305.So much random

Jury Duty 2018

It isn’t easy to get to our Hall of Justice, but I managed it, despite unexpected street construction that forced me to walk an extra couple blocks. They finally noticed that juries started trials pissed off at having had their time wasted for days on end, and now there are far fewer potential jurors hanging around the building. And the police station in the building has been moved to a safer structure, so there are fewer cops around. As a result, the options for lunch have dropped to very few. I went to the place I’ve always gone, that is more expensive and caters to the lawyers. Even it is not thriving.

I just missed out on being selected for a jury for a misdemeanor prescription drug case that was a complete mystery. Did this guy piss on the side of a police car or what? It seemed to be a waste of everyone’s time, though, as it worked out, only one day of my time.

Since I had some time on my hands while we were waiting to be sent to a courtroom, I did what I usually do at such moments and started thinking about metaphysics. Recently I’ve been watching some excellent YouTube videos about String theory, the Multiverse, and the possibility that our universe is a simulation. The difference between Simulation and Pantheism is pretty subtle. You could easily rewrite the Devi creation story as a Simulation -- though this doesn’t get you any closer to answering questions about the origin of “everything.” 

We always come back to that ass Descartes when traveling this road -- the only thing we can know for sure is that we think. That we are aware. We can’t experience reality directly. We know that even our consciousness is a construct (see Korsakoff Syndrome). It would be nice to know what our bodies know. Are we dually sentient? We sort of know that each lobe of the brain has its own awareness, but is there another awareness that manages our perception, among other things? People are always trying to communicate with animals or space aliens, but it would be far more valuable to know what our brains/minds know that our consciousness doesn’t.

Random

Because it’s a Sunday and my options are limited, I walked the route rarely traveled, the bee-line to the Peet’s on Market Street. This takes me through Union Square proper, which is getting ready for the Christmas season. The work required to provide the wood “foundation” for the ice rink is rather more impressive than I had imagined. A lot of lumber and a lot of effort goes into this preparation. And I wonder where all this stuff is stored from Christmas to Christmas? 

Next I hit the new subway station at the SE corner of the square. It is slowly taking shape, but I don’t see why it isn’t already enclosed -- before the rains start. Apparently the construction people don’t think that way. I can see stairs and the bed for the escalator down to the actual train platforms, deep below the street. My view wasn’t good but it almost looked like there was only room for one escalator. I would think that couldn’t be true, but this is a Muni project. The tunnel is around 100 feet below the street.

Finally I walked down the last two blocks of Stockton Street. These blocks have been a construction zone for many years (except for when they are briefly pedestrianized at Christmas). The 2nd block is still dirt with a large hole with elevator down to the tunnel below. But the 1st block is ready to be paved and returned to normal use. Currently it’s being used for staging of construction equipment. And, honestly, there’s not that much reason to rush it back into service until the two blocks above are complete. Mostly this would be handy for taxis and Ubers. But psychologically it would be huge as it would suggest the construction nightmare was close to being over. And the surviving businesses on that block of Stockton would love it.

The street level construction mess is mirrored under the streets. Though not the same street, for the most part. Powell Street Station is the longest of our Market Street train stations serving both BART and Muni Metro, and it has been gutted and partly blocked off for as long as the streets have been torn up. Not entirely sure why. The main change will be that the existing (1970s) station will be connected to the new Central Subway station under Stockton. The new tunnel was bored beneath the original trench with BART below Muni. But that doesn’t explain why they had to gut the entire station. (Which also serves as a homeless camp.) Personally, finally completing the station work will improve my life more than putting the streets above back into service.

And as long as I’ve brought you down here to Market across from the "Medium" headquarters Phelan Building, this Christmas there will be two new popular attractions for the hoi polloi: The Ice Cream Museum has been doing an astonishing business since last Fall, and now “Candytopia” has opened in one of the retail spaces of the Four Seasons Hotel. By next year I expect to see “Crack-a-polousa” and “The Meth Museum.” It seems like we should at least live up to our usual reputation and have "The Kale Experience" and "Tofu You."

This really is the best Peet’s for people watching. The crowds out on this side of Market are noticeably altered by the two new attractions, especially the Candytopia that is just next door. Where are these suburbanites coming from? They don’t even look like the usual tourists. Someone had a great idea for pulling in the sugar craving crowds. Perhaps it’s sponsored by childhood diabetes. There’s still a vacated Walgreen’s across the street that could be converted into a Chuck E Cheese.

The other thing happening in my “hood” is the big Marriott hotel workers strike. I knew there were a lot of Marriott hotels around, but there are even more than I thought. And they all have had loud 24/7 protests for weeks now. I think the union ill timed the strike. This is a busy season, Oracle OpenWorld was last week (I only ended up working one shift) and every room in the city will be booked. People are not going to cancel at the Marriott because of the strike -- which they might do at a slower time of year when there would be vacancies elsewhere. My guess is that the strike is a pain for local management but might actually be saving the corporation some money. 

I’m still a fan of our new Mayor Breed. She seems to be taking some positive steps to deal with the problem on our streets. And the good news is that she’s on the clock. She won the election to fill our late Mayor’s term, but she will have to run again soon and people will want to see that she has accomplished something. That all the other mayors before her were unsuccessful at this, won’t help her. Her timing seems to be good. The process to gain conservatorship for some of the completely helpless people on the street seems to have reached a point where something might actually happen. And most everyone (with some vocal exceptions) is pretty fed up. And it’s not like she has to turn the city into Disneyland. Any noticeable improvement will be celebrated like the 2nd Coming. She’s in a good position. I’d give here 50/50 odds.

After Oracle

Well, I was wrong. My greening season ended with a whimper after all. Not only is a shift spent monitoring an infrequently visited eco-station for a convention lunch boring and pointless, but in the end I only was required to work one day out of the four. A mere blip of a whimper. The novelty of working on what is usually a busy downtown street wore off years and years ago. It was a lovely day and I was in the shade, so it could have been worse. 

