Wherever your red shoes take you.

Hey lady, he calls to me from his seat on the bench. He squints in the morning sun. I like your shoes.

I look down at my filthy red sneaks and say thanks.

I hope wherever your red shoes take you, you have a great day, he exclaims confidently. Then he sees my camera.

And that you get some great photos today!

How did he know I already had?

***

I usually wake up between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning. Even though I don't have a job to go to at present, old habits die hard.

I used to try to leave the house early before work so I could take a few photos before the boring grind of the office day began. Just spending even a half-hour outside the office felt like a very important time, even if I only got one good shot out of it. I felt like I had accomplished something important just for me.

So it dawned on me yesterday that I am literally wasting dawns. I could be up and using that amazing morning light and instead I'm lazing around.

So this morning I decided to change all that.

At 6:30am, I took the 71 Haight-Noriega all the way down Haight Street to Fillmore. Got off at Fillmore, walked to Oak to Laguna and then walked all the way back Oak, to Masonic, to Haight and through the park.

And here's what I saw. All that before the day began, and was I glad.

Early morning on an empty bus but still uneasy neighbors.

Thanks for the ride, 71.

I love the thinking about how many mornings these old houses have seen.

No one will steal your trike if you park it over your door.

This one's shy.

But now they're having a bit of a chat.

I loved the yellow bee man and his matching goldenrod taxi speeding by.

I call this the Dog House. This is the first time I've gotten a good shot of who's guarding the stoop.

I like that Tom Johnson, Sr. used so many tacks to keep his name on.

This is one of my i live here: SF postcards, which I stealthily leave around town. No one's contacted me yet, but I keep pretending they're like Golden Tickets in Wonka Bars, and someday someone will say they found my postcard lying around and thought it would be fun to see what my project's all about.

I wonder where she went.

Life is UR canvas. U R the artist.
As seen in Golden Gate Park.

Wherever your red shoes take you.

***

Red shoes or not, I hope your feet took you somewhere interesting today.

If these people were my real parents

Clara Bow's hair + Albert Brooks' hair = my hair

***

Today, I have reentered the Land of Curly Hair.

I feel a little bit more like Shirley...

... but I'm working my way towards sexy Biba-dom.

I have to take the curly fabulousness in stages. The Boy is so confused. Right now I told him I'm entering my Gypsy/bohemian stage. He didn't know about that either. He keeps telling me that he's had the same hairstyle his whole life, ever since he started growing hair. He doesn't know anything about girls and their stages, even now.

I left the house early this morning with straight hair and came home looking like a moppet. He keeps asking me what I did to my hair, but I can't give away all of my beauty secrets. I told him I had a lot of curly fries for lunch and that's what did it, but he's not buying it.

***

And then I was compelled to dress up like this.

Tell me you do this sort of thing too when you get a new 'do. I just happened to have those rainbow glasses lying about from a walk down Haight Street.

Peace out, babies, peace out.
And pass the curly fries!

xoxo

***

Because I can't take all the credit: Clara Bow photo, Biba photo and Shirley Temple photo. I can't remember where I got the Albert Brooks photo from. I love him, though.

And because I really can't take all the credit, my beauty secret for today is

Angie and Martha's Hair Salon
524 Geary Street
(between Shannon St & Taylor St)
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 359-9375

Thank you, dutchbaby, you were right about these ladies. They are awesome!
Thank you Angie and Martha!

(insert more kisses here.)

Fleeting Enchantments

“I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick” ~ Maya Deren

***

I love tiny discoveries. People or places or things that I've never heard of before that make me pause and find yet another way to see the world as a fascinating place (granted, lots of people have made these discoveries before me and I'm just coming around to it late in the game).

But they're my tiny discoveries. And like a trickle of water that gradually flows to a larger body of water, I'll be able to follow this rivulet to people or other things that will enhance my appreciation of what I've just found and make my personal world more interesting.

***

On Friday night, I stopped into Amoeba Records on the way home. I love to walk the length of Haight Street when I'm not too tired, from the Lower to the Upper Haight instead of taking the train. Two possible treats await me at the end of my walk: plantains and black beans (and maybe a glass of sangria) at Cha Cha Cha, and/or a video or two from Amoeba. For some reason I never buy any music there, probably because the place is so cavernous and overwhelming in its selections, but I seem to navigate my way around the DVD room quite well and always find something I want. Finding restraint at the cash register is harder.

What excites me tremendously is when I discover a fascinating person. Perhaps you've already heard of her, but I found a collection of short films by Maya Deren. I was so entranced by her work. I couldn't stop watching.

From the bio in the Harold Gottleib Archival Research Center at Boston University:

Maya Deren (1917-1961) has been called "the mother of the American underground cinema" and remains perhaps the most noted female experimental filmmaker in the United States from the 1940s until her untimely death in 1961. In addition, she was a noted theorist whose innovative writings are shamefully not as familiar as those of her male contemporaries.

Eleanora Derenkowsky was born on April 29, 1917 in Kiev, Ukraine, the only child of linguist Marie Derenkowsky and her psychologist husband Solomon. In 1922, the family fled the Soviet Union to escape from anti-Semitism, settling in New York City and shortening the family name to Deren... Deren often self-distributed her films, going so far as to screen them on her living room walls. If she managed to land a booking, she often accompanied the screenings with a lecture...She received the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Internationale, became the first filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, which allowed her to begin research on the Voudoun ritual in Haitian culture.

***

Maya died at age 44. It amazes me the body of work: art, thought-- that some people can create in a such a short life. My birthday is on Tuesday. Some days I really feel like the clock is ticking...

What people or places or things have you discovered that made a lasting impression on you? Anything you'd care to share? I'm in the mood for discovery. Now that this election is over, I feel like I can breathe again.

Here is Deren's film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). I wonder what you think of it.

Positively Haight Street

"You know, I went to Haight-Ashbury, expecting it to be this brilliant place, and it was just full of horrible, spotty, dropout kids on drugs. It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn’t what was I thought of all these groovy people having spiritual awakenings and being artistic. It was like the Bowery, it was like alcoholism, it was like any addiction. " ~ George Harrison

*******

Yesterday I took myself for a walk down Haight Street (which is easy to do since it's the closest neighborhood to mine).

The Haight alternately amuses and confounds me. I find it interesting and totally clichéd, wild and disgusting and freaky and totally San Franciscan.

.

I think it's probably that the myth of the Summer of Love and the hype has created the Haight more than anything else, but I thought you'd like to accompany me on my little tour...

***

An appreciation for Hindu gods, Free Tibet, multiple piercings, facial tattoos, and alternative anything is de rigueur. Either that, or you'll be one of the myriad of tourists clutching maps, wearing shorts, wondering why it's so damn cold and why is everything so dirty.

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Vintage hippy hat above. Vintage stores abound here, and their items are not inexpensive, either.

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There are lots of street kids begging for money. It's a different crowd than the regular homeless people you see all over town. Lots of these kids look like suburban runaways, maybe here on some drug-fueled adventure.

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This is a place where capitalism is adored (get yer tie-dye and bongs here!), but all economic and philosophical persuasions are tolerated.

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The mural on the side of the Anarchist Bookstore reads: History remembers two kinds of people-- those who murder and those who fight back.

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This fella was setting out brightly colored flags for the Participarade. He invited me to walk with the parade to Golden Gate Park. But I was too busy taking photos, so I just thanked him.

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Murals and colors abound.

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Just walking. And sitting.

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I love the architecture here.

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It is possible to get a contact high just by walking down the street. (That's incense, obviously.)

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Need I say more?

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Ta-da. The end of the walk.

Here's the song that started it all:

More Haight photos here.