I’ve been a subscriber to the San Francisco Chronicle for almost 13 years, the entire time I’ve lived in the city. I started that subscription because I was used to living in a household where newspapers were a daily staple, and because I wanted to support local journalism. I also felt that major cities should have newspapers and I should thus support the city paper.
And now I’m ending my subscription.
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The rhythm of the drive over the bridge was different. The tempo was similar to that of any slow day, but torrential rain an hour earlier had added a new beat.
Now each segment of the bridge imposed its full three dimensions on those crossing: road hiding the bay below and ceiling hiding the sky above, struts and emptiness and landscapes to the left and right, and curtains of water to the front and back.
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When I moved to Ireland from the US as a kid, I had never gone to a football game. I don’t really remember watching any football on television either, and was mostly aware of the sport via playing it—the two-hand touch version—on the street[1]. As a result of this, I had no defined pro football allegiance[2].
I was still attracted to the game as a spectator, and was able to see short snippets of it on Channel Four, a British television station that did a weekly hour-long highlight show covering the NFL. In the absence of regional holds on my loyalty, I gravitated towards teams for stylistic reasons. This was the Montana–Rice era, and I completely fell for the precision passing attack of the San Francisco 49ers. They’ve been my favorite football team since.
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I’ve only been away a week, but this really makes me miss San Francisco:
[On vacation, so shorter posts for the next while.]
Football is a very complicated game. I can’t think of another sport as demanding for participants on an intellectual level. Soccer, basketball, and many other team sports often involve specific philosophies or systems that players need to learn, but none involve the level of complexity of football.
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At Clay and Gough, after I crossed the street, there was something. No cars in sight, no car sounds, not even from Franklin. No people in sight. No people sounds, until a man in Lafayette Park broke the spell by speaking to his workout partner.
Until then, however, I had felt as if I were alone.
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The Giants baseball franchise technically had five World Series titles before today: 1905, 1921, 1922, 1933, and 1954. However, while the franchise retained its name and history when it moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, the truth is that San Francisco has never had a World Series title, as it didn’t have a team before 1958, and since then the team’s history has been one of frustration, especially in 2002, when it looked like the drought was finally over against the Angels in Game Six. No titles.
Until tonight.
Tonight, Tim Lincecum pitched eight innings of one-run, three-hit ball, and the Giants once again got to Cliff Lee, hanging three runs on him off a Renteria home run in the seventh, and Brian Wilson closed out the ninth to bring this city its first ever baseball championship.
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The temperature in San Francisco hit 101° Fahrenheit today, the hottest it’s been since May 2001. I’m not comfortable at such high temperatures, and was pretty sluggish all day.
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I like this shot despite the various crooked lines.
My brother is organizing what will hopefully become a regular web-centric Python meeting. The first meeting is planned for 18:00 Tue 23 Jun 2009 at the SF Public Library. I think a couple of speakers are lined up already, although I don’t have details on the talks. I’ll be there, and if you’re a Python developer with web interests, or a web developer into or curious about Python, you should attend too!
On Saturday Seth and his mother and I did some sightseeing. We’ve been having absolutely gorgeous weather recently, and we started off at Lafayette Park.
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This isn’t about something that happened to me, just something I happened to witness. It centered on a BMW driver, but contrary to stereotype, he wasn’t at fault in any of it. It wasn’t too serious, either, but struck me as quite ridiculous.
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Even though I don’t live in Manhattan, I’m still disturbed by this graph:
I love San Francisco and have no desire to leave; moreover, if I did leave, New York City would be one of the places I’d consider going to! I’ve been a city person my entire life, and somehow even the difference betwewen Berkeley and San Francisco is something I feel on an emotional level. Worse, I’m picky about cities, and moving to Houston isn’t looking too likely right now.
I’d love to see Dublin (probably quite high) and Berlin (possibly a lot lower) on this graph, but I’m not sure where I could find that data.
The graph is from page 12 of “Reviving the City of Aspiration”, a report by Center for an Urban Future, and I found it via this post on the Queens Crap blog.
I’m rather fond of this photo I took earlier tonight. But I’ll stay silent for the moment on where I took it.
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I voted today, although I have to admit that I did it without much enthusiasm. The major races don’t interest me that much, because it seems such a foregone conclusion that one of the front-runners will win, and I don’t support any of the front-runners. Indeed, Hillary Clinton took California, despite what seemed like a late push for Obama. Somehow I don’t see her (or Obama) representing my views too well…
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I was on the top floor of the Chevron Building at 575 Market today, and took some photos.
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This is one of the most insane local government ideas I’ve ever seen: San Francisco’s Planning Commissioners are considering ordering North Beach pizzerias to close at 02:00—to combat drunkenness.
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This is what my neighborhood looked like last Tuesday morning:
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San Francisco held city elections on Tuesday. The important issues were the competing Propositions A and H, concerning public transport and parking. There was also a mayoral election, although its result was a foregone conclusion.
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The Red Door closed last weekend. I was there for the (sniff!) last time on Saturday, and had typically excellent food. Including the legendary French Toast, which was fantastic. But that’s it, no more Red Door.
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I came out of it almost without injury and am fine, but yesterday I had my first collision with a car while riding my bike in San Francisco—a span of more than seven years of near-daily cycling.
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This is all anecdotal, and hence statistically useless, but I’ve noticed far more bad driving correlated with cellphone use recently. Some of it was in Dublin, where I think cellphone use is still higher per capita, but I’ve seen a lot of it around San Francisco also. I think every case of notably bad driving that I’ve encountered in the last month turned out to involve a driver using a cellphone.
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