Rise Up

Speaking of building buildings, watching them going up is pretty fascinating.

There's a 22-story residential building (BLŪ) going up directly out my office window on Folsom street. I've been able to sit at my desk and observe the whole process, from the first scraping of the original asphalt parking lot to the drilling and reinforcing of the ground, the digging of the basement parking to the placement of the rebar and concrete forms. They just poured the concrete on the 21st floor, the precast facade is mostly in place, and they've framed out the rooms in aluminum 2x4s about halfway up so far.

Naturally, taking in this whole process has brought up even more questions than it answered. The crane magically appeared, so I didn't get to see how they put it together or raise it up by adding new segments. The facade also magically appeared, so I have yet to witness how they hang it from the edge of the building; I'm hoping it will become clear when they start to hang the glass panels that will clad the rest of the building. I'm also not exactly sure what the rickety wooden supports are doing on the top four floors... from here, they seem to be made of two 2x4s or 4x4s that are clamped together side-by-side, and I can't really see how that could provide useful support for the concrete floors/ceilings because any significant compression it seems to me would slide one beam down through the clamps. But I see this at other similarly-constructed sites, so clearly they serve some purpose.

Anyway, watching the crane forever lifting and lowering forms, buckets, rebar columns, port-a-potties, etc., reminds me of my last office location where I also sat in a window looking out over a construction site. This was years ago (1998) as they built the W hotel tower next to the SFMOMA. I kept wondering what would happen if -- and therefore having the secret unspoken half-hope that I'd get to see -- something dropped from the crane. One morning, shortly after getting to work and settling in, as I was taking my first call of the day and idly looking out the window, it dawned on me that I hadn't seen the usual bustle of activity, and my eyes focused onto the crane cable hanging slack. As my eyes followed the cable down, I slowly stood, leaning forward with my forehead against the window. The cable disappeared into an enormous gaping hole like a cookie-cutter cut-out through the roof of the 2-story firehouse adjacent to the construction site. I dropped the phone received.

Turns out that a few hours earlier, the axle on the winch had broken and a 9-ton piece of pre-cast cladding fell nearly 30 stories, smashing through the firemen's living quarters, the engine garage, and into the basement. Purely coincidentally, the firehouse had been emptied of people and equipment the day before in preparation for a remodeling; no one was injured. I did not know this at the time and was immediately cured of my disaster witness craving, left wondering what the crash & boom must have sounded/felt like, but relieved I had not observed it.

Anyhoodle, I'm totally hooked on the Emporis website which has all sorts of useful info on buildings existing, under construction, and proposed, for cities all over the world. I also just learned of several architectural walking tours that I think will supplement my own wanderings and wonderings. Hooray!

Alphabet of giants

Maybe it stems from growing up in western Nebraska where the tallest thing sticking up above the winter wheat was the row of decrepit elm snags and chokecherry trees serving as a windbreak outlining the farmyards, the grain elevator by the tracks on the edge of town, and the radio tower tethered in the distance, red lights lazily blinking an asynchronous rhythm. Or from my time in Cheyenne where the tallest building was the capitol, whose gilded dome can be seen glinting just above the treetops from every road leading into town. There's something about tall buildings that fascinates and exhilarates me.

Whether flying into New York past the endless architectural forest, floating along the Chicago River gazing skyward, or crossing the Bay Bridge with the city lights sprawled out above and below, the little internal thrill of excitement never ceases to spread an involuntary smile across my face. Walking amongst the dark and windy painted canyons of the Financial District every day for years now still hasn't dulled my wonder, and I'm perpetually looking skyward at the dizzying angles, claustrophobic juxtapositions, the reflections of glass and concrete and stone and steel and light.

I suppose there's always a building under construction somewhere in every city, but there has been something of a skyscraper boom in San Francisco in the years I've lived and worked here. Where 30-story towers now stand, I remember the cracking asphalt and chainlink fences of surface parking lots, or a row of sickly poplars. Things slowed down for a bit after the dotcom bust, but the construction pace has picked up with renewed vigor lately, with cranes overhanging taller and taller buildings all over between my office and the waterfront.

