bridges, bay and brooklyn

This past week, the Bay Bridge finally reopened after a piece of metal came away from a section of the bridge that had been repaired Labor Day weekend.

The Bay Bridge when I choose to think about – and I try not to as often as possible – is scary. Personally, I think falling metal is the least of what’s worrisome. The bridge is so long, it takes what feels like an eternity to cross. Not a good feeling in earthquake country.

I think bridges in general are an amazng engineering feat. Suspension bridges in particular seem to be the most incredible – a roadway deck held up by steel cable attached to two long cables that are essentially being pulled by anchors on either end of the bridge. That’s the concept. I’m shocked more suspension bridges don’t collapse like the one in the video above – the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which was clearly not designed right. (Understatement.)

Photo by Simone Roda

As scary as I find bridges, I also am fascinated by them. When I taught second grade in New York, I used to take my kids on a trip by foot across the Brooklyn Bridge. The walkway is wide and gracious and wooden, and floats above the traffic. We would stop at the halfway point, break out crayons and paper, and draw what we saw – the East River and the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, pretty in their own right; lower Manhattan with its impossibly tall skyscrapers, beautiful Brooklyn Heights and its promenade.

As a foolish painter plunges his eye,
sharp and loving, into a museum madonna
so I, from the near skies bestrewn with stars,
gaze at New York through the Brooklyn Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge, Vladimir Mayakovsky

hardly strictly

Went to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this weekend, a free three-day music festival in Golden Gate Park for those of you unfamiliar with the event.

sunset on Lyle and the Banjo Stage

There’s a lot I could write about – Lyle Lovett was amazing, singing his old stuff from Pontiac with the Large Band backing; Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris and Old Crow Medicine Show brought down the figurative house with their rendition of the Band’s “The Weight”; the crowds were peaceful and happy and spontaneous music broke out all around as I walked through the park between stages.

All true.

But instead, I’m going to say that being at Hardly Strictly was both amazingly fun and weirdly deja-vu-ish. It was as though I had returned to my alma mater, Wesleyan, and it was 1984 Spring Fling all over again.

There were the barefoot hippie kids looking shabby chic. There were the drunken no-neck boys. (Why would they want to be at Wesleyan of all places?) There, in front of the stage, were the kids with no rhythm dancing to Gillian Welch’s folk ballads.

I half expected a hackey sack tournament to break out.

Hardly Strictly is a quintessentially SF experience. Clearly, Wesleyan prepared me well to live in the Bay Area.

4th of july

My friends Anat and Rob were in town from LA this weekend. Anat loves fireworks and insisted on seeing the show over the bay. Rob was once traumatized by burning ash dropped from mismanaged fireworks. A 4th of July tossup, which Anat won. Joining us was one of Anat’s friends from Israel, Nava, whom I’d just met and who was in the country for the first time.

We trudged down to Fisherman’s Wharf along with three zillion other people. Nava had lots of questions about the fireworks tradition, the age of the country, San Francisco. People here, she remarked, seemed so at ease and non-self-conscious. Very un-Israeli, apparently. (And un-East Coast, I told her.)

By the time the fireworks began, I was feeling cold and claustrophobic and wondering not about our nation’s birth but whether I’d ever find an apartment. And then, finally, greens and reds and whites began bursting in short trails. There were loud booms and small white dust explosions that looked like comet tails. Colorful tendrils that appeared to come right at us. Multiple bursts of first white and then red, straight lines and then swirly pinwheels.

I remembered watching fireworks back east. As a kid, setting off roman candles in the P.S. 20 playground. Buying packages of firecrackers in Chinatown, a dragon emblazoned on the label affixed to the red paper sheath. The firecrackers themselves always multicolored, which made them seem harmless, like too-thick birthday candles. Arguing over the strength of an M-80 – a quarter stick of dynamite or a third of a stick? (Probably neither.) Later, when I was older, with my mother and brother and niece, leaning on the hood of my car in a UMass parking lot on a hot, muggy night. Or watching off a pier in Provincetown as the sky exploded over the Atlantic.

