You're why I can't have nice things

Don't get me wrong - I get along great with my roommate(s). But there's definitely something to be said for the idea of living alone. For one, my teflon cookware wouldn't have scratches and flakes from forks and abrasive sponges. I would have no one but myself to blame for chips in my glasses. I could use the hand towels without wondering if they had just mopped E. coli off the floor. I would still be the only one who scrubs out the bathub, but it would be half as dirty. I wouldn't find nail clippings in the living room, and if did, it wouldn't be nearly as gross. When propping my head on a throw pillow, I wouldn't wonder if it had also been used to keep someone else's bare feet warm. And lastly, there'd almost never be someone sitting on the couch in his underwear for 6 hours on a sunny Sunday afternoon watching sports and drinking whiskey when all I want to do is catch up on my Tivoed Gilmore Girls.

What is this, Bodega Bay?

So today, while standing on the corner minding my own business and waiting patiently for my friend/neighbor/co-worker Janet with whom I usually walk to work, I got attacked by a bird. It was one of those abundant little black birds that I'm fairly certain is a Common Grackle despite the published maps of their range showing them only living east of the Rocky Mountains.

I've seen them divebomb people who get too near a nest before, but seriously, I was nowhere near a tree and if there was a nest in any of the trees close by, there were plenty of other people in the park closer at hand who could have been attacked. But no, there I stood peacefully watching the old folks doing their tai chi when Blam! there was a flutter of wings on my shoulder, a peck at my head, the brush of feathers on my ear. I turned to face my attacker and the thing hovered there momentarily, menacingly looking me in the eye before flapping off and pecking at things in the grass as if nothing had happened.

Ok, so it wasn't birdshit on the shoulder, but this little incident certainly didn't do anything to assuage my fear that the birds have it out for me. Plus, those little fuckers are smart. I once watched as one of those grackles was finishing off a bagel. After it pecked out all the soft squishy goodness, it couldn't get any good bites of the shiny smooth hard outer crust. The thing stared at the bagel for a moment, cocked its head in thought, and I swear I saw the moment the lightbulb came on. It then dragged the crust over to the nearby fountain and dropped it in the puddle where the water was splashing over the side. A few minutes of patient waiting as the bagel soaked up the water softening the crust, and the bird ate the rest of the bagel in bliss as if he'd just dunked his Oreo cookie in a glass of milk.

Be afraid.

Oh yeah....

Now that the rains have finally stopped, I'm starting to remember one of the reasons they were so welcome initially -- it's frightening how quickly some of the city streets start to smell like urine.

Surreality

One of the last things you expect to be confronted with when walking down the street to work is a giant apple and a bunch of grapes driving past in a convertable, while another bunch of grapes sits at the corner with a laptop in its lap. And yet, such was my morning. If only I'd had my camera.

Apparently they were filming a Fruit of the Loom commercial on a street in my neighborhood, but I didn't immediately see the equipment trucks and other crew, so I was a little startled. Anyway, watch for it this summer, I guess. My neighborhood always looks better onscreen than it does in real life, somehow (too bad it only appears in mediocre features: EdTV, The Hulk, or Just Like Heaven). I guess that's what well-groomed extras, steady-cams, grips, gaffers, and editors are for. I think I could use a crew like that for my life...

Try saying it aloud

A few days back I kept coming across this headline which made me laugh because my sense of humor never fully developed past that of a 10-year old: New Red and Blue Rings Found Around Uranus. This made me recall when a friend of mine was looking for a new apartment and really wanted to find one on the little stretch between Mars and Saturn Streets here in the City for the sole purpose of being able to say things like "I live on Uranus" and "We're having a party on Uranus" and "You couldn't find Uranus? Shall I draw you a map?" and "Everyone sure likes the view from Uranus" and "There's plenty of parking on Uranus."

The sky is falling

Sorry for all the earthquake and San Francisco stuff, but thanks for indulging me. I get easily caught up in that sort of thing - it's probably no coincidence I liked geology and history in college.

Anyway, it's interesting to think about. In early 2001, FEMA reported on three disaster scenarios that would likely strain their ability to effectively manage: 1) A terrorist strike in New York City; 2) A hurricane in New Orleans; 3) An earthquake in San Francisco. Not that they're prescient, necessarily, since it's really just a matter of time, but still. A little spooky. Given what we've all witnessed especially in the second of the first two cases, I'll be rethinking my emergency preparedness kit, that's for sure.

