get off at 9pm and they played until 8:55pm leaving me little time to consolidate and collect the bags in my area. I cheated by pulling in early the compost boxes at two stations that also had a regular Oakland can for general trash. I left the recycling in place but did a final sort on the compost and also pulled the sorted recycling so that all my work during the day was preserved. This took a bit longer than five minutes, but, as I said, I had not been working hard all day.

(They just posted a request for three people to help clean up the area the day after. I guess it was a mess after I left.)

The other bad aspect of the timing was that I had to catch the train home with the rave mob. To my surprise, I managed to even get a seat. And when I arrived in SF I remembered that the cable car system is down for the weekend so I caught a bus up the hill. Heaven after working on my feet for eight hours.

One good thing about rave music, no earworms. I still have a song from Opera in the Park I’m working to extract from my ear -- and no, it’s not opera. Or Queen.

Rockridge Out & About
It’s now Monday and they are still trying to pull in people to help cleanup the rave mess. I seriously thought about it but already had a chiro appointment and it sounds really tedious and back breaking work. The main reason I’d like to go is to see how we could do this better in the future. Maybe something in between a street sweeper and a wet/dry vac. I’m sure this exists. But on to Rockridge...

I’ve worked this before and it is dead easy. It’s a street festival in one of Oakland’s nicest neighborhoods. The biggest problem is that the people with all their kids and dogs just move so slowly it’s hard for us to get through. Once you realize there’s no real rush anyway -- none of the stations were overwhelmed and I added an extra compost to the busiest station in my area -- you can calm down and just wait people out.

We even wrapped up an hour early. And since the train station is right above the event, it’s dead easy to get to and to get home from. This was one Oakland event where we follow Oakland composting rules so all the expensive compostable cold drink cups had to go to landfill. This confuses everyone (and is stupid) but we’re not as outraged as you might expect since those bioplastic cups, even if you have a compost facility that can process them, result in shit “compost.” And all the hundreds or thousands of cups that ended up in the landfill yesterday don’t really add up to much in terms of weight or even volume after they are smashed flat. What they do do, at some point in the future, is add methane to a landfill.

And at the end of my shortened work day I again rode the bus up my hill. I am getting so spoiled by this shuttle service. 


Undiscovered, again
This was the second of these events I’ve worked this year. Different crew this time, but I again grabbed the busy area in back where all the food was and spend the afternoon and evening piling up bags of sorted trash against the fence that separated the event from the rest of the parking lot behind the Federal Courthouse. Ended up with an impressive pile of bags. I have to admit I like being able to see the result of my work manifested like that. And someone else came in after the event and hauled all the bags away as I took down the four stations I had been managing.

We were done by 11:30 when my shift ended and I even made it safely through the late Saturday crowd of near-do-wells in SF’s last Skid Row to where I could catch the shuttle bus up my hill. Unfortunately that's the last time as the repairs are now complete and the cable cars are going back in service.

One thing I preferred about Undiscovered compared with the rave last Saturday was the presence of dogs. I don’t think either event was really a good place for dogs -- too loud -- but it was nice to see them last night. Lots of puppies.

Last night I also tried out the recycled, clear backpack I got from a co-worker after having a hard time finding one for sale here. It is a bit small, and was tossed out because the zipper on the main section is broken, but I actually love the way it fits. I’m working on another way to keep it closed. I think it will still carry enough for HSB, which is what I need it for. That it sits much higher on my back actually makes it better for carrying a heavier load of bags and even water. Last year I had to give up on the extra water because my backpack was irritating my lower back.

Random

I just had an odd peak experience. For me, Subway is as good as it gets for “fast food”. I went in the one on Van Ness at Jackson and got my usual veggie Delight, but what actually made the experience special was that, while it was a tad cool out on the street, the interior of the little place was bathed in the heat from the ovens and the smell of baking bread. It was pretty magical for a franchise food shop.

342. Greening 2019

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AIDS Walk 2019

Yesterday was AIDS Walk, which went really well again. For one thing there seemed to be an over abundance of us. I only worked four hours because we were done early. I reminded everyone of the factors that can make this event go sideways -- an abundance of “free” mixed stream boxes a producer of lube always gives the event, and overly enthusiastic volunteers who will pull bags too quickly that still need to be sorted. 

