Good Morning, Sleepyheads!

“You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.” ~ Billy Wilder

***

Now I love Billy Wilder even more, because he gives such great quote. But of course he does. Billy was brilliant.

You know where I'll be today. I don't know where you'll be but I'll be thinking of you!

Happy Free Friday! San Francisco and I wish you a lovely day!

xoxo

Whilst Trespassing

It's not every day that, while you are trespassing on private property taking photos for i live here: SF, you are discovered (i.e., caught) by the food editor for Esquire magazine, who just so happens to be visiting San Francisco for a few days to research some places for her next article, and then you happen to mention (i.e., blurt out) your favorite sausage place in the Lower Haight and highly highly recommend the bratwurst and the German potato salad, and then she gives you her email address so you can send her some information about it. And then when you get home and tell your Boy about who you just happened to bump into while you were trespassing on someone's private property, he gets a little miffed because if this certain sausage place gets famous due to some slight indiscretion on a person's (i.e., my) part and this certain sausage place is "discovered" by denizens of Esquire magazine readers, then when we want to go there, it will be terribly crowded and overrun by strangers, and the sausage place will have run out of German potato salad, and that unfortunate situation will all be my fault.

However, it is for precisely reasons like this that (a) I love San Francisco-- because it's the kind of place where you never ever know when something wonderful will happen but it will sooner than later, (b) there is a sausage place so yummy that I can recommend it to the food editor of Esquire magazine just in case I happen to bump into her, and (c) why I hate Mondays.

My life begins on Free Friday.

***

SAN FRANCISCO STREET CRED QUIZ

Without using The Google or wikipedia, who can tell me which famous San Francisco series of stories was inspired by the locale pictured above?

Stay out of trouble, folks

Took this in Chinatown, obviously somewhere you're bound to get busted for having fun.

***

I've got some photos to take today. You all keep your noses clean until I get back, okay?
Happy Free Friday!

xoxo

Why I Love the Mission

From Free Friday.
(Gosh, was it only yesterday?)

Hope your day is full of style

I just love being my own one stop shop for images to post. I took this photo yesterday while on that photowalk at lunch with a new flickr friend.

I have a thing about barber shops. And I find the coat and smock on these two gents (see, julochka, the twins' thing just gets deeper and more profound) to be très chic.

Today I have two photo shoots, one for pay (!) and one for the i live here: SF site, and then a meeting about another future photo shoot.

And tomorrow I do have an appointment that deals with hair as well (my hair, as I'm feeling desperate), and if the 'do goes horribly, horribly wrong then I'll need to put together a wardrobe of stirrup leggings and bright jackets with big shoulder pads in them.

Or, if the hair thing turns out super cute, then little ringlets and curls will be a factor. Enjoy your day! I'll miss you.

Well, that explains it

My biorhythms are all fucked up.

***

Parts of my biorhythm are smirking. That makes sense. One part is winking. The rest are in the crapper. No wonder I can't get it together this week.

Julochka wrote a post about why she's all out of sorts this week, and then Starlene recommended that she check out about her biorhythms, and so I followed julochka's example, et voila!


That first graph has me worried. It looks a little crazy, don't you think? A little too up-and-down-y for my tastes. I'll just try to keep smirking to maintain some balance.

Julochka wisely read my chart and graphs and she says that I'll be capable of taking some great photos due to my high Aesthetic secondary rhythms, but that I'll be too weak to pick up my camera for long periods of time because my primary Physical rhythm is so in the dumps.

I do have to say that I don't believe in this stuff, but today I guess I'm willing to admit that something's up that's out of my control. If you want to see what parts of you are smirking or dysfunctional, you can make your own chart here for free.

I'm just counting the minutes until Free Friday. That should fix it.

The Queen of Sutter Street

"At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said she would love to go." ~ excerpt from "Araby," Dubliners, James Joyce

***

Preface

As of 10:30am yesterday (and this is retroactive to at least the last twelve years of my life),

I have had it.

I am done with whiny, spoiled, helpless women who are entitled. Who substitute vapid feel-good platitudes for a personality.

Done. Had it.

Not interested in your demons, your dark side, your dragons.

Oh, you're an artiste? Whatever.

Oh, you're the center of the universe? Not my universe, lady.