Also, unlike any potential future quake scenarios (which pretty much scare the crap out of me), with the passing of so much time, the last Big One makes a really great story. Disaster, tragedy, scope, heroism, renewal, all that good stuff.

Speaking of great stories... has anyone else heard of the giant chunks of ice falling out of the clear blue sky? I'd read about it a year or few ago when it was being reported in Spain, but chalked it up to one of those highly unlikely sketchy witnesses no evidence things, since it was difficult at the time to find any legitimate media reports or scientific investigations. But it's happened twice in California in the last two weeks alone: one chunk leaving a crater in an Oakland playground, and another crashing through the roof of a rec center in Loma Linda.

It turns out that people are investigating... it's just that no one really knows where they're coming from. The FAA is checking into it in case they're falling from airplanes (it's a myth that planes simply dump the contents of each lavatory flush), but there's no evidence to support this theory. Which, while deepening the mystery, is something of a relief to me. Frankly, I'd rather not have giant microwave-oven-sized chunks of ice accumulating on the outside of any plane I'm in. Yeek.

And finally...

Exactly 100 years ago today, at 5:12 in the morning, the San Andreas suddenly snapped a mile west of pre-dawn San Francisco, the rupture rapidly spreading along 300 miles of the faultline in either direction. The ground lurched in some places nearly 20 ft in opposite directions and waves like those of the ocean visibly spread across the ground 2 feet high according to some witnesses. The residents of the city were just beginning to stir when everything they knew went topsy-turvy.

With a tremendous roar, people were thrown out of their beds, buildings shook and rocked like toy boats on choppy seas, churchbells across the city rang out in the clamour before their steeples collapsed, walls came down in avalanches of bricks, chimneys fell in and cornices broke off to tumble onto the sidewalks, skyscrapers swayed, cable car tracks warped, houses were knocked from their foundations, electric and telephone lines snapped, cobbles popped out of the pavement, the Valencia Hotel sank two stories into the ground before collapsing on itself, the monumental City Hall crumbled to rubble. The city's Fire Chief was mortally wounded by falling masonry. The shaking lasted for almost a full minute.

The citizenry poured into the streets in shock and fear and began to take in the damage. But the true horror had just begun. Fires broke out from broken gas lines, knocked-over candles and gas lamps, cooking fires, and despite the tremendous efforts of the fire department they began to spread and merge; there was no water at the hydrants because the mains had broken. Buildings that had survived the shaking -- such as the Palace Hotel, the about-to-open Fairmont, the towering Call Building, the mansions atop Nob Hill -- one by one were consumed by the conflagration. In an effort to create a fire break, the mansions along fashionable Van Ness Avenue were dynamited, but the winds shifted and the newly created blazes rushed back up Russian Hill and into North Beach.

The fire raged for three days until it had consumed over 28,000 structures and left 225,000 people -- over half the city's population -- homeless. Six times larger than London's great fire, twice as big as Chicago's, the blaze is considered one of the world's worst urban conflagrations, and combined with the earthquake still ranks as one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

So this morning, I found myself downtown at 4:30 in the morning with several thousand others crowding around Lotta's Fountain, where quake survivors had gathered in the days after the quake to leave or find word of their missing loved ones and where the few remaining quake survivors still gather annually to commemorate. It was a stirring event to gather in the pre-dawn chill and reflect on what we have or haven't learned, honor the somber event with a moment of silence, hear the sirens wail and bells ring out across the city at 5:12 am, listen to the memories of 108-year-olds first hand, and celebrate a unique city's rich history and vibrant spirit. And you know? I'm glad I got up for it.

Great Expectations

When I first arrived in San Francisco, I'll admit I spent a lot of time wandering around in wide-eyed wonder. I've never been much of a city kid, so some of my awe was just related to the sheer volume of stuff to do and see and feel part of. But I was soon caught up not only in the excitement of the tech boom, but in all of the optimistic mad dash forward - that enthusiastic progressive sometimes-sanctimonious radical seismic spirit of San Francisco. And, in a world that is often rushing forward headfirst, anniversaries such as this whole earthquake thing are good opportunities to pause and reflect on where we came from to help better understand the lessons we should take with us into the future.

