The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire

Taking a break from creating the future apocalypse to comment on the present apocalypse:

The Bay Area has been surreal this week. I'm far south of the fires and not directly affected, but the entire region has filled up with smoke from the flames. Every time I step outside it smells like a campfire, and we've had surreal sunrises and sunsets that make me feel like I'm on an alien planet.

This region is usually very fortunate in that we're adjacent to the ocean and typical wind patterns help circulate in clear air, avoiding the bad pollution that plagues valleys in California. But the northern winds are a curse in this case, both for the spread of the fires and the subsequent spread of smoke. The air quality is as bad here now as it is on the worst days in Beijing.

For posterity, here are a few images of what things look like here and now. (None are my own photos, each links out to the source, but they line up with my own experiences over the past few days.)

Of course, we have it far better than our neighbors in the North Bay who have lost their homes, jobs, and loved ones. I'd appreciate it if you could keep them in your thoughts.

Umbrage

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally managed to snag a copy of Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore from the library. It was well worth the wait. It’s yet another book that seems tailor-made to appeal to me, focusing as it does on the intersection of technology and literature, Google and bookstores, San Francisco and… San Francisco.

San Francisco really is a perfect setting for this story. In terms of scale, it’s small and intimate enough that you can completely buy into the coincidences and acquaintances that build up a social web in the story; I’ve had plenty of such encounters in my own time here, and that part of it certainly rings true. It’s also a city with a deep and abiding love of bookstores, with venerable stalwarts like Green Apple and City Lights and The Booksmith holding firm though the stresses that have shaken up so much of the industry. And, of course, it’s also the hub to much of the new innovations and startups in the country, with new ventures constantly popping up to solve previously-unconsidered problems.

The single thing I probably most appreciate about the Bay Area is how darn collegial people are. Folks around here tend to have an automatic default towards agreement, collaboration, cooperation. When two different ideas bounce into each other, people tend to start working towards synthesis rather than drawing up battle lines. That kind of spirit drives much of the plot of this book. I’m used to technology and literature being portrayed as in opposition to one another: discussions about how Amazon is destroying bookstores, how text messaging is destroying literacy, how ebooks are destroying books, etc. In MP24HB, though, technology is a useful aide that can enhance an already-good thing. It can help you glean more knowledge from a text, it can point you in the direction of new discoveries, it can make previously-obscure books accessible for all. Of course, as in real life there are those who dislike the new way of doing things, but the narrator is clearly on the side of the innovators.

MINI SPOILERS

Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised at how generous this book is towards genre fiction. Like a lot of readers, I first got started by reading genre books (in my case, mostly fantasy and a little sci-fi), without a lot of care for its quality. I read some great authors, but also some really awful ones, and even the great genre authors are often looked down upon by the literary establishment. I often feel like this is something I need to apologize for: “Tolkien is one of my favorite authors… oh, but I like Murakami and Pynchon, too! I’m not one of THOSE readers!” This book, though, makes a strong case for the value of such books. One that rung truest for me is how a shared love of reading can impact your real-life relationships. The narrator and Neel bonded together over The Dragon-Song Chronicles, and that bond has lasted for decades. I know from experience that one of life’s great pleasures is discovering someone who likes the thing you like, in the same way that you like it, and sharing in that joy together. It isn’t a static thing, either: Neel and Clay were driven to new heights of creativity from this shared love, weaving together their own stories as they planned pen-and-paper roleplaying games together. Again, this feels very accurate to me, and it felt great to have it captured here.

And, continuing along the fantasy roleplaying theme, I really dug how this book essentially had a class-based approach to its character development. This is explicit in the case of the Rogue/Mage/Warrior trio of Clay/Kat/Neel, but it applies to everyone. Each person has their own role and skills, and much of the fun in the book is seeing how they are deployed to solve particular problems that the "party" faces. Mat's artistry makes him a gnome illusionist, Mr. Penumbra's congenial devotion to institution makes him an ideal cleric, and so on. I like this idea of fantasy as a metaphor for real life: the excitement of an idealized fantasy role inspires the characters to step up and take extraordinary actions in their more mundane circumstances.

Some random thoughts: This book has what's probably the most upbeat, positive portrayal of Google that I've seen lately. It does a great job at capturing what's impressive and ridiculous about their culture. It isn't played strictly for laughs, but it's kind of nice to see them in a role where they're very powerful without being omnipotent.

The optimistic, collegial spirit of the book extends all the way to its villains, or more specifically, the lack of them. There is an antagonist, but even he ultimately seems more misguided and pitiful than malicious. This is ultimately the story of a group of clever people attempting to solve a puzzle, not of a clash between warring factions.

There are absolutely fantastic shouts-out to some of my favorite authors here in the sections describing the modern authors permitted onto Penumbra's shelves. Murakami, Stephenson, Gibson, House of Leaves, and more put in an appearance here. It shouldn't be surprising that I enjoyed this novel so much, since I seem to share a similar literary taste with the narrator.

END SPOILERS

One final small note on technique: there's a subtle but effective twist on the narration here that I don't recall having seen before. When Clay is talking with other characters, his reactions are usually given in prose rather than in dialogue. It often isn't immediately clear whether he's thinking or saying these words until the following paragraph where we see the other character's reaction. It lines up nicely with some of my own experiences in conversations, where I'm constantly engaged with the other speaker but might or might not be vocalizing my thoughts at any given time.

Anyways! Really fun, rewarding book here that gives faithful insight into my weird little corner of the world.

Infinity

Hi! I'm gradually working through my backlog of books and stuff from the last few months. First up: Infinite City, an incredibly creative atlas of San Francisco created by Rebecca Solnit with the help of a wide group of talented writers and artists.

I received the book as a gift from my sister almost half a year ago, and have enjoyed gradually reading through it in snatches between my other projects. The form is perfectly designed for this sort of ad-hoc reading: each section contains a lush and highly detailed map, along with an essay of less than a dozen pages. Their general approach is to combine two seemingly unrelated themes on the same map, which forces us to both view the broad diversity and contradictions within the Bay Area, and also encourages our mind to reach for connections that we otherwise might not have considered. And so, you get juxtapositions like "Butterflies and Drag Queens" or "Trees and Murders". One map that particularly intrigued me, even before I started my serial reading of the book, was a map of the Mission District (where I work and often hang out) that showed its cultural institutions alongside its gang territory. In my white professional lifestyle, I pretty much never need to worry or even really think about gang turf, but it's part of the reality that underlies the place where I spend much of my life. It's also something that, while very real, isn't part of any physical map of our city that we would see. So, it was an invigorating, fascinatingly fresh way to learn something new about an area that already felt like home.

And, really, that's the major goal of the book. The lengthy, almost baroque introduction launches off from Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities (which had been on my mind not too long ago), exploring the idea that any city actually contains an infinite number of refractions of itself: each person forms their own mental map of the city, made up from their own history and experiences there; some of our maps overlap with one another, but no two residents share the same map. The book is concerned, to a very strong degree, with the concept of our limits of knowledge: none of us can fully understand the lifetime of experiences held by another person, but we can benefit enormously from the attempt to do so. By catching glimpses of others' invisible cities, we can expand our own.

It was a fascinating book: the structure was rather breezy, but each section could delve surprisingly deeply (I have been entirely disabused of my belief the the Ohlones were pre-European natives in the Bay Area), and the prose tended to be a very deep shade of purple. The artwork is fascinating and beautiful; any one of these maps would be worthy of hanging in a home or office. Its concerns are hyper-local, but I thought that this very localism helps give it transcendent power, similar to how The Wire's inextricable link to Baltimore made it surprisingly universal. All that to say, while San Franciscans will probably feel the greatest charge from reading it, I think it holds the potential to fascinate pretty much anyone, whether you're interested in history, people, nature, or cities.

Silicon Valley Musings

You know how, when you read an article on a topic you know well, you get excited at first, and then get progressively more frustrated at the things it gets wrong or fails to address? Well, that's how I felt when reading an article in the current New Yorker magazine titled "Can Silicon Valley Embrace Politics?" (Weirdly enough, even though it's a current article, it's already gone behind a paywall. Usually the New Yorker is good about keeping them up for two weeks after an issue comes out. I don't know if this is an exception for this article, or a new policy. Anyways, you'll need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing, but you'll get the gist from the intro at the link.)