Get over yourself.

***

That was my morning.

This was my afternoon.

Meet Ghalyia.

She is the Queen of Sheba.

***

Yesterday, after meeting a new friend for lunch (who bears absolutely no resemblance to anyone mentioned in the preface), I ended up wandering in an entirely different direction than I had planned.

I meant to go to the Castro, but instead I ended up in the Tenderloin (again).

Walking up Sutter Street, it started to drizzle and I tucked my camera inside my coat. I'm learning. I'm not getting my camera wet anymore.

Across the street from a pawnshop was a corner market where most of the writing on the awning had faded or was rubbed out. But you could see where it said Middle Eastern Foods. That was enough to get me across the street. The open door with the smell of spices got me inside.

Near the doorway were three older women wearing long tunics and headscarves. The eldest woman had a blue painted line running vertically from her lower lip down her chin. (I am not sure what that marking means, if anyone else does, please enlighten me.)

A television was playing in Arabic.

Feeling somewhat shy, I ducked around the back of the store to see if I could find some of my favorite coffee. I love my Cafe Najjar with cardamom, and it's hard to find. And I was enjoying wandering the narrow aisles, looking at all of the juices (blueberry, mango, pomegranate, tamarind) and packets of spice blends (kebab, za' atar, baharat).

I came up to the counter with my little bag of coffee, and noticed near the register boxes of Turkish delight, and little candied fruits wrapped in plastic.

The woman behind the counter beams as I finger the candies. "Oh my God," she says, with a little lust in her voice. "I love those so much. I eat too many of them."


That's all I need for a testimonial, so I choose one of each. She takes an apricot. "Oh my God, this one is my favorite." She unwraps it and takes a bite of it like it's her last meal.

"You like cardamom?" she asks, looking at the coffee.

I love cardamom, I tell her.

You like tea? she asks.

Just tell me what to buy and I'll get it, I tell her.

Come with me, she says, and I follow her to the back of the store. She disappears into the back room and then emerges with a sizeable tub of black tea leaves.

She smiles as she takes the plastic lid off of the tub.

Smell this, she says knowingly. She makes it herself, she tells me proudly, mixing four different kinds of tea with cardamom.

OH my god, I think. It smells like heaven.

Ghalyia owns this lovely market on the cusp of a neighborhood that has still evaded gentrification, even though technically the address is Nob Hill.

She has owned the store for 10 years. The Queen of Sheba on Sutter Street.

Ghalyia offers me a cup of her tea. It tastes even better than it smells. She tells me how to prepare it. "Just a pinch in hot water."

She tells me she is from Yemen. She says she raised two children (one is with God now, she says) as a single mother and never got to go to school. But she has a beautiful granddaughter, Nadia. "Look, there is her picture," she points to a photograph of an infant next to a photo of Barack Obama. "That's my granddaughter, right next to the President."

There are Obama posters and t-shirts about, and I'm not quite sure if they're for decoration or for sale. She shows me an article that someone wrote in the paper about her. An American reporter who speaks perfect Arabic came in to visit regularly and wrote a whole article about her. It's laminated for sharing.

"Where did you come from?" she asks me. "Did you hear of me?"

I tell her I was just wandering by and she says, "That happens every day. I love when people find me."

I tell her I'll be back to talk some more, and to give her a copy of the photos she's so goodnaturedly let me take. She gives me the realest hug I've had in a long time. It's such a lovely hug that I don't want to let go. But I do.

As I'm leaving, it's starting to pour. An old homeless woman, barefoot, comes in, clutching a dollar in her arthritic looking hand. Ghalyia waves after me, smiling. "See you soon! Next time, I'll make coffee."

That is an antidote to the preface.

There are false queens and then there are real ones. I think I've met a real Queen today.

***

ps.: I was thrilled to see that I'm not the only one to have discovered Ghalyia and her lovely welcoming manner. You can read reviews here on yelp, as well as get her address so you can stop by and buy some tea. And maybe even get a hug.

Queen of Sheba
1100 Sutter St
(between Larkin St & Polk St)
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 567-4322

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

Julochka has promised to send a cargo ship to pick me up to bring me to see her in Denmark. I guess we'll bum around Copenhagen first, and then head out to the Galápagos Islands (this all makes sense if you read her post).

