Reading
Back at the same seat in Peet's on Market Street. The woman next to me at this counter/table asked me to watch her stuff and I said sure. And at first I was just doing the usual Interwebs stuff so I was paying attention to her belongings -- or at least I would have been aware if anyone came by and messed with it. But then I switched to reading a chapter of Martha Grimes's Fadeaway Girl (but also here) and someone could have sawed her part of the counter off and taken it with them and I probably wouldn't have noticed. It was a short chapter, too. And only the one because we are down to the dregs of the world of Emma Graham and I'm trying to drag it out as much as I can.
I think this is only the second time I've read this volume, anyway I don't recall much of the plot. And the chapter I was reading was actually plot heavy, for a change. Though even here it was more about what Emma was feeling than about what was happening. But at least what was happening was germane to the chain of crimes the novels are pretending to be about.
Market Street
Back 24 years ago when I lived way up Market in Fox Plaza, I couldn't help noticing how the buildingsx along this diagonal street, Fox Plaza in particular, frequently created eddies of trash at entrances and other points where the shape of the building interacted with the near constant (and often fierce) wind in just the right way. Today they have to model new buildings to optimize (or minimize) the way they block the wind, but back then they just built and then tried to ignore the negative results. After all, it was some janitorial employee making minimum wage who had to pick up the trash that collected in every recess of the building.
There is a similar recess at the entrance of this Peet's, but what I see constantly blowing in, sometimes through and other times coming to rest, are the people of the streets. There is a complete revitalization of Market Street scheduled for not too far in the future. The current street-scape is a result of the construction project that put BART and Muni Metro trains underneath the street in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then little has changed, but everything has aged. Hallidie Plaza, for example, was a part of that same transit project and in the years since they have had to remove all the benches and trees to reduce crime and "blight."
The excruciatingly creative types who will be crafting the new street design will be doing a cunning dance as they attempt to tart up the Mid-Market blocks -- where Twitter and Uber and Dolby have been encouraged to settle -- while discouraging the camping of the more feral elements. I don't envy them. The Seattle Public Library approach is probably the best, give them an area to inhabit that is convenient to them while not essential to the people with more work-a-day interests. But that requires the designers (and client) be realistic and honest. I would guess that this, instead, will be a design process within a world of pretend. In any case, it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Novel padding
I'm now over half through the fourth of Martha Grimes's Emma Graham novels. On this, my second (or third?) reading of this book, I'm noticing how much time the author spends reminding the reader of things mentioned in previous novels. I suppose this is so people who haven't read the previous books -- or haven't read them recently -- won't be entirely lost. For me it's a bit irritating. I still don't have any kind of ebook reader, so I don't know what that experience is like or what options are available, but one thing that should be an option is a version of books that are part of a series with the reminders left out.
I assume the author goes through the book after it's finished and adds these little reminders everywhere she mentions something that happened in a previous book. I would want her to completely finish the editing of the book before adding that padding and distribute the padded and un-padded versions separately. Or you could get them both for the same price and read the one that suits you.
My alley
For a week or so it looked like all the construction in my neighborhood was wrapping up at the same time, but that has turned out not to be the case. The alley is now filled up with trucks working next door. I'm not sure what they are doing, but truck-loads of debris are coming out of the building. It seems like a volume larger than the building itself has been hauled away over the course of the past three or four months. My neighbor says she was almost hit by a toilet flying out of a window -- which suggests major remodeling. (Though the City is also pressing everyone to replace old toilets with low-flow models. After I wrote the above I came home and found a huge pile of bags of debris piled up along the side of our building -- in that nice paved area they wouldn't let our contractors use to get materials to the rear of our building.)
To my surprise, it looks like our timing this summer could actually have been worse. I'm even thinking we might want to put off the pending landscaping and painting until after this project -- what ever it is -- is complete. Now if I can only find someone to give me an idea when that will be.
Fleet Week
This is also Fleet Week. The Blue Angel practice flights over the city will start tomorrow and the weather forecast is perfect for them, with the skies clear and the temps slowly getting warmer until late Sunday when it changes again. This could turn out to be the (relatively) hot weekend we dodged for HSB. Since Nike isn't holding their Women's Half Marathon this year (and we don't seem to be greening the Salesforce convention for once), Fleet Week could be the last event on our calendar. I could live with that.
End of season mid-course correction
After getting a double hamstring cramp on Monday (something I do not recommend), I have a new "Anti-cramp Plan" that will go into effect next Monday. Instead of my usual routine -- sleep in late and do little but moan and bitch -- I've scheduled a, too early, massage and then I'm going to the gym to both workout and stretch the hell out of my hamstrings. (I will finally give those foam roller things a try.) If nothing else, this should surprise the hell out of my hamstrings. We'll see if this really is better than simple rest.
Kevin Durant+
At the gym this morning I caught part of Stephen A. Smith's rant about Kevin Durant going to the Golden State Warriors. (Smith is an ESPN personality famous for articulate rants on sports related topics. Durant is considered one of the three best players in the league.) His position was that, by switching from the second best team in the West to the best team, Durant has ruined the regular season, since there will be no real competition for the now even more dominant Warriors. This after Golden State annihilated the Clippers in the second pre-season game of the year.
I can see Smith's point, and maybe I would be more sympathetic if it wasn't my team that benefited from this change, but I don't really see preserving competion as high among the factors deciding where a player wants to be. This may also reflect my interest in greatness.
I've always been a Giants baseball fan, but I collected the baseball cards of all the players from the great Yankee teams of the 1950s. Who wouldn't have wanted to play on those dominant teams? The same goes for the SF 49er football teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s. When all the pieces fall into place like that, each player has an opportunity to rise even higher through the synergy of greatness.
Both Kevin Durant and Steph Curry may suffer statistically this season as they share the same basketball court -- there's only one ball to go around, after all -- but they will be part of something phenomenal. You would have to be insane to pass that up because it makes the season less exciting for ESPN. If that's even true. I think people are going to come out to see the show.
And yes, I'm going to bring this back to military history. People will say, well of course GSW is blowing everyone off the court with the talent they have now. But most of the new personnel they've picked up since last season went for smaller paychecks just for the opportunity to be part of what should be a history making team. The talent came because all the other pieces were in place.
In military history I see the same dynamic with Alexander, Caesar, Napolean in his prime, the U.S. Pacific Fleet in WW2 (5th Fleet, but not 3rd Fleet because a piece was missing there). When it works it looks so easy. You say, well of course they won, look at all the advantages they had. Yet other military organizations with similar advantages have been failures.
The GSWs, besides picking up those new very promising pieces, also lost many of the players that helped them last season. And for the second year in a row they lost the first assistant coach to a head coaching job elsewhere in the league -- this also happened to the 49ers in their glory years. This is not unlike the attrition armies and navies suffer in war. Will the GSW organization prove robust enough to adjust to all the changes. Will new players and coaches rise to the new opportunites? For me that will be more interesting to see than mere team competition during the regular season.