First of all, I need to make the standard disclaimers: I can only write about my own personal experience, which I'll cheerful admit may not be representative of the industry as a whole. I've worked in tech for over a decade (wow!) and in the Bay Area since 2005. I've worked from the south end (Los Gatos) to the north (San Francisco), but have exclusively worked for smaller companies with anywhere from 3 to 50 employees. I don't have first-hand experience of working for the titans like Apple, Google, or Facebook, which George Packer focuses on in his article. I do have friends at those companies, and have visited their campuses, so I have some familiarity even if I don't have much direct knowledge.

And actually, that's a great place for me to start. Packer writes that "Though tech companies promote an open and connected world, they are extremely secretive, preventing outsiders from learning the most basic facts about their internal workings." Well... I don't think that's true. Just last week, I and about two hundred other random engineers dropped by Twitter's headquarters for a series of lightning tech talks. It was held in their commons, and we could see the literal blueprints on the walls showing the next several months of construction on their new mid-Market home. The Twitter engineers talked about their testing process, the risk/reward evaluation they have to make for supporting new features, how they decide whether to open-source something like their AFNetworking modifications for iOS. And this was hardly an isolated case. I've wandered on Google's campus, walked through eBay's parking lots, sat in on Mobile Monday events hosted at dozens of the Valley's largest and smallest companies. Granted, I have the advantage of actually living here, but companies like Google are actually surprisingly open about many of their activities, such as writing blog posts detailing how they operate their data centers.

So, yeah, I was pretty surprised to read Packer describe them as "secretive." I think that Silicon Valley tech companies are far more open and collaborative than their counterparts elsewhere in the country, and would go so far as to say that it's probably the single most important factor in explaining the Valley's global dominance. The atmosphere out here is incredibly exciting and collegial: workers at various companies are constantly meeting one another socially, chatting with each other over drinks or coffee, coming up with new ideas tangentially related to their day jobs. That's what gives the Valley its energy and dynamism: the constant cross-pollination between companies as people collaborate, leave their old companies to start new ones, hire new people, and then those new hires start the cycle again.

Granted, Google isn't going to divulge details on its search algorithms (though it gives more information than you would think), and Facebook won't reveal an upcoming acquisition, but the industry out here is far more open and less secretive than what you'll find in New York City, the Massachusetts Route 128 corridor, the Research Triangle, or any of the other tech hubs in the country (or, I think, the world). (In Overland Park near Kansas City, Sprint's headquarters resemble a fortress, complete with walls and guard towers. The first job I had in that city, with a small company of fewer than 50 people, required a magnetized keycard to enter our office. In contrast, most Silicon Valley headquarters are laid out like college campuses, and it's easy to visit a friend during the day.) The tech industry as a whole doesn't strike me as especially secretive... granted, they're more secretive than the entertainment industry or academia, but much less so than defense contractors or banking.

I should backtrack here and admit that, for the most part, I agree with Packer's overall thesis: that the Valley is insufficiently politically engaged, and that the local tech boom has created a highly stratified society of the super-rich and the very poor. In both cases, though, I think the piece suffers by failing to make comparisons to other locales or industries that would help show just how far behind the Valley is. In the former case, he paints a picture of tech workers as being isolated and apolitical. He quotes one person as saying that people out here "Don't read The Economist." Well... yeah, we do. And The Atlantic, and the New Yorker, and McSweeney's. Again, I can only speak to my personal experience, but the people I've met here (both in the tech industry and outside of it) are smart and politically aware. I'll grant that there is a large amount of cynicism, that "politicians can't get good things done," but that's hardly unique to Silicon Valley. Compared to the communities I've been part of in Minnesota, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City, I'd say that the Bay Area tech community is more politically engaged. It's certainly possible that we're less politically active than the tech community in New York City or Washington, D. C. Again, I would have appreciated some point of comparison in the article.

Having lived most of my life in the Midwest, I have noticed a significant difference in the political atmosphere out here, but it's a difference in kind and not degree. Compared to much of the country, there's a remarkably high level of consensus on many issues that otherwise divide communities. Pretty much everyone out here supports same-sex marriage, even the few Republicans I know. There's broad support for progressive tax policy, even though this area benefited hugely from George W. Bush-style tax cuts. There's no local disbelief in global warming. All local politicians are pro-choice. And so, there just aren't very high local stakes for these kinds of issues. If someone is very committed to a cause, they're likely to support a national candidate, or someone in a more competitive state (I've gotten in the habit of backing some Minnesotan candidates and causes), but there isn't much outlet for those emotional political issues here.

When there are issues that affect people locally, of course, they get very engaged. Everyone I know (in tech or out) has an opinion on San Francisco's sit/lie ordinance. (For the record, my circle is roughly 75% in favor, 25% opposed.) There's regular tension between anti-growth and smart-growth forces. (Should we build more high-rise developments to support dense urban living?) Everyone cares about high-speed rail. (Almost every tech worker I know supports it; non-tech people are roughly evenly split.)

I can't quite tell if Packer is arguing that the rank-and-file is politically disengaged, or that the big companies themselves aren't politically active, or both. I don't see the evidence of individual disengagement... tech people here write checks, and quit their jobs to join the Obama campaign, and drive to Sacramento to support marriage equality. I suppose a stronger case could be made for the big companies' not being involved in politics, but again, I have to wonder who Packer is comparing them to. The oil companies? Koch Industries? Unilever? I certainly agree that Silicon Valley could do more than it does, but so could everyone. I do wonder what other industries might be good to emulate... the entertainment industry obviously is very engaged in politics, but I feel like there must be some other ones that may also be fairly positively engaged, like retail and housing. I would have loved to see some numbers around the portion of Silicon Valley's wealth that goes to charity and politics, compared with numbers from other industries.

Speaking of wealth, the aspect of Packer's article that I was most on board with was the bifurcated local economy. San Francisco is one of the best places in the world to live if you're young and have money: you can eat amazing fourteen-dollar sandwiches from Tartine Bakery, and live in a ten-million-dollar condo with 1500 square feet and views of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and use TaskRabbit to hire someone to pick up a pair of twenty-sided dice in time for tonight's Dungeons & Dragons game. It's also one of the less painful places to live if you're destitute: the weather is temperate year-round, the city provides a lot of services, and many local groups advocate for the homeless. For people in the middle, though, the city can seem impossible. Rent prices are insane and housing prices even worse. The cost of living is nearly the highest in the country, and non-tech jobs just don't pay enough to cover it. The trend is continuing, too. San Francisco is becoming even more attractive for young tech workers, thanks to relatively new additions like the Valley shuttle buses, so the median income keeps creeping up, and lower incomes keep getting squeezed out.

Ever since moving out here, I've actively promulgated a fantasy: I want everyone who I like to move out here, so they can enjoy the beautiful weather, the awesome culture, and, more importantly, I won't need to fly east to visit them. I've since come to realize that this is an even more selfish fantasy than I had first thought. Visiting the Bay Area can be a dream. Living here can be a hardship, unless you're fortunate enough to land a good job.

So, what should we do about this? It's really the same old problem of gentrification, just written even larger with more money. San Francisco already does a lot with tools like rent control, without which I'm sure there would be even fewer lower-middle-class families living in the city. And like any example of gentrification, it can be really hard to untangle the positive benefits of increasing wealth with the negative impacts on the neighborhood's existing diversity and character.

At one point in the article, Packer describes a coffee meeting he had in Four Barrel, sipping single-origin coffee while surrounded by the casually hip. I immediately perked up at that: my office is just two doors away from Four Barrel, and I think it's a fascinating focal point for what's going on in the Mission, both good and bad. Packer does a great job at briefly and accurately conveying the atmosphere of the Valencia Street corridor: young tech workers with Apple devices, shopping at boutique stores and gourmet restaurants. While he was waiting in line for half an hour to get a coffee, Packer may have glanced at the buildings across the street from Four Barrel. He doesn't write about them, and there's no particular reason why he would have: they look like the kind of new mid-rise condo development that would house these young elites. He may have been surprised to learn that this is actually a public housing development: these nice-looking, well-kept buildings on one of the hottest blocks in the city are reserved for the use of the city's poorest and least enfranchised residents.

And... I'm not sure what to do with that fascinating nugget. The reason San Francisco has so much money to spend on its virtuous social programs is because so many wealthy people live here and help fund their budget. This block of Valencia in particular has benefited in very substantial ways from the changing demographics: I've chatted with people who have lived here for decades, and remember when this was considered a bad part of town. But then places like Four Barrel moved in, and trendy spenders started hanging out, and then more shops started opening up to cater to those people, and the city rebuilt the old projects, and it's now a fun, comfortable, safe space to wander. And yet, Packer is definitely right when he writes about how the Latino population in the neighborhood is shrinking, and families who have lived here for a long time are increasingly finding it hard to find affordable rent, or even shops that provide useful services. Again, it's the same old story of gentrification, and I wish I knew how to "solve" it such that everyone could get what they want and nobody has to leave.

