I’d intended to go out and do some of the Fat Tuesday celebrating around town last night, but I’d taken off on a day trip to Tahoe and ended up coming back in the evening, completely wiped out. So, instead of checking out San Francisco’s Mardi Gras celebrations, I curled up in my bed with a book and went to bed early. I can’t help it, though – I feel like I missed out on something by not partaking of whatever the city had to offer last night. So, I’m wondering, what did everyone else do to celebrate Fat Tuesday in San Francisco?

I know that, had I not been so sleepy, I was going to wander over to Grant Street to check out the annual Mardi Gras celebration at Mojito. However, my roomie told me that it’s actually a much bigger thing than I knew about and tickets were $150, so I wouldn’t have ended up doing that after all. I know there was also Carnaval. But I’m sure there was tons of other stuff going on. Let me know what it was so I can live vicariously while staying at home and working on things I should’ve already finished!

Most of my “art projects” are invisible, in that, they take place on and between computers, but next time I crave busting out with old school craftiness, I’ll take over the front table at Papa Toby’s like these cute girls have right now.

Love the bottles of Red Stripe + rubber stamps.

(I wonder if they have a blog.)

We’ve all been keeping up with the anti-porn hysteria surrounding Kink.com’s purchase (and plans to restore) the Armory, but little has been done to examine the few people behind the so-called “neighborhood outcry”. Imagine my surprise when I read on the Blowfish blog (local sex toy retailer) that among the signatures of the most disgusting “what about the children” letters to the Chronicle was none other than Victoria Theatre owner Anita Correa. She was also quoted against Kink.com and adult employment in the recent NYT piece. What brought my attention to this turn of hypocrisy in an institution long-known for support of arts, LGBT entertainment (like porn panels) and very adult performances (like burlesque shows) was Correa’s sudden refusal — yesterday — to show local lesbian filmmaker Pink and White Productions‘ premiere (Blowfish is P&W’s producer). According to Blowfish’s Christophe Pettus, Correa had verbally agreed to host the opening night at the Victoria on February 6, and was advised (in person) of the film’s adults-only content. But now it appears that in a hasty effort to maintain her newfound prudery, she’s ripped the rug out from under P&W claiming “concerns from the community” about NC-17 content and that offensive material is against Victoria’s policies, all while refusing to state the theater’s policies to Blowfish.

Shall we point out that the Victoria has shown plenty of porn in the past? Or that Pink and White’s films are award-winning darlings of LGBT international film fests? No, let’s read Blowfish.com’s press release about the Victoria — usual home of LGBT film fests — censoring a local lesbian director. I’ll bet Ms. Correa hasn’t been in the audience of her own theater in a long, long time (and thus is a bit ‘out of touch’ with the ‘community’). Pictured: Pink and White’s director Shine Louise Houston.

In their efforts to come up with a lead story that was even more inconsequential than yesterday’s, the Chronicle’s editors have truly succeeded:

What, are they just screwing with our heads now?
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Amusing article in the British newspaper The Guardian, comparing Liverpool and San Francisco. Liverpool is said to have “greyer weather” (though you wouldn’t know it by the rain here Thursday) and is also artsy and bohemian to a degree.

Hmm, if you say so. I found this Aug. 2005 BBC piece where they asked young people “What’s living in Liverpool like?”
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There are only two explanations for this lead story in this morning’s Chronicle:

A. Nothing more important than Muni’s on-time report happened on Monday.
B. They kind of have their heads up their butts.

Feel free to vote in the comments.

Now that I’m working in Palo Alto, Caltrain is my pal. It’s three blocks to the station and three blocks to work, with a 5 minute ride in between. The train timing in the morning, though, means that I have a 5 minute window in which both trains go whooshing by; so if I don’t catch the 8:13 or the 8:18 I’m screwed for another hour. The other trains until 9:13 are express trains that skip Palo Alto! Coming back at night it’s the same.

