More art, more joy.

I'm slated to be a part of the volunteer effort to help seal the latest mural to grace our nearly-newly minted park. This mural, like the last one to go up, is on the western-facing wall of one of our public lavatories found along the Lower Great Highway, the road next to the Upper Great Highway, the one that's becoming a park. The official opening day for the park, a name has yet to be determined, is April 12, if I'm not mistaken. 

You might recall my having recently posted about the mural that had been defaced by dipsticks who are, presumably, big-mad at having yet another place in which to recreate safely here in the city. If not, then here you go---Vandalism. 

The above snippets show the work of Orlie K., an artist whose work I've admired for a number of years now. They are incredibly skilled at bringing to life both flora and fauna in the most unique and whimsical way. I also really enjoy their color choices. I was a bit too close to the mural to be able to snap a wide shot. If you're curious to see more of Orlie's work and are able to access Instagram, then check out Orlie's page: https://www.instagram.com/orliegrams/?hl=en. 

Vandalism

I was biking down the Great Highway the day after its permanent closure on March 15th and was met with this sight---

Emily's mural was 'tagged' before she'd been able to apply a protective layer over it to shield it from both sun damage and the threat of vandalism. On Sunday, fortunately, she and a group of volunteers went out to scrub away the damage. I think Emily is now on track to apply the sealant this week. 

And in other mural news, a second artist, Orlie K., who working this weekend at another site along the Great Highway, was verbally harassed by passersby. One person even called Orlie's piece 'visual pollution'. Orlie's work decorates various businesses in SF and beyond. Pollution of any kind it ain't. 

Volunteer clean-up effort of Emily's mural yesterday.

Quick update on cats and Ocean Beach Park aka The Great Highway

Big boy Bartie is still alive, thank goodness, but the trick will be how to keep these two kitties, whom I refer to as 'furrenemies' from slaughtering each other over the long haul. The hubs and I have decided to sequester the cats when we aren't at home. Each area of the house, in which the cats reside in our absence, has a litter box and bowls of food and water. We've been operating in this mode for the past couple of weeks and it's been good...so far!

Backyard Bartie

In other news--on Friday, March 15th at 5am, the Upper Great Highway will close permanently to car traffic. Below is a shot of an artist called Emily Fromm creating a mural showcasing some of the history of the westside of the city. Highlights of her piece include the Cliff House (1890s version) and the long gone, but not forgotten Playland-at-the-Beach. Emily's work is fun and whimsical and I'm glad she's been tapped to be the first of, hopefully, many artists who will contribute to sprucing up the area along the Great Highway with eye-catching creations. 

          

The artist, Emily Fromm, at work on the walk-path that flanks the Upper Great Highway.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

When it rains, it pours.

It has been pouring water out of the sky on and off for the past week, I'd say, and I really wish the title of this post were actually referencing rain. Did you know that a cat's claw can puncture and potentially fatally injure another cat without so much as a blood splatter or any other visible marker letting one know that something were amiss? I did not know this, but I am learning the hard way that this is true. Nursing an ill kitty back to health is already challenging, but it's been made more so as my husband has had to travel out-of-state to tend to his recently deceased aunt's affairs. To be honest, I really don't wish to talk about anything too heavy, so I'll share with you, as if I were a 'someone' in the film industry, my Criterion Closet picks. 

First I should ask if you've seen the videos shared by Criterion of film industry folks literally standing in a closet-sized room looking at shelves of movies carefully before selecting their prized favorite flicks? If you like the person who has been selected to participate, then it can be a fun watch. Here's the Criterion link for those who wish to learn more--Criterion 

Here is my film list:

1) Laura, a film by Otto Preminger starring Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Vincent Price and Clifton Webb, has got to be my most favorite of the film noir genre, next to Double Indemnity. It's an engaging watch that I never tire of even though I know 'who done it'! Release date: 1944.

2) High Tide, a film by the remarkable Gillian Armstrong and starring the incomparable Judy Davis from 1987, still packs a punch as a tense, well-acted mother/daughter drama for the ages. Like Australian accents and Elvis tribute acts? You'll like this!

3) The Third Man, Carol Reed directing and starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and Trevor Howard, is probably my favorite Orson Welles film. The film is set in post-war Vienna and shot mostly on-location. There's intrigue, affairs of the heart, illegal activity and more! What I really like were the bit players speaking untranslated dialect in the film. If you've an ear for Austrian dialects, then you'll find these bits of dialogue a real treat. 

4) The American Friend, an early-ish Wim Wenders film from 1977, starring Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper, is an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel called Ripley's Game. The film has the swagger of American '70s cinema a la Robert Evans with a gritty continental flare. Speaking of flare, don't forget to check out Ganz's trouser game in the film. Har-har. 

5) Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, directed by Robert Altman and starring Karen Black, Cher, Kathy Bates and Sandy Dennis is a film that feels a bit overlooked in Altman's oeuvre. Based on the play of the same name, it's about an all-female Jimmy Dean fan club who convene 20 years after Dean's death in 1955. It's a fun romp that retains the feel of a stage play. 

There are so many great films; this list could be longer! So, I'm curious to know--what would some of your Criterion picks be? 

Vision Zero, nowhere near-o.

Ten years ago, SF committed to something called Vision Zero. What it meant was that by 2024, SF would suffer no more traffic deaths after implementation of various traffic-calming measures meant to be rolled out (forgive the pun) city-wide. These would include, but not be limited to: lowering speeds limits, putting in speed humps/bumps, and adding traffic cameras. Under the last Mayor, progress toward eliminating pedestrian deaths as a result of reckless motorists was NOT made. I suspect that the proposed measures were both not implemented in a timely fashion and not actually put in city-wide. The city has added a few more bike lanes around town, largely unprotected (read: white paint on the ground), and we all know that a splash of paint does not shield one from injury. 

In 2024, there were twenty-four pedestrian deaths as a result of distracted motorists. It's foul. The last car-related pedestrian death of the year was in my neighborhood and just a few days before Dec. 31st. An older woman, walking alone in the early morning hours in lanes of traffic on the Great Highway for reasons not initially provided*, was struck and killed by a driver. 

The new SF Mayor, an heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune, Dan Lurie hasn't yet shown his commitment to Vision Zero, but he has spoken on the record about not wanting The Great Highway, a car roadway along the Pacific Ocean, to become a park. Oh, well, buddy! The majority of San Franciscans voted in favor of the park, so it's coming. At least visitors to the new park won't have to worry about drivers crashing into them.

Image courtesy of WALK SF

*It has since come to the fore that the woman was suffering from some sort of dementia and had wandered away from home. -very sad, indeed.

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.