While on the subject of Latinos, Packer quotes Mitch Kapor (of Lotus Notes) saying that "asking questions about the lack of racial and gender diversity in tech companies leaves people in Silicon Valley intensely uncomfortable." I think he's definitely right about the lack of racial diversity: it's absolutely shameful how few African-Americans and Latinos are employed in high-tech positions. It's something we need to do much better on. However, I have (again, in my own limited personal experience) noticed a huge improvement in the last few years on addressing gender diversity. It's definitely a problem: at my previous company, we had hired over twenty (!!) men before hiring our first woman. Companies now openly talk about combating the "Dave ratio" (the ratio of men named "Dave" to women in a company; a 1:1 or worse ratio is shockingly common) and are explicitly describing their need to improve representation. Larger companies are addressing every stage of the pipeline: getting more school-age girls interested in science and math, encouraging college women to pursue STEM careers, setting up internship programs specifically for female programmers, and proactively recruiting woman developers. Smaller companies like my own make greater efforts to seek out female developers, and even use terms like "affirmative action" that would have been anathema a few years ago. While there is still a very long way to go in improving the situation, it feels great to see more traction now that companies are discussing it. I was delighted when my own sister enrolled in the fantastic Hackbright program, and landed a great programming job within a few weeks of graduation.

But, the point still stands that we have a long way to go to even begin to approach parity, and we need to start taking similar initiatives to improve racial and cultural diversity. The tech industry in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, lags far behind most other American industries on both counts.

Um. I think that's all I had to say. I worry a little that I'm just a sensitive San Franciscan getting defensive when a writer from New York criticizes my town and my career, but I do have to admit that he's right about at least a few things. My biggest complaint is that he doesn't offer much perspective in how San Francisco compares to other cities in America, or how the tech industry compares to other industries; some objective figures on our miserliness or apathy would have impressed me much more than scattered anecdotes and interviews. Then again, I am a privileged tech guy, so that's exactly what you would expect me to say.

"Bleagh! I Think that Piano Has a Ghost!"

Sketchfest is in full swing! It always feels like an embarrassment of riches - the sheer number of talented people performing in a limited span of time can feel overwhelming, and I usually end up just picking one or two shows to attend. This year, I plan to make it out to more, and so far, it's been off to a fantastic start.

Thanks to the largesse of my wonderful sister, I scored a ticket to Paul F Tompkins and Friends Real and Fake. Paul might be my favorite comedian - his stand-up is good, but more than that, he works in an amazing variety of modes, including raconteur, character, performer, and pal. If I were to meet someone like Patton Oswalt or Louis CK, I would be delighted but incredibly nervous, worried that I would inadvertently do something (like say "hilarious") that they could seize on and expose as foolish. I'm sure I would be star-struck if I ever met Paul one-on-one, but his style of humor is one of the warmest, most positive (yet still funny and occasionally revelatory!) that I've heard.

That warmth was on fine display at his show on Friday night. At previous Sketchfests I had attended the Paul F Tompkins Show, a wonderful vaudeville-type extravaganza. This one was quite different, with no music or sketches. Instead, it had a series of stand-up performances, interspersed by Paul's characters. I had seen all of Paul's "real friends" previously in sketch shows, but it was the first time I'd seen any of them do standup, and all of them were terrific, using very unique perspectives to make us laugh.

I'm going to refrain from sharing my favorite moments from the standup, mostly because I suspect they will be touring with the material, and some of it may eventually end up in some special or other, and there's no earthly way my typing words into a blog could match the effectiveness of their delivery. I'll confine myself to some general reactions, and recalling moments from the show that seem unlikely to be repeated in the future.

First, to run down the real friends: I only know Steve Agee from The Sarah Silverman Program, where he played Brian Posehn's stoner boyfriend. Much of his set involved telling stories from his past, and either extrapolating from them or imagining unseen aspects to the tales. Mary Lynn Rajskub looked stunning; I've only seen her in Mr. Show with Bob and David, but apparently she has done some major television and film work as well. Her comedy focused on introspection, and had some wonderful moments where a totally unexpected "fact" arrived from left field. Finally, Kevin McDonald from The Kids in the Hall did a set anchored around the idea that he, as a sketch comedian, had no business doing stand-up. This was the most meta of the sets, and Kevin masterfully interwove his standup with commentary on him doing standup.

Paul may be the most gifted riffer in the business, and at the start of the show, he opened with several minutes off the cuff purely about the surroundings. This is the first year that the Verdi Club has hosted Sketchfest shows, and this was the first show held at Verdi. It's a pretty cool venue - the room is fairly intimate (capacity 299 people), so everyone is close to the stage; the floor is level, but the stage is elevated, so everyone has good sightlines. There's also a well-stocked full bar. Anyways, Paul came out after being introduced by a Sketchfest founder, and immediately started some business with the microphone, whose cord had been looped around the stand. Um... I'm going to get this wrong, but his opening went something like this, with lots of laughter from the audience interspersed:

"Ah, good - three microphones. I'm so glad that the Verdi Club was able to accommodate my request: I said, 'I require no fewer than three mikes! And, if you could make sure that one of the microphones isn't plugged into anything, that would be great.' Actually, I remember now that I specifically asked for a cordless mike, which makes me feel foolish. Great job, Paul! Way to start off the show! Idiot. But I am grateful that Verdi could fulfill so many of the things I require for my show. I said, 'I'll need some chandeliers from the movie Logan's Run.' They said, 'No problem, we got you covered.' I said, 'Please make sure to have a depressing bar stool from [some era or movie? I forget...]' They said, 'We can get that for you.' I said, 'You're really going to hate me for this... but is there any way you can get a haunted piano?' 'Poltergeist or ghost?' they replied."

Needless to say, all of this was just responding to things in the room, things that I had totally missed during the half-hour that I'd been sitting and waiting for the show to start. Those comedians, always ready with their observations and their jokes!

A lot of Paul's comedy is based around anecdotes and telling stories, so after his intro most of his set was about an incident that occurred at Christmas. Hopefully you'll get to hear it! For the rest of the night, he did his characters. If you haven't had the pleasure of experiencing these before, you can get a taste on YouTube, but most of the "mythology" around them has accreted over years of appearances on podcasts like Comedy Bang-Bang and The Pod F Tompkast. His characters are based on real people, but they aren't really impersonations in the standard comedic vein. Instead, he takes only the most basic facts about the person (Werner Herzog is is a German film director who made a movie about a man getting eaten by a bear; Ice-T is a rapper who acts on the show CSI: Miami), then extrapolates goofy premises (Werner Herzog is obsessed with the awfulness of nature and wants to fight it; Ice-T is obsessed with creating new business ventures). The most impressing thing is the canon - while Tompkins inhabits a character, he is constantly making stuff up in response to questions or statements from other people on the podcast, and these become established "facts" for all future appearances. Over time, this makes the characters evolve into hilarious personalities that are barely unrecognizable (Werner Herzog married a beautiful robot who he fashioned from the parts of a zeppelin).

Paul performed as probably my three favorite characters of his: Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Garry Marshall, and The Cake Boss (cakeboss!). He had basic but effective costumes for each: a fabulous cape as Lloyd Webber, a white wig for Marshall, and a black wig and white chef's jacket for Buddy Valastro. Tompkins did a great job of setting up each character so newcomers wouldn't be totally lost, while also not feeling like he was just retreading old material for the hard-core fans. For example, he re-told the story about how he was bitten by a cake bug, as he usually does as that character; but he also discoursed for a little bit on why cake bugs occupy cake kitchens and the role they play in keeping predators under control.

As Lloyd Webber, he reviewed his musical oeuvre and laid out his plan to compete against the awful "juking-box" musicals of the day. Garry Marshall provided some insights into his hit sitcoms of the past, and gave a very long and entertaining description of how he's going to find Bigfoot, and what he'll do once he captures it. My favorite set of the night was the last one, though. After the Cake Boss (cakeboss!) described the horrible time constraints he has to work under and explained how he received the curse of the second sight, he offered to go into a trance (er, "tranche") and answer any questions about the future we might have. This was incredibly impressive - I'm always amazed at seeing great comedians thinking on their feet and responding to something unexpected.

