Mystery Solved!

When I woke up two blocks from my house, the guy next to me on the bus remarked, “You got a good nap!” I never know how to respond to these ‘compliments’ from my bus-mates other than a tentative “Thank you?” as I wipe off my drool and start digging for my keys.

I got off at the next stop and within half a block I heard his voice behind me, “Hey, do you live around here?” “I do.” “Have you tried that new cafe on Turk?” New. Cafe. New. Coffee. NEW COFFEE! That’s it! The note on my hand was a reminder to try the new cafe near my apartment! It was like a heavenly chorus sang.

I immediately raced home for my camera and my Calvin & Hobbes and headed over. And the cafe—Apollo Coffee—was lovely and charming. Plus the owner gave me cheese, which is easily the quickest way to my heart. Immediately the other lounging locals struck up a conversation—one was a professional photographer who specializes in PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE who I am going to stalk until he takes me on as an apprentice, and another fellow admin assistant who is going to email me a comic strip today that promises to change the way I wile away my work hours. I mean, my lunch hours.

New Coffee at Turk and Divis. DO IT.

DiNana's Done It Again

Once again Diana's comment is better than the actual posting it was attached to:

"oh and p.s. Elek has started trying to lean in for the open mouth kiss again. I then back up and show him how you pucker up and you need the "mwah" sound that a CLOSED mouth brings. Then he starts clicking his tongue like an African, and we're back at square one."

"New Coffee."

I have to write things on the back of my hand if I want to remember them. No other location works as well, try as I might to create new habits. Usually my notes are things like "rent check" or "send love letter to Katy" or "make onesy, damnit," but this time my reminder says "new coffee."

I don't know when I wrote this. I don't know what it means. It feels like somebody else wrote it there and now I'm stuck looking at it all day, like, "WHO DID THAT?? WHAT'S GOING ON?? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE??"

If anybody can translate this for me, please let me know. In the meantime, it's time for my fifth cup of joe.

Vesuvio's, Telegraph, and the House on the Hill

You may recall my pictures of City Lights and Japantown taken on Saturday. Or maybe not and I'm an egomaniac. At any rate, the following funtimes happened as I was photographing City Lights: I saw an old local I used to drink with at Vesuvio's five years ago, when it was My Local Bar. I used to go there frequently with my fellow coffee-shop slave Rosie, who I now see about twice a year at a bbq. Zoom forward five years to Saturday, when I'm taking pictures of Vesuvio's for another photo book I'm working on (a top secret one that MAY become Christmas gifts as long as Deee and Bri-tri keep the secret, which may be easily done as long as you don't give them beers and try to be sneaky with questions like "So what's Sharona's next photo book about?")

At any rate, as I'm shooting the photos, there's a familiar face from the old days! A guy who has worked at City Lights for upwards of two decades and has been warming a stool at Vesuvio's just as long. It was like being reunited with an old friend you missed but didn't know you missed until you saw them again. He let me photograph him, which I will post here as soon as my internet connection at home comes back to life. I'm on the verge of trying animal sacrifice if it will make the Free Wireless Gods happy.

And so I ended up having a beer (or two) at Vesuvio's again, just like old times. Deee and Brian came down from their Home on the Hill nearby and joined in the festivities, where Deee and I ended up scrawling sketches on napkins of the ABC book and Brian ended up in a discussion with the Bartender and the Locals about Brian Wilson and some Dennis guy, all of them getting fired up talking about albums and releases and rock documentaries. It was a fabulous meeting of worlds and times, and one more reminder of why I love San Francisco.

The following pictures of Deee and Brian were taken at the House on the Hill. Please note the fabulous wallpaper that Deee and I put up about a year ago, ALL BY OURSELVES. Deee knew how to do it like a pro because she had a Home Depot How-To book.



This is Brian the bass-playing-lawyer-rock-critic who currently has a bartender at Vesuvio's in love with him:

U is for Umbrella on a Rainy Day

PeyPey, you will DEFINITELY want to make sure that you have an umbrella when you come visit San Francisco. It rains a lot here, but all you have to do to survive is carry an umbrella, wear brightly-colored galoshes, and never leave the house.