I did have plenty of time for greening conversations with the handful of people curious about what we were doing. One guy even gave me a reusable metal straw -- with cleaning brush! Which is nice but, there are very few times I want a straw. Not counting the times I manage to drench myself following an ice blockage incident. Smoothies and milkshakes do require a fat straw, or at least a straw makes drinking them easier. And a straw is handy for stirring Thai iced tea. Otherwise, I don’t see the point.

Feynman

There’s a calf/ankle exercise I do at home next to my shelf of “special” books. While exercising today I was noticing how handsome the spine of my copy of QED by Richard Feynman is, which got me wishing that there was a companion Q?D, also by Feynman to go with it. I write Q?D and not QCD because what I have in mind is a book started by Murray Gell-man and then rewritten by Feynman. I’m confident (without any reason for this confidence) that Feynman, while rewriting Gell-man’s text, would come up with a better analogy than “chroma” for what’s going on with quarks. If this usage -- color is based on electrodynamic frequency which is an aspect of QED -- annoys me this much, it must have bothered Feynman even more. So what I want is a companion volume that explains “QCD” but in a whole new way, so that the “C” has to be replaced with another letter.

From this my mind wandered to Feynman’s habit of working, both physics and drawing, in topless bars in LA. I have no doubt that any number of print and electronic journalists thought to question the girls about how it affected them to be sketched by a Nobel Prize winning physicist. And I’m sure their replies were as interesting as the usual answers of athletes to questions that go beyond their sport. Not very. But I do wonder. You could imagine a sort of “Good Will Hunting” with the brilliant young woman just trying to feed her kids but rediscovering her math genius. Or she could be genius on the bongo drums. That would work, too.

298. Greening plus Digital photography.

I've been distracted of late and these notes have been sitting on my computer waiting for me to move them here. Now is that time.

Greening Moto Bay

It occurred to me last night, as I pulled load after load of heavy trash bags and our eco-stations’s wood stakes and collapsed boxes from the bay end of the huge pier 30,32 complex to our trucks near the Embarcadero, that I have been failing spectacularly this year in my scheme to work the middle of events, and not the start or end.

The good reasons for this scheme is that it would make best use of my roving-sorting-and-pulling skills. The real reason is that the starts are boring and annoying, and the ends are such hard work. Some events are too short to have a separate “middle” shift. Sometimes there are middle shifts, but not for my pay grade. And I’m in a bind here in that I do want to be around for the final station sort, especially when there’s a major food vendor component. That’s where my roving sorting skills really do pay off, as they prevent unsorted vendor bags from being hauled back to our dumpsters or trucks. 

But yesterday’s event, Moto Bay, had very little food so my skills were largely wasted. This was our first time with this event, so we didn’t know exactly what to expect. This, I suspect, was also why our "A" crew was working it. And the setting was lovely. These piers are just south of the Bay Bridge with a great view of the new SOMA downtown, the Giant’s stadium, and what there is to see of the developing Mission Bay neighborhood modestly rising to the south. And as we were closing down around 10pm, the fog was rolling in dramatically.

Still, after the third heavy toter load from the far end of the pier, I was ready to hand this job over to our younger workers. I did manage to get away before 11pm, fifteen minutes early. 

In praise of Today

And by “Today” I mean all the newfangled things that people so often like to nit pick, and in particular my little Samsung digital camera. I tend to buy the low-end of high-tech gadgets, since I tend to not really use them that much. This camera is a perfect example of this tendency. It was the cheapest option that seemed to do the things I needed for a particular project (no idea what it was, as this was years ago). And then it mostly set in a drawer for years as I’d gotten out of the habit of photography. 

But photographs turn out to be a wonderful way of documenting things around my building, so I started taking pictures again for HOA purposes. And then for myself. I never bothered to really learn the ins and outs of this camera -- and Samsung doesn’t exactly make it easy to figure out. I only recently turned my flash back on and was shocked by how much improved the indoor photos were. I only shoot in low resolution mode since I only display my photos on the computer, and am more interested in simple documentation than in resolution -- but I can shoot fairly high res if I wanted to.

So, while taking some vastly improved flash shots of our laundry room today -- people (not including myself) are keen on having it painted -- it occurred to me that this is, almost beyond doubt, the best camera I’ve ever owned. The 10x optical zoom is better than anything I ever had for my 35mm cameras. I can do macro photography much easier than with my 35mm cameras. This camera only has a display screen on the back so framing a shot is similar to a view camera -- which I’ve always preferred. And it goes without saying that the ability to view and delete shots you’ve just taken makes life so much easier than with a film camera. Likewise, the free editing options of Google Photo are superior to anything I could have done in the darkroom in the past. It’s possible I can’t play some of the depth-of-field games I used to play with my film cameras, but I don’t actually know that for a fact -- since I’ve never tried/studied the documentation that carefully. 

All I have to do to seal this matter, is think how much easier it would have been to photograph weddings with cameras like this. And beyond “easier” it would have been low stress as the nightmare all wedding photographers of the past lived with was the possibility of failing to properly load the film so that the film wasn’t actually advancing in the camera as you worked -- so that at the end of the day you had nothing on film. And yes, this happens. Not to me for a wedding, but it did happen to me at least twice on other “once in a lifetime” photo opportunities. 

And I haven’t even mentioned that this camera is small enough to carry in my pants pocket, and I now usually carry a little USB cord with it in my backpack to I can upload to my computer, edit, and send out links from anywhere. (Sending out the links does require WiFi access.)

Tea and fitness

This morning I had a terrible time getting out of bed and off to the gym. It was a cold Sunday morning and my bed had never felt so warm and comfortable. When I finally arrived at the gym I noticed that it was exactly 10am and the outside temp was 56F. Old people seem to be always cold, something I’m rather looking forward to, as I tend to get overheated, but I have yet to detect any indication that this is happening to me. My threshold for feeling cold remains 60F. How much is this tendency to feel cold simply the consequence of taking blood thinning medications, I wonder.

I’m at my new favorite Peet’s -- deep in SOMA -- but I think this may be the last time. My bus luck getting here couldn’t have been worse, and then I arrived to find it packed. I’m sitting on a stool again.

