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.
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