Paul selected someone, who asked, "Who's going to win the Super Bowl?" (In case you don't follow football, San Francisco is going to the Super Bowl next weekend, to play against the Baltimore Ravens, so it's a question high on the mind of many residents here.) Tompkins good-naturedly mocked the question for a while - "That's a real important question right there! I mean, out of all the things in the entire future that you could possibly want to find out about... well, okay, sure, we'll find out who wins a sports game. Good forbid you should have to wait a week to find out." He went into his tranche, then moved "All the way into the future... parting the curtains... all the way to two weeks from now.. it's so far! I don't know if I can make it!" He then described the scene: "I see a stadium, filled with people! They are tossing the coin... the coin is flipped, and they're ready to... do the first football thing... then... oh, no! Suddenly, the ground falls out from below the field! It's Bane! He's at the stadium! That's right, he's crossed over from Batman into our own world! It's a Purple Rose of Cairo type of thing. A woman was watching The Dark Knight Rises and fell in love with him, so now he's here. And, that's it! The game is called on account of Bane. And this gentleman here made a lot of money on the game. That's right, he bet on Bane winning the Super Bowl... and the odds were very long! So he did quite well. Okay, does anyone else have any other questions?"

While still in his tranche, he selected a young woman who asked, "Will Garry Marshall ever find Bigfoot?" He cracked up a little before replying, "That's a bit of a callback there. Okay, let me check." He described Garry Marshall, in a far-away, distant land, coming across a tall, mysterious shape. [I forget exactly how the next part of the story unfolded - I think that it turns out to be the actor who played Bigfoot, and Bigfoot, standing on each others' shoulders, or something.] "And then... oh, no! It's Bane again! He's here too! He kills Garry Marshall and takes Bigfoot for himself! And that gentleman from before makes even more money by betting on this. It's off the main book, too... the odds of Bane finding Bigfoot were four thousand to one. He really cleans up. Okay, final question!"

Another woman asked, "Who will be our next president?" "That's a... okay, that's a pretty good question, I guess. It does affect your life, so whatever. All right, I'm - hold on, before I proceed, a follow-up question: the president of the United States?" Yes. "Okay, just checking. I'm moving through the future again... all the way to 2016... oh, wait, now I'm going back to 2015 when the people are actually running. Okay. I see that the Democrats will nominate... Hillary Clinton. She's good, she's doing well. She's done something with her hair that I approve of. And the Republicans nominate... a bag of angry worms. The bag of angry worms is making some progress, it has a few good points. Okay, now I'm at the first major debate. Hillary is winning the debate. The bag of worms is doing well for a bag, but c'mon, a bag of angry worms can only do so much. Oh, no! It's Bane again! That gentleman made even more money by betting on Bane in the 2016 election, he wasn't even a candidate. But he ends up winning. So, that's it. Bane is the next President."

The show ended with gales of nonstop laughter, pretty much starting from the introduction of the bag of angry worms until well after Paul had left the stage. It was, needless to say, a fantastic show!

Fast-forward a day to the next event: the Thrilling Adventure Hour! I've actually only recently gotten into this - I contributed to their recent Kickstarter project, then started listening through their voluminous archives. This is a live show that's been playing in Los Angeles for nearly eight years. Every single month, they were a completely new script and put on a single show. It's done in the style of an old-timey radio serial, like The Shadow or Buck Rogers; if you listen to A Prairie Home Companion, it's a bit like a hipper version of the radio sketches they do on that show. The show is anchored by two recurring segments: Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars, about a literal space cowboy (a man from Earth who comes to Mars, rides his horse, tangles with outlaws and ruffians and whatnot); and Beyond Belief, with Paul F Tompkins and Paget Brewster as Frank and Sadie Doyle, a psychic married couple constantly confronted with paranormal mysteries who just want to be left alone and drink with one another. In between they feature a rotating assortment of other programs, commercials, and the occasional song.

The TAH is a surprisingly dynamic program, with a steady core of performers playing multiple roles, but a constantly rotating slate of guest stars, from the world of comedy but also featuring many "straight" actors known mostly for their dramatic roles. Their cast at Sketchfest is always impressive, and this year did not disappoint: Reggie Watts, Jonathan Coulton, John Hodgman, Colin Hanks, Gillian Jacobs, Rider Strong, Steve Agee (remember him?), Keegan-Michael Key, and an uncredited but excellent Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett.

This was my first time seeing TAH live, and I was really looking forward to it. I enjoy listening to the podcasts of their LA shows, and one thing I notice is that, in every program, the boisterous audience will respond well to the jokes and such within the script, but there will also be moments when they crack up at something physical happening on the stage. Of course, this is completely lost in the audio-only version everyone else consumes it in, and I really wanted to catch a glimpse of that sort of business. I wasn't disappointed - sometimes it's as simple as Paul F Tompkins scowling at the audience, other times it's an inspired bit of blocking.

I'm pretty sure that these programs will enter the podcast stream soon, so I'll avoid spoilers. Instead, here's a random list of personal favorite moments from the show:

• Kevin Murphy's talented instrumentation.
• Paul F Tompkins as the King of Coffee, doing one of the very best types of characters he does.
• ... and the way he exited the stage from these segments, constantly glowering at the audience, never turning his back.
• The very rich songs, nearly all done in chorus, most of which Jonathan Coulton joined.
• Keegan-Michael Key's incredible character of a nazi from the future.
• Rider Strong's animated performance opposite Marc Evan Jackson.
• Reggie Watts as a hangdog minion.
• All of the wonderful ladies - the sunny Annie Savage, the impassioned Gillian Jacobs, the magnetic Autumn Reeser. (And the terrific harmony they sang at the end.)
• Seeing Amelia Earhart fly her plane.
• I like to think that I was the first person in the audience to realize which Shakespearean play was being parodied in the final WorkJuice commercial.
• Beyond Belief doing a rare call-back to a previous episode, which happens to be one of my all-time favorites.
• Seeing the Bens (or at least one of them) pop onto the stage and wave at the very end.

 It was an incredible show, and left me kind of wishing that I had tickets to the 9:30 as well. Apparently, they're keeping the serialization of Sparks Nevada between both shows that night, which is amazing.

The entire experience was fun and strange; it's reminiscent of a lot of different types of entertainment, while not being like any thing I'm used to. There's frequent laughter like you would expect from a live sketch or stand-up show; but what kind of entertainment these days inspires frequent applause? I guess it's a little like watching a play or musical, but instead of holding your reaction to the end of an act, it spills over at opportune times, like an actor entering or exiting. In terms of interactivity, it might be closest to something like a special screening of a favorite movie; but you have the drama and malleability of a live performance. Well. It's a unique, fun, funny experience, and hopefully one I'll get to see next year as well!

My Favorite Google Maps

Taken from the April Fool's "Quest" layer. Yes, the Ferry Building really does look like that; and yes, there really is a Treasure Island.

Invocation

On Wednesday I got to see Invocation, the first part of the new dance Bare Bones Crow, which was created and performed by my relative Vangie King. (I'm not totally sure what the proper term is for our relation. She's my father's cousin; does that make us first cousins once removed?) She's been dancing for most of her life, but this was the first chance I'd had to see her, and it was a great experience.

On an earlier visit with Vangie when my parents were in town, she had described the idea behind this new piece. It evokes a creature who is buried far underground; the creature awakes, and the dance shows its journey. Vangie collaborated with a sound designer to create the aural landscape for the dance.

Vangie's dance was included in the "raw & uncut" showcase at The Garage, a cool performance space in SOMA. The Garage sponsors a resident workshop program that allows artists to spend time developing new creations, and many of the dances in this showcase were from residents at various stages of their program.

The Garage reminded me a lot of some of the smaller venues in Chicago where I've seen Pat perform. Really intimate, very immediate, usually with one person who's clearly running all aspects of the venue. Here, people gave donations for their entrance ($10-$20 sliding scale; I'd pre-paid on Brown Paper Tickets, but will probably do it in person the next time I come), received programs (simple and effective folded sheets of paper), and could choose from various beverages to purchase. The manager let us all know the window of time when the restroom was open - since it's on the opposite side of the stage as the seating, it isn't exactly accessible during performances. Folks mingled or lingered for a while, then we headed in and started the show.

The first piece, "No Self," primarily featured a single dancer; another woman prowled around at intervals and provided live lighting support, and a man played a fairly subdued string instrument for live music. The woman, wearing a very long dress, was standing on a pedestal hidden under her dress, giving the illusion of enormous height. The piece began with her coming to life, and slowly coming to understand and control her body. (The moment when she first smiles was both hilarious and disturbing.) Intellectually, I knew that I was watching a person standing on a pedestal, but throughout the performance it felt like I was watching a single, tall, increasingly graceful body. Eventually she came down and moved around the stage. As with the other dances, there was fairly minimal speech, but what little is there seems shocking. The words towards the end go something like, "You want to live forever? I wish to die!" The piece was intriguing and seemed to end on a somewhat bittersweet note.

