Earthquakes and old friends...

I was en route to my mom's place in the East Bay around 11a when a warning message flashed across my phone's screen: TSUNAMI WARNING! Stay away from the coast! Move inland! 

I knew that there had been a rather large earthquake this morning about 5 hours north of us, but what I didn't know was that there had also been a series of quakes out in the ocean on two different fault lines. Bart, our regional train system, suspended service as a precaution and all of us passengers had to off-board at the final SF station. I was not going to mom's today after all. Our SF-wide train service was also suspended, so I took a streetcar, then a bus, and then used my feet to get back to where I'd parked my car in an area of town called Glen Park. 

I live about 7 blocks from the beach, but our area was not given evacuation orders. I think, however, West Berkeley and parts of Pacifica had to 'close up shop' and get out of Dodge. As quickly as everything began, the tsunami warning was rescinded and transit services resumed. I probably could have gotten out to mom's had I just hung downtown and waited a bit. Oh, well. 

***

I had what I might call an 'emotional earthquake' last week at my new job selling fancy chocolates. It was Day 3 and a nice couple came in to purchase some goodies. They had a few questions and I did my best to assist them. The woman struck me as looking familiar. I have worked in the service and retail industries on and off for decades and have a fairly good head for faces. Occasionally, though, some people just look like other people. There are only so many combinations of facial features, 'colorings' and builds to go around. We probably all have a Doppelgänger out there somewhere, or at the very least someone who looks like they could be a sibling. I think that's what I was thinking when I was talking to the woman in the chocolate shop. She could have been someone I'd served eggs to some 20 years ago. Or mixed a cocktail for some 15 years ago. Maybe she'd been in a play I'd seen. Or maybe she was from my general neck of the woods and I'd walked by her at some point in life and taken note of her somehow. 

None of the above was actually the case. I know this because when we were chatting chocolate I felt compelled to tell her that she looked like a friend of mine. The woman responded with the usual sort of thing when a stranger blurts out something like this. It was: I must have one of those faces. 

I could have smiled and agreed and left it at that, but instead I said the first and last names of my friend. This was a friend, might I add, who had died in the early 90s in a car crash. She (I'll call her Chickie) and I ran in the same circles in high school. We were pretty tight back then. She was funny, fearless, charismatic and silly. We partied pretty hard together and did our fair share of cruising the El. She left behind young children. She also left behind parents and sisters.

She said: That's my sister. 

I looked into this woman's face and knew immediately who she was. She was no longer the small, chubby-cheeked girl with a sort of mullet-y haircut who always had the biggest gap-toothed grin on her face. I said her name--it came out like a squeaky question, really--and went in for a hug. She is now taller than I am and resembles my friend, her sister, so much these days that it was uncanny. I had not seen this person since the mid-to-late 80s. The whole thing was mad. We chatted for a bit about her and her family, her nieces and nephews and what she's doing now. It was hard to focus on the task at hand for a while after she and her husband left the store. 

During my lunch break, I called the only person in my phone who was also friends with Chickie. She didn't pick up, so I left the message: YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE WHO I JUST SAW!

Photo credit: Bruce Kaiser

Divided we stood.

At the weekend, a bunch of us Prop K volunteers along with the group behind getting the proposition up and running met up on The Great Highway for a victory rally. The informal soiree kicked off Saturday at noon. At 12.30p, I was still mooching around the house when I looked at an online post by another supporter who shared a picture of a cohort of No on K folks standing at the event with their No...K signs raised high in the air. I then decided to get down to the Great Highway fast in order to counter whatever the anti-park people might have up their sleeves. 

When I arrived, there had already been a round of singing of Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land and I'd also missed one of the main architects of Prop K giving a short speech. The No on K contingent, standing on the other side of the median dividing oppositional lanes of traffic (fitting!) were quietly chanting something like: Open the Great Highway over and over, but it was fairly easy to ignore. One woman dressed as a bunny and holding an NO on K sign had been a bit prickly with one of the Prop K supporters who had attempted chat with her, but, other than that, nothing of note happened. The park police, I should add, were on hand were some sort of scuffle to have kicked off. Fortunately, nothing untoward occurred. I stayed at the gathering after the last of the NO folks walked off, then made my way back home. 

Note the NOers in the background of this image. Photo credit: SF Chronicle

Here's a sort of crap shot I took of the No on K peeps from my perch on the Yes side of the street.

A park at the beach? Why, yes!

I have spent the past few months campaigning for Prop K, the gist of which was to turn a road for cars near the Pacific Ocean into a park. Fortunately, the tireless efforts of many, many volunteers proved successful and WE WON. Nationally, election results have been mostly abhorrent. I'm so glad we prevailed here, locally, with this issue as it takes a teeny-tiny bit of the sting out of knowing who'll be occupying the White House come January.

Doing 'visibility' with Snowy D. Plover last Monday. 

