Tag: san francisco

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california music san francisco

In a cloud

In A Cloud - New Sounds From San Francisco

Oh wow, our pal Greg Gard­ner put togeth­er a real­ly nice col­lec­tion of new music from local bands. It's called In A Cloud, which describes the recent win­ter weath­er and the album itself is a time cap­sule of San Fran­cis­co sounds in 2009-10. My favorite song is a sweet lit­tle thing called "Baby Held" by the elu­sive and pseu­do­ny­mous Jacques But­ters; you can lis­ten to it below. There's plen­ty more on the album — a love­ly track by Son­ny & the Sun­sets, a good one from the Sand­witch­es, a keep­er from Kel­ley Stoltz. You can buy it direct­ly from Greg's label, Secret Sev­en Records. Yay.

Categories
flickr photo san francisco

Transbay bird swirl

Transbay terminal San Francisco birds

Perched among the tall build­ings in down­town San Fran­cis­co, my office can feel like a nest in a tall tree. Yes­ter­day evening, the birds that live atop the Trans­bay ter­mi­nal swirled up to, and around, the win­dows of our con­fer­ence room, and the aerie-like feel­ing was stronger than ever. One bird even land­ed, briefly, on the ledge of the win­dow. I have no idea what kind of birds they are, what brought them to us, or what they hope to achieve. But I am in awe of them.

Categories
flickr photo politics

Not a bad idea

Renaming Bush Street - San Francisco - Pranksters after the inauguration

Okay, one last polit­i­cal thing. In the wee hours before yesterday's inau­gu­ra­tion, a genius prankster named Alex Zec­ca report­ed­ly cov­ered every "Bush" street sign from down­town to the Mari­na with a stick­er that said "Oba­ma." I heard about it when I got into work, but missed the chance to see it for myself. Luck­i­ly, Vanes­sa Nay­lon saw it hap­pen. Awesome.

Categories
politics san francisco

Elections / Photos from the campaign trail

Bake sale for Barack ObamaPho­to: Joshua Lott

Last June, Mara orga­nized a bake sale to raise mon­ey for Barack Oba­ma. It was a typ­i­cal­ly chilly sum­mer day in San Fran­cis­co, but we made a fist­ful of cash, AND we got our pic­ture tak­en by a passer­by who hap­pened to be a pro­fes­sion­al pho­to­jour­nal­ist. His name is Joshua Lott, and he post­ed it on a blog called The Stump­ing Grounds, which fea­tures one pho­to per day from one of the many pho­to­jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the cam­paign. Ours was post­ed on June 24th.

Barack Obama strikes the Heisman poseI had to include this; it's the cur­rent pho­to, and it's awe­some. It was tak­en by Scout Tufankjian, and her site is well worth a look. She's post­ed a series on the Secret Ser­vice which is both reveal­ing and kind of scary.


Categories
food urban

Urban farming / My robot bees are pregnant

[Dan­ger: I could only get the video to play in IE. Not sure if it's my par­tic­u­lar array of Fire­fox add-ons that are block­ing its mojo, or what.]So every few weeks I sift through the most­ly asi­nine archives of SFist, and today, against all odds, I found some­thing inter­est­ing: A llit­tle blurb about urban bee­keep­ing in San Fran­cis­co with a link to a Cur­rentTV short. The direc­tor pro­files this guy Jon Ral­ston, some­one I vague­ly recall from my time in the bee club. He's younger (in bee­keep­ing age, any­way) and takes a very sim­i­lar approach to bee­keep­ing that I did: Just get a hive, put it in your back­yard, let the bees do what they do until some­one com­plains. Worked for me until my land­lord stum­bled upon it dur­ing a very active day (that turned into a swarm), and became ter­ri­fied. I also iden­ti­fy with Jon's rea­sons for get­ting into bee­keep­ing in the first place — feel­ing clos­er to the out­doors, and hav­ing a source of cheap gifts. He seems like an inter­est­ing guy, and he's got a fun­ny blog, too: My robot is preg­nant.

Categories
food reviews san francisco

I live inside your television

Doug LeMoine - Check Please - Looking at the cameraYou may rec­og­nize me from some­where, some­where like YOUR TIVO.


Pret­ty much the only thing the direc­tor told me: "Don't look at the cam­era." Dang. More on my explo­sion onto the local pub­lic tele­vi­sion restau­rant-review­ing stage some­time soon; until then you can check out my episode of the Check Please Bay Area here.

Categories
flickr visual

Photos / Bridge and Bay panoramas

Flickr photo

The weath­er has been get­ting nicer, so I've been jump­ing at any chance to ride my bike. Last Thurs­day morn­ing, I rode across the Gold­en Gate Bridge and up into the Marin Head­lands as the sun was com­ing up, and I stopped to take some pho­tos as it was peek­ing above the hori­zon. When I was going through the results, I real­ized that the indi­vid­ual pic­tures didn't real­ly do jus­tice to the moment, so I poked around the Inter­net look­ing for some­thing bet­ter than Photoshop's stitch­ing util­i­ty. Autos­titch to the res­cue! It's sim­ple, straight­for­ward, and it instan­ta­neous­ly pro­duces panora­mas with­out dis­cernible seams even with just a few pictures.

Flickr photo

(I was so intrigued by the above results that I decid­ed to try it with cell­phone pic­tures). Last Sat­ur­day, we had a pic­nic at Kir­by Cove, a lit­tle val­ley on the Marin side of the bridge. It was fog­gy and cold for the first hour or so, but then it start­ed to burn off and I took some pho­tos with my lit­tle cell phone cam­era. Once again, Autostich worked mag­ic on it. Here's to technology!