And now, with several plans submitted and approvals underway, talk of a new tower being built here (just miles from the San Andreas) that would be the tallest building this side of Chicago -- perhaps even taller than the Empire State Building -- that could tower over 350 feet above the city's current tallest building, the Transamerica Pyramid. Proposals, too, for a series of several other skyscrapers that would also be among the country's top 20 tallest buildings. I'm grinning just typing about it.

I'm all for stemming rampant unregulated construction and growth, for keeping neighborhoods (like mine!) feeling like neighborhoods and for preserving views. But downtown, where you've already got steel and glass and polished stone stretching heavenward, why not think big? Huge! The earthquake threat can be accounted for by modern engineering (more than ever before, anyway... if the biggest big one hits, we're all screwed anyway). The view argument seems a little weak for the proposed sites because if you wanted to look out at nature, you wouldn't live in a city with skyscrapers to begin with; a city's skyline has its own beauty in the twinkling lights and soaring heights, the illusionary permanence, in the defiance and integration and complexity and chaos and humanity.

It's not much of an argument, but if we as a civilization, a culture, a city, are capable of creating immense monuments that boast of our ability and achievement and are filled with life and work and plumbing and thrumming, shouldn't we do it? Maybe? Just for me and my idiot grinning?

The wheels just keep on turning

Seems like it wasn't terribly long ago that I was wishing y'all a happy first day of summer, and here we are already ringing in autumn. The planet just keeps on circling.

Anyway, Happy Autumnal Equinox. Enjoy it while it lasts, because today's the last day for six months that the daytime is longer than the night (unless you're in the southern hemisphere, I guess... but I don't really know anyone who is at the moment, so I don't think I have many readers down there). Well, technically speaking, because the sun is a disk and because the atmosphere refracts light, it'll still be a couple weeks before the length of visible light is shorter than the length of darkness, but the point is, the days are getting shorter and before you know it, it'll be dark when we get to work in the morning and dark when we leave. I hate that. And this is the period when that changes the most rapidly: every day is 2 minutes 25 seconds shorter than the previous one here at my latitude.

On the plus side, pumpkin spice lattes are back at Starbucks.

Don't call it a murse

I know I said I wasn't going to become a knitter. I believed it too. But here I am, with 5 different projects on the go. Only two of which are scarves.

I tend to go through phases when it comes to my creative outlets. For a while it was charcoal. Then I got bored and tried out paper sculpture. I moved on to pottery, which was one of my more successful crafts. Next was photography, and now knitting. So I guess it's likely that I'll give this up before long too.

But in the meantime, I'm having fun trying out new things and gradually moving beyond the basic scarf. I've tried out a few hats, and am giving mittens a shot. I also just discovered the joy of felting and am sort of hooked. I want to do a series of felted bowls next, now that I've finished my most complex (for me, anyway. Technically it was pretty easy) project so far.

Since I'd been carting around my yarn and needles in grocery bags, I decided I should make myself a bag. And out of all the online patterns for girly handbags and flowery frilly purses, I hit upon one for a felted shoulderbag/satchel on knitty.com that was masculine enough - almost like a small messenger bag. I'm pretty proud of the results and have already been asked to do another for someone.

I just have to keep sweet talking my neighbor for use of her washer if I plan on all these felted works. No way I can do this at the laundromat.

The pictures are before the felting and then the finished product. I'm embarrassingly proud of it.

Blue windows behind the stars

I know I've been a bit gloomy since my unheralded return to the blogosphere (does anyone still use that term? Am I like the old guy trying too hard to be hip around the young kids but making an ass of himself using long-dead lingo?), but it's just a phase. I'll get through it, to be sure. I always do. It's just that periodically all my various biorhythmic cycles seem to hit their trough simultaneously which reinforces their amplitude instead of canceling each other out and leaving me my usual level, stable self.