Taking a walk on the Great Highway once results showed Prop K would pass.

https://electionmapsf.com/ 

I live on the west side of the city very near the ocean. If one looks at a map of the city (found by clicking on the link above) showing a break-down on how folk voted on Prop K, it's clear that a majority of my neighbors in District 4 did not want a park. Or maybe I should say that they did not want the misinformation that they'd been fed on social media about what Prop K was about to come into being. One of the main fibs was that Prop K was some Trojan Horse type ruse meant to usher in large building projects and that our coastline would be marred by a 'Miami skyline'. Never mind that there is no zoning allowed for such a build. I spent a bit of time on NextDoor dipping my toe into the No on K posts and saw that people were very much believing the rather multi-faceted lie about what the passage of Prop K would bring. There seemed to be no way to convince these people that they were falling for bald-faced lies, so I took to reporting posts for spreading Prop K falsehoods. If I were to try and talk to these folk IRL while out canvassing for Prop K, I would either be yelled at or told that I just didn't really know what I was campaigning for and a look of pity would come across their faces. The 'no' votes came from my neighbors, primarily, who seemed to have bought into the boogeyman narrative of skyscrapers popping up in our backyards hook, line and sinker.  The majority of 'yes' votes were from the northern and eastern parts of town, for the most part. I'm thankful that this issue was put to a city-wide vote else we would not have won.

The misinformation campaign brought by the No on K folks and propagated on various social media sites hindered us, but didn't defeat us. We will have our park and it will be a park for all.  

David Gilmour wasn't there.

I've had this draft collecting dust, as it were, for a while now. I can't bring myself to discuss the shit show that was national election results, so I'm going to ignore them, if that's OK and just talk about visiting London. 

The Battersea Power Station, just south of the Thames, featured on an early Pink Floyd album cover, is now an attraction of sorts and even boasts its own stop on the Northern Line. The last time I visited London in 2015, the structure was still in the midst of being spruced up, I think. There wasn't much around the area of the power station; it wasn't a place where one visited. Now, in addition to the new tube stop, there's a Battersea Power Station ferry stop and there are loads of newly built apartment buildings, walk paths, green spaces and benches for the many folk who live in and visit the area.

Wanting to view the structure that I had always associated with Pink Floyd, I took a trip down to the power station to see it in all its refurbed glory. The exterior and environs did not disappoint. 

Walking from the tube station, we were met with this view--

I really dug the newly-built apartment buildings dotting the way from the tube to the power station. There's a snippet of one of the apartment houses on the left in the above photo. These buildings are uber modern in design, not too tall and seem to fit the space, if that makes sense.

Here's a better shot of the apartment building from the last snap--

The Power Station as seen from the ferry dock.

            

I had heard that the interior of the old power station housed businesses, but didn't totally think that it would look and feel like a shopping mall inside, but that is exactly what felt like. Upscale in look, but a mall nonetheless. At the very top of the structure is some sort of guest 'experience' one has the pleasure of paying for in order to access. I didn't feel like shelling out the £20 entrance fee. I did, however, go into the gift shop positioned right as the experience-goers come out of the exhibit/show/what-not. The shop stocked totes, calendars, cards, t-shirts and keychains all emblazoned with a sort of pop-art image of the old power station. None of it really floated my boat, so I left without making a purchase.

        The Battersea Power Station-cum-shopping center.

The generous skylights are a nice touch.

People-seeing in London and Bath

 -just came back from a visit to England. I was gone about two weeks and it felt, towards the end, just a tad too long. To be fair, I needed the first week to recover from jetlag, so for the second week I was awake during the day and asleep at night, so there's that, at least. 

When I lived in London a little over a decade ago, I saw my fair share of British film and television actors in places like Holborn and Bloomsbury. Seemingly every character actor who had had a bit part on Dr. Who was in and around Lambs Conduit Street. This time was slightly different in that I saw some familiar faces in unexpected places and one in an unexpected get-up. 

A few days into my trip, I was traveling on the SE rail taking a train from London Bridge to Greenwich and as I was alighting at Greenwich I turned my head to see Rupert Everett slouched against the window seat on my train bound for Slade Green. He turned his head to meet my gaze. I thought, looking good, Rupert and then looked away as I stepped off the train. Where was he going? Woolwich? 

I met a couple of friends in Bath during their Autumn 'fayre' weekend the 13th and 14th, I believe it was. I had arrived on the Thursday and was sat in the square very near both the Roman Baths and Bath Abbey when Mr. Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud, walked through. I had just watched a re-run of Grand Designs the night before in my accommodations and was sort of floored that McCloud looks just like he does in the show (minus the big puffer jacket as it wasn't cold out). I wondered why he was in Bath until I popped in to Topping & Company Booksellers the next day and realized that he'd had a speaking engagement there the previous evening. Too bad I missed it!

The funniest 'off the telly' sighting was in Russell Square. I had just come from a visit to the V & A Museum and was taking the bus, for the heck of it, down Piccadilly Circus. The bus terminated at Russell Square, so I hopped off and was about to cut through the square when I saw a woman, surrounded by a small entourage, who was dressed like a catcher's mitt. I thought it funny, and tried to take a sneaky snap when the woman in the silly get-up saw me. I put the phone down and she said, 'No, I want you to take a picture.' I realized then that it was Katherine Ryan, a Canadian comedian who has done fairly well for herself in the UK, dressed like a goof. I told her she looked 'fucking ridiculous' (which was probably the point) and took a photo. She was with her husband and a what turned about to be a camera crew. Apparently, Ryan was dressed as a snack food and not a mitt. Hearing my No. American accent, she said the mitt-shaped crisp was a cross between a Cheezit and some Brit crisp I was unfamiliar with. I told her she had me at Cheezit and her hubs told me rather enthusiastically to 'try one!' Then an assistant's hand shot out with a bag, so I took one. The puffy little mitt-shape snack was god awful. So I just thanked them and moved away. Whatever Ryan was hawking is going to need more help than her dressed as the snack, to be honest. 

