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.

299. Beer Circus & Opera in the Park plus

Beer Circus

You try to live a good, honest, simple life and then, just once, you slip up and the next thing you know you’re at a Beer Circus in Sonoma County. And if you’re thinking of The House of the Rising Sun, I only wish.

I won’t tell the story of how I ended up signed up for this event, as it doesn’t seem plausible even to me, but I will say that I ended up carpooling from SF to Petaluma too early Saturday morning. The people I rode with were on a later shift, so they dropped me at the fairgrounds and went to a gym (?)... these crazy kids today. As we were pulling in I noticed a Lumberjacks restaurant out on the main street. I had had an early breakfast (too early) and, since I had time to kill and was looking at working a long, hot shift, decided a second breakfast would be a good way to fuel up and kill time. 

The Lumberjacks motto is “Where the big boys eat.” It seems they are a national chain and it also seems that competitive log chopping and sawing are a thing. Where I was seated I could see the video screen showing these competitions, mixed with info on the chain. It made for one of those, “you’re back in Kansas” moments.

The food was fine, if nothing to write home to SF about. I avoided the four egg omelette and ordered two eggs scrambled plus potatoes and toast off the “Senior” menu. This was my first experience with a senior menu. I over tipped a little so it cost about what my breakfast out usually costs. And now for the “circus.”

This was a beer event sponsored by Lagunitas. We’ve worked beer events in SF that featured a range of different beers, but this was just Lagunitas, plus circus like events and many people dressed up with some sort of “circus” look. Though, as it turned out, it was no more of a freak show than our more normal events. What it was, however, was hotter than those of us from SF are used to this summer. Which is actually fine as we need to get in shape for the next month of hard-core events that often get hot weather. 

So we came. We greened. We left... but didn’t drive directly home, as I would have preferred. Someone was hungry so we briefly cruised Petaluma at the hour when most restaurants are closing, before finally stopping at a Chipotle for a late dinner. It was actually surprisingly good. Then we drove home. And while we were driving home my cell phone slipped out of my pocket, as I discovered when getting ready to take my shower. Fortunately, we were all working together the next day at Opera in the Park.

Opera in the Park

I’ve never liked opera and many, many years of working this event -- which is an outdoor sampler of the operas the SF Opera will be performing this season -- has not changed that. Except that now I dislike opera and despise opera goers. They are the absolute worst. Talking with a woman working an earlier shift, she mentioned how entitled they were, and then the remainder of the day each person seemed to be in a competition to prove that they were the most entitled of them all. The over-served crowd at the beer circus were actually less annoying -- though the vendors at the circus made up for that, nothing new there.

Since OITP is in Sharon Meadow, I had breakfast at the Pork Store. When I arrived at the park, the weather was perfect. Not too hot last last year, when half the crowd was hiding in the trees, or too cold and foggy like three years ago when they cut the show short, presumably to save the singers from pneumonia. 

We can’t make noise or block the view of the audience picnicking on the grass, so aside from keeping the perimeter in good shape, we take our lunch and other breaks during the performances and rush around trying to catch up during intermission and especially at the end. And by the end the crowd is both over-self-served (they bring in bottles of wine, mostly) and even more entitled. They dump their picnic debris at the nearest eco-station, or at least near the eco-station, as everyone knows that leaving your personal bag of unsorted trash, like an offering, near the eco-station is both proper and avoids the problem of deciding which container to put it in. Let the help sort it out.

My favorite crew chief, who usually works this event, was replaced this time by the boss. So the final cleanup took longer. The boss was trying to make reality conform with our stated goals for the maximum weight of bags to lift and the like, when all the glass bottles made this impossible. Usually we just manhandle everything into the trucks as best we can, J__ is a great organizer of trash loads, but yesterday it all went slower with more conversation. But it got done. And the diversion rate was much higher than the day before because Sonoma County doesn’t accept half the items we can put into compost in SF and Oakland. That’s the problem with greening in Kansas.