I arrived just as the walkers were returning and the entertainment was starting. I quickly determined that the Chevron area was creating the most mess so I worked there until it was time to start taking down our eco-stations. The problem here was that Chevron was mixing plastic flatware and lots (LOTS) of little condiment packages with the paper plates of food. So I was pulling out the plates -- with some food and a few cups -- after knocking off the plastic items. This resulted in a bunch of bags filled with my usual nearly 100% compost while the contamination built up at the bottom of the containers. But this was a nearly perfect event for me as I got to sort down the four stations in the Chevron area myself.  After getting out as much of the good stuff as I could reach, I would pull the bag and add it to the next station, slowly getting more and more of the food that had fallen to the bottom. By the final station there was just a mess of plastic and some food that I was happy to toss into the landfill. Then I moved on to shut down other stations that I had not been maintaining.

This was in Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow. This being July, we didn’t get any sun until almost the end of the site cleanup. Typical summer in SF. 


One interesting, and surprising, thing happened yesterday. The new woman last year, who at this event was annoyed by my pulling out compost she had just sorted, praised my method. Either she finally noticed how it works or she finally noticed that I have “special” status with our boss as the oldest employee (who remembers details like the lube boxes from hell from year to year). Don’t know which it is. Don’t really care.

Undiscovered 2019

Surprise! (for me) they moved it two blocks west. Luckily you can just catch a glimpse of the new location down Jessie. 

The new location is a little harder to get to but also more secure. And the event is now more like a baby La Cocina event. If it gets any busier we’re going to need more than 6 yards for the compost. 

I trained the new guy, who seems to be a quick study. Since it was already busy when we started, I was in sorting and pulling mode, so he, to my surprise, copied that as well as just the basic sorting. I was prepared to cover one of the eco-stations in the entertainment area, as well as the ones in the food area, but the first time I hit it he was already there doing what I would do. Happy day.

Because it was so crowded at my end, dropping my sorted bags in the toter at the south edge of the event worked well. It might have been easier for E___ to use the toter, instead of the wheeled round, for hauling, but that would have left the bag stash more visible -- though I’m not sure anyone would have cared.

The only problem at the end of the day was that my head-lamp batteries had died so I had to improvise to do the final sort of the station bags. That and the mess left by some vendors.


I pulled a single blue glove from the compost -- just to mess with me, I’m pretty sure. And the event staff put a stack of pizza boxes in the compost without removing the plastic spacers or foil condiment packs because, of course they did.

Art & Soul 2019

Another greening season, another Art & Soul Festival in downtown Oakland. What I like about it is that it's the first of the Oakland events I work with James, who supervises another crew that does mostly hauling and grounds. That and that it gives me a chance to get warm in the middle of a cold SF summer.

What I don’t like is the amazingly consistent resistance of A&S goers to what we are trying to do. They insist on throwing their food and plates into the landfill, and if you call them on this some will tell you they do it on principle because sorting the trash isn’t their job. It, apparently, is the job of the Man. The food vendors are also total assholes, but that never really changes. I only had three vendor eco-stations to maintain this time so I would go in, sort them all out, work the street and concert areas for an hour, return and find the most ungodly and unlikely messes. Which took much longer to sort out than if we just collected their damn bags and sorted it and kept them away from the sorted bins. I’ve actually sent out an email suggesting we drop the pretense of “vendor self-sorting” but I doubt that will fly since people would rather believe that we are slowly educating the public and vendors. After twelve years of greening work I can attest that there is no change, especially with vendors. Though to be fair, every year at this time I have to ask what the Oakland bin colors mean because gray for recycling and burgundy (brown) for landfill makes absolutely no sense.

At the very end of my shift on Sunday I was scheming the pickup of a bunch of leftover food from the caterer in the VIP area behind the big concert area near me, while trying to wind down the vendors. Some had already left so I pulled the properly sorted compost and recycling toters and put them out in the street to be taken to our dumpster location. A bunch of MEN were sitting around the other eco-station talking and drinking while the women took down their setups. I couldn’t even get to the station because of the lounging men so I said screw it and headed for the VIP area. Which turned out to be a good decision as they managed (how?) to not know that their Sterno cans didn’t belong in landfill. So I collected them for reuse while my crew chief showed up for the food pickup I’d been scheming since the previous night, when we composted all the leftovers. (I was really hungry and they looked delicious.. But getting them home on the train is just too much bother.)

