Two of my favorite things are set to convene this Wednesday: Ritual Roasters and Bikes to Rwanda, a non-profit that unites American roasters to improve the quality of life for Rwandan coffee farmers. A ping-pong tournament is set for July 9th at 5 PM at 1026 Valencia to help build five bike shops. Read: the $25 you could spend this week on big brand coffee could provide a co-op farmer with a bike toolset, including tire lever, frame pump, and wrench.

I’m a big fan of Clara Seasholtz, the founder of the organization that raises money for a low-cost bicycles that farmers use to transport supplies and 130-pound bags of beans. Seasholtz helped the group provide more than 250 bikes to farmers last year and is currently focusing on opening bike shops in Rwanda to teach communities how to care for and build bikes. She’s on a Northern California trip this week, and I admire her unique approach to using what she knows (the American coffee industry) to impact what she saw as problematic (Rwandan farmers lacking transportation to increase their marketability). Now that deserves some table tennis.

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While the idea of getting on the Treasure Island shuttle kept me away last year (who would want to go to a place that doesn’t even have a grocery store when there is so much wonder cityside?), I was excited to see the lineup for this year’s music festival. September will bring Justice, my favorite Canadians Tegan & Sara, and the somewhat dark sounding and delicious Okkervil River. Consider me in line at AT&T park.

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Tonight and Monday mark the only two theatrical screenings of The Gits Movie in the Bay Area.

The film explores the saga of one of the better punk bands I’ve ever had the chance to see in action, whose career was cut tragically short not by the usual mix of lethargy and substance abuse, but by the singer’s horrific rape and murder as she walked home from the Comet Tavern 15 years ago this week. The startling crime sent shockwaves through the Seattle rock scene, stopped a brilliant band in it’s tracks, and suspicions and rumors ran amok for 10 years until DNA testing eventually revealed the culprit. Now a whole new generation has been discovering The Gits through their records ( including the newly issued Best Of The Gits and You Tube videos like the one below.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyCXmaRj0Wg

The film documents the faces of the post grunge era, including interviews with the band, and their friends and supporters who include Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna, and many local SF residents including Broken Rekids label honcho (and now Rainbow Grocery beer & wine buyer) Mike Millet.

The San Francisco screening is on Monday July 7th at The Landmark Embarcadero Cinema with a special post screening Q&A with members of Seven Year Bitch.

The Oakland screening at the Uptown tonight on Saturday July 5th offers the added opportunity to see The Gits drummer Steve Moriarty now a local resident, in action with a new band he’s just started with Dead Kennedy’s bassist Klaus Flouride.

For more info see the links

7/5 Uptown Oakland or 7/7 Landmark Embarcadero in SF

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San Francisco coder Alex Payne’s downforeveryoneorjustme.com gets a plug in the New York Times tomorrow; the piece went online an hour ago. Payne’s site answers that nagging question “Is there something wrong with (insert favorite website) again?”

In a blog entry in which he discusses that and other side projects, he calls the site “a quick hack” for which “I don’t have the time or resources or desire to build the ideal solution. I hope that some big ISP or networking outfit takes the simple design and puts it in front of a proper setup.”

If that concept sounds familiar, not surprisingly Payne works at Twitter.

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With Independence Day on a Friday but gas prices bumping five dollars a gallon, we’re celebrating the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth close to home.

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Last month I posted about the Asian Art Museum’s first-Thursday event series, called Matcha, after the delicious powdered green tea. It was fun; I attended a lecture about how green tea will cure all your ills (and it’s hard to disagree), listened to awesome music, watched people stick their tongues out, and tried out cupping — which didn’t really “adjust my chi,” although it did leave me with an impressive circular bruise that lasted a week.

Be that as it may, it was fun and interesting enough that I’m going to risk minor injury once more, and go to today’s event, Sound of the Sages. I don’t exactly know how I could be injured listening to the guqin performance at 7 PM, or trying out brush painting, but I seem to have an instinct for it.

To quote the event page:

Renowned guqin performer and scholar Wang Fei guides us on a special musical journey, introducing Chinese culture and bringing to life the sound of the sages. Performing guqin masterpieces from different dynasties, she will also share the legends and folktales behind the music and intimate her own commentary and insights to bring these ancient works to present day.