So I’m getting intimate with the train platform and its surrounding businesses. I can go to the drugstore at Sequoia Station and buy toothpaste or whatever, blow some money on a latte, or get a bagel. What I mostly do, though, is watch people and talk with people. This morning at coffee the most amazing woman in a tight puffy pink jacket with fur trim explained the mechanics of her hairpiece to me. There’s no way to describe the hairpiece without sounding melodramatic. It swirled, cascaded, shone, and made me want to twine my hands in her luscious chestnut tresses. Seriously, that was some pornstarlicious hairpiece! I forgot to brush my own hair this morning or even look at it. The other thing I do at the station in the cold grey morning is whip out my laptop and try to get on the Pizza and Pipes free wireless (like right now.)

No matter what, at the station there are always hunky guys in uniforms doing something. Police, security guards, dudes in orange vests and hard hats with a lot of things hanging from their belts like Harriet the Spy. Then there are smug-looking guys with manicures and nice haircuts with laptops and mountain bikes. There’s a category that I think of as “ladies in nurse shoes” who look like they’re going to work in a hospital or doctor’s office, where they’ll change into scrubs. The upper class looking women clutch their sparkly beaded handbags, lips pursed, brave and resolute, as if thinking “I can’t believe I’m actually taking the train!” Safari time, ladies. Me, I might look like I’m playing hooky from the alternative high school but if you look a bit more closely you will see the analogue to the mountain bike guys: a smug-assed GenX technocrat whose laptop bag cost more than the sum total of all the clothes I’m wearing.

On a recent trip to New York I noticed an odd synchronicity of shoes and bags. On the subway, people’s shoes always perfectly matched the social class of their carrying bags. Sneakers went with backpacks. Leather shoes (whether pointy or sensible) went with leather purses or classy-looking satchelly briefcases. And one category always had fancy square-bottomed twisted canvas-handled department store shopping bags, and the other had plastic bags from the drugstore. It was eerie. Here the rules seems a bit more mixed up.

Caltrain itself is lovely. Clean, bright, quiet, roomy, with comfortable seats. The ride through Redwood City reveals the interestingly squalid back of Cosco, a lot of grey-looking auto body shops in the very sweet neighborhood on the other side of the tracks in back of Target, and then the green, green, gated and walled backyards of people in mysterious Atherton. I think really rich Ents live in Atherton. Menlo Park has apartments, apartments, then a scrubby field, then the train station.

On the way home on Friday people all over the train (I walked from end to end) were drinking beer, kicking back, and talking to strangers. Was that special Friday night mojo? Or is Caltrain in the evening always like that?

I’ll have more to say about Palo Alto later.

As Mark pointed out, Barack Obama was in town today pimping for Barbara Boxer among other things. I attended the fund raiser tonight along with 1400 other people to an utterly packed house at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in Union Square. I did got a few shots of the man who would be king and Barbara. I even got a shot of my old time colleague Doug Boxer. Check out my pics on Flickr if you like.

San Francisco’s very own Gravy Train is rocking the Bottom of the Hill this Friday. It’s not too late to jump on this bandwagon especially if you’re a fan of the new wave, electro and Le Tigre sounds. The band is promoting the release of their upcoming album, All the Sweet Stuff due out in July and you will go crazy for this stuff. It’s an all ages show so I can’t speak for the crowd. I’d be willing to offer a money back guarantee that you’ll have a fabulous time, ‘cept I might go break. See ya there!

So I’m doing errands downtown, on 2nd Street, and I’m trying to find some free wifi. The other day in the car (this is dumb I know) I had my powerbook on while I was driving and it was picking up maybe 50 different networks. – Pine & Battery or whereabouts. But sitting in Peets’ on Mission & 2nd, no wi-fi. Walk into the CNET lobby building, and no wifi. Walk to favorite cafe downtown, the “golden gate perk” (no where near GGP haha) and it’s closed. Walk through Chinatown to Russian Hill and the Chameleon, and there are all the zombies… like in that zombie movie where the town is vacant but the mall is full because, it’s explianed, “zombies do what they did in real life, regular habits, like shopping.” Chameleon is packed. I squeeze between two people and have a nice hi-speed wifi for work. Funny on this day-off, downtown was pretty vacant, but on Russian Hill the cafe was packed with worker bees like me. Extra points if you comment here with the proper zombie movie.