In the meantime, I'm going to Gore-ify you for another moment, so brace yourselves.

Word is out this week that, yes, things continue to get worse. The arctic sea ice reached its annual low on Sept 16th, which isn't unusual by itself. What's terrifying is that it melted back to a record-shattering minimum of about 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million sq miles back in 2005. That's the lowest since records began and puts the melt roughly 1 million sq miles more than the 25-year average. An extra area larger than Texas and Alaska combined, melted away this year.

Holy god.

Ok, it's true, the fabled North-West Passage was ice-free which raises the possibility of actual commercial shipments along a route that cuts the voyage between London and Tokyo to 9,950 miles instead of the 14,300 through the Panama Canal. But still.

The problem here is many-fold. Like so many of the systems we're fucking up, this one is a nasty feedback loop. The more ice melts, the less there is to reflect solar energy back out to space. So the more dark sea exposed, the more heat is absorbed by the warming ocean, making it harder for ice to form. And the latest numbers show that there's already less sea ice in the Arctic than most climate models project for the year 2050.

Aside from the increased wave erosion and melting permafrost, all the arctic animals reliant on pack ice are threatened. Walruses keep their calves on the sea ice, but feed in the shallow waters near shore. When the ice and shore are nowhere near each other, the calves are abandoned or the mothers starve.

Polar bears, too, as we all know by now, also rely on sea ice to hunt. More and more are disappearing, unable to swim back to shore or drowning trying to reach the edge of the shrinking ice to begin with. USGS scientists predicted 2 weeks ago that two-thirds of the world's polar bears will have vanished within 40 years, including all of the Alaskan population.

I think I'm feeling a little of that whirling dervish dizziness that sets in when things seem to reel out of control around you, leaving you helplessly stumbling sideways with sickening vertigo, panting and befuddled, with nothing to be done but plopping down and waiting for it to end.

Scheisa.

Auwoooga auwoooga!
Condition red, I repeat, condition red!
The defenses have been breached! Bogies from within! They've tapped into the main processor and are accessing the classified files. Begin destruction sequence Beta.
Condition red!

The worst of times

As if it weren't already fairly obvious that the world is going to hell, further evidence was presented Wednesday in the form of the 2007 Red List of Threatened Species presented by the World Conservation Union. Prepare to be depressed.

Of the 15 million currently known/recognized species worldwide, the IUCN assesses some 41,000. Things don't look good.

Despite a possible, but unconfirmed, sighting last month, the Yangtze River Dolphin hasn't been seen since 2002 and is considered extinct. No chance of recovery, even if a few individuals still survive.

The Redheaded Vulture jumped from "near threatened" to "critically endangered" status.

There are only 182 Gharial crocodiles left in the wilds of India and Nepal - a drop of nearly 60% in just 10 years.

Of all those monitored, the status of only 1 species improved. But even then, the Mauritius Echo Parakeet edged from critically endangered to just endangered, and that only via captive breeding and careful management.

A combination of illegal hunting (including the commercial bushmeat trade) and the virulent Ebola virus has also forced the Western Gorilla to critically endangered status, wiping out nearly 70% of the remaining population in recent years. Unless something changes soon, it seems certain they will be extinct inside of 15 years. Seriously.

So, in summary, at least 785 species are known to have disappeared over the last 500 years and 65 others are now found only in captivity. According to Wednesday's report, an additional 16,306 species are threatened with extinction -- 188 more than last year. Broken down a little further, 1 in 4 mammals are in jeopardy, 1 in 8 of all the world's birds, a third of all amphibians, and a full 70 percent of the plants that have been studied.

Cheered you right up, didn't it?

Around the world in 13 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes. Nevada says: Meh.

I don't know if this has gotten much press outside the CA/NV area, but the disappearance of adventurer Steve Fossett has certainly been in the headlines a bit here lately. He went out for a short flight in a small aircraft from a ranch somewhere south of Reno on the 3rd and hasn't been heard from since.