295. Goodbye to the Temporary Transbay Terminal

Microsoft vs Google

Here’s a perfect example of the idiocy of Microsoft vs Google. On my Chromebook if I get my access password wrong -- I’ve changed it twice recently so this happens all the time -- I get a little error message, but all I have to do is continue typing in the correct characters. Not so with Windows. On my Windows machine there’s an error dialog that you have to get out of by clicking “OK.” What else is going to happen at this point besides your trying the password again? Possibly this is a security measure so someone can’t just keep tossing different combinations of characters at the machine until it gets it right, but I can think of better ways of avoiding that. I think it’s just Microsoft being Microsoft.

It only took two months for people to discover my new favorite Peet’s out on Brannan. All the best seats were taken when I arrived today. I’m at a nice counter, but sitting on a stool. Still nicer here. 

Waiting for the bus, I realized I was actually across the street from another Peet’s, and a Starbucks. Unfortunately, that Peet’s has hardly any seating and that Starbucks is always freezing cold. 

Just noticed that this room has really well positioned sound absorbing panels. The ceiling is quite high, maybe 16’, and the panels are suspended from the ceiling about 4’ down. This way the bottom absorbs sound heading up and the top should be absorbing sound bouncing down from above. 

Counting and packaging pennies

“The Olympic Flame is always an adventure.”
This would be my slogan for the Olympic Flame cafe/diner here in SF, if they asked me to help with their branding. The idea of them having “branding” is a joke.

The OF is just a block too far into the Tenderloin from Union Square. The block to the east is the heart of the theater district but the next block is nowhere. It’s my regular neighborhood breakfast place because it’s cheap and the food is usually quite good. Also, since it is that extra block away, there isn’t the line of tourists you find even in the block before. But you pay a price for your bargain price and short lines.

The proprietor is an older Greek man who seems to be losing it. He is also the cook. On a normal visit, it seems that all the staff speak different, non-English, first languages and then try to communicate in English. Not sure why, but the waitresses can’t post the written orders as happens most places, instead they have to shout the order to the cook. This communication can take a while and entropy is high. 

Usually, a younger man I believe is the cook’s son is also behind the counter on weekends, but he hasn’t been present the past two weekends. So when seated, you are informed that your food will probably be delayed 10 to 30 minutes. Last weekend I was on my way to work, but had built in some buffer time so this worked out fine. Today I wasn’t in a hurry and I was ordering something really simple, blueberry pancakes. The delay wasn’t the problem.

For a long time I avoided ordering items cooked on a grill because of the likelihood of meat contamination. The effect of a bite or two of actual meat on my GI tract is dramatic. But more recently I’ve changed my mind on that and decided exposure to small amounts of meat in this way could actually give me immunity to that dire reaction. If my stomach has some of the necessary meat enzymes in reserve, it won't be forced to flush everything down the colon. We may get a bit of a test of that today as there was a good sized debris field of what I believe was hamburger at the bottom of my bottom pancake. The first bite, and taste, took me by surprise. I was still pondering the taste when the “mouthfeel” of the second bite warned me that something was very wrong. 

I then removed the offending meat from my food, but the question is, How much did I consume in that first bite and how will my gut respond? Time will tell. Fortunately, I’m home doing my laundry and other “errands” so I am at least close to the toilet. (I lucked out.)

Speaking of laundry. 
The other day, when the banks were open, it occurred to me that the last time I checked I only had $2.50 in quarters, which is exactly the amount I usually need. But then again, it frequently happens that the washer or the dryer will reject a coin for some reason, so I like to have at least one more quarter in reserve. Then I forgot about it. 

So today I discovered that my recollection was correct and that I also had no quarters in my pocket -- since I’m always giving them out as tips. I then dumped out my loose change collection and found one extra quarter. Success. But now I had a pile of pennies on my table. So I found some wrappers and started counting them out.

And that reminded me of when I first learned to do this, when I was parked with my grandmother as a young child and put to work doing everything my grandmother needed done. Counting and wrapping change was actually one of my favorite jobs -- perhaps because it didn’t require crawling around under the furniture dusting and polishing, or carrying laundry about. I also enjoyed using the carpet sweeper. I know I was under eight, but I don’t know at what age my grandmother first started using me as seasonal or part-time labor. My cousins were also enlisted when she “put up” the grape jam she made each year from grapes she grew around the garage.

Saying goodbye to the Temporary Transbay Transit Terminal, 

The new complex is opening over the weekend -- no, not the train box underneath or most of the retail -- but the bus portion and the park on top. While I am curious to see what we’ve bought, mostly I’m sad that the Temporary Terminal is going out of service. So I took a final trip on the AC F line to Berkeley for my favorite Vegan deli. More on that later. 

I did take a bunch of final pictures of the Temporary Terminal as I suspect this will be one of those things Bay Area people will be nostalgic about for generations.

By the time I did some errands and was ready to go, it was already past 1pm and I was starving, so I grabbed the 38 Geary bus to take me directly to the Temp Terminal, except that it didn’t.  SF’s Muni buses have already switched to the new terminal, because of course they would. So I had to walk several additional blocks. Didn’t matter. I still had time to take my photos before my bus arrived.

The trip to Berkeley takes forever because of the seemingly random route it follows, so I returned on BART, which was so fast it was almost spooky. This may have been because I had picked up a used copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe in Berkeley, and was engrossed in reading the introduction.

Now for The Butcher’s Son vegan deli: They have moved across the street into a much larger space with lots of outside seating both in front, on the sidewalk, and in a large garden in the back, which connects with other properties. It’s really quite nice, and they seem to be able to get your order out faster now. It used to take forever. It was a serious temptation before and now it’s much worse.

Here are the photos,

293. The Third Princess and personal impressionism

Link to Table of Contents

Genji

A Branch of Plum

“ ‘We live in a degenerate age,’ said Genji.” According to the book, everything, perfumes and calligraphy in particular but also fabrics, were better in the past. And this is the 10th century. How often have people thought they weren’t living in a degenerate age?

