Category: San Francisco

Whoooah, Geek Out! Le Geek, c’est Chic. Geek Out!

On Friday, through a series of rather wonderfully fortunate events, The Good Man and I were invited to attend a San Francisco Giants baseball game as guests in one of the luxury boxes at AT&T Park.

I’ve had a chance to frolic on the luxury level before, and I know how good it can be, so I was more than happy to accept this opportunity.

It was a beautiful September night at the yard and the Giants were playing the Dodgers.

From where we sat, it looked a little like this:





Enjoy this truly rare photo, as it shows the Giants have a runner on first base. They only managed to score one run the entire night. These days Giants baserunners are on the endangered species list. (grr!)

The reason for admittance to the luxury suite was a corporate event, so there was much gabbing and hand shaking and business talking going on. The Good Man and I got there early enough to quickly get through the gauntlet of hand shaking, then we went outside and found nice seats.

A (free) cold beer, some (free) good food, and two fantastic seats later, we were feeling pretty darn happy.

It hardly gets any better than that.

But it did. It got better than that.

A lot better.

In the third inning, one of the sales guys I knew came over and said, “hey guys, I think Willie McCovey is here.”

Um.

What?

We’d been told there was a chance he’d make an appearance, but I certainly didn’t believe it would happen.

It happened.

This is a TERRIBLE photograph, but under the auspices of “pictures or it didn’t happen” meme on the internet, I figured I’d own up to it.

Some things to know about this photo:

1) It was taken with a cell phone camera and the photo is fantastically noisy
2) the lighting in the room was TERRIBLE for even the best of cameras
3) It was Friday at the end of a very long week and I was beat down tired
4) I was EXTRAORDINARILY geeked out to be meeting Mr. McCovey

So add all that up and please excuse the terrible photo. Mr. McCovey looks fine. I look like something the cat dragged in.





Mr. McCovey signed a baseball for me. Right there. As I watched. He took a baseball, signed it, and handed it. To me.

Oh my dear heavens!

Here, see!!!





I was utterly stunned. Profoundly stunned. Mr. McCovey is a very calm, quiet guy. He speaks with a slight Alabama accent and is quite humble. I thanked him for being with us on that night and he said it was his pleasure.

We had a chance for a quick question and answer session and he was very generous with his time.

During the moments while they were setting up the event for Mr. McCovey to sign baseballs, I said to The Good Man, “Hey, look! That guy over there is wearing a World Series ring! I’m going in to take a closer look.”

The Good Man said, “Well I’m going too!”

So I approached the man and said, “Excuse me, is that a World Series ring?”

He said yes.

I said, “May I see it? I’ve only seen photos.”

The guy said “sure” and then he TOOK THE RING OFF and handed it to me.

I said, “whoa, I didn’t think you’d actually take it off.”

He laughed and said, “well, I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

So I looked at the ring. It’s really beautiful. Classic diamonds and a deep carved Golden Gate Bridge. So stunning. And to me, so meaningful.

I turned the ring over in my hand and looked at the side. There I saw the name Alioto engraved.

Oh shit. I’d just accosted Giants Vice President Mario Alioto, member of the most powerful family in San Francisco.

Um. Oops. He was quite nice about it, but I quickly handed it back, commenting “it’s really heavy!” and he laughed and joked about it being gaudy (it’s not).

But then the rest of the night I kept saying to The Good Man, “oh god…what was I thinking….oh lord…..what WAS I THINKING?”

I comforted myself by looking at my signed baseball, still so totally in awe.

For goodness sakes, I’d just met Willie McCovey face to face. I spoke to him! I shook his hand!

Gah!!!

Geek out! Double Geek out!!

Needless to say, I had more than a little bit of trouble getting to sleep that night.



Quiet, Yet Loud

I love photography and learning about light. I dig finding ways to take something commonplace and make it look extraordinary.

Then sometimes, you just gotta let the subject do the talking.

This photo was posted on Facebook by the amazing San Francisco bluesman, Ron Hacker. He captioned the photo by saying, “This slide has been in my pocket since 1971.”

I know that slide. I’ve seen that slide a lot. This photo is like seeing an old friend, though I’m used to seeing it on Ron’s left hand while he makes some of the most stunning sounds come out of that beat up ol’ National steel guitar he plays.

The tone is gritty. The tone is warm. The tone surrounds your entire being and shakes you up and sets you back down and makes you wonder if any moment of your life prior to hearing Hacker play ever really mattered.

Then he sings in that rough voice and you die and come back to life and like a born again, you shout hallelujah while your body moves on its own and your soul is altered for the better. Life suddenly has meaning and no meaning at all.

That’s what that well worn, well used slide does to me.

Beautiful photo by my favorite blues musician.