The only reason I bring this up here is because I'm fascinated by some of the numbers I've been reading associated to this story. All sorts of people, including the Civil Air Patrol, are scouring the mountains and desert basins within a certain radius of his planned flight path, and there's still no sign of him or his plane. But they have discovered 6 - 8 other wreck sites apparently heretofore unknown. And according to the NTSB, there have been 340 plane crashes in Nevada in the last 10 years alone, while another 150 planes have gone missing, according to the Civil Air Patrol.

It's just sort of jarring when you're used to feeling like nothing can go unnoticed in the world today with all the crazy technology available and the reduction in privacy and the wiretapping and Google peering in your windows; feeling fairly certain that there's very little mystery left.
When the truth is, there are still parts of the country that are so remote, so hard to reach, so inhospitable, that a famous person in an airplane can just vanish and never be found.

That's oddly kind of comforting, really.
Unless you're Mr. Fossett, of course.
Or anyone who was in any of the other 150 planes. Or have any intention of flying solo out over the Sierra into basin & range country.

So much for the Palak Paneer

Exactly what you don't want to see when you walk past your favorite curry-in-a-hurry lunch spot and glance through the window into the kitchen just as a gust of wind lifts the heavy curtain which normally obscures the view:

+

=

I mean, I know they need to make large batches, but using a power drill, paint mixer and large bucket? No wonder it's so cheap.

*sigh*

Dang it all, anyway.

Just once I'd like to come (or stay) home sick from work and have the place to myself to wallow in my self-pity and crappiness (not crapulence) without having to share the couch or the tv or the front room. I mean, I've got roommates, it goes with the territory. I recognize that. And, as I've said before, I like my roommates. I do. I just occasionally would like to not have to hole up in my bedroom for some alone time since they are always home when I want to be and the spare room is generally unusable.

Truthfully, I'm totally jealous. Although I have to say if I didn't have to work every day, I'd certainly not be sleeping til 1pm, or sitting around the apartment (well, not all time...). Lordy, the apartment would actually be clean for once, for one. I'd also know the city inside and out because I'd have climbed every hidden stairway, biked through every neighborhood, gone to every museum and poked into every hidden gem of public space. I'd be hiking through every gorgeous place within a day's drive. I'd have been to the Grand Canyon. I'd learn to surf. I'd have mastered my pottery and would sell pieces. I'd have knit presents for every family member for the next several Christmases. I'd print, frame and sell some of my photographs. I'd volunteer for the Park Service, and maybe the Marine Mammal Center. I'd grow fabulous flowers and fat vegetables in my community garden plot.

It's easy for me to say that, of course, because I can't do all those things. So my jealousy becomes a little snitty. But that's the sort of shit that goes through my head while I'm sitting on the futon instead of laying on my couch.

It sorta takes away whatever possible fun there may be in being home on Tuesday afternoon with a monster fucking headache.

Ugh

It's been six years already. How the hell did that happen? The weird thing is, when I think back on that particular morning, and indeed, the several grueling days following, I still get a bit, I don't know, exhausted. Like some weird post-traumatic emotional overuse flashback. Drawn out, of course, by nearly 5 years of international craptasm.

For now, I'll spare all the where-I-heard-the-news stories. I just thought I'd say, you know, good luck world. It doesn't have to be all car bombs and land mines and village burning and polonium poisonings and shootings and nuclear dabbling and kidnappings and beheadings. Why aren't we all cooperating and helping each other out and baking each other cookies? Doesn't that sound nice?