J is for Japantown and a Pagoda at Night

PeyPey, this is Japantown. Japantown is like Chinatown, except it doesn’t smell bad and it’s full of Koreans. Japantown is very close to where I live and there is a wonderful Japanese bookstore and paperstore where I can find fun stickers and pretty stationery. The food in Japantown is also yummy—there are Korean tofu houses and cheap sushi places and one of the best Japanese grocery stores in San Francisco. I will take you when you come. You won’t be able to read a word on any of the packaging, but the guessing game is part of the fun. We will also play a game called “Find the Largest Bag of Rice,” and then another game called “Why You Don’t Buy the Largest Bag of Rice When You Have to Walk a Mile Home.”

C is for City Lights, a Book-Lover's Friend

Peypey, City Lights Bookstore is a very important place to your Auntie Roni because when she first moved to San Francisco, she worked in a coffee shop and was too poor to buy books. So when she wanted to read a new book, she would come to City Lights after work. She would pick out the book she wanted to read and then sit on a stool reading it for hours until she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. She would do this every day until the book was done and then she would pick out a new one. Auntie liked City Lights Booksellers a lot because of its history. City Lights is famous for publishing books in the 1950’s that no other publishers would touch because they thought the books were scandalous. Scandalous means 'good.' If it was not for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, we would not have Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems. Someday when you are much, much bigger, Auntie will read you this poem if you promise not to tell your great-gramma and -grampa.

On books, brunch, and rainy Sundays

After our monthly brunch today, April and Tori and I were having obvious separation anxiety. We kept lingering on the sidewalk, ignoring the gentle rain, conversation still going full throttle with no evidence of waning. April has a new boyfriend, and Tori and I were both eagerly injecting our two cents' worth: "Wait to introduce him to your family!" "But don't wait TOO long or it'll become too big!" "Yeah! And if you can, introduce him to your sister first so he knows someone before the parental introduction!"

Deciding to prolong our time together with a rainy day visit to Green Apple, we soon found ourselves perusing shelves, bringing books to each other ("You HAVE to read this! If you do nothing else in this life, READ THIS!") and talking about how there will never be enough time for everything on our literary to-do list ("I just don't read enough!" Tori sighs, three books gripped in hand).

Then there are those moments of quiet, when we are each absorbed, consumed by shelf after shelf of used book glory. I found myself picking up two random books, flipping to passages, and immediately re-shelving them after reading the following:

Book 1: "His religion was the sea."

Book 2: One character is described as hapless seconds before saying, "It's fucking cold out here." I don't think hapless characters should use the f-bomb. I JUST DON'T.

However, I did walk away with a handful of treasures that I cannot WAIT to begin. The excitement reminds me of how I felt as a child coming home from the library with a full bag, not knowing where to start and wanting to read all of them at once RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW.

Now if you'll excuse, it's time to draw a bath and get crackin'. It's a perfect rainy Sunday...

On Beauty

“Beauty was something that was new to you. That was why tourists and children could see it better than other people, and it was the poet’s job to keep seeing it the way the children and tourists did.”

–Nell Freudenberger, The Tutor

This is why I’m not going to wear pants anymore. This way when I do, it’s new and everyone’s impressed. Lower the bar for beauty, that’s my motto. Don’t let your audience get used to ANYTHING.

Misguided Management

"Whatever you do, do NOT cheer up your coworker whose dad is in the hospital. Any affection, any informality, is inappropriate. So temporarily no nicknames, no fun. He's here to be depressed. And YES, he's showing up everyday to be distracted and keep busy, but we're here to MAKE HIM FEEL WEIRD BY TREATING HIM DIFFERENTLY."

Can I Use Your Shower?

So...yeah...our building's hot water heater is broken. Turns out it's been broken since Monday, but I won't tell you why I didn't notice until today, other than to say that MAYbe I've overslept my shower. A couple times. Until this morning, when I woke up and my hair still held the shape of my pillow. I dragged by freezing arse into the bathroom, climbed squinting and shivering into the shower, and then lost one of my nine lives when the water NEVER WARMED UP. Please keep in mind that I won't even use our toilet because our apartment is so cold my rear would freeze to its seat. I save up and sprint to work.

I didn't actually realize it was broken until I called the landlord from work to complain about the size of the heater. That's when I found out OH! It's not that it's too SMALL for our building. It's that it doesn't even WORK. This blew out my evening's plans for a steamy, aromatic bath and has left me on frequent phone calls with the plumber who claims to have fixed it, while an infant squalls in his background.