Without going into a lot of detail, julochka has the inside track with sailors, so I feel confident that I can get a lift soon.


I stopped by the Pirate Supply Shop at 826 Valencia to get some supplies, in case we run into pirates on the way back. People don't believe me when I say that there's a Pirate Supply Shop in San Francisco, but there is. (Even David Byrne has said that this is "one of the top five pirate stores" he's been to lately.)


Sorry for the blurry photos. You'd have thought I took these photos looking through the viewfinder with my glass eye or that I was holding the camera with my hook instead of my sword hand.

Yes, this is a silly post. I admit it.

But it's Free Friday Eve, so I'm allowed. Har!

***

ps.: If you ever want to read some cool books about what life at sea was really like, try Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail by Stephen Brown, or Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age by Marcus Rediker. You can read about Anne Bonny or Mary Read: women pirates, yeah! No joke... pirates were equal opportunity employers. And these ladies were not the Keira Knightley fake pirate types either. Read the book and you'll see.

pss.: The "Have You Got Scurvy?" sign is just one of the many informative, absurd and hilarious signs you'll see at 826 Valencia. In addition to being a kick ass pirate supply store, 826 Valencia is a well-known writing workshop, dedicated to helping kids aged 6-18 develop their skills as writers. They're also the publisher of the awesome new book of kids' letters to President Obama called Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country.

psss.: Photo of Anne Bonny from wikipedia.

Backtrack: a story of meetings

I'm going back to last Free Friday, to a group of photos I took. A late afternoon, in the Tenderloin, downtown.

It's both easy and hard at the end of the day -- easy in that I just lose myself in my photos and it's like I never went to the office (I just forget everything, even what time it is), and hard, in that I'm tired because it's been a long day -- but I have to go through the images, and even if it's just to find a few that make me happy. And then I can stop and go to bed.

***

I realized the photos I like best tell stories. So here are three.

Part I: The violinist

It's quite common to hear a variety of music being performed in the metro stations. Ordinarily, I don't stop to listen because I've yet to hear music that's worth stopping for. In my humble opinion, that is.

I understand (and you do, too, I'm sure) what it's like to enjoy something so much that you have to close your eyes to experience it. I did not have my eyes closed, but the slight, long-haired man, dressed all in black and playing the violin... his eyes were closed.

He played that violin like nothing else in the world existed except for him, and the violin, and the music.

The music was etheral, and haunting, and I couldn't quite place what I was hearing and for once, I didn't want to leave the station immediately. I remembered a recent story I had heard about virtuoso Joshua Bell playing his violin in a DC Metro station (imagine that!) and how barely anyone even noticed. If you haven't read this story, you should.

When the musician stopped playing, we talked for a few minutes. The piece I was playing he had improvised (that amazed me just in itself, what a concept) and that he was visiting from Atlanta, before going on to LA. I was already sad to know that he wasn't a local and I wouldn't see him in the metro station again.

We talked about his violins and his CDs, and a little bit about Venice. I remembered the violin museum I had gone to in San Marco, a place he would have loved more than any normal person. He's never been to Venice. I hope he gets there someday, for that city and violins are good friends.

***

Part II: The man on the street

Coming up to the street, I saw the Truth Building again. I know it's a repeat from a previous post, but it's a photo I really love.

The sun was hanging lower in the sky, drifting into late afternoon.

The man gently helping the little boy on his bike, with training wheels, made me smile. Against the hard backdrop of this gritty part of town, you realize that kids still need to learn to ride their bikes.

Near the Hibernia Bank, at the corner of Jones and McAllister, the clouds were filling the sky with an end-of-day fullness.

Even the neon lights had something to say.

***

he says: hey lady, take my picture.

then he starts goofing off, wiggling around and striking crazy poses. which of course makes for a terrible photo.

i say: stand still and just act normal. otherwise i can't take your picture!

he says: act normal? i haven't done that in my whole life!

he laughs. and stands still.

and then i take his picture.

i tell him he has nice eyes. he does.

and then he can't help it... boys will be boys.

***

These old buildings must have so many stories to tell. I guess I'm not too sure how many of them I'd really want to know without them weighing down on my heart. But even in their present state, I find these places quite beautiful in their way.