Elsewhere in the museum, try your hand at brush painting, chat with a docent about the museum’s special exhibition Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty, explore the scholarly arts of China in the galleries, or simply enjoy a drink with friends.

Wang Fei’s performance is co-presented with the North American Guqin Association and is made possible by LIVING CULTURES GRANTS from The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA).

I can attest that the Ming Dynasty exhibit was also awesome, and I’m looking forward to wandering through some of the galleries I missed the first time.

As always, admission to the entire museum, including all the above events, is $5 after 5 PM. The event runs from 5-9 PM; the guqin performance is at 7. The Asian Art Museum is on Larkin, next door to one of my favorite buildings in town, Main Library.

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Ever heard of reverse graffiti? Neither had I until earlier today. Reverse graffiti artist Moose makes a big statement about clean in San Francisco’s Broadway Tunnel. Shot by documentarian Doug Pray. For most information visit www.reversegraffitiproject.com.

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With a shoulder that feels ripped apart courtesy of Chrome (that sounds very Valencia Corridor-esque), I’ve been looking for something to carry my items around SF in that won’t require Ibuprofin. That’s right: a backpack. No more shoulder bags; this time around, it’s an off-to-third grade two strap style. I noticed a heavy duty one from Freight Baggage at Freewheel, but the white would last about a week before I tried to leave for work with coffee before getting caught off guard by a stop sign.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time yesterday afternoon trying to track down Freight Baggage’s creator, Travis Poh. An online search for freightbaggage.com turned up one of those pages with a photo of a random lady and an offer to buy the URL. Uninterested in freight shipping quotes as well, I started asking strangers and messengers. “Oh yea,” one told me. “Travis. You can find him on Vallejo toward North Beach. By that cafe. Tell him Frank sent you.”

My fault for not getting enough information (or maybe the fact that it sounded a bit too much like a drug transaction). A Freight Baggage MySpace page says Mr. Poh is 100 years old–no big shock there. I was also told that he’s elusive and overworked. I could order one through a bike shop but it could take more than a month to arrive. Is it so wrong to want to end my search and find the maker in our seven-by-seven mile city?

All I want is a backpack, preferably in primary colors and within the range of my tax refund check. It doesn’t have to be big enough for me to fit in. You can stick that logo with a train car anywhere you want on it. But please, let’s end the search.

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The three-month-old clothing and curios shop BellJar (don’t go too dark) in the Mission is hosting a show in two weeks with work by Jon Carling. The California College of the Arts grad’s ink drawings are imaginative, and, like the shop that’s hosting him, darkly romantic. You can preview his work on Etsy before the June 26 event at 3187 16th St. If it’s anything like the last one, champagne and beautiful tattoos will abound.

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THIS is one of the things I LOVE about living in San Francisco!

Right when I’m in a debate that has included some of the following items:

A) Public Health issues
B) Germs Spread by Humans
C) The EXTRA dirty things that happen IN San Francisco
D) Breaking the Law in San Francisco
E) Flyers posted on utility poles being illegal

…I’m walking to work… and while I’m following THE LAW (which is suddenly so important to some SFers) waiting for the light to change, I SEE THIS FLYER, POSTED TO A UTILITY POLE, illegally; detailing a beautiful example of the germ-spreading habits of humans.

In this case, someone else’s germs will be on someone else’s FACE for charity…

Ahh…. I love it…

** NOTE: For the record, I love that people are giving away their dirty jock straps for charity and have no problem with them posting their flyer. It is merely an absolutely perfectly placed example of some of the highlights of a previously posted blog. ***

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The Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, a local political institution whose endorsement is a perennial must-have for San Francisco Democrats, has received a letter from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in which he announces his opposition to the gay marriage ban amendment that will appear on California ballots this fall.

And in other political news, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has filed papers to begin a bid for Governor for the 2010 election. Newsom, forever closely linked to the gay marriage issue ever since he opened the floodgates for gay marriages in San Francisco in 2004, was vindicated earlier this year when the California Supreme Court ruled that gay marriages were constitutional in the state.

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His career in ruins and facing charges and a state investigation, John Cota, the pilot of the freighter Cosco Busan that struck the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7, will retire rather than try to retain his pilot’s license.

The collision spilled 53,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil and fouled the shoreline around the bay and up and down the coast.