Unbuckling his beltway

You know, pretty much everything there is to say about Idaho's Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig has already been said (or set to music). And I'm clearly not the only person to think these things. I mean, is it any wonder no one is even questioning that he's been seeking out trysts in men's rooms?
A) Inadvertent foot touching in the stalls is not easy -- aren't you usually trying hard to pretend no one else is sitting next to you at all? And if you did tap toes, maybe a quick "sorry" or at least a rapid retreat would be in order.
B) Picking up paper off the floor? Really? A public restroom floor? Really?
C) You see the police badge and say "No!" instead of perhaps, "Sorry officer what's this all about?"

It kills me. So, on the one hand it makes me sad that the poor guy is so deeply disturbed by his own inner-most urges that he's out making laws to squelch them in others too. Which also pisses me off, on the other hand, and so I squee a little in delight at his being called out. Of course, I'm also frustrated that his mortifying behaviour (anonymous bathroom sex: a world of eew) is the exception that will prove to all the other conservative Republican zealots just why we gays are so icky and eeeeevil.

A last thought because he's in the news again today saying that he's going to fight to undo his guilty plea. He says the evil liberal media made him do it. Seriously. Apparently the pressure from the Idaho Statesman, in particular, was so stressful that he didn't "knowingly" plead guilty. Because obviously the very best thing to do when so concerned about an ongoing investigation into your sexual history is to plead guilty to soliciting anonymous gay bathroom sex. Ummmm, ookaaaay.

The Return

I'm not dead! I swear. At least, not that I'm aware of (as far as I know, I am not an M. Night Shyamalan character). The hiatus from writing just sort of happened. Writing in the evening after work wasn't appealing, my weekends got busy, and before I knew it, a few days had turned into a few weeks. And then all the things I wanted to write about started stacking up and sitting down to write anything became ever more daunting. And weeks turned to months. Crazy how that happens.

And here we are, summer basically over already.

Anyhoodle, quick recap of some of the things I was going to describe/discuss/write about in detail but now will now just breeze over:

The last weekend in June was Gay Pride ("Pride Not Prejudice"), which is pretty much what you'd expect when an extra 500,000 people come to town to be silly and happy and gay. Or to ogle at all the silly happy gay.



That was also the weekend that Joy and family were in town, so I ditched the parade and the four of us spent the morning at Golden Gate Park and went out to lunch, which was quite fun. But I, Uncle Yak, hereby declare that Nolan is growing up too fast and should put a stop to it while he's still a toddler.

4th of July was quiet this year, and I was the only person atop my roof, weirdly. Though the bajillion people atop all the other roofs in the neighborhood still made for an entertainingly communal experience. Fireworks were terrific. Remind me next year to discuss Independence Days of yore.

The following week I spent back home with the fam. I had a truly wonderful time camping and hiking in Great Sand Dune Nat'l Pk with my sister, nephews, and brother-in-law; driving to see my ailing Grandma in central Nebrasky with Mom; visiting my Grandad in western Nebrasky; and spending some quick but quality time with Dad at the house in Cheyenne that still feels like home, which stems in part from being able to sit in the shade beneath enormous trees that I remember planting as tiny saplings.

A sunset/full moon rise walk and tour of the Pt. Bonita Lighthouse.

Headed to LA to visit Jen and to totally band-geek out at the DCI World Finals at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Long lines aside, I had a blast, though it became clear to me that my own Drum & Bugle Corps summer was a whole different lifetime.

I next spent a long weekend backpacking with my friend Nichole along California's "Lost Coast" up north of Mendocino. The spectacular scenery and utter lack of people totally made up for the fears of: slipping and tumbling to my death on the rocks 800 feet straight below; bears; stinging nettles and poison oak. We did see the ISS and Endeavour fly overhead on the last evening, which was unexpectedly awesome.

This year's Labor Day trip: wait for it... Omaha! Between the Nebraska State Fair, the steaks, the Henry Doorly Zoo, the Runzas and the Dorothy Lynch, and the good company, it was hard not to have an excellent time. But you know, having grown up in Nebraska, my expectations were perfectly placed.

So that was the summer that was. Without any of the detail or filler material. I now vow to update on a [somewhat] more regular basis.

Be prepared.