Scary Happenings in the City

It was over before I could decide whether I needed to go stand in a doorway or not.

I rode through on the Bart less than an hour earlier.


As I was researching these stories, I found out that singer Robert Goulet died.
No one under 40 would have ever known who he was if it wasn't for Will Ferrell...
I don't care if he's Notorious Big, can he croon?

My New Job

Weirdest Thing I've Seen in SF So Far:

At a British Ex-pats meeting at a bar called Etiquette (who really gets into the Halloween spirit - complete with Haunted Mansion-style decor and bowls of fun-size candy on the bar), out of nowhere a person, clad head to toe in a green lycra catsuit, face covered, with a small featureless doll-like mask suspended where its face should be. It started on a platform, on all fours, slinking around and gyrating, then jumped to the ground and glided between peoples' legs across the floor.

Beside that obvious horror, the meeting was fun. If you've seen the movie "Superbad" I met a guy who looks a real-life version Fogell character. I swear. It's him ten years older with an English accent. He works for LucasArts (George Lucas's company) doing the sound effects for video games. George and I are going to go miniature golfing with him and his wife.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse, the actor who plays the role in the movie.


Unrelated photo from Baker Beach. Please note iconic bridge in background.

Will Somebody Hit the Lights?

Saturday night was supposed to be Lights Out San Francisco, a city-wide energy conservation attempt. George, his roommate, and I hiked up the street to Alamo Square park, thinking we'd have a great view of the San Francisco skyline suddenly going black. At least that's how I envisioned it. Instead, we could hardly discern a couple buildings (like the TransAmerica pyramid and City Hall) with most of their lights off. Nothing else changed, but at least I got a cool nighttime photo.

I'm concerned about my family. I just got off the phone with my mom in Encinitas, where wildfires are causing mass evacuations. As it was, I could only talk a couple minutes because she said they're asking residents to avoid using their cell phones so the airwaves are clear for emergency signals. Right now they're sitting indoors with all the windows shut because the ash and smoke are clogging the air outside. It's nothing unusual, as unsettling as it is. Every year the fires are back, right on schedule in October.

My sister likes to recall the year (actually exactly eleven years ago today) of the Harmony Grove Fire. That night, on the eve of her eighth birthday, we stayed up almost all night watching the news to see if we would be evacuated (the Aitchisons down the street were all packed and hosing their roof as midnight rolled around and a firefighter on the news said, "these fires always just burn straight out to the ocean"). But the fire brigade managed the fire before we were evacuated, and Emily lived to see her eighth birthday (despite her pessimistic sister's runaway imagination), and her ninth, and tomorrow her nineteenth. Happy birthday, Emily.

And now some photographic evidence of how my days consist of waking up at ten, laying in bed until eleven, and walking around cool places with a cute boy:

Bay Bridge from Coit Tower area

Golden Gate Bridge from the other side of Coit Tower

Fat lazy tourists contemplating fat lazy sea lions

Beach near Golden Gate Park

Cute old couple walking on the beach

Golden Gate Park

View from my new room

The Opposite of Hallelujah

Alcohol ruins everything.

I don't understand the line between having a few social drinks and binge drinking every night of the week. Why do it? It's not impressing anyone. I'd be interested if anyone could explain to me why it's important to drink so excessively that you black out more than once a week. Sure, I've been drunk, and I have a lovely scar on my knee to remind me that it's a stupid idea! Even if it happens every couple months it's understandable. If I'm really upset about something I just want to join my friends at reggae night and get drunk off $2 Red Stripes. But if it's a regular occurrence, is it normal or alcoholism? Where do you draw the line?

It's red beer, Mon!

I had the pleasure of spending time with the incomparable Amy Tietz this weekend, and we did a lot of walking, shopping, and watching season two of "The Office." I'd forgotten how good it is just to hang out with someone you can be yourself around - to not have to worry about having every second planned out, but spend an hour talking at lunch in a cafe or wandering the racks at Buffalo Exchange.

Elle est adorable.

We were going to join G to watch the rugby final at the Mad Dog in the Fog, an English pub in the Haight district. We were on our way, dressed in the appropriate red and white English team colors (or, more appropriately, colours), when he called from the bar to tell us that it was packed and they were charging a $20 cover charge. Frick. Disappointing, but England lost anyway, and Amy and I had fun perusing the Haight-Ashbury area instead.