And we also got a beautiful Golden Gate Park sunset. And, unlike at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass -- which is now on my calendar -- we got to enjoy it after the noisy crowd had left. Though there’s something to be said for both experiences. 



You would think this would be the end of this story, but not quite. The curious thing about Sunday is that, not only is it the day of the week I have the most greening shifts, it is also the night I put out the trash for my building. And because we’ve recently had problems getting our trash toters back in the morning, I have to listen for the sounds of the garbage men in the alley so I can go out and reclaim our bins -- including the special locking one we have for recycling. Or had until last Monday.

So, last night as a crazy woman decided to set up camp in our doorway and spend the hours between 10pm and 6:45am ranting and laughing to herself, while periodically throwing garbage around the alley and at the buildings, I couldn’t do what I would normally do, turn up my music until I couldn't hear her. (When debris started hitting the buildings I did call the police -- three times -- but they never showed.) So I got as little sleep as she did.

And so I got some retaliatory pleasure in getting to wake her ass up around 7:15 when the garbage people arrived. My favorite Recology employee and I quickly cleaned up the worst of the trash -- I had my picker, of course -- but I needed to make a second pass that afternoon when I watered the garden out there. And he found and returned our “special” blue toter, which I promptly decorated with bands of tape and signs requesting it be returned locked -- so that the other buildings can’t use it. We’ll see how that works. 

I really do wonder what it is with crazy people and their constant trail of trash. Just did a Google search and got nothing. 

199. Opera In the Park

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Opera In the Park

I think we can all agree that the only reasonable conclusion is that the people managing this event read my last blog post and were offended by "Caterwauling in Sharon Meadow." I don't know why. Here's what happened.

It was yet another of our freakish, one day, Sunday heatwaves. Not a cloud in the sky and the SF official high temperature was over 90F. I took some photos of Sharon Meadow when I arrived at Noon, with the expectation of taking another set later in the day when the crowd had filled in, instead, the crowd was sensible enough to hide in the trees bordering the meadow all day. It was actually kind of amusing: Were they driven into the trees by the caterwauling, or were they ashamed to be seen at an opera event?

View from the cool of the trees with stage on the left and part of Hippie Hill on the right. The bike storage area in foreground.

My plan had been to take my lunch break right after the intermission, and then be ready to man an eco-station before the music came to an end. (Recall how I cleverly read the situation last time and was in the right place at the critical time?) Unfortunately, it took me longer to sort and clean out the big eco-station that was in the crowd during the break, and then to work my way through my area getting all the other stations in order before I took my lunch break. By the time I made it to our HQ (behind the dumpsters, as usual) it was after 3:30 and the concert was scheduled to terminate at 4pm. I was only half way through my sandwich when they wrapped up with some stirring tune or other and the crowd started streaming out. And at least half our crew had followed me to lunch.

I aborted my lunch and fought my way through the departing salmon to the eco-station that traditionally gets hit hardest. Because it was a double station, and I had just cleaned it out on my way to lunch, I was able to keep it functioning -- though the wine bottle filled recycling bags got too full to pull easily.

The good side of this being a too calm, 90F day, was that the wind didn't blow all the trash around at the end of the day. 

Book Club

We met today to discuss The Light of the World. I really did like the book, and it's something I can recommend to more people than usual -- though probably not to the person I know who's situation is most like the author's, as I have no idea if this would be helpful or not -- but I ended up with a record low quantity of notes for discussion. There was nothing about the book that I would have changed. There were a couple things I wished I could ask Ficre, and I'm still curious about that poem by Lucille Clifton, but otherwise there's not much to say.

Or there is, but I'm not comfortable bringing it up with people who are in married relationships. Is it better or worse to find your soul mate if you're then going to lose that person? The odds of finding that person are always slight, but Ficre and Elizabeth seemed to know almost immediately what they had and never grew out of it. Or to put it in the terms of Le Petit Prince, is it worth it to learn to be tamed if you're going to be left on your own later? 

I don't think Alexander would choose to have acted differently, but there is no equivalent for the survivor to what Clifton wrote in her poem about the person dying, 

"...there was all around not the
shapes of things
but oh, at last, the things
themselves."