Photo: Copyright 2011, Ron Hacker



If you love the blues and you need to get healed, visit Ron’s website and click play on that video.

Then you’ll know what it’s like inside The Saloon, San Francisco’s oldest bar and an astounding place for live blues. That video will help you discover just a taste of the power behind that shiny metal slide.





What Makes San Francisco Fun

Had to smile when I read this bit today in the SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicle’s online home:

__________________

From Leah Garchik’s column:

“On Upper Grant one recent Saturday, Mal Sharpe and his Big Money in Jazz Band were playing at the Savoy Tivoli, which has windows open to the street. When Sharpe sang out to a group of passing German tourists, reports Lucy Johns, no one responded. But their tour guide, Tara, said she was not only a guide, she was a singer. This spurred the crowd to demand a song. She sang ‘All of Me,’ and ‘we all swooned,’ said Johns. ‘Then she tromped off down the street with her bullhorn, leading the Germans to City Lights,’ said Sharpe.”

__________________


I love the visuals on this bit of North Beach storytelling. I adore Mal Sharpe, he’s a SF Bay Area legend, and one of The Good Man’s favorite jazz musicians. When you see a Mal show, you are completely engaged by his charm. So this story, inviting a passerby to come up and sing (and she knocks it out of the park), comes as no surprise to me.

It’s one of the many reasons why I love North Beach.

These kind of things just happen every day in San Francisco. It’s just how we do things…especially in North Beach.

Here’s another example. One night I was sitting at my favorite family-owned Italian restaurant called Sodini’s (it’s a North Beach icon). The restaurant was crammed and I was alone, so I manged to squeeze into a nice seat at the bar next to an older gentleman.

He and I got to talking when he offered to buy me another glass of Chianti. The man turned out to be Leo Riegler, current owner of Vesuvios, the world-known bar next door to the City Lights Bookshop where the Beat Generation used to drink and write and fight.

Leo has owned quite a few businesses in North Beach through the years. That night he told me about the coffeehouse he once owned (on the site that is now the Lost and Found saloon). I asked him about the bands that used to play there, as that coffeehouse was well known to host Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and more. He told me a long and involved story, the punchline of which was…

He used to pay Janis Joplin $20 a night to play his stage.

I mean. Wow.

All this over a simple plate of ravioli and a glass a wine. Leo is a walking musical history lesson.

That’s just how it goes in North Beach. That scruffy guy in the corner of Caffe Trieste who looks like he just dragged in off the street? Probably a world famous poet laureate. That run down guy who looks like he’s about to pass out on the bar at The Saloon? Likely a multi-millionaire musician.

And then sometimes you just meet a random German tourist who can’t believe that his tour guide stepped in off the street, did a set with a local band, wowed the crowd, then kept going.

How beautifully inspiring. The Muse always does a little dance inside of me when we walk together up Grant street. It’s her fault I moved here, after all…..


Stockton Street, looking toward the tunnel, 2:51 a.m.





Photo by my North Beach friend, Scott Palmer.



Shortest Distance Between Two Points is a Little Black Jeep

This week I was back at my employer’s office location in the greater Sacramento area. I have such a mental block about making the drive up there because the first time I ever went to Sacramento almost ten years ago, I left on a Friday afternoon and it was an awful, hellacious drive.

And ever since, the drive just seems equally hellacious.

When people ask me how far away is Sacramento, I usually say “oh, about two hours.” But that’s not really true.

In the office this week, I was chatting with a coworker who lives there. He’d asked how the drive went, and I told him it was pretty bad. There were three different accidents in varied locations that had backed up traffic in all kinds of directions. So the trip took me three and a half hours.

My coworker replied, “Yeah, I always figure it’s going to be a three hour ride, no matter what.”

Three hours. Just. Ugh.

I can get from Albuquerque to Las Cruces in three hours, I thought to my little self.

Wait a minute.

What’s the distance from ABQ to LC? About 200 miles, right? According to the maps of Google, the distance from my old apartment in ABQ to my best friend’s home is 224 miles.

Then I looked up the distance from the mid-Peninsula to the Sacramento suburb where I was visiting.

125 miles.

Something’s not right here.

So I embarked on some math. It hurt my head and made me wobbly on my pins, but math was necessary.

So if I go 125 miles in three hours, which is 180 minutes, that means I go one mile every 1.44 minutes.

That means:

My average speed is 41.6 freaking miles per hour!

So if that’s an average, that means sometimes I’m going 65 mph, which is the posted speed limit…

And sometimes I’m going squappity mph because I’m at a standstill at Emeryville, moving real, real slow on the approach to the Bay Bridge, or stuck on that freaking causeway staring at the back of a semi-truck that’s belching black smoke and wondering WHY GOD WHY do I have to drive to Sacramento!?

