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Down The Rabbit Hole

When I’m not otherwise occupied at work, I’ve found that an excellent way to make time pass in the blink of an eye is to get on Google Maps/Street View.

I spotted this photo over on Shorpy the other day. It was labeled, “Card Alley, San Francisco, February 1936.” I’d never heard of Card Alley, so I figured it was either one of the multitude of half-block long streets that dot downtown, or it was no longer in existence.

The former proved to be the case, because I hopped on Google Maps and found it almost immediately, Surprisingly it still looks very similar.

Once in San Francisco, however, I started exploring. First it was all the places I’d lived. (It looks like many of the buildings had changed ownership because they were actually being kept up now.) From there I started visiting all my old haunts, my workplaces (the small architectural office where I worked 8 years is now a vacant lot adjacent to a condo complex), my daily commute (I actually walked that much?!?). And from there I moved out of the city proper to visit a few of my other favorite places: the Marin Headlands, Sausilito, and then points further afield.

I found myself awash in a curious mix of emotions, a lot of which I can’t even find words for. Obviously there was sadness, a sense of loss tinged with regret at having never done all the things I’d wanted to do (because there was always next week, next month, next year)…but there was also joy and that feeling of “home” I always experienced when I was there. I’ve always said San Francisco was a very jealous mistress, but one that would welcome you back in a heartbeat with open arms should you stray and then return.

I think that’s one of the reasons I haven’t gone back since my departure in 2002. I fear that Siren will grip me and demand my return to her bosom as it did the last time I left. (Granted, that was only an absence of about six months, not fifteen years, so my fears may be groundless.)

And—perhaps most fortunately for me to resist that siren song—as I noted even while living there in my 20s and 30s, is that it remains a city of and for the young…and most recently, a city of the insanely wealthy young, a demographic that I decidedly do not fall into. I remember balking at having to pay $1300 a month for a one bedroom apartment with off-street garage parking and a view of downtown on Twin Peaks in 2002. Nowadays, $1300 might get you a mother-in-law studio apartment in the back of a garage in the Outer Sunset.—if you’re lucky.

But it was still a fun little virtual visit and I plan on returning for further exploration the next time I’m sitting at work with nothing to do and waiting for the day to end.

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I Know It’s Fake…

…because every other picture I’ve seen of Mr. Hardwick shirtless indicates he’s either shaved to within an inch of his life or naturally smooth as a baby’s hind end. But it’s still nice to fantasize.

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Some Days I Do Miss Denver

I knew it was hot the minute I walked out of work yesterday afternoon. The car thermometer registered 119 for most of the commute, topping out at 121 as I turned onto our street. The temperature probe on this thermometer had been in the shade all day, so that was the actual air temperature.

On days like this, -8℉ and 10″ of snow in the middle of May doesn’t sound so bad. But then I think about the other aspects of life that caused us to flee Denver and realize it’s just the heat (and a bit of nostalgia) talking to me.

I fear these temps are becoming the new normal and their onset and duration will only get earlier and last longer. (But according to Glorious Leader and his minions, global warming is just a myth perpetrated by Liberals and the Chinese to sell more us air conditioners and take away our guns, force us to have abortions and get gay married…or something.)

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This…

This is where the true power of our government comes from. Not from the infantile tweets of a demented, narcissistic old man who fancies he’s been made God Emperor.

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Pretty Much!

I can’t wait to go home from sitting at my office job at a computer just to do the same thing—except without pants on.

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Happy 4th!

Today is July 4, 2017. This is the day we Americans celebrate our birthday. We are not an empire, we are a country, and we are still young, and still suffering through our growing pains. We are still evolving. Things change. Even though we have an aging Nero wannabe in the White House, rest assured that this to will pass.” ~ Dave, Riding On

All I would add to Dave’s quote is to remind us that our country, our people—our ideals—are stronger than any one leader and have survived much worse than the willfully ignorant, narcissistic orangutan currently occupying the Oval Office. “This too shall pass.” Like a kidney stone, no doubt, but it will pass and the country will be stronger because of it.

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This is EPIC

Junkie Running Dry

‌by Kevin D. Williamson
June 30, 2017 2:34 PM

Some people simply cannot handle the fact that Donald Trump was elected president.

One of those people is Donald Trump.

Trump has shown himself intellectually and emotionally incapable of making the transition from minor entertainment figure to major political figure. He is in the strange position of being a B-list celebrity who is also the most famous man in the world. His recent Twitter attack on Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe exemplifies that as much as it does the president’s other by-now-familiar pathologies, notably his strange psychological need to verbally abuse women in physical terms.

Trump may have his problems with women, but it is his unrequited love of the media that is undoing him.

“I always tell the president, ‘You don’t need them,’” says Sean Hannity, the self-abasing monkey-butler of the Trump regime. The president, Hannity says, can reach more Americans via Twitter than he could through the conventional media. That isn’t true, of course: Only about one in five Americans uses Twitter. Hannity might be forgiven for not knowing this, a consequence of his much more general habit of not knowing things. But he actually does know the president. How could he possibly believe that this man—this man—does not need them?
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He needs them the way a junkie needs his junk.

Donald Trump cares more about how he is perceived in the media than he cares about anything else in the world, including money. Trump is a true discipline of Bishop Berkeley, professing the creed of the social-media age: Esse eat percipi— “To be is to be seen.” Trump is incapable of enjoying anything—money, success, sex—without being perceived enjoying it.

Consider: Even though he has in fact been on the cover of Time magazine, it was discovered this week that he had had his people produce some fake Time magazine covers lauding the success of his television show, The Apprentice. He had these fake Time covers displayed at Trump properties around the world. Why? Because Trump, for all his professed contempt for the media, believes that success is not success until it is certified by Time magazine or (avert thine eyes, Hannity!) the New York Times.

Donald Trump is a man who invented an imaginary friend, John Barron, to call up members of the New York press and lie to them about his business success and his sex life. (He claimed, among other things, to be dating Carla Bruni.) A man who “does not need” the media does not do that.

Trump wrote of the third lady that he chose her because he wanted to be able to enter a room with her and make other men envious—to see “grown men weep”—a very strange admission that his satisfaction in his marriage rests neither with himself nor with his wife but with third parties who might ogle her. (His cuckoldry-obsessed fans must surely have noted this.) But envious of what? Asked during a public appearance whether she’d have married Trump if he weren’t rich, she answered: “If I weren’t beautiful, do you think he’d be with me?” There is a certain clarity in that, one of a very familiar sort.

As president and president-elect, Trump spent a great deal of time tweeting about his ratings as host of The Apprentice and those of his successor, about the ratings of various news programs covering him, about the viewerships and readerships of various media outlets, generally theorizing that those critical of him must by moral necessity be in decline. On the other hand, he plainly does not know that there are tax provisions in the health-care bill Republicans are trying to drag out of Congress: He was perplexed when they came up at a White House meeting with Republican senators, saying that he was planning on taking on tax reform at a later date, oblivious to the content of the bill he purports to be negotiating. He doesn’t understand what’s going on between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but has taken to Twitter to argue—surprise—that, whatever it is, it’s all about him.

What do you think he reads first in the morning: His national-security briefing or Page Six?

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