Tag: san francisco

Nyotaimori — The practice of eating sushi off of the body of a naked woman.

3:14 p.m.

PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Dan Bistline is self-appointed mayor of Church St. I know this because there’s a sign in his window:

Church Street

Pop. ?

Dan Bistline, Mayor

Dan Bistline has also printed up a quotation for each pane of his three-sided window:

“You are a good and kind person.”

“Jump and a net will appear.”

“There are no truths, only stories.”

Dan Bistline annoys me.

10:39 a.m.

Great post from Plastic Bag:

” I received a referral today from Google via Yahoo!. Someone
had typed in “load urge rectum girl”. I was, of course, the first
result. Which fills me with worry. Am I fulfilling the needs of the
Load Urge Rectum Girl community? Are they satisfied with the
information on my site? How can I turn their initial browsing into
a recurrent user pattern? Will they become a repeat visitor? Oh,
user behaviour analysis is so very tiring…”

4:35 p.m.

Chocolate truffles and tango music while you watch animals mount each other? Only in San Francisco:

Valentine’s Day Sex Tour (Sat/10-Sun/11)

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

What does Valentine’s Day mean to you? Candy conversation hearts? Frilly
cards scrawled with gushy poems? A diamond tennis bracelet on your pillow?
Perhaps you are the unconventional sort who would rather watch animals mate
at the San Francisco Zoo with your beloved. Yes, picture yourselves holding
hands and sipping champagne while you roll through the zoo on your very own
private X-rated tram tour led by an animal care professional, sampling
chocolate truffles and listening to tango music. Not a bad way to feel the love. — Jan Richman

San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Road, SF; Sat/10, Sun/11; 9 am and 3 pm; $50; (415) 753-7080.

(Update: Errr… Make that “Only in San Francisco and San Diego.”)

2:51 p.m.

So this guy is driving a sports car with a license plate holder that says, “Get in. Sit down. Hold on. Shut up.” Charming. He probably has a matching one hanging above his bed.

12:12 p.m.

I buy some daffodils on my way to work. As I’m walking, I realize that I’m carrying flowers and a book of poetry as I trot along the Streets of San Francisco. Suddenly, I’m the over-the-top “sensitive girl” and my life is a bad undergraduate play.

1:26 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Cynicism kicks in.

Excerpt:

“I swear I used to think
everyone kinda had a similar life to mine, but anymore I’m
sure
they have a lot less fun, eat a lot more bran, have
a
lot more low quality sex, and mail each other
inspirational cards that they actually read.”

12:04 p.m.

This guy fights with his girlfriend. A lot. So much that he has a rather lengthy page devoted to the subject, “Things my girlfriend and I have argued about.” A sampling:

  • I eat two-fingered Kit-Kats like I’d eat any other chocolate bars of that size, i.e., without
    feeling the need to snap them into two individual fingers first. Margret accused me of doing
    this, ‘deliberately to annoy her’.
  • She pours water into the back of my monitor every time she
    waters a plant, which she refuses to have moved to another, less overtly stupid, location.
  • Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on – let me make sure you’ve got
    the inflection here: Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but
    years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I
    narrate the entire bleeding film to her. “Who’s she?”, “Why did he get shot?”, “I thought
    that one was on their side?”, “Is that a bomb” – “JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF
    GOD, JUST WATCH IT”!
  • She wants to paint the living room yellow. I have not the words.
  • Margret thinks I’m vain because… I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the
    bathroom – our fourth most popular location for arguments, it will delight and charm you to
    learn – Margret proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous
    narcissism by saying “None of the other men I’ve been with” (my, but it’s all I can do to
    stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) “None of the other men I’ve
    been with used a mirror to shave.”
    “Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn’t it? As all the other men you’ve been with can now
    only communicate by blinking their eyes!” I said. Much later. When Margret had left the
    house.

(Thanks, Kevin.)

8:41 a.m.

Spent Saturday night on the Haight. Mad Dog in the Fog had an “Irish band from outer space,” and Molotov’s was dank, but Nickies featured a relatively sober girl mesmerized by her own reflection. I say sober because she managed to balance on one of the benches that circled the room, and she perched there dancing with the mirror. She would grind seductively and cast furtive, flirtatious glances at…. herself. Huh. Then someone threw up on my friend’s pants and we had to leave.

8:46 p.m.

Found a post on, Small Japanese Notebook that struck me as a concise description of being 16:

“i suddenly don’t like my friends. or a good majority of them.”

5:14 p.m.

I was on the Haight awhile back and overheard a conversation between three men. Two of them had been fighting and one asked the third man his opinion:
“I don’t know Jim, you were servin Tommy with some pretty aggressive tones.”