100 years ago, San Francisco had well over 400,000 residents -- all the more remarkable because a scant 60 years prior, it consisted of little more than a Spanish mission and fewer than 1000 inhabitants, including the Americans who were trickling in despite the war with Mexico. The population grew 25-fold in little more than a year after the discovery of gold in the Sierras. The hulls of ships, abandoned at the docks as their crews headed to gold country were built over, silted in, and underlie parts of the Financial District where, at the turn of the century skyscrapers designed by famous architects were popping up to rival downtown Chicago.

By 1906, San Francisco was the 9th largest city in the country and the largest west of St. Louis. It had the most important port on the West Coast, one of the busiest ferry terminals in the world, one-third of the nation's gold in the vaults of the Mint, and both the biggest department store and largest public building (City Hall) west of Chicago. Cable cars climbed the hills and martinis were in vogue - both local innovations. The opera houses and theaters were filled with citizens in their finery. The Palace Hotel was considered one of the most luxurious in the world and the Fairmont, gleaming white atop Nob Hill was just weeks from opening. Also atop Nob Hill perched ornate and fantastic mansions built by the Silver Barons, while the surrounding city was crowded with only somewhat more modest Victorian homes, built side-by-side, often sharing walls and largely constructed of the still-abundant local redwood.

The city also still had a ribauld and darker side. Though the Chinatown was the most populated outside of Asia, it was rife with prejudice, some of which was legislated. The Barbary Coast was crowded with bordellos, dance halls, saloons and opium dens, and men were still being shanghaied on the docks. The slot machine was a popular new local invention. It was widely recognized that the city government was corrupt. The South of Market area was filled with factories, foundries, warehouses and the homes of the rough and tumble working stiffs.

So what was once an expanse of flea-infested sand dunes, rocky hills and soggy salt marshes, had become a thriving bustling booming metropolis. The city exuded a fiery enthusiasm: born of such humble beginnings and stoked by the fires of gold, silver and trade, no resident doubted their home would soon rival Paris in its cosmopolitan splendor. And despite a history of tremblors, in their own great rush forward, few people could have imagined it would be all but gone in a matter of days.

High on a hill, it calls to me

Looking back almost 10 years later, I suppose what brought me to San Francisco was not terribly different from what has drawn so many people to California from the beginning: the promise of adventure, lure of wealth, ideal climate and rich natural setting, chance to start anew, impulsiveness, and a little naïveté. Without so much as a map of the city, I set off with two friends, our meager possessions piled in the trailer hitched to the Explorer, and headed West.

True, our path detoured from the historic westward trails a little as Bryan made his way across the miles from Ithaca to pick me up in Cheyenne and we proceeded to Ben's in Bozeman. But I could still feel the weight of the past across the expansive landscape, the layers of history piling up with the restless spirits of the Cheyenne and Crow, Shoshone and Nez Perce, Lewis and Clark, Jedidiah Smith and Jim Bridger, Sitting Bull, Bill Cody, wagon trains of fortune seekers and homesteaders, cowboys, railroad workers, miners, hitchhikers... all the while reading aloud the restive wanderings through another generation from Kerouac's On the Road.

We rejoined the trail traversing the vast Basin and Range of Nevada, crossing blinding salt flats and alkali alluvium shimmering in searing summer heat that proved the fiery furnaces of hell for emigrants of another era. And while our greatest hardship was the melting Skittles as we tried to conserve gas without air-conditioning, it was still a relief to come upon the sparkling waters of the Truckee River sinking into the sands at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. As we crested the great mountain range, I couldn't help but wonder what the doomed members of the Donner Party would think if they could see us 150 years later, traveling a 4-lane highway over the pass that sealed their fate and bears their name.

What was the scene of Sutter's claim to history but proved his ultimate undoing is now the palm-dotted avenues of the state capital, and beyond that the flat farmland and orchards where Okies worked their weary way out of the Dustbowl depression and armies of undocumented immigrants now toil in hope of something better. Through all that we finally crossed the Bay into Oz, coming to rest where the road ends and the rows of pastel shanties cascade over the hills, their laundry lines and rickety back stairs belying their frosted Victorian facades.

The rest, as they say, is history, as we found work and a place to live, moved on, moved up. I have seen gold nuggets in a Wells Fargo vault, worked where silver barons traded, bundled up against Mark Twain's coldest winter, hiked the trails John Muir preserved, thumbed through books where once Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg idled, gotten high in the haunts of hippies, kissed men in broad daylight, ridden out a modern cycle of boom and bust, and know that wherever I end up beyond San Francisco, I will have left my heart here indeed.