And even that boon is imaginary. A wished for eschatology. Another story we tell ourselves so that we feel better about what we don't understand and never will.

Thunderstorm!

Not much rain, but we are getting some lightning and thunder. This hardly ever happens here so is always exciting... until the power goes off. Doesn't happen every year, but when it does it is around now, as it's a function of hurricane season. The best year for thunderstorms, since I've lived here, was 1999, the summer after my dad died. One night the show seemed to go on for hours.

198. Urban renewal

The cost of urban renewal

(In the sense of sustaining the existing built environment, not the way the term was misused in the 1940s to 1960s.)

Here are some photos I took this morning of my alley now that all the scaffolding is finally down. It took months, and must have cost a fortune, but the two big buildings facing Powell street and the cable car line are now weatherproofed and re-painted.

I didn't move that landfill toter into the frame, but I also didn't move it away.

Good shot of the paving we would like to replace, not a project I want to be in charge of. You can actually see here how the paving is level in the background (my end of the alley) and starts to slope left to right by the foreground. When it hits Powell, the slope matches the slope of that street, which rises about 40 feet in a single block. If the alley isn't properly paved it won't drain to Powell, and will drain into the lower level of the building on the right. Before I passed the project off to the manager of that building, I did get a bid for replacing the existing alley with concrete for $26,000. 

It's really hard to get a good photo of the alley side of the larger building on the right. I don't feel like climbing up on our roof. 


Turns out there hasn't been anyone living in the unit across from my building because they were waiting for the scaffolding to come down so they could get moving trucks in. 

Events

Thursday was a JP Morgan corporate charity race. I hadn't worked it for a couple years and now I remember why. Give people a numbered bib and a banana and they act like apes. 

The "venue" for this was a large parking lot near the San Francisco Giant's stadium. The Giants own the parking lot (there's a plan for a big mixed-use development here) and scattered dozens of large, concrete planters around the lot. Unfortunately, they didn't get around to adding the trees yet, so the runners and their corporate enablers decided to use the planters as trash containers. it took us no time at all to take down and sort our official eco-stations, but then it took hours to sort out the planters. 

On the positive side, that was the day we got some tropical moisture up from the Gulf of California which brought our heat wave to a close and gave us lovely clouds and at least the smell of moisture, if no actual rain. And the full moon was battling with the Bay Lights for the attention of anyone looking toward the bay. As nice as fog can be, it's not the same thing as real clouds.

Tomorrow is Opera in the Park. Last year I worked Solano Stroll instead, but this is easier to get to -- and much easier to get back from, as AC transit stops serving the Berkeley end of Solano street by the time we're finished.

I have very mixed feelings about Opera in the Park. I always like working Sharon Meadow in Golden Gate Park (excuse to have breakfast at the Pork Store), but I dislike opera. (There is a stirring piece from Turandot that I won't mind hearing.) This is one of the picnic events we work, which are something of a pain because everyone holds onto their trash until the last minute. Most of the trash comes in a huge wave as the crowd is breaking up and overwhelms our eco-stations. Mary, my boss, is crew chiefing the event this year, and I've already giving her my suggestion for how best to manage this, but we will see if she can get everyone to actually monitor the key stations at the critical time. Two years ago, we had it all planned out but it was foggy and cold and they wrapped up early. I read the clues right and got into position in time for the rush, but it took the others by surprise, as they were going by the clock. This is why I tend to ignore the maps and schedules we are given and just play it by ear. 

As expected, my work schedule is really filling up now with an event or two every week. I'm already signed up for the International Dragon Boat Races -- one of my favorites (and a killer to work). The first week of October is always a monster for us, but this year is going to be even worse with HSB and Fleet Week happening the same weekend, and also overlapping with Oracle OpenWorld. 

The latter is a mystery as it is happening at Moscone Center which is currently torn apart for a huge expansion program. I have no idea how they plan to make this work. I may work it (for a change) just to see.