Mot's blog

Weekend Check in

( an overdue blog post that compensates in length and blah blah...)






















I had received an invitation to a BBQ at NIMBY in Oakland for Sunday (more on that in a moment..) , so it seemed a perfect excuse to spend the weekend with my friend Lynn in San Francisco. I ended up taking an evening flight on Thursday with Lynn "collecting" me at her local BART station around 12:00am and putting me to bed for the night.
Friday morning we set off to see non tourist parts of San Francisco Lynn wanted to show me. Aside from the BBQ - I had no specific agenda for the weekend - but I did mention "Food Trucks" and Lynn knows that Junk Shopping always makes me happy.

We set off Friday morning for Crepes and walking some very very neat neighborhoods of Glen Park while we caught up on life. A nice sunny day ( yet not warm....) while Mr Eric reported that it was 85(?) degrees back home. We ended up heading for "16th avenue Steps Project"




































An incredible art installation ( and a bit tiring..) From there - Lynn took me to the Rain Forest Exhibit with the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. An awesome living exhibit of rain forest habitat and its inhabitants. Highly recommended. We wandered from there to the Haight Ashbury neighborhood to grab some late lunch. Lynn and I parted ways as she headed to a Roller Disco Bachelorette party. From there and I walked myself over to the Castro neighborhood. I did not end up poking around much - my jet lag was catching up - so I grabbed a MUNI train back to Lynn's place and crashed for the evening.



Saturday morning - Lynn and I headed off on bike to the Framers market near(?) her apartment. I had some reservations about biking. It is Lynn's primary mode of transport in the city and enabled her to traverse the city fairly nimbly..but I am from the "strolling" old school of biking. The whole move-the-pedals-and-watch-the-scenery skool. ( insert bird song here) The idea of the Crank-the-bike-and compete-with-city-traffic mode ( insert heavy metal music here) I am not skilled in. It requires a mental trigonometry I find stressful. Did I mention I have not been on a bike in a year?? Lynn did a good job getting me safely through the city. After we left the farmers market - we headed to Lynns office space in an old warehouse in Bayview. A GREAT space for her freelance work and a neat facility.

Afterwards we headed to a House-parts-recycling place "Building Resources" to look for any interesting project starters. It was there that I told Lynn of my workshop FULL of interesting-yet-not-started project starters. The Room of Failure I like to call it. It going to get me on one of those Hording shows on TV soon I am sure.... We headed on bike all the way down to Valencia street to do some shopping after we tracked down some Food Trucks. These were on my ToSee list. Between numerious online articles, Friends blog posts and folks on Face book gushing... I wanted to experience Food Truck. So we found a bunch on Valencia street and we skipped the Filipino and headed right for the GARLIC NOODLES. yum yum.


From there - we started hitting up the retro antique stores. One place - Stuff - had lots of good stuff and I was trying very hard to stick to the script and not add to The Room of Failure. It helped that the store "does not ship" - bit I did find a great lamp for our house that Lynn is now going to act as shipper for me.

We then met up with Lynns boyfriend and headed out for Soul Food for dinner. After all the red meat - I called it a night.

Sunday - I returned to Valencia street to look at more stores and search for lost sunglasses. NO luck finding them but I got a chance to stroll over by Dolores Park and take pics of some great houses that...I would find acceptable to buy...... :O)


Lynn, Kenneth and I headed over to Oakland to tour Crucible. An amazing facility that is the number one reason I would contemplate a move to the Bay Area. Lynn's friend Steve gave us a great tour and Lynn kept telling me that if I lived in SF - I could make this place my second home. So Tempting!! Pics of the Crucible facilities...







We then headed over to NIMBY for a BBQ thrown for the fundraisers. NIMBY is another cooperative art facility. Very different from Education focused Crucible. Crucible - much more of an organized education facility and NIMBY - a more punk-based performance space.


The party was an interesting lesson in itself. I have noted the vibe before at Burning Man events. Whereas a group of folks advertize an event to the public or wider circle - but then remain in the smaller private circle mode. It ends up making you feel like you are crashing or intruding. No one in the original circle makes a formal effort to engage anyone outside the original group. I think it is fair to expect that if you advertize to a wider group than your own - that you sign up to engage the newcomers you invited. Otherwise everyone is just gravitates to talking to their friends and you are just standing around. My notion probably stems from previous experience with COAP in Rochester where new folks were always stopping in and we thought it was important to take the effort to make the people you invited actually feel welcome. I was not put out by the vibe at the party... I was happy to hang out with Lynn and Kenneth. But the party did crystalize a nagging impression from various Burning Man events. I think the new insight will be helpful in the future.

After a stop at another house parts place - Lynn and Kenneth drove me back to pick up my stuff, exchange farewells and it was off to the airport for the RedEye. A great weekend.