Como Agua para Elefante

I started reading Water for Elephants today. After a couple days, the BART commute, while retaining its glory, fails to require complete vigilance. The book's about a circus, which I like; it's set in the Depression - another plus; and it manages to incorporate old people as well. For some reason books from the perspective of the elderly fascinate me. I was a little disappointed to find out it's written by a woman, since the narrator is a guy. It seems like such a female perspective that I have to keep reminding myself the protagonist is a boy.

Speaking of books, people keep asking me what I do at this internship. Here's a sample of my day today:

8:55 - Get to work, find out I got moved to another computer (from which I can't access my e-mail account), and spend the next 15 minutes trying to set up Outlook on the new computer before Kate, one of my editors, sends a tech guy to help.
9:20 - On Mondays and Wednesdays another (apparently messy) girl shares the new computer with me. I move my stuff over to the new desk, straighten up, and dust.
9:30 - Kate asks me to research a proposal for a coffee table photo book about greyhounds and I read the proposal, go online to assess interest level in the subject and existing similar books, and e-mail her back my results and opinion.
11:00 - Home Publishing Group Meeting. The editors for the Home section (things like knitting books, decorating, animals, crafts) meet to discuss future projects, marketing, and how to match the success of Stuff on My Cat. I play the role of fly on the wall, and eat the Pirate's Booty someone brought in.
1:00 - Begin logging in book proposals and try to print rejection letters, but the new computer isn't hooked up to the printer I need and I can't find it on the computer to add it. I e-mail helpdesk guy again. Turns out it was easy. Embarrassing.
2:00 - lunch break, after which I keep logging rejected proposals and returning manuscripts, photos, portfolios, prototype books, for Bridget, my other editor...basically the valuable stuff people send in but we don't want to publish.
4:45 - I fit in a quick editing job for Kate before heading off at 5:00. Probably my most successful day yet. I forgot to say that a large part of this job involves walking back and forth to the beautiful, clean, high tech kitchen for tea/coffee/hot chocolate and large amounts of non-dairy creamer. Preferably all three at some point during the day.

Soft October Night

This is too perfect to pass up. Thanks, Faith!

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

--T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

(Click below to hear the poem read by the poet...wait through the commercial. Is it just me, or does Eliot sound a bit like the caterpillar from "Alice in Wonderland"?).

SF Loves You!

There's so much to do here it's overwhelming. Festivals every weekend and concerts every night (not that I've gone to any...YET). I thought I'd share a few photos from the last week.

Alamo Square. The row of Victorian houses are the apparently infamous "painted ladies." So far all I know about this park is that there's a great view, half the park is "dog crap central" (according to G), and it gets really cold and windy there in the evenings, like today as we sat on a park bench trying to eat pizza.

Golden Gate park...no buffalo in sight...

...just some weirdos.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
-Carl Sandburg, "Fog"

In front of a Hayes St. apartment. I appreciate the quotation marks.

I got on the BART going the wrong way tonight, but at least I got to see the Oakland BART station (and I will never make the mistake again).

Look Out Upon the Myriad Harbour

I'm sick.
It started with a sore throat when I woke up yesterday morning, and by the time I got to work I had a headache and a full-fledged fever, complete with aches and chills. So instead of going out and walking around at lunchtime as usual, I settled myself on one of the bizarrely modern couch-shaped pieces of foam on the top story of the Chronicle office building with Spin Magazine's punk issue, my 1/4 of a Thyme rotisserie chicken (leftovers from dinner), and the tail end of a bag of Trader Joe's spicy flax seed chips (the best part of the bag because by that time it's mostly just spice). I could see people walking around on neighboring rooftops, a flag flapping in the wind, and straight ahead, a barge that seemed to float between the gray water and the gray sky. It's cold here.

Sorry I've been MIA lately. My own mother calls to make sure I'm still alive. Sorry, Mom; yes, yes I am. I'm going to blame it all on G. I will never be that girl who ditches everyone to hang out with a boy, but I don't yet have any friends here anyway, so it works out nicely. It just means that my boxes and boxes of moving items remain on the floor of my room, unpacked, and I don't update this as often as I'd like to.