Suddenly I See

The San Andreas Fault runs roughly northwest along much of the length of California, passing beneath the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south of the Bay Area, up along the Peninsula, heading out to sea near the cliffs of Daly City, past San Francisco, coming briefly back beneath dry land at Stinson Beach northwest of here and disappearing for good beneath the waves of the Pacific beyond Tomales Bay and Point Reyes. From the beaches of San Francisco, the fault is approximately 3 miles due west out to sea.

It's a strike-slip fault, which means that the Pacific Plate (to the west) and the North American Plate (to the east) are grinding past each other laterally at speeds of nearly 2 inches per year in some places. The rocks of Point Reyes north of the City most closely correlate to those of the souther Sierra Nevada mountains 350 miles to the southeast. This movement is anything but smooth, of course, and when the landmasses get stuck, the earth near the fault starts to deform, the pressure builds and eventually will release in a sudden shock: the ground jerks and the energy released travels in waves through the surrounding rock at speeds of over 8,000 mph.

The Bay Area is not unfamiliar with earthquakes, of course, and the scenic beauty of the surrounding geography which draws so many people is a direct result of the natural forces at work beneath us. 30-40 tiny quakes are registered every week across the Bay Area. Prior to 1906, major quakes had happened with some regularity, and earthquakes estimated at 6.5 or higher occurred in 1898, 1892, 1868, 1865, 1838, and 1836. Before that, records are less reliable. Since 1911, there has been just one: the 1989 Loma Prieta quake that shook the World Series, collapsed a portion of the Bay Bridge, sandwiched the Cypress Freeway in Oakland, set the Marina District of San Francisco ablaze, and nearly destroyed the town of Watsonville to the south. Still, by some estimates it would take nearly 30 Loma Prieta earthquakes occurring simultaneously to release the same amount of energy as was let loose in 1906.

In 1906 there were roughly 1 million people in the Bay Area, and the death toll from the quake and fires stands between 3,000 and 6,000 people, with 250,000 people left homeless. The Bay Area is currently home to over 7 million people and San Francisco is the 2nd most-densely populated city in the country, after New York.

The USGS cannot predict quakes, but they can measure deformation and strain and they estimate that there's a 62% probability of at least one major quake registering a magnitude of 6.7 or higher striking the Bay Area before 2030.

Is it any wonder it's always in the back of my mind?

*Because this is a blog and not a scientific paper, I feel no need to cite sources. Just know that I'm not making this up. If you want to verify any of my statements, feel free to look it up online your own damn self.

Rain, rain, GO AWAY

I've been plodding along through the wet and gloom like everyone else for the past weeks and, while not terribly thrilled with the weather, haven't been too miserably affected. Yesterday, however, quite unexpectedly I reached my limit. I was sitting in a meeting when the wind shifted a little outside so that the rain started slapping against the window. My vision blurred momentarily and with a muffled internal scream, a little something inside me hurled itself off a cliff.

This is enough! I know I just bitched about the rain a few posts ago, but seriously, I've come to regret my enthusiasm back in November and this has got to end. It has rained every day this month but one, breaking April rainfall records before the month is even half over. San Francisco's precipitation since July has reached 157% of normal. Every day comes word of another road closure due to mudslides. My bath towel hasn't been truly dry since it was last laundered. The crackers and cereal in my pantry are soggy. My friend's car smells of mildew from an unidentified leak. My houseplants are looking anaemic for want of sun.

The sun will surely come out one of these days, but if it isn't soon, I may just freak out completely.

History repeating

Having lived in San Francisco for nearly 10 years already (I have no idea how that happened), I think it's safe to consider myself a resident, as opposed to a transient like so many others of my age or younger. One of the many great things about this city is how important its history is to its identity and one of the great things about its identity is how much it defines its residents.

Sure, all the great American cities have their histories, and not having lived in any others for long enough to absorb their own layered pasts I am certainly biased. But San Francisco is fascinating because its tale combines threads you'd recognize from all the others. A happy accident of geography and culture and timing: from pre-Columbian outpost to Spanish mission, from ranchland to overnight metropolis, from the end of the trail to the gateway of the Pacific, war, boom and bust, the Wild West, the exotic Orient, European grandeur, incomparable wealth, working-class poverty, immigration, innovation, tragedy, rebirth.