Next up came Vangie's piece. She performs as the creature - I presume the Bare Bones Crow of the title - who abruptly awakens in an enclosed space deep underground. The creature is curious, frightened, exploring its surroundings and trying to understand what's happening. The creature also seems quite powerful, but perhaps not aware of it. Vangie's colleague Brenda had designed the sound for the piece and "performed" it live via her Macbook. Some of this was ambient noise and music, but there were also amazing sound effects that really magnified Vangie's movements: crackling rocks, spooky-sounding drippy slime, hurried footsteps, and more. (Unfortunately, the audio system got a bit wonky and it was sometimes hard to separate the sound from the hissing speakers. I'm ignorant enough about modern dance that I couldn't tell if it was a technical problem or a sign of avant-garde composition!) Vangie's movements were amazing to watch - often stately, deliberate, and powerfully focused. She, too, only occasionally spoke, and her few words captured the stress of the creature.

After a first attempt at a piece that was aborted due to the increasingly feisty speakers, we took an early intermission, followed by a piece by two male dancers. One was a native American Indian (who started off wearing extremely bright red high heels) with a larger build, another looked like a regular white guy with a slighter build. This dance seemed to be more purely about movement; or at least, it didn't seem to be telling a story as explicitly as the first two had. It was also quite funny, although I wasn't sure until fairly late on whether it was OK to laugh.

"Maintain Class" also had flashes of humor. This dance featured two incredibly attractive young women, who start the dance reading newspapers in chairs. The dance moves through a sequence of phases, each set to its own song (including some really excellent electronic pieces) or silence. Sometimes the women seem to be cooperating; other times competing; at one point they writhe in pain on the ground, at another they seem to be playing a cruel version of the trust exercise, at others they dance with one another. I think the emotional center of the piece comes when the two very slowly rotate in smooth 360-degree pivots, with each turn showing a new face to the audience.

After an earlier aborted attempt, the second shot at "Worn on the Bottom" had better cooperation from the music. Combining trends from the first two and two previous performances, this one was both disturbing and funny. The dancer maintained strong eye contact with the audience throughout her performance. Dressed in a pure white girlish dress, she starts out flipping through the pages of a large book, and begins to dance along to the music she hears. Some of the movements become increasingly sexual, which feels incongruous and disturbing as the dance continues. Her moves repeat and evolve throughout the dance, giving you ample opportunity to reflect on them. (I'm just now realizing, incidentally, that print is a HORRIBLE medium for describing a dance. It would be better if I had more of a dance vocabulary; I apologize for the hash I'm making of all this.) There was one particular sequence of gestures she made which fascinated me for reasons I still don't understand: starting with both arms raised just above her head, she pauses for a moment, then moves her right arm through a swift set of even horizontal steps away from her left arm; at the end, she moves her right hand up and forward, toward the audience, twisting just a tiny bit, as if she were reaching for something far away or turning a key in a lock. Like I said, I don't know why that movement resonated with me, but it's still haunting me days later.

The evening ended with "*cari's tiny circus*", which was accurately billed as four "almost serious dances." The first term that comes to mind to describe this one is "prop dancing," though that doesn't begin to do justice to it. Each of the four dances had some physical object or set of objects on stage. For the first one, she came out in a deliberately gaudy and poofy ballerina dress, and plopped herself down in, um, a bucket. And then she danced in the bucket. It was pretty unreal, incredibly talented, and highly amusing. Another dance took place entirely on a stool, where she somehow managed to maintain her balance while dancing on the top, on the side rungs, swung out sideways, etc. My favorite one featured a variety of pots and pans spread across the stage: she somehow managed to dance through a skillet, dutch oven, stockpot, etc., without ever touching the floor. It was a lot of fun, and the performance felt like a celebration at the pure joy and fun of controlling a talented body.

So, my first introduction to San Francisco dance was a great one. It was a lot of fun to see Vangie perform, and also fun to see it in this context, where I could try and pick up a rudimentary education about what else is going on in modern dance. I know I'll never be an expert at this particular art form, but I like what I've seen so far.

The Reich Stuff

Last week's New Yorker had a fascinating article titled The Poverty Clinic. The story centers on a clinic in Bayview-Hunter's Point, the poorest and most dangerous neighborhood in San Francisco. I was immediately glad to see that the New Yorker was casting its gaze over to my neck of the woods, even if it was for such a depressing topic. The article addresses the chronic, seemingly intractable problems of urban poverty, focusing on the health conditions that plague many black children in urban neighborhoods: asthma, hyperactivity, etc.

When I got deeper into the article, though, I started tripping out. It took me a while to make the connection: the article's thesis was eerily similar to the "crazy" theories of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, which I had encountered in Robert Anton Wilson's "Wilhelm Reich in Hell". Reich advanced a theory that he called the Emotional Plague: the idea was that a singular illness afflicted the human race, one that spanned psychology, sociology, and biology. The emotional plague is imprinted on us in childhood, it makes us neurotic, causes disease and war and crime, and we pass it on to our children. The ideas caused Reich to lose his credentials, his freedom, and his legacy to the forces of censorship.

Well, amazingly enough, there is actually evidence now that emotional trauma can have effects much like what Reich had predicted. The article talks about a study covering Adverse Childhood Experiences, also known as ACE. The study by Kaiser Permanente found an astonishing level of correlation between early childhood trauma (parents who fight, family members who use drugs, emotional neglect, etc.) and later adult disease (diabetes, heart problems, and, yes, cancer). To some degree these links are already expected: emotional abuse in childhood can lead to adult depression, which can help lead to, say, smoking, which increases cancer risks. But even when they accounted for such intermediate risk factors, the Kaiser researchers found a huge and otherwise unexplainable correlation between ACE indicators and adult disease.

Contemporary research has developed a working theory to help explain this. All humans have hormonal responses to stress. This is an evolutionary, adaptive trait: when we feel threatened, our bodies flood our systems with chemicals: they make us more alert, prepare our bodies for healing, heighten our immunity, and so on. In the short term, this is helpful; however, when it happens frequently, especially in children, it can affect the body in permanent ways. Affected people might feel constantly anxious, or might not recognize when they're in danger; their systems don't work right, which causes physiological problems that lead to later diseases.

I was particularly affected by the Bayview-Hunter's Point physician who described what she observed in her community. Kids in the projects experienced broken family lives, which caused them to act out in social situations. When they started school, ten of the thirty kids in a class might be hyperactive; only ten kids are "infected", but all thirty are affected. When they become teenagers, these kids are more likely to have sex early, more likely to attach to abusive partners, and so they start raising another generation of kids who experience stress in childhood, and so are affected by the same hormonal and physiological symptoms.

To me, that sounds an awful lot like an emotional plague. A virus that propagates across social and biological boundaries. It's weird and creepy and depressing. At the same time, I'm fascinated that Reich might, in the long run, be recognized as a visionary instead of a kook.

Peter G. Timkins

The January Of Doing Funny Stuff concluded with a great day in The City, followed by my first-ever viewing of the Paul F. Tompkins Show, during my first-ever visit to the San Francisco outpost of Yoshi's, a jazz club and sushi restaurant.

It was a gorgeous day, so I decided to head up early and enjoy all of it. For me, "enjoying" is usually synonymous with "walking around in". I caught BART up to 16th and Mission, and cut directly west along 16th. I'd consulted a recently-gifted book called "Stairway Walks in San Francisco", and followed its suggested route in my approach towards and through Corona Heights. I feel like I keep saying this, but I think that the views from the top of Corona Heights might be the best you can get of eastern San Francisco. It helps that it was a perfectly clear day, and the Bay was a gorgeous shade of blue. You're much closer to downtown here than in my previous favorite spots, like Twin Peaks, and so you can appreciate a finer level of detail, including clear looks at individual cars and trolleys and streetcars moving around. You have complete, unobstructed views of The Mission, SOMA, and the Castro, along with the western face of Potrero Hill, most of the Financial District and the northeastern hills, and the southeastern quadrant of the city. Plus, there's an amazing full-on look at downtown Oakland; from this perspective, Mount Diablo rises directly behind the skyscrapers there, which is a very cool effect.

Totally jazzed, I continued along the stairways, then broke off to cross over to Buena Vista Park. This is several times larger than Corona Heights. It's also a lot more wooded, and has more paths, which generally run in concentric rings with some stairways (yay!) running more or less straight up. More awesome views could be found from the top here; the trees meant more obstructions than Corona, but from certain spots you could catch the Golden Gate Bridge and the Presidio.  As an extra-special bonus, a bunch of friendly dogs were frolicking around on top of the hill; some of them demanded to be petted, which I gladly obliged. Good doggies!