The light is starting to fade to night. And my lens isn't wide enough to take it all in.

Contrasts appeal to me. I love finding unique juxtapositions ... and seem to notice more of them when I'm toting a camera around. Next to this men's club (and what Obama has to do with the club, I have no idea) is a rescue mission. Both the gentleman's club and the rescue mission were locked tight. No escape and no solace to be found in either place.

I wonder what this mural is really trying to tell the people that see it. I'd like to think that it's something like: there are more good people than bad people, and not this, which is seems pretty vague and not very inspiring. People living in this neighborhood need a little bit more than ambiguity.

***

Part III: The artist

Here I am, sitting and waiting for a new friend who, when I meet her, feels like an old soul. The air in the restaurant is thick with rich, delicious smoke from the tandoori oven, and I feel like I'm at an Indian barbeque. I've come in off the street to wait for her, since standing outside the restaurant was starting to get me admirers I didn't want.

I wish I could be in this neighborhood, invisible, to observe and take photos, but I can't. Standing outside waiting, a man who looked very much like the one I took photos of earlier, lurches towards me, an open beer can barely concealed inside a brown paper bag.

He smiles at me and says, you're so pretty. You're like an angel. Before I know it, he's reached out to push some hair away from my face. I wish I was braver. All I could say was thank you and then turn inside to the safety of the restaurant.

Indoors, away from the dark and the street, my new friend and I talk and plan. We talk about Cairo, where she was born, and the Mission, where she lives now. We talk about veils and makeup and photography and paintings and dance.

Three meetings. One afternoon.

***

While I was working on these images, I was listening to Paul's music, so I made a slideshow to share with you. The track is from his album, Ghosts, and the piece is called "Under The Direction Of St. Teresa VI."



You can learn more about Paul Mercer, listen to his music or order CDs on his myspace page.... http://profile.myspace.com/paulmercer

***

ps.: you can see this set of photos on flickr and leave comments here, too.

Building Truth

I took this photo yesterday during my Free Friday excursion and it seemed most appropriate for a note of thanks...

***

I wanted to thank

Liz at Eternal Lizdom
The Pink Cowboy
and new reader Dear Jesse McCartney
and new reader Flartus at My 2 Sense

for taking up the torch and posting the Fidelity video on their blogs with their own thoughts and insights. Reaching out and building consensus, educating and sharing, these are some of the gifts of participating in blogging.

You can still sign the petition at Courage California. The signing period ends on Valentine's Day.

xoxo

My Assistant Quit

Dear Tangobaby,

In light of your recent ranting post, it's obvious that you have plenty of time for silly things and are not concentrating on more pressing issues like sending out all of those prints to the nice people who wanted one, or the Christmas presents that you said are now for Valentine's day.

I am running off to Buenos Aires with Sergio.

See ya!

Sincerely,

Your assistant, Tangobaby jr.

***

She left me a pile of photos with your names and addresses written on hot pink Post-Its, and a big stack of photo mailers. Guess I know what I'll be doing this Free Friday.

And sending out those Christmas/Valentine's Day packages too.

Good help is SO hard to find.

about last night

I feel decidedly unglamorous this morning in my sweats and fuzzy socks.

But now I have proof that last night I looked a whole lot better.

Thank you, Jennifer, for capturing the magic inside and outside of your beautiful tango studio.

(Look, you can even see the Transamerica Pyramid in the background, and a little bit of the Bay Bridge.)

A Three Advil Night

It's been a long time since I last prayed to Goddess Advil.

***

Tonight the red shoes came out, and yeah, it is like riding a bicycle.
You never forget.

You never forget how the music fills your ears and you dance with your eyes closed for minutes upon minutes. How your hair gets sweaty and sticks to your forehead and the side of your face, where it's pressed against the face of someone else. How you can't help humming the melodies, laughing when you make a mistake. Milongas, valses, tangos.

***

Tonight at Ney and Jennifer's.
Music, color, art and friends.
The three most favoritest people I could ever wish to dance with, this being my debut for 2009 and the first day back on the dance floor in many moons.

They didn't forget me!

xoxo to my lovely friends: R, P and T.
You made me feel like a princess, thank you.

ps.: And I got to ride the cable car there and back. Now that's what I call San Francisco Tango.