3:34 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Friend from college writes, filling me in on the friends he saw over Christmas break.

Excerpt:

…And I swear my friend Mike
smoked about fourteen acres of hash down in Brazil.
Like I don’t know if he’s got a complete sentence in
him anymore. But 99 percent of my friends are tops. Including
Mike, who may well be able to read without moving
his lips by April.

10:40 a.m.

My friend Katy is 5’2″, beautiful, and blessed with a tangle of curly black hair. I spent New Year’s Eve with her, and every ten minutes or so a new guy noticed her:

“Awwww, I like ’em petite!”

“Ooo. I’ve had wet dreams about that hair.”

“Hello there, little girl. Wanna sit on my lap?”

Like she was going to saunter up, plop down on his lap, and wrap her legs around him. “Oh, Romeo. Don’t be so coy. (Insert bubbling laughter.)” Glah! By the end of the night I felt like my brain needed a shower, and none of it was even directed at me.

2:32 p.m.

My friend Sam is leaving San Francisco, and he made some good points in his farewell note. Another one bites the dust:

WHEREAS, despite the greatly-exaggerated demise of the New Economy,
housing prices in San Francisco are still the second-highest in the world,
and

WHEREAS the Bay Area is swimming in cultural events which are all
within driving distance, but which lack parking anywhere within the same zip
code, and

WHEREAS we spend over two hours commuting each day, and

WHEREAS we and two cats would like to move in together and have a
front porch for something under $1000 a month, and

WHEREAS it might be nice to purchase a house within the next five
years without a Tokyo-style mortgage, and

WE THE UNDERSIGNED (to wit, my girlfriend and I) do hereby declare:

YEA, VERILY, we are getting the Duck out of fodge.

12:07 a.m.

Oooh Virtual Bubble Wrap. Such satisfying pop-like sounds. Must move hand away from mouse to wipe moronic drool from chin.

10:27 a.m.

Portraits in Stupidity, first in a series

The bus driver was a typical morning commute bus driver, stopping suddenly for no apparent reason, letting more passengers on the bus despite the laws governing volume, density, and morning coffee breath. The woman standing next to me had one arm wrapped around the pole for support. In her left hand she held a compact mirror, she was applying eyeliner with her right. The driver would slam the brakes, she’d wobble and narrowly avert skewering her eye. It made me nervous. Not because I’d mind having her out of the gene pool, but I have no idea what kind of detergent you use to get brain out of a new sweater.

3:44 p.m.

The people in my neighborhood:

  • The guy with retro “I listen to indie rock” glasses whose dachshund always wants to know if he’s just bought something edible. Last time I passed him, he was letting the dog smell a CD.
  • The old lady who lives behind me and teeters around her sun room. Watching her, I realized for the first time that old people walk slowly because every step hurts.
  • The perpetually surprised girl who tweezes and tortures her tiny eyebrows until she looks sufficiently terrified.

10:07 a.m.

te>Couldn’t we all use a little John Denver right about now? We could:

Aye Calypso!
The place's you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye Calypso!
I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

Right. Why am I still at work?

8:47 p.m.

San Francisco Moment:

Guy in a Jeep Cherokee passed me this morning with his radio blaring. He stopped for the light and as the engine roar quieted, I heard, “THE NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX PLUNGED TO ITS LOWEST LEVEL IN 15 MONTHS…” He was blasting NPR. Rock on, suburban white guy.

10:16 a.m.

I don’t know what my thumb did in a past life, but the person in charge of thumb karma has gotten around to me. Apparently, I have Atilla-the-Hun thumb. Twice in the last week, I’ve burned it badly. I mean big, oozy blisters that I have to concentrate on not prodding. Ow. Accursed thumb of Cain.

11:18 a.m.

San Francisco moment: a cable car passes filled with 60 drunken, dangling voters who are chanting VOTE-AL-GORE! VOTE-AL-GORE! One dude at the back has a Nader sign.

9 a.m.

Things I heard in the Castro last night:

  • Guy in a Renaissance-Faire-type outfit: “That’s exactly the kind of Spock costume I want. Blue, the badge… original series.”
  • Girl in Viking Hat with Large Group and Large Beer: “I’ll be 18 in TWO HOURS! WooooooooHooooooooo!” Much high-fiving.
  • Naked Playing Card Girl: “Have you seen the rest of my deck?”
  • Twelve 20 year olds who had climbed atop the bus stop shelter: “ROCK AND ROLL! ROCK AND ROLL WILL NEVER DIE!!”
  • Luke to Princess Lea: “Where’d I put my light saber? Do you have it? Shit… I think someone ripped off my light saber.”

11:22 a.m.