I worked my way down the north side of Buena Vista, crossed Haight, and over to the Panhandle. Being such a great day, folks were out in full force along the paths here, running, cycling, and walking like me. I went through a long loop, east to the end and then back west, before crossing over into the main part of Golden Gate Park.

I've visited GGP many times before, and I doubt I'll ever get tired of it. Not only is it huge with tons to see, but it's also regularly changing and improving. On this trip, I made my first-ever visit to the Conservancy of Flowers; I didn't make it inside, but even outside there's a gorgeous collection of flower beds. Since this was Sunday, JFK Drive was closed to auto traffic, and huge numbers of people were thoroughly enjoying the park. For the most part cyclists were staying on the road while pedestrians claimed the full breadth of the shared walk/bike lanes.

I continued looping my way west, and eventually made it to what I'm now thinking of as the Museum Campus. I was last here several years ago, when the new home of the California Academy of Sciences was under construction; that project is now over, and the result is a perfectly formed jewel. The de Young museum continues to impress with its modernist architecture and wonderful outdoor sculptures and gardens. Next along in the ring, an outdoor amphitheater connects to the history of the park (it was erected in 1900); on this day there were no shows, but a talented amateur was playing a flute while several picnickers listened with appreciation. In the center of the campus is a recessed, tiered set of walkways and gardens, with a fountain in the middle. Finally, on the south end, the new Academy building was doing a brisk business.

The building looks nice; a bit big and blocky from a distance, but they do a lot of stuff with glass to open it up. I still haven't been inside; I've heard good things and am a bit curious, but at $30 per ticket, it will probably be a long time before I head there. Regardless, though, it really transforms the area from "The deYoung and Friends" to a full campus. The Japanese Tea Garden is now almost an afterthought, you need to hunt around for it.

I was tempted to make this my lunch spot, but decided to press on to Stow Lake, figuring that, hey, water is nice! The lake was indeed pleasant, and quite busy; the median age of visitors here skews several decades older than the rest of the park, and I suspect that many of them are native San Franciscans. I walked around for a bit, started to eat on a bench facing the water, then relocated to a nice little picnic area set farther back from the crowds, within sight of a waterfall. I had some leftover homemade pizza (Cook's Illustrated's recipe for thin-crust), a banana, and some homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

After I finished up, I wandered over towards the waterfall. There's a large stone cross above it, and I was curious about it. It turns out that it was erected back in 1894 (!), in honor of a priest from the Church of England who served as Sir Francis Drake's chaplain. The inscription covers both front and back of the cross, and tells how this guy led the first English-language prayers on the West Coast.

Checking the time, I decided it would be good to start heading back east; in all of my walking, I hadn't even reached halfway through the park. On my trip back I took a more southerly loop, closer to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. This included the back of the California Academy, several very large fields and athletic areas, a lawn bowling club (with signs that sternly forbade playing bocce ball), and so on. I returned to the Panhandle, re-crossed Haight, did Buena Vista Park again and got acquainted with a new set of doggies, then resumed my long-delayed Stairway Walk from the book. This took me along Buena Vista Drive East (which has many gorgeous houses), down Roosevelt Way (also has gorgeous houses), down the Roosevelt-Henry stairs to Henry (which, you guessed it, has gorgeous houses). At Castro I swung south, crossed Market, then made my way back to the Mission.

It was a pleasantly warm and sunny day, and I was in the Mission. You can guess what that means: ice cream! I've long heard glorious tales of Bi-Rite Creamery, and knew that this was the perfect opportunity to try for myself. As with all popular Mission places, it was a bit of a scene, with a line that stretched to the end of the block. Still, I didn't have to be anywhere soon, and it was a thoroughly pleasant day, so I pulled the New Yorker out of my bag and read while I patiently waited.

Bi-Rite makes all their own ice cream, and do some really interesting flavors. There are a handful of familiars, like vanilla, chocolate, and cookies and cream; there are a few popular upscale flavors, like roasted caramel with sea salt and mango; and there were some fascinating originals, like roasted banana and ricanelas (cinnamon with snickerdoodles). I was fascinated by the latter, and opted for a single cone with ricanelas.

Bi-Rite is cater-corner from Mission Dolores Park, so I crossed the street and ambled through, licking my cone. The park was full, as is always the case on sunny weekends. It's an extremely chill scene; people plop down their blankets and hang out, reading or talking and enjoying the sun. A few people were playing music, and some folks nearby would dance. A children's playground was packed with young-un's, and the smell of marijuana was a little less strong there.

The cone lasted exactly long enough for my slow walk through the park; I disposed of it, then picked up 20th Street and continued east. I had just one thing on my agenda prior to heading to Yoshi's: I wanted to check out Borderlands, a science-fiction and fantasy bookstore, near 20th and Valencia.

It was quite cool. It's a little smaller than I was expecting, but stuffed with great books; and, since they only cover a few genres (horror in addition to sci-fi and fantasy), there's a much higher probability of finding something good. The store itself looks great as well; it may be the cleanest used book store I've ever been to.

They have newer books towards the front of the store, used hardcovers farther back, and used paperbacks at the very rear. They do that awesome independent bookstore thing where the staff (seems like two guys) write notes about their recommendations, giving a few sentences describing a book and why you should check it out. These seem to be very effective; in most cases, the books they referenced were no longer on the shelves.

I spent about half an hour in there, half-listening as someone (the owner? the clerk?) chatted with a series of customers while I scanned the shelves. I started by looking for a few favorite authors of mine - Neal Stephenson, Robert Anton Wilson, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin. Unfortunately, I already own pretty much everything that they've written, but I was happy to see the books that they had. I was toying between buying a new copy of Neverwhere (just about the only Gaiman novel I haven't read yet) or Masks of the Illuminati (a less-popular successor to Illuminatus! and the Schrodinger's Cat trilogies; it sounds fascinating, it's supposedly about Albert Einstein and James Joyce teaming up to solve cosmic mysteries). However, I eventually found two used books that I wanted. In a bit of perfect timing, they had Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends; I had just started You Suck the day before and was coming to the realization that it was a sequel, so with BF I would be able to get caught up. Along with this I got William Gibson's Burning Chrome, which has been on my radar for years and bizarrely isn't carried by any library nearby.

It was now just a bit after 4:30, so I headed up Valencia back to 16th, over to Church, crossed Market, then jogged over. Google Maps wanted me to go up Fillmore; for a change of pace, I decided to head up Steiner instead. Steiner proved to be a bit more residential, and was a pleasant, relatively quiet walk up and down the hill.

Yoshi's San Francisco was built in connection with the new Jazz Heritage Center, which is part of a revitalization effort taking place in the Fillmore district. It's absolutely gorgeous. When you first walk in, you enter a large lobby that holds rotating exhibits; right now, it's a series on a Jewish-American artist. I walked around and peered at the reproductions. The history is pretty fascinating, all tied up with the horrors of World War II but also referencing back to the historical role that Jews played in earlier events like the Revolutionary War. I think that there's also a separate jazz museum area, but I didn't explore that.

I picked up my ticket from the box office; my awesome brother had scored reservations, which gave me a guaranteed good seat at this sold-out show AND a voucher for dinner. I headed into the restaurant, which is probably the best-looking dining area I've been inside in The City. I talked with the incredibly friendly host, who offered me a seat in the restaurant; I ended up sitting in the downstairs lounge, with a view of the flat-screen television showing the Jets-Steelers game. Yes!

The menu is similar to the Oakland Yoshi's. I was tempted by a lot of their dishes, but eventually decided to have the sushi; after all, it's amazing, and, as I was startled to realize, I haven't eaten any sushi in nearly six months. I got one of their sashimi combination plates, along with miso soup, edamame, and a Sapporo.

Of course, everything was delicious. They do a really interesting presentation of the sashimi: instead of just offering the standard soy, ginger, and wasabi, they scatter around a handful of flavor pairings. There's a wedge of lemon, a few thin radish slices, some nori, and a fascinating yellow gloop that I couldn't identify. The sashimi itself is excellent, although I did end up wishing that I'd ordered nigiri instead.

I milked my edamame and my beer as long as I could, keeping an eye on the game and another eye on the time. When I started watching, the Steelers were up 24-0; by the end, the Jets had mounted an amazing but ultimately unsuccessful rally, locking up 19 unanswered points. I finished the last of my beer and headed in to the club.