He's currently left to catch the 21 bus downtown to attend the San Francisco School of Bar-Tending, a $400 2-week course filled with hopeful middle-agers intent on finding a new career. They say that within two nights you've recouped the cost of the lessons in tips.

I went back to San Luis Obispo last weekend and everyone kept asking the same questions: how are you liking San Francisco? Where are you living? What do you do at your internship? I wished I could just get them all together and answer those questions once instead of robotically nodding my head and smiling: Yes, I am liking San Francisco. Everything is going fine.

Get Your Own Coffee

You know in movies how interns are always depicted as running to the corner Starbucks to get their boss a nonfat sugar-free caramel macchiato, or in charge of getting their hands on the unreleased issue of the new Harry Potter book (that was so unrealistic in "The Devil Wears Prada")? My internship is not going to be anything like that.

You want me to do what?

The Chronicle Books office is beautiful and contemporary - all brand new and modern and colorful. Everyone who works there seems to be in their early 30's, fashionable, and married or engaged. My two editors, Kate and Bridget, are going to be great. After an hour-long walk/BART ride/walk to the beautiful area of SOMA, I was given a tour of the office, then set to log and mail out rejection letters. You wouldn't believe the ideas for books these people propose: "101 Things to Do on the Back of a Harley Davidson," "The Drugs Are Great! The Upside of Depression." They just got worse from there.

I met a girl who is an intern for the Fiction section, and tried to contain my jealousy. That's much closer to my niche than the Craft / Architecture / Home section I'm working in now. Another great thing about being an intern (in addition to unlimited tea) is the opportunity to sit in on meetings. A couple hours after I got there, I accompanied Kate to her meeting where scones were shared and target audiences were discussed. The woman presenting used the company that owns Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie as an example. Urban Outfitters is targeted toward (supposedly - we all know it's a lot younger) 18-30 hipster types. Anthropologie is supposedly marketed toward 30-45 year old women. In the same style, Chronicle Books has to decide what for demographic each book they market is designed.

18-30?.....................................30-45?

Today G and I are going to Ikea to find furniture. I have a good lead on a desk from craigslist, but I have to somehow rent a truck to move it. Also on my to-do list are go to Golden Gate Park and explore Ingleside (my neighborhood). I hear there's a big mall around here...

Gettin' 'Frisco-y

Is this real?

I look out my new bedroom window onto a hillside of twinkling yellow lights. The branches of several scrawny pine trees are silhouetted against the last remnants of hazy sunset light beyond the ocean.

An hour ago my new roommate Dave took me to the nearby beach, where a fifteen minute hike down an iceplant-covered hill opened out to pristine sand and an orange sun hovering over the waves. We discovered a piece of a 100 year old shipwreck beached on the sand - just five feet of connected wooden planks with rusted hooks still attached.

For those of you who don't know, two days ago I moved to San Francisco to work as an editorial intern at Chronicle Books, according to their website: "One of the most admired and respected publishing companies in the U.S." What's more, their mission statement says they are "inspired by the enduring magic and importance of books." I too am inspired by the enduring magic and importance of books. Brilliant. This will work out.

Tomorrow is my first day at Chronicle Books, so although I should have been unpacking, I've been exploring the city with a certain English bloke the last couple days. I'm still learning the various "neighborhoods" of San Francisco, but today I managed the BART (which will most likely be my transportation to and from work) and fell in love with the deliciousness which is the Ferry Building Marketplace. Gelato! Bread! Cheese!

"Mmm...fancy a nice slice of Wensleydale, Gromit?"

I'm living in an amazing house outside of town, in Merced Heights, almost in Daly City (but still in the bounds of San Francisco proper). Dave, a 30-something freelance computer something works at home and owns the building (which is gorgeous). Julie, my other roommate, is a third year set design major at SFSU. I've just met her briefly, but now that I know her major I predict we will have a lot to talk about.

Leaving San Luis Obispo was one of the saddest moves I've ever had to make. Over the last four years I've become more confident, happy, and made better friends than I ever have before. As Cogsworth, the enchanted clock from "Beauty and the Beast," would say, "If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it," but it was time to move on from that chapter of my life. As much as I've loved living in San Luis Obispo, there are other things I have to learn about life and wider venues to explore. And I think San Francisco is just the town to do so.