I’m at my new favorite Peet’s again, the one at 8th Street and Brannan, and just finished the first volume of Genji. Besides the superior chairs, decor in general, and clientele, what sets the cafe apart is the music they play. I wouldn’t say it’s the finest jazz, but it is quite good jazz, and far better than the more common hits from the ‘60s. 


New Herbs
Just when you think the “romantic” complications at Rokujo (Genji’s primary residence) couldn’t get any more convoluted, they do. One of Genji’s brothers, the former Emperor, is ill and withdrawing to a religious life as he prepares for death, and the best way he can think of to protect his favorite daughter (who is very young but even more immature) is to marry her off to Genji -- who isn’t even particularly interested in her. At the age of 40 (or 39) he is now saddled with a child bride to look after. 

The poor man would rather spend his nights with Murasaki, but he’s concerned about hurting the feelings of the former Emperor. And his new wife, who is only known as “the Third Princess,” is revealing herself to be something of a twit. 

This reminds me of what I imagine the sad reality of the Islamic martyrs’ Seventy Virgin reward would actually be like. 

But fear not. Genji is still Genji and is now chasing after one of his new wife’s kins women, a woman he has a romantic past with. The lesson being, I suppose, when your romantic relationships get too complicated, chase after someone else. 

“The world has an unpleasant way of gossiping about people in high places. How, everyone asked, was Murasaki responding to it all? Some lessening of Genji’s affection seemed inevitable, and some loss of place and prestige. When it became clear beyond denying that his affection had if anything increased, there were those who said that he really ought to be nicer to the princess. Finally it became clear that the two ladies were getting on very well together, and the world had to look elsewhere for its gossip.”

After describing, in considerable detail, the presents and display of two spectacular events in a row organized first by Murasaki and then by Akikonomu (the Empress for whom Genji acts as guardian, without hitting on her for once) we get this, “...We have all read romances which list every gift and offering at such affairs, but I am afraid that they rather bore me; nor am I able to provide a complete guest list.” 

After praising the short chapters, this “New Herbs” chapter is endless and even divided into two parts. And lots of things are even happening, births and deaths as well as the usual romance. Genji’s daughter has now given the crown prince a son. And after learning of this, the daughter’s grandfather -- the Akashi Lady’s funny father -- has broken entirely with the world and gone off into the mountains to pray and die. 

Leaving the “world” behind is something much talked about in this book. Genji wants to do it but keeps getting pulled back in. (Godfather 3 reference) The Former Emperor, the father of the Third Princess, is doing this, but the Akashi Lady’s father is the most extreme. This would seem to be a consequence of the Buddhist influence on Japan at this time. It isn’t that different from the Christian emphasis on the Next Life, and seems to be ignored in general about as much.

Everyday impressionism

I set down the book and pensively turned my gaze to the street outside the Market Street Peet's. I was enjoying the vagueness of seeing the street with my reading glasses on. And then it occurred to me that I could go even more impressionist by simply taking off my glasses entirely. Better. Semi-translucent blotches of color.

I can spot the crazies walking past even when they are just blotches of color due to the way they move.

Windows

I had to print out some documents this morning so I fired up my Windows machine. Before I could do any work it had to complete the installation of the “April” OS update. Since this is late July, I can only hope they mean April 2018. This process took forever. Having some previous experience with this nonsense, I did other things while waiting. I did my daily exercises. I shaved. I brushed my teeth and changed my clothes. I washed out the compost toter. I swept all the carpets and tile surfaces in the building. I changed my clothes again. I addressed the envelopes for the HOA mailing I was going to print out. 


How is it, one wonders, Google can update the Chrome OS without my being aware of it and Microsoft can’t? Maybe Microsoft just doesn’t care? When the process was finally complete, Cortana seemed to be gone. I feel bad about this. I never once engaged Cortana. I could have said “Hi.” Unfortunately, all the questions I thought to address to Cortana included profanity, which seemed even ruder than ignoring her. “Why does the software for displaying files and folders on my computer seem NOT to be part of the fucking OS but some slow add-on? Why do I have to force an update of the list of files it shows me when I’ve just opened the list (when trying to select a file to enclose with an email for example)? Are you people all high or just stupid?”

215. Post street

Mid-century Dwell

Today I'm at a Peet's I rarely visit, on Van Ness (it is of the old, oak and granite style, but so small it's hard to get a seat.) For a time I was blinded by the sun, so had to abandon my laptop for the Dwell magazine I had almost forgotten about in my backpack. 

I have mixed feelings about Dwell magazine, but you have to admire their dedication to Mid-Century Modernism. The "finishing touch" this issue (the little stand-alone feature on the page before the penultimate page, if you're counting the back cover as the final page... I'm confused now) is about Jean Prouvé and a recently published monograph cunningly titled, Jean Prouvé by Raymond Guidot. 

Prouvé is another of those outstanding figures with formal training in neither architecture nor engineering. Seeing his work does take me back to that time, but while I like the strength and simplicity of his furnature, it seems to me to lack the grace one finds in the work of the Eameses and in some of the Scandinavians and Finns.

The final regular feature in this (September-October 2017) issue is of a condo unit on the 31st floor of a Chicago building on the lake. Here they've done a splendid job of recreating everything about Mid-Century Modernism I hated at the time, and I find my taste has not changed. I think it's one of  the most ghastly dwellings Dwell has ever presented. Turn this unit over to me and I would be the one bringing in the crew to gut the place and start fresh, something that usually drives me nuts.

Another feature in this issue shows a smallish apartment in Buenos Aires where the owners (he an architect) gutted the place and found, of course, interesting floors, ceilings, and battered masonry walls in the entry -- all of which they preserved. Now I would have preserved them too, but I would have had mixed feelings about it. The ceiling is interesting, but busy and impossible to keep clean. Ditto the entry. 

It's just as well I can't afford to take on a project like this as I would inevitably be confronted with either preserving something I liked -- but didn't really want here -- or spending money and bringing in more building materials to cover that thing. This would be in some hypothetical space, not my own place. 

A couple days later...