On the bright side, we're getting a new heater altogether as a result of the current ineffective duct-tape job in place. On Monday. So either I'm not showering until then (not unheard of), or I'm coming to your house. Probably the latter, as nothing will make me want to wash more than the fact that I cannot.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go boil some water on the stove for a sponge bath, right before chopping the wood, milking the cow, and heating a pan to warm the bedclothes.

My Three Favorite Things. IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

Is it bad that everything in life that pleases me can be wrapped into one burrito? And yes. I put a burrito in our copy machine and scanned it. And nobody blinked an EYE. Apparently I've lowered the bar of sanity here. SWEET.

Graffiti I Saw Last Friday

"Every piece of bacon is unique. Like a pork snowflake."

there's a fine line between old lady and small child

I used to describe myself as an old lady: I like to take baths, go to bed early, eat soft foods. And then I realized that I'm actually more like a small child: in addition to all the aforementioned qualities, I also run on high and crash hard. Catch me at 9 a.m., and I'm high as a kite. Catch me at 9 p.m., and I'm unconscious. I fall asleep instantly in moving vehicles (much to the chagrin of the bus passengers on whom I end up drooling) and have been known to stamp my feet in frustration. I have more fun playing with glue and glitter than playing poker online, and I don't have the attention span for anything without a good song, dance, or shoot-out. I wear my heart on my sleeve, both the good and the bad. If I don't like you, you will know it. If I do like you, I will hurl affection at you with a vengeance. When I run, I sprint, when I walk, I jog. Having a mission thrills me. I like instant gratification and am prone to impulse-hobbies that I will drop when they cease to interest me. Roughly five and a half seconds later. Let's hope this blog is an exception, but who can really say the day I'll forget it exists?

I like you.

Me After Two Corn Dogs and a Glass of Sauvignon Blanc

AND YOU SHALL KNOW MY FRIENDS

Lately I have been finding myself rather flippantly applying labels to postings. Basically, I discovered the wonders of labeling, and just went BUCK WILD. This is actually how I approach most of life, but it inevitably gets a little messy, and here is no exception. I also found that I tend to tell stories about the same people over and over and over again, and I wanted a way to direct you to a collection of postings about that one person.

So here's what I did:

I removed and consolidated the more vague labels: 'pictures not of people,' 'something's in the air,' etc. All of the postings that fell under those headings could easily fit into others.

I added more specialized labels called "Why I Love My Friends: (name) Edition." (I wish there was a way blogspot could tier this bad boy as right now it's a long-ass list which sort of defeats the purpose of consolidating labels to SHORTEN my list, but whatevs, we all know how useful a wish is, thank you, Grampa, for chuckled cliches.) The idea behind the Editions (other than acting as a tool for Leslie to compare her posting number to Xandra's) is to help ME when telling a story. For example, say Deee does something hilarious at the Farmer's Market on Saturday (nigh-inevitable), and I want to post it on Monday. Now when I tell this story, I can hyperlink "Why I Love My Friends: Deee Edition," and then you will know exactly who I'm talking about without a lot of backstory! Isn't this handy? Think of them as mini-memoirs. Or as super-long character descriptions.

Hopefully this new system will work for now--if it gets too convoluted or too long or if I start becoming conscious of numbers or all sorts of other potential hazards, I will re-think, re-form, re-format. Or maybe I'll just sit around, waiting for google to create a better filing system.

The Circus Ain't for Everyone

I actually find that this illustration symbolizes the majority of my problems.

A Barry Manilow Party

This June (Friday the 13th, to be specific) heralds the arrival of a group of wild and crazy girls to Vegas to celebrate the birthday of Lea Lea. In the many emails bouncing around right now about all of the potential activities and lodgings, I received the nugget below about the Barry Manilow Aquanet Hair Party. Caroll, apparently an illustrating wunderkind, was inspired and drew the following. I really hope the party weekend is JUST LIKE THIS:

On Planning a Trip to Vegas

"I would like to point out that this is the official Barry Manilow hotel... Oh yes. You, me and Barry. That sounds like a party in an Aquanet hair can."

What is he tinkling?

"Needless to say, I had to explain to him what chones were. He's from Texas."