hell yeah bean

"It was like seeing the Ghost of Eighty-Six. Suddenly, I knew they were going to lose. I grabbed my..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:19:50 -0400

“It was like seeing the Ghost of Eighty-Six. Suddenly, I knew they were going to lose. I grabbed my stuff and quickly bolted out of there, looking like a guy grabbing his clothes after a bad one-night stand. My friends were in disbelief — it was like Montecore the Tiger was dragging me off the stage. I couldn’t possibly explain it to them. Ten minutes later, I walked through my front door, sat down next to the Sports Gal — who was dutifully watching the entire game on the sofa — then watched Aaron Boone crush that Wakefield knuckler into the stands. I had been home for about 45 seconds. No lie.”

- Picking up the pieces in the aftermath of the 2003 ALCS - Grantland

Obviously a very old story, from probably the best of the Simmons years.

"For the last three decades many Americans have puzzled over a system that gives an R to a movie in..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 02:03:49 -0400

““For the last three decades many Americans have puzzled over a system that gives an R to a movie in which a women is carved up by a chainsaw and an NC-17 to one that shows a woman sexually pleasured. From such ratings one might conclude that sexual violence against women is OK for American teenagers to see, but that they must be 18 to see consensual sex. What message does this send to the kids the MPAA presumably means to protect?””

- Carrie Rickey

(via fireworkselectricbright)

“You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario which is both complicit and complex. It’s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film.”

-Ryan Gosling on the controversy around the rating of his film ‘Blue Valentine’

(via misandry-mermaid)

"Just as we once knew that infectious diseases killed, but didn’t know that germs spread them, we’ve..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:36:44 -0400

“Just as we once knew that infectious diseases killed, but didn’t know that germs spread them, we’ve known intuitively that loneliness hastens death, but haven’t been able to explain how. Psychobiologists can now show that loneliness sends misleading hormonal signals, rejiggers the molecules on genes that govern behavior, and wrenches a slew of other systems out of whack. They have proved that long-lasting loneliness not only makes you sick; it can kill you. Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking.”

- Smoking With Friends | The Hairpin

"Google Reader was my first personal assistant. When I moved to Los Angeles in 2007, I created a..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 22:51:43 -0400

“Google Reader was my first personal assistant. When I moved to Los Angeles in 2007, I created a Google Reader folder titled Los Angeles. This folder was comprised of over a 100 food, apartment/real estate, neighborhood, local news, and music blogs. I would regurally scan headlines, but the primary utility of this folder was search. When I wanted to figure out where to go out to dinner or where to consider moving to, I would search this folder as opposed to google.com. By limiting my database, I usually received better results.”

- On Colossal Squids, Google Now & Betaworks — Trends & Predictions — Medium

The article isn’t at all just about Reader and worth reading on its own, but I thought this was amazing.

"San Franciscans feel resentful about the tech industry’s lack of civic and community..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:02:17 -0400

“San Franciscans feel resentful about the tech industry’s lack of civic and community engagement, and the Google bus is our daily reminder.”

- Why we’re invisible to Google bus riders - San Francisco Chronicle

"NoPa = Prospect Heights. You moved away for a few years and came back and all of a sudden there was..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:09:12 -0400

“NoPa = Prospect Heights. You moved away for a few years and came back and all of a sudden there was a whole neighborhood that your friends spent time in that never was a neighborhood before. In San Francisco’s case, it was a neighborhood named after a restaurant. This is basically the worst thing I can imagine.”

- New York Elsewhere - The Morning News

The writer is completely and utterly wrong (and I assume, kidding/trolling, but maybe not). I say that because of a small crime I took part in, a civic misdemeanor that is still playing out.

In 1999, my then girlfriend (now wife) and I moved into a little garden apartment on Fulton between Central and Lyon. The neighborhood was then still widely known as the Western Addition—and with good reason because it was and is a part of the Western Addition. While it didn’t have the homeless issues that plagued (and plague) the Haight just across the panhandle, crime was still pretty bad. If you wanted to buy crack, it was very, very easy to do so on Central at Grove.