*sigh*

41.6 freaking miles an hour. No wonder this drive is so tortured. To paraphrase that bard of modern times, Sammy Hagar, I can’t drive forty-one.

I like to drive and go. I don’t like stop and go. Go and go, that’s my motto.

I guess it’s a where-you-were-raised issue. In New Mexico, if I go 224 miles in three hours, that is one mile every 80 seconds which means my average speed is 75 miles per hour. Which is the posted speed limit.

Which means sometimes I’m slowing down to make way for other cars and sometimes the New Mexico State Highway Patrol doesn’t really need to know what I’m up to.

Ahem. Anyhow…..


If you listen close, you can hear the sound of all of those drivers pounding their heads on the steering wheel.



Image from The Sacramento Bee.


Let’s Have Some Group Therapy

Ok. I’m going to be strong here. : deep breath :

They say that talking through your feelings after a tragedy helps lessen the pain. I’ve kept this pent up inside for almost a week. I thought I could feel better. I thought I could forget.

But the nightmare. Oh the pain. It continues.

So I think it’s time I opened up and discussed my feelings. I need to get closure.

This is going to take all my courage.

Here we go.

Last week, it was Tuesday, and I was at the ballpark with The Good Man and some of our friends.

It was a clear, warm August night. The San Francisco Giants were playing baseball against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the crowd was full of anticipation.

My vacation was just beginning and we couldn’t have asked for a better night. A cool breeze played over the outfield and the laughter came easy.

It was the middle of the fourth inning. The Pirates had been sat down and the Giants were up to bat. No hits in the game so far, so I decided to get up from my seat and use the ladies room.

Evidently I wasn’t the only one needing a stretch break in the 4th inning because the line to use the ladies room was really long. But the line moved fast and thankfully, I was able to get my business done and get out of there.

Feeling a growl in my tummy, I walked the length of the third deck of AT&T Park to find a vendor with the shortest line. No luck this night, the food sellers were hopping.

So I just got on line. All you can do is wait. I had nachos on my mind. If you go to the right vendor, they’ll serve you up this tray with two reservoirs. One holds cheese. One holds salsa. Chips line the middle. It’s perfection in a non-recyclable plastic rectangle.

The key to this whole delicious thing is the liquid cheese dispensed from a cheese machine. The nice lady behind the counter pushes a button and cheese comes out.

When the cheese is flowing, you know all is right with the world.

I waited in a long line while some dude in the front bought eight thousand hot dogs and had to contact the International Monetary Fund to get the transaction done. I watched the game on the in-house monitors.

Jeff Keppinger doubled and the waiting crowd sent up a cheer.

Still, I stood in line.

What got me through the drudgery was the thought of the ballpark nachos. So happy. So good. Cheese AND Salsa? Can it really be true?

Finally Hot Dog Boy walked away and the line moved up. The next guy only wanted a beer, and was done fast. One more step forward.

But wait. Something was wrong. Something was amiss.

Something was…out of order.

I noticed one of the ladies who vend the sweet mystery of life that is ballpark nachos was holding a big silver bag and wringing the life out of it.

She was extracting every last morsel of the orange cheesy goodness.

And then I realized. The truth came to roost.

The Cheese Machine had gone offline.

Oh dear god! The humanity!

What will become of us? What can be done?!

I saw a guy come out from the back to install a new bag of cheese into the machine. Then I heard a lady tell someone “It’s going to take a few minutes, the cheese has to warm up.”

I panicked. What should I do?

You are never prepared for an emergency when the terror strikes. These type of situations call for clear, calm thinking.

I considered moving over to another food vendor, but the lines were outrageously long. I’d only have to wait and wait for the dispensary of another cheese supplier. And what if THEY ran out too?

No. Now was the time to be a grown up. I had to become Zen. I had to stand my ground. By god I’d wait for that freaking fake cheese to warm up.

The minutes ticked by at an utter molasses pace. I couldn’t watch the game I was so heart rended by the fear and worry I had. What will become of the nachos?

Finally, after an eternity, I saw one of the vendor ladies tentatively try the button on the now silent machine. Sweet molten cheese flowed like lava from an active volcano. The night was saved! The cheese rides again!

The crowd parted and I stepped right up to the register. “One nachos, please, the kind with both cheese and salsa.”

“That’s a deluxe nachos,” the Goddess in a Green Visor behind the counter informed me as she filled the reservoir with the sweet fake orangey manna from the gods of processed cheese food.

She even gave me a swipe of cheese across the top of the chips.

Yes. Deluxe. My destiny.

I paid the tab and turned away, comforted by the crispy cheesy salsa-y treat.

I vowed to eat every morsel, my spoils in the victory over the thronging masses that night at AT&T Park.

I am a survivor. I am stronger than my fears.

I grew up a little that day.







Image from The Fun Ones.