There was at least one funny thing that happened on Sunday. We have a worker who admits to being OCD and, while much better lately, has a tendency to be too perfect when sorting trash when it gets busy. But she’s the perfect person to sic on a dumpster that is obviously too contaminated. 

Anyway, the first time I worked with her and noticed her problem was at A&S many years ago. I was working the same area (around half a dozen public eco-stations plus the vendor stations) and she was supposed to be covering for me while I took a lunch break. I left her working a particularly vile BBQ place where they were giving away small, but free portions of ribs. Most of the ribs were going into the landfill, because Oakland, and she was trying to sort that out. I took my half hour break and returned to find her still at it. She had never left to cover the other stations she was so focused on getting this one perfect. Sisyphus had nothing on her. I was so pissed, imagining the state of the other stations, that I left her at it and rushed to clean up the mess she had inadvertently made.


Anyway, her soul sister was working Sunday and she too was focused on the landfill bags. It is hard to let all the good compost at the bottom of landfill bags go at A&S, but it’s a war you can’t win unless you stay at one station all afternoon. But at least I was keeping the four eco-stations in order (by quickly pulling out the bulky paper items on top) so she was actually helping, but in a way that doesn’t make any long term sense. This time I was just amused. I probably should have talked to her about it, but I’m not sure that’s really my job. And, except when she wore out the bottom of one landfill bag and left it leaking it’s contents onto the street, she was making my job a little easier.

Outside Lands 2019

I arrived an hour early at the usual service entrance but they wouldn’t let me in there. I walked miles -- around the event -- to the entry closest to where I was supposed to be working but they weren’t letting anyone in there. I finally tried the main entrance for concert goers but they didn’t like my backpack and water bottle. So I left. First time I’ve ever not managed to work my shift.

That was Friday and I’m next scheduled for Sunday. I will go in without my backpack or much of my gear and with little enthusiasm. This is my least favorite event anyway and now they’ve made it even worse.

Sunday
Well I did finally get in and to my work area, but it was a pain and took about an hour. I also managed to have my phone die on me -- for the first time -- so I couldn’t contact anyone when I was stuck short of where I needed to go. But then the coolest thing happened. While sorting bags of trash I ran into a brand new cable, still in its packaging, so that I was then able to recharge my phone. And it’s a neat little cable, much smaller than mine. So I ended up coming out ahead there. Of course I did have to pay $4 for a bottle of water since I couldn’t bring mine into the event.

As before, we got caught-up before the last set and they stopped bringing us more bags, so we had nothing to do until almost time to quit. 

Oh another cool thing happened: Almost at the end some people from a bar booth started bringing us their trash on a golf cart. There were bags full of beer cans -- and unusually for a vendor, they was nothing but beer cans so they could go directly into the recycling. I went to grab some more of the bags so I was too late to catch the woman tossing the entire, unopened bag into the dumpster. You have to open them up and dump the contents. Fortunately, I had a younger coworker to send in to get the bag. And he found a bunch of other bags that had no business in there. We had no idea how or when they went in. But the point is that, if not for the woman tossing in her bag, we would not have noticed the others. It SO worked to our advantage. Or at least my advantage since I wasn’t the one who had to jump in and fish them out.

Unfortunately there was no upside to the guy I helped dump a large toter of “recycling” into the recycling dumpster only to then discover it was completely mixed trash. We had to fish out all the trash and compost. The same guys had a toter full of compost that we opened the compost dumpster so they could dump it directly and they managed to do that in the worst way possible, so that stuff was draining out under the doors. Aside from those two idiots, it was a pretty good shift.

219. Start of Genji

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The Old Mint

On Friday (already two weeks ago. I'm so far behind) I worked an event at the Old Mint called Undiscovered 2. I only signed up at the last moment because we were short people. This was an evening event partly in the little plaza on two sides of the Old Mint and partly inside. I worked the plaza, which was lined with food trucks and food vendor tents. It was the usual.