The one famous person I expected to 'see' on my trip to England was in Bristol. From Bath one can easily reach Bristol via the x39 bus. So I hopped on the bus one morning looking forward to my visit, if you will, with the person below. I wasn't paying great attention to the stops, so actually rode the x39 to the end station. No biggie. Walking back loosely via the bus route led me to signage for the Millennium Square. A walk over the river Avon and a few steps farther was this man--

Bristol boy made good.

Without my having to state, I would hope that the artist captured this person's likeness well enough for you to know who this is! 

'A lotta rocks, y'all.'

The title of this piece comes from a dude who, upon first getting out of his car in the Yosemite Valley Lodge parking lot, looked around and then said to his family still sat in the vehicle: It's a lot of rocks, y'all. 

I will not say that seeing stubbed out cigarettes butts on the ground at a bus stop in Yosemite Valley would typify my experience visiting the national park, but it's not far off. There are hoards of visitors to the valley in the summer, and, arguably, not enough oversite of said guests. I spent a portion of my visit picking up litter, unfortunately. That said, I was glad to see the grandeur of the park after 44 years. I have hazy memories of our family trip to Yosemite--I think we camped--but even if I had remembered the 1980 stay, today's park experience would probably not be comparable as the number of visitors to the park have nearly doubled over the ensuing years. In 1980, there were approx. 2.4 million visitors to the park--which is still loads, to be honest. But compare that to pre-pandemic nos. hovering around 4 million annually. The last visitor tally taken was in 2021, I think, and the number of park guests that year was around 3 million.

My buddy, S., flew over last week from England and is making her way from California to Las Nevada via automobile. S. bunked with me here in SF the first part of her stay, then we both traveled to Yosemite together before parting ways yesterday. She traveled on to Sin City via Death Valley while I took public transport back home. (I wouldn't recommend it, to be honest, as I spent nearly ten hours on trains and busses before throwing in the towel and having my hubs pick me up from a bus stop about three miles from home.) I've major travel fatigue today, let me tell you.

S. was completely enamored of the flora and fauna in Yosemite. I would hazard to guess that her home turf of Newbury is vastly different. While we do have similar flora in my neck of the woods--redwood, oak, pine--the scale and magnitude of Yosemite makes visiting the trees feel that much more grand. 

Over the summer, I worked a retail job in a tourist area here in town called Pier 39. It's, as the name might imply, along the water and from the pier one has a stellar view of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the Marin Headlands when the skies are clear. Visitors from all over the world and the country visit Pier 39. I found that most days at work had me interacting with folk from German-speaking countries. The boss, interestingly, told me when I was hired and found out that I spoke German: We hardly get any German visitors. That told me that a) she doesn't know what German sounds like and b) she must not ever visit the Pier 39 shop. After a month on the job, I knew for sure that it was the latter and probably also the former. 

Anyway, back to Yosemite--German guide books must have a sort of prescribed route for visitors to California to take because the majority of those with whom I spoke had rented a vehicle and were traveling between SF and Los Angeles with stops in Yosemite, and in Las Vegas (this included seeing the Grand Canyon), and, time permitting, a trip to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah as well in between.  It would seem that if the Germans are anything, they are nature lovers. 

I didn't take any litter pictures while in Yosemite because why bring any of us down, but I did take a snap that, for the most part, incapsulated my stay there. 

I'm still trying to figure out how these Germans got their VW camper vehicle over here from Hessen (I looked the plate up). Talk about dedication to the cause! 

I will leave you with a few more pictures of Yosemite--

El Capitan, there are five climbers on the rock face, if you can believe it!

Camp Curry, Half Dome in the background.

This big boy was eventually startled by some nitwits having a photo shoot/video shoot in the grass nearby.

Lovely day in the yard--

This is my view from the new dining table out back while I read Joanne's latest blog post. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be sitting outside right now. There are workmen using power tools on a house a few doors down and I can hear a steady stream of screams coming from St. Gabe's, a Catholic elementary school, on the corner. BRRRRR!!! then EEEEEE!!! then some more BBBUUUURRR!!! And you know what? I really do love it. This yard makes me happy as a clam. 

The cats are darn happy, too, when they are able to be sprung from the Catio and let out into the wider yard, that is. I can't really keep an eye on both of them at once--they always eye the fence--so I have to have them out with me one at a time. Marcel was outside with me first and then poor Bartie was allowed out after his plaintive cries pierced my heart. 

Marcel under the jade plant.

Sad Bart with his stuffed mouse for comfort stuck in the Catio.

Big Boy Joy out in the backyard with me.