It wasn’t even remotely trendy, but we loved it for the old Victorians, some of the best in the city, and its central location. There were occasional all night house parties at The House of Love, complete with giant naked pileups in the front room downstairs, The Justice League and Storyville had great shows. The Fulton Street Bar was an oasis of pool tables and punk rock jukebox. It was nice.

At the time I worked for a soon to be ill-fated start up web magazine. One of my writers was Annalee Newitz. When I changed jobs there, she took my old gig editing the tabloid section. We were co-workers and pals. Then the whole thing went to shit, and we both moved on.*

Annalee got a job as an editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. This was back when Alt-Weeklies were still a Thing City People Read Every Week. And when it came time for her to put together the Best of the Bay issue in 2000, she asked me if I could write one of the neighborhood guides. Sure. But which neighborhood? We had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I guess I could write about my neighborhood. The neighborhood association keeps pushing this dumb NOPA name—you know, like SOMA, but for North of the Panhandle instead of South of Market—but it’s a made up thing and nobody actually calls it that.
Her: That’s perfect. Can you get me 1000 words including four or five venue write-ups by Monday?

And so I wrote this thing about a neighborhood that didn’t really exist. It was (as far as I’m aware, and I could be wrong) the first time NoPa showed up in print on anything other than some huckster impresario’s real estate flyer. It was certainly among the first.

It was hard to find anything to write about in, um, “NoPa.” There were virtually no restaurants, and the few that existed weren’t any good. Did I want to write about the PopEye’s? No. Of the four things I wrote about, one was a corner store. That was what kind of neighborhood it was.

And then Fly Bar opened, which, for whatever reason, was popular with yuppies. The Justice League became The Independent. Little Star started serving deep dish. El Rico finally closed or was shut down by the health department and Little Chihuahua moved in. Cafe Abir opened a sushi restaurant, then a sake bar. The bar/brothel on Fulton closed. Storyville turned into an Asian fusion restaurant. The empty lot where Plaza Foods (and a very downmarket version of the original Fallettis) re-opened as an Albertson’s. The crack house vanished. Things changed. Look! It’s Papalote. It’s Nopalito. It’s Four Barrel. Would you care for some gelato, sir?^†

I remember noticing that a check cashing place had closed and was now a gallery. That was when you could really feel the money money money coming. More so than Bar Crudo. And definitely more so than when NoPa opened.

Speaking of which…

When the neighborhood was still “transitional,” and gangsters still hung out on the corner of Grove 24 hours a day, I was walking up Divisadero** when I passed a woman standing on a ladder. She was scraping paint off of a derelict bank building that had long stood empty. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me the was opening a restaurant there. This, as it turned out, was Allyson Jossel. And at the time (I believe it was 2005) opening a Fancy Restaurant on Divis—at least on that part of Divis—was anything but a sure bet. It took courage.

And while I wish I had not been priced out of that part of town, and while Divisadero Street now makes me I groan and gnash my teeth, and while I can’t stand the detestable little shits who hang about in the parklets or the polar fleece farmer’s market, and the whole scene just depresses me and reminds me of everything I hate about the city I love(d), and, and, and…

Well.

More power to Nopa for having the guts to move there when they did—albeit many years after the neighborhood took its name.**

————————————————————————-

*One of our other co-workers was a young kid just out of Berkeley who was working 20 hour days in the art department and doing all kinds of back end work for something like $18,000 a year (in San Francisco!) named Andy Baio.

**I was on my way to my rent-a-mailbox, which I had because all of our mail and packages would get stolen. It was called the Post-All Center. And although it lost its lease and shut down, you can still see it painted on the walls of NoPa, by the then up-and-coming muralist Brian Barneclo.