After the plaza was shut down, I went inside briefly to help in there. This was the first time I'd been in the building, which is one of the few survivors from the 1906 quake and fire. As I recall the story, a few people stayed behind and threw buckets of water on the heavy wood shutters to keep them from bursting into flame.

The building is amazingly solid -- it was the U.S. Mint, after all, and no doubt full of gold and silver much of the time. There's an open courtyard in the middle at the first floor above ground level. This was the main "venue" for the event, though they were also using many other rooms on that floor. I would love to explore the place. 

We finished sweeping the plaza to the north of the building just before 1am and I left. I arrived at the foot of Powell street just in time to see the final cable car of the day leave. At that time of night it makes surprisingly good time up Powell. Past my house.

Caffe Puccini

For a change I am at Caffe Greco in North Beach, sitting out on the Columbus sidewalk. To my surprise, Caffe Puccini is no more. The place is gutted. I'm sitting on the sidewalk closest to Puccini and kept trying to identify the unpleasant smell, which I was thinking was a demolition smell. Finally realized it is a fire smell. A quick search informs me that it was gutted by a fire on the 10th of this month. I'm surprised I didn't hear about that. Nothing indicates that they will be returning. The restaurant on the other side of them is closed with signs saying they will re-open. This assurance turns out to be a lie half the time anyway.

I just went through the hundreds of photos on Yelp and found a good shot of the amazing jukebox that was in Caffe Puccini,

SMART

I'm on the SMART train sitting at the new San Rafael terminus. It has functioning WiFi! A very comfortable little commuter train with a perfunctory little snack bar. 

I think I will be seeing some of the fire damage above Santa Rosa, but that's based on my interpretation of a photo I saw in the paper. In any event, I figured this would be a clever way to get out of the heat (this, too, is over a week old) during this little heat wave. Though, judging by yesterday, I will somehow end up hiking around Santa Rosa where it's even hotter than in SF.


This train is remarkably smooth.


This train is actually getting full. I'm seriously surprised. 


We're in Novato now. It looks very dry and there's a vulture circling... still California summer. We are at the edge of what should be wetland. Or what will probably be part of San Pablo Bay in 50 years -- they don't seem to have built up the track in anticipation of sea-level rise.


Just passed through the burned area between Santa Rosa and the airport. I expected more of the countryside to be burned but it seems to have been primarily the subdivisions that burned. Which supports my suspicion that building codes are a large part of the problem. Also, I haven't been able to regain WiFi since I shut my laptop around Petaluma. I think this is a Chrome problem, but I only run into it with certain routers. It's nice to see they are using the old stations at Petaluma and Santa Rosa (among other places) but to call those stations "downtown" is misleading. "Central" would be a better adjective. If I could get to Google Map I would check to see how far the station is from what I think of as downtown Petaluma. I have no idea about Santa Rosa. They probably just have an older mall. "When I was a boy you could ride your horse to Indian Genocide Mall and tie him up in the food court where there was a water trough and the Cinnebon guy kept some hay on hand. You could tie him up, do some shopping, have a snack, molest some girls, and come back and your horse would still be where you left him."

Just passed through the fire area again and the trees did survive better than the houses. Were their roofing materials soaked in napalm?

The Tale of Genji

by Murasaki Shikibu - Vintage, 1990 (the book itself was published "before 1021" according to Wiki)

I was trying to think what the circumstances of Genji's mother in the court of the Emperor reminded me of, and finally realized it was the story of Auntie Lindo from The Joy Luck Club. Her mother had also been the too-popular, youngest woman (concubine?) and so hated and plotted against by the older wives and concubines. (And this is also why I believe it is older wives, and not men, behind Islamic traditions of keeping young women in bags.)

Viewed this way, Jane Austen's novels are like chamber pieces with only a small group of players (single women and a variety of mothers, mostly), where literature from polygamous traditions are like symphonies with all the various additional sections of extra wives and concubines and their respective families. Since I tend to prefer smaller groups of musicians to full symphonies, it isn't surprising, I guess, that I'm not sure I will have the patience for Genji. Not because of its length but because of its base political nature. Unless there's an Auntie Lindo in here somewhere.