I recall most vividly, though, the bicentennial celebration in New York City. Multi-masted schooners sailing around Manhattan and a fireworks display that was awe-inspiring. I had just started high school that year, in Manhattan, and was loving the excitement of the city. I knew on some level it was a dangerous place – crime was on the rise as the city’s population dwindled, bled out to the suburbs. But it was MY dangerous place, which made it not-dangerous in my teen logic. Rather than be frightened by New York, I relished it – the gritty grimy hard-ass and unbowed city that seemed so primed for the anarchy of the nascent punk rock movement,

The bicentennial was the year of the 44-caliber killer, when couples no longer risked sitting and kissing in their cars for fear of meeting up with the Son of Sam. It was also a year when the city was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy – just months earlier the Daily News had run its famous headline about the federal government’s decision not to bail us out: Ford to City: Drop Dead. The murder rate in 1976: 1,622. (In 2008: 496.)

All that crime and chaos was forgotten, though, for a moment at least, in the smoky afterglow of that summer’s 4th of July fireworks show.

glen park

You know a neighborhood in SF has arrived when it has its own association newspaper. In the case of Glen Park, it’s the GPN (Glen Park News). The latest issue has as its above-the-fold headline: “Scofflaw Scavengers Spark Debate.” About the habits of professional recyclers who pick out cans and bottles for the refund money which, apparently, is illegal.

Kind of lame as an urban issue, granted. But I love this anachronistic little newspaper, and I love the neighborhood.

I’m moving from Glen Park this week, my home on and off for the last year and a half, which is leading me to wax poetic about the place.

My litmus test for a neighborhood is how far you have to walk to get a bagel and a newspaper. Not far, as it turns out, if you’re close to g-park center.

Check out La Corneta for the best burritos in the city, Glen Park Station (an old-time divey neighborhood bar) for the atmosphere and great happy hour prices, and Gialina’s for thin-crust brick-oven pizza and friendly servers. In fact, you’ll undoubtedly have to wait for a table at Gialina’s, so you might as well head over to Glen Park Station for pre-dinner cocktails. Plus, the neighborhood has its own little library – how cool is that – and a great used bookstore, Bird and Beckett.

There is definitely a small-town, even a village feel, to the place, despite close proximity to both BART and the highway. It seems insulated, in a good way, possibly because the center sits in a little valley and to get anywhere you have to go up and over hills.

The neighborhood is named after Glen Park Canyon, a yawning 122-acre split of the land that descends from nearby Twin Peaks and where you’ll often find dogs and their humans, or a softball game at the fields by the rec center. I’ve taken walks in Glen Park Canyon, and run along its edges on O’Shaughnessy. It’s an amazing ravine within the city limits, with trails both on the canyon floor and under the homes perched on concrete pilings along its rim.

Glen Park Canyon, ca. 1909

I’ll sign off with a few pics of Glen Park through time courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library.

fighting the proposed highway ca. 1958

Bosworth, looking down Diamond toward Chenery, ca. 1948

dancing ganesha

At the top of the escalators in the Asian Art Museum is a statue titled Dancing Ganesha. And, at the feet of this elephant-headed Remover of Obstacles is a small slot where you can pay tribute.

Pauline, who led the tour of would-be museum volunteers (of which I was one), explained that many people turned to Ganesha at those moments in their lives when big changes are on the horizon – new job, starting a family, moving. Wouldn’t you know it? I’m mired in one of those moments. Looking for a new place to live, remaking myself after the end of a relationship, becoming an Asian Art Museum volunteer. I’ll have to spend more time with this stunning, whimsical little Ganesha …

The tour of volunteers took us into staff-only areas like the inside of the coat check room (not so interesting) and through the collection (very, very interesting). I was particularly moved by the Korean celadon pieces – pale green lidded ewers.

Some other artifacts to mention: a beautiful example of Zen brushwork, part of the “Lords of Samurai” special exhibit – a large charcoal-colored O painted onto a scroll. The O, a docent told us, is a key symbol of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism as it represents both everything and nothing. A stunning raku bowl fired by the man who invented the process that is named after him. A room with statues of Buddha representing different visual interpretations of this central deity by various Asian cultures.

