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.