Bank Cafe

My original plans for today haven't worked out, and so I have been pulled here by my desire for a Bun Mee crispy tofu sandwich later this afternoon. On my way home I will hit the Chinatown branch library to return one book and pick up my next. This rarely works out so well, and it would have been even sweeter if the library had opened before 1pm, so I could have hit it on my way here.

This location on Kearny has always been marginal. Kearny is the seam between Union Square and the Financial District -- which works perfectly for a bank cafe but this block of Post has been in transition for years, ever since the Rizzoli Bookstore next door closed. But that is about to change again.

Shreve's (our premier local jewelry store) recently moved from their temporary location where Rizzoli had been, to their new location across the street. And now Britex Fabrics (our premier local fabric store) is transforming the old Rizzoli space for their new location. And since that is next door to (actually the same building as) Gumps (our premier local expensive housewares emporium), this block is suddenly turning into a major destination for people with money. 

I don't know if this has anything to do with the bank cafe's plans to remodel next month, but it might. Honestly, I don't see much overlap in the Gumps/Shreve/Britex crowd and the laptop dependent crowd here in the cafe, but at least the block should be without urine attracting gaps for a change.

All this change might be better for the Mechanic's Institute, which is in the next block down Post toward the subway station. I do expect to join there at some point, but I suspect you would be more likely to find their members in those three other SF traditions than here at the cafe. 

And I do wonder how this retail location musical chairs will play out once the subway under Stockton Street is complete in 2019 (or whenever). Businesses have been chased from Stockton like nervous rodents, causing the retail heart of Union Square to shift to Grant Street. When Stockton Street returns to civic life -- and with another subway station spurring the flow of people at both the Market Street and Union Square (proper) ends -- Stockton will suddenly return to being the most desirable location in the area. Will the shops reshuffle again? 

I don't expect the new subway station (on the Central Line) to do much business at first, so the main benefit will be easier access for people who have been avoiding the construction zone for all these years. Eventually, in ten years or more, Rose Pak's subway will make economic sense and businesses that can afford it will try to cluster around Stockton. Assuming retail shops are still a thing in ten years.

They are now talking about opening just the section of the Central Subway from Union Square to the south in a couple years, to provide better access to the Warrior's new arena (which project has hardly even begun but will probably happen faster than the government projects.) This makes total sense, but I don't think anyone would have suggested it prior to Rose Pak's sudden death this year. I hope her coffin is well secured as I'm sure the thought of her subway opening without the connection to Chinatown proper would have driven her wild. 

I've never been a fan of zombie stories, but I understand there are fast and slow zombies. Rose would be a nasty zombie. 

214. Fire, light, and literacy

Magic light

I feel guilty about this, but I am so loving the light we are getting in SF thanks to the catastrophic wildfires to the north. I'm sitting in the front window of the Market Street Peet's, and the light is shining parallel with the sidewalk, hitting the people walking toward the west full in the face. It is what is known in cinema as "Magic Hour" light, usually what you get just before sunset -- the movie Catch 22 used this light to the best effect. Only, because of the smoke in the air, we are getting it all day, or close to it. 

The around the equinox light here is pretty great anyway, but this just makes it transfixing. I can't stop looking at the faces of people walking past. A cinematographer would be so envious of this light.

Literacy

On Medium, I keep running into (thanks to an algorithm that has noticed what I click on, I realize) pieces by young people arguing the importance of reading widely. Sometimes there are lists, which can be revealing in any number of ways, but other times they are just saying you need to take the time to read as much as you can.

Of course I see in this support for my belief in a constant "10%" (Alan Kay's term) of people who actually think about things. Some of the newer books suggested would not make my list, but that doesn't mean they don't belong. One recent list surprised me by including Xenophon's book about Cyrus, which I haven't read! I am shocked and appalled that some Millennial has read a Classic I haven't. And I know he really has read it since he launched into an unnecessary defense of/preference for Xenophon over Plato. (My guess is the SF Public Library didn't have this when I was plowing through their Classics section. I read both the Anabasis and his Symposium.)

That's life

This Sunday La Cucina is back with a San Francisco Street Food Festival -- after skipping 2016 due to an overabundance of response from the public in 2015. Unfortunately, Sunday is not only the day of our next book club meeting (The Five Invitations) but I'm hosting. 

When I finally learned that the food event -- very much my kind of thing, as it is all food and in the past has been overwhelmingly busy -- I requested a special, four hour shift at the end of the day. This would be after our meeting but would only run an hour past the close of the event. My boss told the scheduling person to post this, but she never did. I let it slide as Mary was so busy the past week and more, and then the fires hit this week and two other events happening this weekend have now been cancelled (one was a half marathon). 

(And speaking of breathing, a percentage of people on the sidewalks are wearing some kind of face mask for protection against the poor quality of the air. Honestly, I haven't noticed it being that bad. I turned on my air cleaner at home because I just bought it last year and might as well use it, but this air quality would have been great when I was growing up in the Valley. The Valley equivalent of Monty Python's Yorkshiremen, "Oh, I wish we had had smoke polluted air like this when I was a lad...." I imagine there's a small poison oak component to the smoke, but it can't be that bad at this distance. Seem to be more East Asians with masks, possibly because they're used to wearing them at home.)

So now I'm thinking it's just as well my shift was forgotten, as they can now plug in some of the people who lost shifts at the other events. Sadly, this is unlikely to end like the Berkeley Kite Festival -- the other event where they screwed up and didn't give me a shift -- because I still worked the second day there and got to hear how much I had been missed the previous day. I'm unlikely to hear any feedback from this end-of-the-season event.

213. City streets

Life resumes

My day-after-HSB rest day is now past (I really didn't have any kind of cramps or post event distress, yay!) and I started the top-to-bottom cleaning of my building. It's still a little smoky here due to all the wild fires up north, but the wind is changing now and it's getting cooler -- good cleaning weather.

There's actually a number of HOA tasks on the near horizon. End of the year documents to create, our annual fire inspection to schedule. When I get home I'm going to test our emergency lights again. Really, it doesn't amount to that much. I need a new book.