Cota had a 1999 DUI conviction, was taking sleep medication, and misread a nautical chart though he had been a ship pilot for 27 years.

Flickr photo by Anna L. Conti

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I saw that occasional SF Metblogs contributor and relentless self promoter and sex book author Violet Blue is the latest recipient of the tempest in a web teapot award. The LA Times website has David Sarno covering a fracas in which any Violet Blue mentions or posts have been deleted from Boing Boing and it’s archives.

Writes Sarno:

“I’ve been wracking my brain thinking of what issues I might’ve come down on the wrong side of,” Blue told me on the phone. “There’s been no argument, there’s been no disagreement, no flame war, none of the usual things.”

Could Boing Boing really be a Stalin era throwback that wants to erase it’s own history, and somehow have the world to believe the widely read SF Gate columnist doesn’t exist?

At AdRants they speculated a possible conflict with blog ad provider Federated Media, which seemed somewhat unlikely to be involved in editorial concerns (IMHO ) since they supply ads for dozens of popular sites including the Metblogs network.

BoingBoing eventually issued it’s own terse comment and explanation after the web “sh*tstorm” lapped up on it’s serenely acerbic shores:

“[Violet’s] posts were removed from public view a year ago. Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There’s a big difference between that and censorship.”

Read the LA times blog, or for a more concise semi ad biz related wrap up read more at AdRants.

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The Calif. Dept. of Forestry, in charge of fighting the hundreds of fires around the state, has posted a PDF of the major incidents as of this morning. An interactive Google Map is also available.

Meanwhile, the sky in the Bay Area cleared Sunday and yesterday. Today it’s overcast and foggy… And after last week’s horribly smoky conditions, now I don’t know if this overcast is part smoke or what.

One of the endangered spots is Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. They have a fire blog, Sitting with Fire; a feature in the L.A. Times a few days ago documented the outpost’s preparations for the worst. The resort-cum-monastery is closed at least until July 11.

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I washed my dog this morning, clipped his nails and got out the door to go see the vet for his regular check-up. Because I did not have any cash on me, I walked a little further to get coffee, to a place that takes cards.

I go in this place frequently enough. Though the “law” says dogs cannot go into food establishments, both of my closest coffee shops allow them. When I bring the pup in there, I carry him in my hoodie, just to be respectful of others.

Today, I go in and order a mocha and bagel to go. I have my dog on my shoulder.

I’m waiting for my food, when I get the feeling that someone is staring at me. I look around and my eyes land on one of the most foul specimens of human waste I’ve ever seen. Literally, this man is the human version of “Jabba the Hut”. He is a desending pile of tires of fat, rings of flesh telescoping towards the ground. He is shaped like a fleshy soft-serve, ice cream cone. His skin is yellow from jaundice and his eyes are bright red in the lids and whites, showing “Pink Eye” at the very least.

This foul man-pile yells at me from his stench-seat, “The dog goes outside”. I reply, “Are you the owner? I’m not leaving him outside.” I go back to waiting… “It’s the law” says flesh-sore-man, “Are you above the law? I’ll call the Board of Health.”

I grab my stuff to go and say to him loudly, so the whole cafe gets the message, “When you call the Board of Health, tell them you have a full-blown case of the infection known as “Pink Eye”, and that everything you have touched, including that stainless steel spoon someone else will later use, is infected.” I continue, “Tell them the money you gave the cashier, has now been handled by the same people handling the customer’s food. Tell them you have now exposed your infection to everyone in the cafe. Maybe you should think about THAT next time you worry about health codes…”

Do I need to take my 4th Anger Management class? YES.

Is it ridiculous that in San Francisco, an 8 pound, freshly-bathed dog is a health hazard, when in EVERY corner of this city, the average San Franciscan comes upon human fecal matter on every train, door handle, cafe, bathroom they use because this city is swarming with filthy, homeless crackheads?

YES, more than I need Anger Management, YES.

I pick my dog’s crap up, no matter where it lands. EVERY DAY when I walk to work, I dodge SEVERAL piles of human waste. The people who made those piles can go into any establishment they like. But I can’t bring my 8 pound, clean dog on my shoulder to get a coffee to go without having some ridiculous law spouted at me from Jabba the Jaundiced?

The LAW must GO!

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