Hooray for reserved seats! Yoshi's (both locations) has an interesting policy, which is basically first-come first-serve, but you can reserve a seat with certain actions, like having a brother pay for your dinner. I wanted in about five minutes before the show and claimed my seat: second row from the stage, on the left side, with mostly a full-on view but able to see the piano player's hands. Score! The two other reserved tables at my table would remain empty for the whole night. Double score!

The show opened with the band walking out and taking up their instruments. Piano, drums, guitar. They started jamming. Paul F. Tompkins began addressing the audience. "Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! It is I, Paul F. Tompkins, of the Paul F. Tompkins show! Look around as much as you like... you cannot see me! But, do not fear. I am not a disembodied spectre, speaking to you from beyond the grave. I am merely standing behind this stage curtain!" And so on.

I just loved Tompkins' voice, here and throughout the show. I've seen and enjoyed his work on Mr. Show, and caught a handful of YouTube clips from him, but haven't followed him too closely otherwise, and so was surprised and impressed by the show.

The overall structure is kind of like an old-timey variety/vaudeville show, but with modern sensibilities. There were a few songs, including some from the band, a few solo pieces from Tompkin's Very Special Guest Tom Brosseau, and one show-stopping number with the whole gang. Tompkins did some comedy bits, mainly conversational storytelling, and kept up a pattering showmanship throughout. He also had some skits with his Very Special Guests: Neil Patrick Harris and Gillian Jacobs. Yay!

A few random memories from an excellent show:

I don't want to repeat too many jokes, but I figure his SF-specific bits are unlikely to be performed again, so: from his post-opening-song monologue:
"Thank you, San Francisco! I've heard that your one-sided rivalry with Los Angeles is continuing well. You know, the rivalry that we choose not to participate in; but, I think it's terrific that you guys are keeping up your end of it. I was riding in a cab yesterday, and learned from the driver that this isn't just a rivalry with LA, but with all of Southern California... and that includes San Diego. Really? San Diego? Let me just let you know, you guys have already won, whatever weird competition you think you're having with San Diego. I mean... what do you say when you meet someone from San Diego?  'Hey, you! Yeah, you guy from San Diego!  Nice... zoo!  And, nice... water zoo. Pfft... typical San Diego. Having two things.'"

I hadn't heard of Tom Brosseau before. He was quiet and pleasant, and a great singer and guitarist. It wasn't until about halfway through his first song that I realized it was also really funny. He had a complete, dead-on sincere thing going the whole way through, so even once I started to suspect that he meant it to amuse, it took a while for me to be sure. There really weren't any laugh points during the song, and while the audience clearly appreciated it, I'm not sure that we ever "got" it.

Neil Patrick Harris was excellent. Tompkins introduced him, and early on described how much he had enjoyed his role in Undercover Brother. I was delighted by the shout-out, and think that Tompkins was short-selling the movie... yeah, it's dumb, but it's a really fun kind of dumb, even beyond the (great) scenes that NPH is in.

For this section, they competed in a brand new game: Reference-a-thon! (Note: I don't remember what it was actually called.) Each one tried to stump the other with obscure references.

NPH: "Luca Braci sleeps with the fishes."
PFT: "Ohhhhhh..... mmmmm.... argh.... I should know this! Is it... wait.. gosh. I don't know. I'll just say 'The Godfather.'"
NPH: "That's right!"

PFT gave the quote "Soylent green is made out of people! It's people!" That kicked off an angry and heated exchange. First of all, as NPH pointed out, the quote is "Soylent Green is people! It's people!" He then got PFT to confess that he hadn't ever actually seen the movie, and so had no business referencing it. PFT defended himself, saying that he'd heard enough to understand what the movie was about, and preceded to give a capsule summary of the film. "Right?" he hopefully asked. NPH shrugged. "I don't know, I haven't seen it either." Which led to an increasingly violent series of recriminations, and a fear that they were plunging headlong into a dark future the same as what may or may not be depicted in the film Soylent Green.

It was pretty awesome.

Later on, PFT started in on a big, brassy, Broadway song covering major legal battles. "BROWN versus the BOARD of education!" He was interrupted by Gillian Jacobs, who walked out in her jammies, reminding PFT that they had a slumber party that night. PFT suggested crank calls; GJ reminded him that crank calls were mean, and suggested prank calls instead. They called that one boy who Gillian likes, and lots of giggling ensued.

This spun out into an increasingly crazy, surrealistic series of statements, ending with Gillian's tearful confession that she was, in fact, a bird with hollow bones.

The absolute biggest part of the night: EVERYONE came  back on stage to join together in performing one of the standards: "That's Not My Name" by the Ting Tings. It was AMAZING. And hilarious; I don't think people ever stopped laughing. They did a stunningly good job, too, throwing far too much talent into aping this pop hit. And it wasn't just a song, it was a performance. Tom gently crooned into his mike; Gillian gave this amazingly cute little scowl and half-shake of her head whenever she announced "That's not my name! That's not my name!" PFT led off and ended the song with a kind of slide-whistle thing, and joyously led the singing throughout. NPH and Gillian played off of each other wonderfully. (I think that NPH may not have been miked; I'm not sure if this is actually the case, and if so, whether it was deliberate or not.)

The evening ended with a very, very, very long (but funny!) farewell from PFT while his cohort twinkled the ivory. He went all over in saying his farewell. He thanked everyone (including his crew, and Yoshi's crew, and SF Sketchfest, and so on); he also thanked us for being such a wonderful audience. We stayed quiet for this part; it's rude to applaud yourself, right? He continued with something like, "You've been such a wonderful audience. I wish we could spend eternity together. And now we can!" He dramatically gestured up towards the ceiling. "Release the cyanide!" We all laughed and applauded. PFT giggled. "That has to be the weirdest reaction I've ever gotten from an audience. Who would have thought it would be so easy to start a cult?"

It finally ended, and after a standing ovation and final curtain call, they headed out. The whole evening felt like it had gone by really fast, but checking my watch, I realized that it had been about an hour and a half. I seem to get that experience every time I go to Yoshi's, and I suppose it's a good sign: I'm having so much fun that I'm sorry to see it end.

I worked my way back down to 16th and Mission, and was pleasantly surprised to only run into a single obnoxious drunk on the whole way. I think I might try to do this in the future and avoid the mid-Market gauntlet to reach my standard Civic Center station.

Anyways, it was a great cap to a nearly perfect day. Thanks, Pat!

Slow Ride

"Seeing through the Fog" may be the best guidebook to San Francisco ever written.  Its secret: it doesn't rely on a professional reviewer.  Instead, it consists of dozens of mini-articles written by local high school students.  Each is told in the student's own voice, on whatever subject they feel like discussing.  This does include, for example, a chapter on cable cars (written by the daughter of a gripman) and on Alcatraz, but the majority of the book is devoted to topics like the best burritos, underground graffiti art, why the Sunset is so boring, doggie haute couture... all sorts of stuff.

The book is a project of 826 Valencia, McSweeney's non-profit publishing arm devoted to youth advancement.  The student authors come from a huge variety of racial and financial backgrounds, with pretty much everyone represented: Black, White, Hispanic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, etc.  They even manage to snag several native San Franciscans, which is very rare, and one fourth-generation resident, which is unheard of.  Some came to this country to seek asylum and see the city through the critically proud eyes of an outsider; others grew up here.  In one section that I violently disagreed with, the author tries to convince you that Sacramento is a much better city than San Francisco.  Still, it's the fact that you get such a variety of perspectives that makes this book great.  You have chapters that moan about all the tourists in Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf, but also chapters that take those places seriously and describe what's worth seeking out there.  A significant minority of the book is devoted to the Sunset, which is one of the largest residential neighborhoods in the city but isn't even included on many tourist maps.  Reading all of these chapters helps you get an idea of the place: quiet, cold, foggy, peaceful, inexpensive.  You may love or hate it, just like the writers love or hate it, and since each section is written in the author's own voice, you can get a better idea for how to respond to their suggestions.

(That said, one nice and minor improvement would have been to cross-reference the chapters.  I'm thinking of one section that gave encouraging rah-rah prose about how great the theater district and City Hall are.  The architecture is nice, but anyone who's been here knows that you do not want to be walking around that part of town, especially after dark.  The book is designed for browsing and flipping and exploring, so the occasional warning would be good.)