Some things that have been sitting in my notes for a while now...

SOMA

Sitting at the 4th street Peet's, needed a little oak and granite. Walked here the long way through the middle of the Financial District and the new "Downtown" SOMA. Work is progressing on Salesforce Tower and the Transbay Transit Center but neither is on the cusp of opening. 

Walking past some other projects that are still in early stages of construction, I was thinking that the best thing about the over budget Transit Center is that it gave the authorities political cover for going higher-density than SF is usually comfortable with. It's still too soon to be able to envision what this new neighborhood will look like when built out in (maybe) ten years, but it will be something new for SF.

And while I'm downtown, here's something I wrote about cities. 

Why I love cities

And by cities I mean truly urban streets. Yesterday my plan had been to eat lunch and work in a cafe out by Lincoln Park, but I had forgotten they only accept cash and I didn't have enough cash for lunch. I had enough for iced tea and a snack, and that was fine.

But today I walked down to the Peet's on Market (because I also need to buy some more septic-tank-cleaning-enzyme-stuff) and, when I got in line I realized I had even less cash and using a card for under $5 is just silly. But this is downtown and my bank has ATMs directly across Market, and there's even one of the grand, older branches a block away. In fact, I have the option of at least a half dozen Wells Fargo ATM machines within about a block radius. 

Yesterday I could have paid a fee and used a third party ATM machine if I was desperate, but in a proper city the services you want tend to be magically available thanks to the "invisible hand" of the free market. (I'm misusing Adam Smith's concept here, but just a little. And, while not affirming his theory, my variation -- that business entities, while attempting to maximize their business, end up providing services where they are most wanted, I think is true and is particularly visible in urban areas. Starbucks -- I'm looking at one directly across the street -- is the best example of this at the moment. A block from here there are two Starbucks locations directly across 4th Street from each other. One has been there forever and serves the convention trade and people flowing in and out of the massive parking garage that houses the cafe. The other is new and associated with the Target store. They both look busy every time I'm in the area.)

This is why it drives me nuts when neighborhood interests reject increased density for fear of traffic. Yes, "traffic," in the sense of cars on the road doesn't effect me personally because I don't have a car, but traffic in the sense of people, foot-traffic, on the streets is the main factor in determining the value of urban real estate. 

And, Yes, developments like La Defense are a spectacular and indefensible waste of foot-traffic density. But here, around Union Square, most of the buildings and the urban design is 19th century (pre-City Beautiful!) and the exorbitant cost of real estate has driven landlords to maximize rents by creating as much retail space as possible accessible to the sidewalks. The best example of this being the Metreon, which had to be completely redesigned to take advantage of all the sidewalk frontage they were wasting.

The worst frontage wasters in the area now are the convention center and some of the newer hotels, but even the Hilton is attempting to do what Macys did and rent out spaces on their perimeter to retail tenants. Unfortunately for them, they are on the Tenderloin side of Union Square and, for the moment, much of their foot traffic is interested mostly in their chemicals of choice and social services.

211. pre-HSB

Living with the animals...

I needed a Peet's interlude, so after my mid-afternoon shower I walked back downtown to the Market Street Peet's. I walked in behind a streetperson/crazy I quickly identified by the bright blue Ross (Dress For Less) store cart he was dragging behind him. I was afraid I was going to be in line with him, so I wasn't sad (or really surprised) to see him veer off toward the bathrooms where there was a substantial waiting line. But this is where it gets worth writing about.

Imagine you were really desperate for a toilet, or simply sociopathic and didn't care about other people. Regardless of your need or your ruthlessness, you would have to time your arrival just right to be able to jump the line and walk directly into a bathroom. This guy did just that. Someone was coming out just as he walked up and he bolted in -- leaving his Ross cart behind.

The poor Peet's staff tried to get him to come out, but you know how well that worked. I wasn't waiting in the line, but I'm pretty sure I would have been as impressed by the guys timing even if I had been. But my question is, How do you end up a crazy street person when you have that kind of luck?

An atypical week

Not only am I working weekdays, instead of my usual weekends, but I worked three straight days with a double shift (two, four hour shifts) on the middle day. Three shifts were at Oracle OpenWorld here at Moscone Center. (The reason I signed up for this was to see how they were going to manage working around the construction zone in the middle of the convention center. It was blocked off with a green wall -- not a living wall, but a wall covered in what looked like AstroTurf. The area was constrained but people who hadn't been here before wouldn't even notice.) 

So I spent three hours each day standing on the carpet in the sun showing people where to put their trash. 

Then last evening I also worked "Taste of Temescal" in Oakland -- a nice little neighborhood event where a bunch of restaurants serve food on the sidewalk and we put out our eco-stations to collect the resulting trash. The event was easy to work, the only problem was that it was spread out over more than ten blocks. We sorted all the trash and hauled it back to a truck near the middle of the area. There were only two of us, which made me nervous, but it worked out fine. It's amazing what two good people can accomplish -- and equally amazing how more useless people can do so little.  

The event audience was annoying. An odd combination of dense and patronizing. Maybe it was because I was always in a hurry since we had so much space to cover. 

And this whole week all of us "greeners" are mostly just getting ready for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, which is looming on the horizon. Today I did laundry so I have all the clothing options for this weekend. At least I will be in control of what I'm wearing (clothes and gloves and hats) because I have no control over the changes going on at the event, which I already know will be extensive. I tried to sort out some things online, but haven't heard anything back since Saturday -- I'm expecting lots of "fresh hell" when I arrive Friday, late morning.

The most fun viewing at Oracle today was the sniffer dogs. There were three of them, two yellow Labs and one Black, and one of the Yellows was younger and got excited when he saw the others. He had to be calmed down. The Yellow female was very well behaved. 

It still looks like the weather will be perfect this weekend -- not a cloud in the sky and in the 70s F -- though I think there's going to be less shade in my area than in the past so it's going to feel hotter. I'm reviewing my hydration plans. Already stocked up on enough electrolyte water for the weekend. (I'm glad I just checked the forecast again, now they are predicting tomorrow will be the warmest day at 75 with it dropping down to 69 on Sunday. This is good news.)