Over the years, I’ve tried to reconnect with my Korean-ness – taking language lessons, for instance. But I’ve never been too successful. I’m hoping that being at this museum, steeped in history and culture, will give me more chances to examine and understand that part of me. Maybe now with Ganesha’s help it will be more possible.

badcamp

Spent the day yesterday at the Bay Area Drupal (BAD) Camp learning some basics about Drupal, the open-source content management system.

As someone new to trying to develop websites in Drupal, the intro workshop I attended was both amazingly informative and overwhelming.

Apart from the explanations of nodes, modules, blocks, views and panels (whew), what I enjoyed most about the day was the communitarian impulse of the people involved in organizing the event. Kieran Lal, who is billed as Acquia‘s Drupal Adventure Guide, the first speaker during the session I attended, was both open and welcoming to us newbies and talked about his desire to make Drupal more widely available as a low-cost publishing option. Not just for the people in the room and their communities, but also for newspapers and magazines, which are being shuttered left and right in this era of cost-cutting.

Loved this. As an ex-journalist, I’m torn about the financial difficulties newspapers face. Selfishly, I don’t want my dead-tree Sunday New York Times to go away. And yet history tells me that journalism is a creature of evolution and will always exist in some form or another. It’s just the medium that has changed, from town crier to printing press to now blogs and Drupal.

Oh, and I’ve got a website idea … let’s see if I learned enough at badcamp to launch.

released

Narrowly escaped serving on a jury for a 24-day trial. With my freedom, I decided to walk from Civic Center back home to Glen Park. A sunny day in SF, documented.

athens v sparta

My friend Evan and I went to the Giants game Saturday night. We were given great seats by our friend and co-worker Brent, who has season tickets but couldn’t make it. We sat close to the field, so close in fact that we almost caught a foul ball. A young kid a few seats down from us in our row wound up with the ball, which is how it should be. (At one point later in the game I walked past the kid and he was running his fingers over his souvenir absent-mindedly. I’m sure he’s sleeping every night with the ball stuffed into his pajamas.) Even if we didn’t have great seats, it would’ve been fine – AT&T Park is a beautiful stadium, with its gorgeous brick wall in right field and a view of the bay from the cheap seats.

photo courtesy of antman

After the game (which the Giants lost – shocker), we took Muni to the Haight. And on the Muni were tons of Cardinals fans. Co-existing peacefully with Giants fans.

Clearly, I am too recent an East Coast transplant because it seemed incongruous to me that Cardinal fans could be allowed to ride Muni unheckled. The last baseball game I’d been to on the East Coast was Yankees-Red Sox at Fenway Park. I kid you not, actual blood was shed, both during the game – a fight broke out right next to me – and afterward, on Lansdowne Street. The SF Muni is not unlike the Green Line trolley in Boston and I can’t imagine Yankees fans after a game riding without deep fear of being dismembered and sold for parts while crammed alongside Sox fans.

Yankees-Red Sox, I realize, is to some extent a special case because it carries the weight of a long-standing historical rivalry between cities. It’s basically our modern day Athens v. Sparta. Baseball is just one of the stages upon which the psyches of these two cities – Boston was once dismissed as “that town” by former NYC Mayor Ed Koch – duke it out for supremacy.

If you’re interested in reading a lyrical, engaging essay about the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, a piece that elevates their annual battles to that of Greek tragedy by one of the best baseball writers of our generation, then pick up a copy of Why Time Begins on Opening Day. Author Thomas Boswell is a sports writer for the Washington Post. The essays in this book are somewhat dated, but if you love the game or if you love great prose, you’ll love this collection. I read this and Boswell’s other essay compendium, How Life Imitates the World Series, in the mid-80s and fell in love with baseball writing.

Someone once said baseball must be a really boring game because people spend so much time trying to convince us how beautiful it is. Maybe. But before you decide one way or the other, read Boswell. Or Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, the late John Updike’s piece about Ted Williams’ final game. And then let me know what you think.

the americans

SF MOMA has a wonderful traveling exhibit of Robert Frank’s photographs from his seminal book The Americans. Frank shot these photos in the mid-50’s with a starkness that lays bare our culture. The exhibit is titled Looking In, so appropriate for a photographer who made visible underrepresented people and moments.