The book is brilliantly and loosely structured into three broad categories.  The first is highly personal, giving the students' subjective stories about the city; the second is more proscriptive, aimed at visitors, and focuses on areas that a tourist might want to see; the third is directed more at locals, and helps point peoples' attention towards some of the more esoteric or out-of-the-way features of the city.  In practice, there is a ton of overlap between these.  All three sections include advice on good places to eat; I'd conservatively estimate that more than half of all the sections include at least some restaurant recommendations.  Still, the tone is a bit different... the first section might be more likely to describe the types of food that would would find in the city, while the second section would describe the best dining choices in a particular neighborhood and the third... well, okay, the third will do the same as the second, but more likely in a place you haven't been before.

I've definitely picked up a ton of stuff from this book that I'll have to try out.  I love the city and have been spending a lot of time here, but have only really explored a small fraction of what's available (mainly downtown, SOMA, and the Mission, with jaunts out to Chinatown, North Beach, Pacific Heights, the Richmond, the Inner Sunset, and Potrero Hill; also Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, Golden Gate Bridge, and Crissy Field).  With this to guide me, I have a lot more promising areas to explore: the Russian district, Bernal Heights, Glen Canyon Park, and various other scattered locations.  I've also learned about new ice cream that I must try, like Bi-Rite Creamery, and restaurants, like Taqueria Cancun. 

One should keep in mind that this book was written by high-school students, and so their tastes and desires may not match those of older people.  They explicitly and cheerfully explain that they aren't allowed into nightclubs or bars, so those locations are totally missing from the guide.  I also get the feeling that some of the things that might be wonderful for a group of 17-year-olds might be less interesting for a solo 29-year-old; Seniore's Pizza may get more mentions than any other restaurant, but I'm less excited about visiting that than I am for other places.  Again, though, what's great about this book is that it wears is prejudice on its sleeve: unlike a more professional travel guide, where you're left guessing why a reviewer picked one place and not another, here you get a real sense for everyone's tastes.

So, yeah: phenomenal book, both for visitors and wannabe residents like me.  I'm not sure how long it will be around for, and it may get more out of date as time goes on; most notably, Muni fare has now increased to $2 from the $1.50 it was when the book was published.  It would be great if 826 Valencia periodically revisted this concept, say every four years with a fresh class.  Each guide would be totally different, provide more up-to-date thoughts on the City, and the collection would eventually form a kind of oral history of life here, focused on the mundane reality of everyday life more so than the landscape features.  In any case, they're off to a great start.

Have Mercer

I picked up "Alive in Necropolis" after hearing the author read the preface on "The Writer's Block," KQED's literary podcast. That podcast can be pretty hit-and-miss for me, but there's enough intriguing stuff in there that I keep coming back. In this case, I was struck by both the tone - a mixture of creepy and matter-of-fact - as well as the local angle. I added it to my list, and just recently finished reading it.

The author is a native of the Bay Area, and it shows. Most of the book's action takes place in Colma, an odd little town a little ways south from San Francisco. The book's first paragraph includes a sentence like the following: "Just over one thousand people live in Colma. More than one million dead people reside there." If you look up Colma on Google Maps, you'll quickly grasp the situation: the city is almost completely covered with cemeteries. For more than a century, ever since San Francisco reclaimed valuable real estate that was filled with paupers' bones, Colma has been THE major final resting place for a plurality of Bay Area residents. That said, it IS still a town, with its own mayor, police force, local politics, businesses, and residents. It's a kind of bizarre situation, and it takes a book like this to remind people who live here just how odd it is.

The author breezily uses real geographic features: street names, cities, counties, and so on. I don't think any of this will turn off people who aren't familiar with the region, but it does add an extra layer of resonance for people who live here. For example, at one point in the book we learn that a certain group of teenagers are from Burlingame. From the context, anyone can grasp what they need to know: Burlingame ain't San Francisco, it's somewhere in the suburbs, and is a relatively safe place. For people who live here, though, Burlingame will instantly conjure up a host of other associations: wealth, status, privilege, quiet, entitlement. That's a lot of mileage out of one place name.


MINI SPOILERS

The main hook of the story, though, is Colma, and specifically the afterlife. In the metaphysics of AiN, after people die, they continue to exist as ghosts. The ghosts obey many of the Hollywood conventions: they can see the real world, but living people cannot see them; they have only a limited ability to interact with physical objects; they never age. When people die, they will exist forever in a particular form. That form seems to be somewhat random: it isn't necessarily the body that they died in, but some people come back as much younger than others.

The dead can be hurt: they can "die" again in accidents, and can attack one another. Doing so is rather pointless, as they will be "reborn" as a ghost again shortly. There is one permanent end, though: if a ghost chews something called the Root, they will vanish forever - or at least, no longer be seen within the realm of ghosts. Root was one of the authorial inventions that I especially enjoyed. I take it for granted that it means Mandrake Root, though it is never called that by name.

The ghosts were a really interesting touch, and one that I wish Dorst had explored a little more deeply. He mainly confined himself to about a half-dozen deceased characters. There are four villains, led by the sinister Doc Barker. The strongest character is Lillie Coit, the famous philanthropist and supporter of firemen. She watches over Doc Barker's gang and tries to warn people about their actions. The other two major deceased characters are Phineas Gage, who survived an iron pipe that was driven through his skull, and a deceased daredevil aviator. It's a big group, but... well, I have a confession to make. Very early on we catch a glimpse of Emperor Norton regally presiding over a funeral. And I wanted SO BADLY for him to be a major character. Sadly, he remains strictly background, and never even speaks. Looking over the past hundred years of history, there are tons of fascinating characters who would make for terribly intriguing ghosts: wealthy capitalists like Flood and Mills; the media mogul Hearst; rock stars from the 1960's; and many more. The dead characters we do get are charming or creepy enough, but bringing the dead back to life is such a great idea, I wish we'd gotten to see more.

(As a side note - I'm now wondering whether Dorst only included the people who were actually buried in Colma, and if so, if that necessarily restricted his choices. It's possible that Colma hasn't been as popular a place to be buried recently.)

The dead are the most interesting part of the book, but the main storyline actually deals with a living cop, a rookie on the Colma force named Mercer, referred to on the radio as Boy Thirteen. Mercer was a great character, and we get to know him well throughout the book. He's trying to find meaning in his life, and thinks that he's found it in policing. However, he still carries a lot of uncertainty and self-doubt with him; he constantly analyzes himself and his own decisions, and has trouble enjoying what he has. He's a grown-up who seems to have not fully grown up yet.

Mercer gets a majority of the POV chapters, but plenty go to supporting characters as well, and they are also worth knowing. I won't list everyone here, but we get a great mixture of personalities and roles. Late in the book, we get to see how a particularly messed-up teenage girl thinks, and it's creepily impressive. We can hear the storyline that she tells about herself, and compare that to the reality of what she does to others.

Oddly enough, even though this book is nominally a detective story and is filled with dead people, the actual crime feels relatively tame. Well, maybe not tame - the main crime that opens the book does seem really horrible - but still: in a world where seemingly every mystery novel features murder, kidnapping, or other heinous crimes, this one boils down to a group of kids being incredibly stupid and taking dangerous risks. I think that this is actually a strength of the book: by trying for less, it achieves more. The victim is still alive, and Dorst milks his gradual and evolving reaction to the crime, which allows for more psychological playfulness than would have been possible in a more conventional straight-up murder story.

Plus, as local readers know, anything like that that happened on the Peninsula WOULD be the most important local story for months. Yeah, thinks are kind of dull around here sometimes.

This seems to be Dorst's first novel, and it kind of shows. There are a few interesting plot lines that he raises which never go anywhere. I kept waiting to meet Jude's gay friend, but he disappears from the book and we never see him. Lorna's financial troubles are interesting and touching, but don't seem to play into the main storyline at all. The bit with Mercer's mother in Tahiti seems like a big deus ex machina.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the book, though. After all, there are other things that don't directly contribute to the Mercer storyline that I still loved. Almost all of Toronto's saga, and especially his relationship with Mia, is superfluous to the plot outside of establishing how much more inhibited Mercer is. Still, Toronto's an intriguing guy, and I enjoyed watching him rage, rule, fall apart, and rebuild himself. Similarly, the bit with Gage's iron never gets closure, but I liked the plaintive quality it lent to the story.

Altogether, the feeling was a bit like reading The Big U, but at the beginning of an author's career instead of after it had been established. TBU was a fascinating and fun mess of a book, careening all over the place and dropping plot lines as frequently as it blew my mind. I don't think that Dorst is another Stephenson, but I owe him the same allowances I gave that book.


END SPOILERS

Alive in Necropolis is well worth checking out. It's a fun mixture of mystery novel and character study, with lots of supernatural action and San Francisco Bay Area lore tossed in for people who enjoy that stuff. Its structure is a tad rough, but it's still eminently readable and a lot of fun.