Also, John Prine (another of my favorites) will precede Emmylou Harris on the Banjo stage at the end of the day Sunday. I would have preferred their being spaced out more, so I could move closer to the stage for both sets, but I'm hoping I will be able to hear Prine from the area where I will be working. 

Astrophysics

Since I had lots of time on my hands while working Oracle, my mental subject was the observable universe. Thinking about the universe on this scale is as mind boggling as thinking about reality on the quantum scale. The most distant galaxies we can see are composed of stars consisting almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, and they are over 13 billion light years away (and the universe is less than 14 billion years old.)

These early galaxies exist (as I understand it) in every direction we can look, so that we know the universe was a big place even then, and that we are not on an edge of that universe. We also know, based on the redshift of the photons coming from these early stars, that space is expanding in all directions. There's a way of describing space as being like a ball of bread dough with raisins distributed throughout the dough, that is intended to help us understand the concept of expanding space. As the bread bakes, it rises and the distance between the raisins gets greater. This works fine when you think of bread dough when you can see it all rising together at the same time. But with the universe that isn't the case.

We see those distant, early galaxies not as they are now but as they were 13 billion+ years ago. As the photons reaching us passed from there to here they passed through space that was more and more expanded. The center is now baked bread -- to continue with the metaphor -- but the surface of the ball that we can see is still cool dough. (In fact, we calculate the current location of the most distant stars as over 40 billion light years away, but we will never see what's happening at that distance now. And that would be true even if we lived for 40+ billion years, as the continued expansion of space means the light from those regions will never ever reach us.)

But, with all this, what I have trouble with is the expansion of space at the center of the ball we are looking at -- which is really just our observable universe, not the universe as a whole, since we have no idea how big that is and we never will know.

Talking about time on this scale is even worse that talking about geological time. I don't know, off hand, if life will be seared off Earth by the Sun before or after parts of today's observable universe start disappearing. But, let's say that stage of the expansion of the universe precedes major changes to the structure of our Sun. How strange it will be to know you are seeing a galaxy -- maybe with a spectacular quasar at it's heart -- for the last time. Will the news media report this the way they report the passing of rock stars? Or maybe like they report the passing of much lesser celebrities. 

Will we rage against the dying of these lights?

184. Our electric future

Previous - 183. Seeing the end

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Last time on Bloggity-blog...

Last time I talked about getting a glimpse or foreshadowing of the end of life or my event season. This morning I realized there is another way this is true just now. Below is a picture of the poor tree that grows in a pot in our alley. 

Last year it suffered all kinds of injury and indignity as it was pushed about the alley by various workmen before finally coming to rest outside my alley window. And then someone knocked off yet another limb for no reason I'm aware of.

But here it is, fully leafed out on its few remaining limbs, and doing surprisingly well. Except that I happen to know that it is already preparing for winter. It's going through the process of pulling the things it still wants out of its leaves and putting the waste it doesn't want into those leaves. Soon the leaves will all drop -- over a surprisingly short period of days -- and it will be bare for the winter. 

This is especially odd here as the tree's peak growing season -- when the days are longest and the sun is highest in the sky -- doesn't mesh with our warm weather, which will start in maybe a month, at which point the tree will probably be bare. Maybe if it was a species of tree that was native to this area it would have a cycle more consistent with our weather? I don't know. If it was in the ground instead of this pot, I'm pretty sure it would keep its leaves longer, so the fact that it is already starting to hibernate wouldn't be obvious. But it does serve to remind me that natural processes are going on all around us that we are unaware of. That appearances can be deceiving.

My Name Is...

I'm finished reading but not finished thinking about this novel. It's the story of a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a writer. Aside from it being fiction, it is remarkably similar to the memoirist parts of Salie Tisdale's collection of essays. 

It would be nice to have a book that mashed together the stories of families where the husband left the wife, the wife left the husband, and neither left but someone probably should have. The children would all be resentful of different things. Maybe one of them would be aware that the adults were all just doing the best they could. But this probably wouldn't be the kid who was the biggest screw-up his or herself.

And we never do get the hinted nasty bits of the story. I don't exactly mind that, except that it means we can't judge the protagonist's actions. If we knew we would be in a position to say she acted correctly or incorrectly -- from our perspective -- but as it is we have to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not that that's a bad thing, but it does seem a little unfair. Or a little too uncritical.

Cafe calculus

Or, "Life is hard, Yo." I'm at the Peet's on Market because I got off BART at Powell and because it's the weekend  (so the Bank Cafe isn't open). Besides having to pay an extra dollar for my iced tea here, I'm also subjected to the hits from the 1960s. At the Bank Cafe, the music is better (usually) but the WiFi (while better than it was) still sucks. The Specialty Cafe (also, sort-of Peet's) has better seating, but costs a little more and has WiFi that is usually in the middle, plus they are also closed on the weekend and even during the week they close early (5 pm, I think). There's a Starbucks that has excellent WiFi and similar prices, but I'm not fond of Starbucks and they also have very limited seating. 

Yesterday I went to Caffe Grecco in North Beach because I wanted a change of pace and because I wanted to thoroughly browse the new hardware store there -- I suddenly realized that it was about the same distance as the one I usually go to (same company) but there is less of a change in elevation going to this new one. It does seem to be well stocked and not as busy.

An optimistic future

Recently I read a piece that spun several current trends in a very positive direction. The author saw electric, self-driving cars leading to a world with relatively few, long-lasting cars serving the majority of people. This would reduce drastically the need for oil (at least 30%) which would lead to a collapse of that industry and an end to both drilling and pollution (including greenhouse gases). Parked cars would become a thing of the past, freeing space for people and bicycles and for housing where there are parking lots and garages today. 

The author thought these changes would have job creation effects that would balance the obvious job loses of people who currently drive or work in the oil and automobile industries. I didn't buy that, so I didn't bother to remember the job creation details. I will give the scheme credit for preserving the value of suburban real estate, since it preserves automobiles in a new form. Since we appear to be too stupid now to build neighborhoods that work, I would rather see a return to public transit and walking, but I do think the autonomous electric car dream is more realistic. Even I would give in and buy a smartphone so I could access these vehicles when the prices were reduced to reflect the lack of a driver. 