In a November, 1951, interview in LIFE magazine, Frank said, “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” That’s in fact exactly how I felt as I stared at the African-American couple sitting so upright on their motorcycle, the parade watchers in Hoboken whose faces are obscured by a window shade and an American flag, the gas pumps in the middle of a desolate landscape, sitting under an incongruous SAVE sign.

I especially loved seeing the hand-written correspondence from Frank detailing his arrest as he traveled through Alabama shooting for the book and the discrimination he faced there as a Jew. There is also Kerouac’s typed introduction to the book, complete with misspellings.

I was enthralled by this exhibit, enthralled by the apparent connections between Frank’s work and that of the great early 20th century documentary photographers.

And yet …

In all the photos, not one was of an Asian-American. On one hand I have no problem with that. This was Frank’s vision of America, beautifully realized. He makes many points, and they are all indeed poetic.

On the other hand, on the other hand … I can’t help but feel like Asians are slighted once again. It’s irrational, I realize, because I know many, if not most, groups go unrepresented in Frank’s collection.

So I propose a new book be made, called The -Americans. It will be a homage to Frank, shot in the places where he shot across this country, but this time employing a more current sensiblity of invisible in America. What do you say, Guggenheim, will you fund me?

If you’re in the Bay Area, see Looking In. At SF MOMA until August 23.

cathedral

Visited Muir Woods for the first time this weekend.

I sensed it was my cathedral (albeit one in which people were walking around snapping photos – kind of like an outdoor St. Patrick’s), a place infused with grace. I am not a religious person, and in fact have tried over the years to puzzle through and articulate what it is that I believe. I used to say that I believed in people, that I was a secular humanist. But I wonder if what I actually believe in is redwoods.

It’s not like Muir Woods is a place of pristine nature far removed from society. There were tons of tourists – including me and my family – wandering the well-maintained paths. I did wish that more people took their time to look up and marvel at the crowns of these massive trees, or that they were more reverential and less talkative. But actually it was fine. Ultimately, I cared only about the little mule deer nibbling grass, just feet away, the late-afternoon light slanting through the trees in an almost stupidly picturesque way, the textured reddish bark, the cross-section of the 1,000-year-old trunk with its astonishing historical markers (“Charlemagne’s death”; “Revolutionary War”).

As a kid, the trees I saw and played on sprouted out of cement sidewalks. Most often, they were oaks or maples, and their extensive root systems buckled the surrounding concrete. So of course we’d ride our bikes as close to the trees as possible to feel the bounce over that uneven cement reverbrate through tire and leg and body. I’m sure the trees were choked over the years by New York City soot and car exhaust and stunted in their growth. My memory of them is that they were worn and tired.

One tree, though, stands out. The Weeping Beech, in Flushing – where I grew up. It had long, wispy tendrils that drooped down to the ground. I always thought the name perfectly suited that tree. As a kid, I knew it as the place in the middle of Bowne Park where we would run to for shade on those unending summer days full of play.

A few months ago, I was in Flushing, visiting my dad. I happened to walk past the spot where the Weeping Beech once stood and saw a memorial signpost that said the tree I knew as a child was planted in 1847, the first of its kind in this country. A man named Samuel Bowne Parsons brought a cutting of the tree from Belgium and later provided many of the original trees for Central Park.

In 1966, the tree was given landmark status – the first living landmark in New York City. The tree died – the sign didn’t say from what – in 1998, though it is believed that all Weeping Beech trees in the US are descended from this first one.

(Incidentally, John Bowne – namesake of the park and my elementary school when we weren’t referring to it as P.S. 20 – was one of the first practicing Quakers in this country and stood up against religious intolerance to the point where he was jailed and sent back to Holland to stand trial for his beliefs.)

John Muir wrote that “no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite.” And I say no temple made with hands can compare with the California Redwood. Or, for that matter, the Weeping Beech.