But for everything San Francisco is known for, perhaps the most significant is The Great Quake. It's a funny thing that people all over the world know of the earthquake and fire that destroyed the city a hundred years ago, despite all the disasters elsewhere through the ages. And that piece of history quite possibly defines the city more than any other even a century later. There are several reasons for this (I'm sure many volumes have been written about it elsewhere), but chief among them I think is the underlying fear that it could or knowledge that it will happen again, that all the greatness around us could be destroyed at any moment.

Not a day goes by that I don't think of the possibility of The Big One. Wherever I go, whatever I'm doing, it's in the back of my head, and I'm scoping out places I could duck into to avoid falling debris, sturdy objects to seek shelter beneath, brick edifices to avoid walking past, electrical lines that could come down should now be the moment. It's not a paralyzing fear, mind you, or even an unhealthy obsession - in fact, most of us go about our day to day under the assumption it won't happen today. But the possibility that it might is all-pervasive.

And so, as the City prepares for the 100th anniversary of the last Big One, I'll join in the fray by writing a little about some of the things I've absorbed over the years and come to feel is part of my own heritage as a resident of this fair city.

Is that what I think it is?

I stepped out of my apartment building this morning headed to work and fortunately was a little more alert to my surroundings than I often am before coffee. Because there, not 5 feet from my doorstep in the middle of the damned sidewalk, were two giant human turds slowly melting in the rain.

Sometimes I hate this filthy city.

I fall behind; the second hand unwinds

Snowboarding again this weekend. Which was awesome.* My friend Andrea and I decided we'd head up Saturday morning to avoid the Friday evening escape traffic. The rain, of course, was falling here as usual, so it turns out we made the right decision. My neighbor Janet had ditched work early Friday to try to beat the east-bound traffic but called me at 10:30 pm to let me know they had been forced to turn around: I-80 was closed over the summit due to heavy snow and traffic accidents. They had spent hours in bumper-to-bumper only to give up and head back to the City. Chain requirements and road closures are very common on this stretch of highway, and I can tell you from experience how sucky it is to be forced to crawl around on your hands and knees in pouring rain at lower elevations to put chains on your car, only to be stuck in 3 lanes of standstill traffic for 4 hours overnight a few miles from the summit in whiteout blizzard conditions. But I'll leave that particular tale of woe, booze, gambling, speeding tickets, traffic accidents, snowmobiling, single-engine plane flying, hot glue, vinyl, and puppies for another time.

Anyway, Andrea picked me up at 8am and oddly, it was the smoothest and fastest drive to Tahoe I'd ever had. Apparently the previous night's closures had turned enough people back who then either abandoned their plans for the weekend or continued on their ways at first light. By the time we were on the roads, they were eerily free of traffic. Which put us on the slopes by noon for a solid half day of riding at Alpine. The trees were all cloaked in fresh blankets of white, the parking lot was surrounded by snowdrifts 15 feet tall, and there were no lines at the lifts. Several times during the afternoon, as I paused in the deep powder to rest, I was surrounded only by the soft whoomp of snow falling off branches and the tinkle of fresh flakes drifting down from the peaks.

We found a cheap but surprisingly classy little hotel right on the Lake to spend the night, complete with hottub, fancy beds, and little kitchenette. And apparently both the lesbian and the gay guy looked much cooler than we actually are: the boarder chick behind the desk chatted us up about how the riding was, and where the best drops, hike-ins, and out-of-bounds bowls were on the mountain. Andrea and I did our best to keep up with the lingo and not give away the fact that we're total dorks and the only terrain park we experienced was a complete accident involving a wrong turn and several spectacular screaming wipe-outs.

On a tangentially related note, this whole daylight saving thing is a pain in the neck. Somehow it completely escaped us this year which put us an hour late on the mountain, to our complete surprise. First of all, why can't we do away with it entirely? I mean, who likes it getting dark at 4 in the afternoon in the winter anyway? Secondly, shouldn't they broadcast it to the populace somehow? Which may be harder in today's digital age when fewer people watch commercials, listen to the radio, or read the newspapers, but still. We had no idea. Were we just that oblivious?

In other news, the drive back tonight sucked. Traffic and pouring rain. So strange to me that in the middle of nowhere's flooded flat Central Valley farmland outside of Davis was bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go for an hour, yet we breezed through the notoriously standstill toll-plaza and across the bridge in record time with only one momentary heart-stopping hydroplaning blind panic.

*Sorry Caroline. I can't help it. I did think of you, though, if that helps any.