Next - 185. Almost a holiday

102. Ove & me

Previous - 101. Class and the South

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Absalom

p240 "...and there was nothing of vanity, nothing comic in it either Grandfather said, because of that innocence which he [Sutpen] had never lost... just told Grandfather how he had put his first wife aside...." This is a curious statement. I'm not at all sure what is meant by "innocence" here. I suppose you could say they all (people involved in the slave economy) were "innocent" if you mean that they lacked any sense of good and evil. 

Ove

It might surprise you to learn that I am reading two other books just now. The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson -- grumpy but also very funny -- and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. As I write that, it occurs to me that Ove and Bryson are much alike. And you could throw me into that grumpy group as well. Fortunately, I'm on Bryson's (sarcastic humor) end of the spectrum. 

Ove and I would get along like a house afire (unfortunate imagery since his house just burned down in the novel), especially as it comes to the uselessness of younger people. Sadly, I suspect we are due for a sort of rebirth for Ove as he learns to reconnect with the irritating people around him, rather than the suicide he is currently having a hard time realizing. 

Several chapters ago Ove was incensed by a neighbor who neither had his own Allen wrenches (or keys) nor knew how to properly name them. Remember those chairs at Peet's I was praising some time ago. It seems that when they were assembled the workmen failed to use the adhesive that keeps the screws from unscrewing. Every time I come in I have to test a chair to see to what extent it is falling apart, and almost every time I have to turn it upside down and tighten the screws as much as I can with my fingers. I even brought in my set of Allen wrenches one day, only to discover that the screw requires a special tool. 

So today I noticed one of the screws had fallen out and was lying on the floor. I had been considering removing a screw and taking it over to the hardware store (right around the corner) so I could get the proper tool but felt that was going just a little too far. But since it was just sitting on the ground... 

The tool only cost eighty cents and now I can at least make the seat I sit in secure. Ove would have been impressed.

What has just surprised me in the novel is a passing mention of paint brushes sitting in jars of mineral spirits. This succeeded in bringing the memory of that particular chemical cocktail to mind, but it's a smell I haven't known for decades as almost all paints here are water based latex, since lead has been forbidden. What kind of paint do they have in Sweden? By a truly freak coincidence, my friend who owns a second home in Sweden is going to be in town in two days and I could ask her, except that I would be shocked if she had a clue about paint either here or there. I could probably find this information on the Internet, but probably in Swedish. It 'tis unfair.

Next - 103. Best laid plans

94. Absolute pitch

Previous - 93. Vintage Space

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Van Ness

I'm at yet another Peet's, sitting at a very nice granite window counter looking out over Van Ness where I just avoided the first fake Buddhist monk I've seen here in months -- I guess they're back for the holiday season. 

I'm doing my Christmas shopping for presents that have to be mailed. A tin of baked goodies from Tartine -- so a delightful lunch there, of course. And then I had a very hard time working a list of five kid's picture books down to just two. I passed on the book I really liked the best because another was just too beautiful to not buy. 

There's actually a Peet's adjacent to that bookstore, but it was too crowded, so I walked about seven blocks toward home until I noticed this cafe, which while smaller, wasn't as crowded. 

In between, I passed the new Tesla store and I don't think it's my imagination that there are now more Teslas cruising Van Ness. I saw two right in front of the store, but I just noticed another while sitting here. For a long time, Van Ness was lined with car dealerships and a number of them remain, though there are now more ex-dealerships that are vacant or converted to another use. Tesla is the only American made automobile represented on the street now.  

Musicophilia - Absolute Pitch

This is so interesting to me that I'm going to have to quote a bit: 

People with absolute pitch can immediately, unthinkingly tell the pitch of any note, without either reflection or comparison with an external standard...

The precision of absolute pitch varies, but it is estimated that most people with it can identify upwards of seventy tones in the middle region of the auditory range, and each of these seventy tones has, for them, a unique and characteristic quality that distinguishes it absolutely from any other note.

..."At five [Sir Frederick Ouseley -- that doesn't sound right does it?] was able to remark, 'Only think, Papa blows his nose in G.' He would say that it thundered in G or that the wind was whistling in D, or that the clock (with a two-note chime) struck in B minor..." For most of us, such an ability... seems uncanny, almost like another sense... such as infrared or X-ray vision; but for those who are born with absolute pitch, it seems perfectly normal.
...

...to those with absolute pitch, every tone, every key seems qualitatively different, each possessing its own "flavor" or "feel," its own character. Those who have absolute pitch often compare it to color -- they "hear" G-sharpness as instantly and automatically as we "see" blue. (Indeed the word "chroma" is sometimes used in musical theory.)

Well that complicates my desire to replace the "chroma" in QCD with music.

...
When people with absolute pitch "hear a familiar piece of music played in the wrong key... they often become agitated and disturbed. . . . To get a sense of what it is like, imagine going to the produce market and finding that... the bananas all appear orange, the lettuce yellow and the apples purple."

Transposing music from one key to another is something which any competent musician can do easily and almost automatically. But for someone with absolute pitch, every key has its own unique character, and the key in which one has always heard a piece is likely to be felt as the only right one. Transposing a piece of music... can be analogous to painting a picture with all the wrong colors.

I skipped the following passage, but want to include it now,

The Finnish entomologist Olavi Sotavalta, an expert on the sounds of insects in flight, was greatly assisted in his studies by having absolute pitch -- for the sound pitch of an insect in flight is produced by the frequency of its wingbeats. Not content with musical notation, Sotavalta was able to estimate very exact frequencies by ear. The pitch made by the moth Plusia gamma approximates a low F-sharp, but Sotavalta could estimate it more precisely as having a frequency of 46 cycles per second. Such an ability... requires not only a remarkable ear, but a knowledge of the scales and frequencies with which pitch can be correlated. 

Next - 95. War stories