***Anyway. I’m sorry about whatever role I played with the name. I know that, like the gentrification of the neighborhood itself, it would have happened with or without me. But still. For both of those things: Sorry.

PS: I swear to you I’ve had nothing whatsoever to do with naming FolSoMa.

(via emptyage)

Photo

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:16:19 -0400

Hi by celiabean12 http://bit.ly/11MEyOf

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:57:43 -0400

Hi by celiabean12 http://bit.ly/11MEyOf

webuiltthiscity: Another shot of Transamerica and Sutro from...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:31:26 -0400

webuiltthiscity:

Another shot of Transamerica and Sutro from Treasure Island, with the good camera

"I know motorcycles are dangerous. I know they’re not practical. But riding the bike is the..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:17:27 -0400

“I know motorcycles are dangerous. I know they’re not practical. But riding the bike is the only thing I do that feels like I’m actually alive, that I’m not just huddling under a sheet and waiting for life to kill me. I really do hope riding doesn’t kill me—I am Mr. Fucking Safety, and I look like a huge white penis riding down the road in head to toe armor and I do not give one fuck because I love dressing up like a spaceman and I love that I am trying to take risks but balance them out as much as I can—but if it does it does, and there’s a sort of comfort in knowing there’s an actual, terrifying bottom there and it’s the end of me, and all those stupid spiraling worries run shrieking from it when they see it looming, and even though death is the worst friend you could ever choose, none of us ever got to make that choice.”

- Riding motorcycles into storms, and other inefficient therapies

Varsity Bookmarking

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:02:49 -0400

Varsity Bookmarking:

amazing

Don't Try: My Father's Horniness

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:28:16 -0400

Don't Try: My Father's Horniness:

daxtumbler:

My father, Dave Robert Shepard Sr., died on either December 30th or December 31st, depending on what time zone you were in. I received the call on the 30th at 11:30PM in Los Angeles, but the caller, positioned in Detroit, was two hours deep into the 31st. He was dead at 62 years old. Small cell…

My stache!👌 by celiabean12 http://instagr.am/p/W-XLB8wT4o/

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:57:18 -0400

My stache!👌 by celiabean12 http://instagr.am/p/W-XLB8wT4o/

Wassup by celiabean12 http://instagr.am/p/WlAgLYQT0I/

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:12:34 -0500

Wassup by celiabean12 http://instagr.am/p/WlAgLYQT0I/

yeahapparently: patrickcotnoir: MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED I just...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:26:37 -0500

yeahapparently:

patrickcotnoir:

MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED

I just I can’t I don’t even I what

Lessig Blog, v2: Prosecutor as bully

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:49:31 -0500

Lessig Blog, v2: Prosecutor as bully:

lessig:

(Some will say this is not the time. I disagree. This is the time when every mixed emotion needs to find voice.)

Since his arresting the early morning of January 11, 2011 — two years to the day before Aaron Swartz ended his life — I have known more about the events that began this…

Below the Boat - San Francisco Bay

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:48:03 -0500

Below the Boat - San Francisco Bay:

WANT

"But we should not assume that, just because we pay a company they’ll treat us better, or that if..."

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 21:42:37 -0500

“But we should not assume that, just because we pay a company they’ll treat us better, or that if we’re not paying that the company is allowed to treat us like shit. Reality is just more complicated than that. What matters is how companies demonstrate their respect for their customers. We should hold their feet to the fire when they demonstrate a lack of respect.”

- Derek Powazek - I’m Not The Product, But I Play One On The Internet

"Reminder: It’s similar at every scale; it’s full of continuous variations; and, conjecturally, it’s..."

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 11:30:10 -0500

“Reminder:
It’s similar at every scale;
it’s full of continuous variations; and, conjecturally,
it’s all connected.”

- Fractals and Stories

New York City's Very Weird Five-Year Forecast -- New York Magazine

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:53:23 -0500

New York City's Very Weird Five-Year Forecast -- New York Magazine:

(via Instapaper)