Tour d'Espresso ride, April 19, 2009

This past Sunday, James and I, along with about 20 fellow bike riders, braved the 90-degree heat wave, notoriously pot-holed San Francisco streets, and of course the Cesar Chavez St. "Hairball" in search of the finest cuppas our fair city has to offer. An overwhelming craving for pupusas at Balompie had us veering off after the Coffee Bar, but it was a jittery, jaggedly, great time.

Big thanks for Frank Chan, our photo-taking, espresso sipping guide, and of course to the awesome SF Bicycle Coalition for leading and organizing the tour! The interactive "Map" provided by our friends at Flickr lets you re-enact our adventure: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekstinkbreath/sets/72157616987027189/map/

Enjoy these documents our our little group's adventure! P.S. That's my beautiful bike in the foreground of the first slide you see- you can see James and I in the background!

I think this picture says it all.

Photo of "Adios Douchebag" wheatpaste poster courtesy Peter Samis.

Mushroom Hunt!

Beginning around September to October of each year, a wonderful incubation takes place in the soil. Seemingly overnight, the plentiful fog and the rain bring forth a kaleidoscopic display of sometimes edible, sometimes poisonous, but always otherworldly and wondrous fungi. Of course mushrooms and fungi are always present in our world, but in the fall and winter to early spring they tend to reveal themselves to us more readily. Since I began hunting for them about a decade ago, I've never lost my wonder at these strange and beautiful life forms.

For the past few years, I've made a point of going on a few solo mushroom forays around Christmas time-- usually to Butano State Park or to Point Reyes National Seashore -- my favorite spot on earth (sorry folks, that's as specific as I'll get!). I find it's a great way to remind myself of the simple pleasures in life, even amidst all the bluster and mayhem of the holidays. Here are some pictures of my latest Christmas foray. Enjoy!

James and Stephanie's Berlin Blitz, June 23-30, 2007

Stephanie's Milanese Madness, June 18-23, 2007

Hovering

Coasting at 15,000 ft on my first descent into the Europe, I was suddenly struck by the strangeness of the tapestry below. I peered down at the expanse spread out before me, pressing my forehead against the glass, while I struggled to pinpoint what it was that made this "new" landscape so different from what I had seen dozens of times before in my domestic flights.



Quietly it came to me-- the reason rested "squarely" in geometry. Squares and right angles, that's what you get when you look down at the landscape of the American countryside. Small farms on ordered parcels of land, laid in neat grids of gingham. And now, wonderfully, something new hovered below. The German countryside seemed chopped, disordered, an intricate weaving of tiny parcels with rounded edges. In particular, my eyes traced the boundaries of one enormous handful of land, which was suddenly bisected by a tiny sliver of smaller parcels crammed into a jagged row. Unlike the large quilt of squares and rectangles I had become accustomed to in the States, whose boundaries represented the agreed-upon terms of real estate transactions, the little plots below me seemed somehow weathered. I couldn't help but think of river stones, or crackers that had been nibbled at the edges.

Chalk it up to the romantic notions of a girl from the "New World" who had read one too many history books and an Anthro degree. I couldn't help but to interpret the disordered landscape as one intricate story, which was itself made up of countless subplots and storylines. In my mind, the shape of each individual parcel existed as an artifact of long-forgotten circumstances-- battles, family feuds, fortunes made and fortunes lost, each event leaving its trace on each parcel of land. With the luxury of many centuries to develop, the landscape seemed to have morphed into one massive German fairy tale.

I landed at Berlin (Tegel) Airport within the next hour, but wasn't to arrive in Berlin quite yet...First I jumped on an Alitalia flight to Milan, to see my dear friend Camilla, and her Belgian roommate Nele. More to come...

Somehow I think Marcel would have approved....

Tuesday, January 24, 2006 (AP)

Attacker of Duchamp's Urinal Sentenced

PARIS, France (AP) -- A court has convicted a 77-year-old French man for attacking artist Marcel Duchamp's famed porcelain urinal with a hammer, rejecting the defendant's contention that he had increased the value of the art work by making it an "original." The court gave Pierre Pinoncelli a three-month suspended prison sentence Tuesday and ordered him to pay a $245,490 fine. Pinoncelli also was ordered to pay $17,616 to repair "Fountain," a work worth millions of dollars that was chipped in the Jan. 4 hammer attack at the Pompidou Center. The work was part of an exhibit of the early 20th century's avant-garde Dada movement. The Pompidou Center had sought more than $523,930 for the damage. Pinoncelli-- who announced that he plans to appeal the decision-- told reporters that what he had done was not vandalism but a "wink" at Dadaism that had Duchamp's blessing. "I told him in 1967 that I would do something," Pinoncelli said. "I added to its value," he said, assuring that Duchamp would "have had a good laugh." Duchamp, who died in 1968, emphasized the creative process, and a role for the spectator. The work has an estimated value of $3.4 million, said Marie Delion, a lawyer for the Pompidou Center. The original was lost but in 1964 Duchamp created eight other versions of the work. After buying his ticket to the exhibit on Jan. 4, Pinoncelli attacked "Fountain" with a hammer before writing "Dada" on the sculpture. Pinoncelli, a former salesman who calls himself a participant in the creative process as conceived by Duchamp, said that his hammer attack was an artistic endeavor. During questioning, he had told police his attack was a work of performance art and said then it might have pleased the artists of Dada. The January urinal attack was not the first for Pinoncelli. He urinated on the piece during a 1993 exhibition in Nimes in southern France. "The day that you understand that what belongs to someone else does not belong to you, things will go better between yourself and society," the court said after handing down the sentence. Pinoncelli's actions are not limited to the Dada movement or works of art.He cut off his own finger as an expression of solidarity with Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by leftist guerrillas since 2002. Duchamp's idea to transform a urinal into a work of art first appeared in1917 when he tried to display the piece at a New York show using a pseudonym, R. Mutt. It was refused. A 2004 poll of 500 arts figures ranked "Fountain" as the most influential work of modern art, ahead of Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,"Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's depiction of war's devastation.

Me...on BBC?

Last week Geoff e-mailed me a link to a segment that aired on Go Digital, "the weekly BBC World Service programme that looks at how technology is changing our lives." Host Gareth Mitchell reported on podcasting, a new media hybrid of "broadcasting" and .mp3 technology (hence the "iPod" reference) that some believe will revolutionize the way audio information is created and distributed. This has yet to be proven, but it's fun anyhow.

Nerd that I am, I wrote Gareth to comment on the show, and included a shamelessly self-promotional plug for my own podcast project. Amazingly, Gareth actually followed the link, listened to the podcast, and asked if he could air my write-in and a clip!

Wow. This is the most "press" I've recieved since winning that Hemingway Days short story competition a decade ago!

Well, Gareth works quick, and the show aired this morning. You can download and/or listen to it here. The whole episode is great, but if you don't have time you can move the controller to the 14:00 spot, which is where I make my guest appearance. That's a little past halfway, for those of you who don't have a timecode bar.

Unfortunately, the clip I sent to Gareth does not have the musical backing, which I feel really enhances the speech recordings. I thought Four Tet and Kid Loco would understand-- Gareth's legal advisors didn't.

P.S. Don't miss the recently posted tunes by Óskar Arnórsson's legends of Icelandic hip-hop, "The Sweaty Janitors". As James so astutely put it this morning-- these songs are "F A N - F U C K I N G - T A S T IC!"