If you’d rather see something artsier, experimental music maven Pamela Z (pictured at left) is presenting the second in her ROOM series of performances, tonight at 8:00 pm at the Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa St. at Harrison.

And if you’re up for something mystical, dark and theatrical, attend one of the many Easter Vigil services held at Christian churches tonight. Classically, a congregation would meet in the “undercroft” of the church, the sub-basement where the skeletons are buried, to remind them of the tomb from which Jesus rises. Nowadays you’re more likely to find yourself in a candle-lit church basement, but the service is still great theater, with scripture readings that move from the creation to the exodus from Egypt to the passion and resurrection. Good bets are Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in North Beach, 8:00 pm; St. Gregory Nyssa Episcopal Church on Potrero Hill, 8:00 pm; Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, 8:00 pm; or St. Francis Lutheran Church in the Castro, 7:00 pm.

Above: the first sidewalk stencil I’ve seen in the Lower Nob in three years, snapped late one night wandering Jones, near the new oh-so-politic bookstore infoshop, Babylon Falling. Because there weren’t enough places in this city to posture radical theory-blah-blah. I’m actually all for radical theory-blah-blah, too. I just can’t deal with Yet Another Anarchist Front that only stocks the books that “angry” white dudes with the cash to blow on them want. What about some shelf space for the messy, dirty, beautiful radical underbelly of the neighborhood itself, of rebel whores and hustlers? Of queers and queens? You know, the people you don’t see around these parts so often these days? You think we could at least embalm them (edit: us) in a little clever window display.

And god, just hating on trust fund kids and hipsters probably just makes it worse. That’s the insidious thing. You’re either part of the problem, part of the solution, or some jack-off stenciling slogans.

(Also, even though it has nothing to do with what I saw today, a few days ago I heard somebody yell “HEY, PAUL! I’LL TRADE YOU THREE PLAYBOYS FOR A LIGHTER!” over on Hyde, near the library. Gotta love the Tenderloin.)

While I was in Chinatown, I saw that it was laundry day for some people:

I went back through Nob Hill, and saw a bus-shelter ad for the Economist. Apparently somebody decided to change the copy a little:

After I got back to my place, I decided to go to Safeway and get the rest of the stuff I needed to make stir-fried beef with peanuts. While walking through UN Plaza, I saw this, which made me think of this article from the Onion:

Tomorrow I’ll be going on another adventure, which I’ll post here as soon as I can. Hooray for adventures!

Thanks for the tip, Kathy Me, the Dane who I hang out with on Norway Day (5/07).

photo credits: wikipedia, public domain painting: Lucia by Swedish painter Carl Larsson in 1908., public domain photo by Jonas Bergsten.

On 10/28/06 at 10:30 AM a suspect snatched a woman’s purse at Washington and Hyde Streets. The woman and her friend chased the suspect, calling for help as they ran. Three young men witnessed the events and intervened, stopping and holding the suspect until police arrived. The suspect listed as 6’2 180 pounds with no address was booked for Robbery. A citizen’s commendation will be recommended for Jim Truitt, Andrew Blachman and Ryan Axelson.

In other notes: if you want to volunteer for the homeless count, ping homelesscount07@sfgov.org- it’s for tomorrow (Wed).

I think I love this museum because it’s really small and intense. You can walk it in about 5 minutes. At the corner of Mason and Washington, where all cable car lines meet, are these large sheaves- pronounced “shivs”- that keep the cable lines constantly running. Another great thing is that it’s so loud you’re overwhelmed by the noise and can’t hear anyone talk. It also smells of metal. FREE! Go downstairs to see how the lines work underground- they have clear panels to the underground sheaves. The interpretation is a little long winded and technical- not for kids- but everything is obvious and visual when you get there. I brought two kids- age 5 and 9- and afterwards, on the street, tried to find the “arm” that grabs the cable from beneath the car, and to see the running live wire in the middle strip. I have to say the concept of how the cable car worked never really hit home until I visited the museum and saw it in action.

Another tidbit: Hallidie, the guy who invented the cable car, did it because he pitied the horses that climbed the steep hills. Also, horse manure was a big issue. No shit. Ha ha. From the site:

“[the] rail system was conceived in 1869, after witnessing horses being whipped while they struggled on the wet cobblestones to pull a horsecar up Jackson Street.”

This may blow your mind: a map of the cable car line coverage in its peak, 1890.

I ran across this plaque on the Chinatown Treasure Hunt this year, and again on Friday happy hour at Tunnel Top– a cool bar right on top of the Stockton Tunnel. I just love it that SF has a great literary legacy, and perhaps people don’t know, but we lay a claim to Robert Louis Stevenson. Notable works: Treasure Island, and In the South Seas.

I didn’t know that he had such a passionate reason to come to California:

In August 1879 Stevenson received a cable-gram from Fanny Osbourne, who by that time had rejoined her husband in California. Details are vague, but there seems to have been some last attempt by Osbourne to break with Stevenson; the contents of the cable were never revealed by either to family or friends. With the impetuosity of one of his own fictional characters, Stevenson set off from Greenock, Scotland, on 7 August 1879 for America. On 18 August Stevenson landed, sick, nearly penniless, in New York. From there he took an overland train journey in miserable conditions to California, where he nearly died. After meeting with Fanny Osbourne in Monterey, and no doubt depressed at the uncertainty of her divorce, he went camping in the Santa Lucia mountains, where he lay sick for two nights until two frontiersmen found him and nursed him back to health. Still unwell, Stevenson moved to Monterey in December 1879 and thence to San Francisco, where he fluctuated between life and death, continually fighting off illness.

from “Robert Louis Stevenson Biography”

And, from the wikipedia entry, some more details on his life in SF:

In December 1879 he had recovered his health enough to continue on to San Francisco, where for several months he struggled “all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many thoughts,” in an effort to support himself through his writing; but by the end of the winter his health was broken again, and he found himself at death’s door.

45 cents a day, that beats my 60$ a week. It’s inflation, right.

Radioactivity was a very new and ill-understood thing in those days, and so the following logic made sense: the water from hot springs was radioactive, and everybody knew spring water was healthy, ergo, if you could make your daily water radioactive, you’d be healthier. Evidently, this was popular enough in the 1920s for them to buy a building, as this inscription above a Revigator’s spout will attest:

I found out about this whole affair from Theodore Gray‘s Periodic Table Table website. The idea behind the Table was that this fellow decided that he needed to build a table in the shape of the periodic table, and to collect samples of each of the elements, and then to make a remarkable and entertaining website about the whole business–check it out, but be warned that it’s addictive, if you like that sort of thing.

In any event, among his samples of uranium are a Revigator and a booklet about them. The booklet is remarkable reading, including such pearls of wisdom as “The invigorating effect is due to the radio-activity of Niton, or emanation, a radio-active gas continuously produced by the Carnotite Ore and which gas is then absorbed by the water.” (Carnotite is one of the principal ores of uranium, along with pitchblende; the Revigator jars were lined with it. Niton is now known as radon.) It also has a picture of the building, and its address–Sutter and Taylor Streets:

The Radium Ore Revigator Company is long-gone–as near as I can tell, it went under in the 1930s, the victim of the Depression and the burgeoning awareness that ingesting radioactive materials was a good way to get sick. But if you look at the satellite photo in the link above, you might see a building with the same crenellations as those in the drawing of the Revigator Building at the southeast corner of Sutter and Taylor. And if you go to that corner, you’ll see the Revigator Building itself:

It currently houses an art importer’s store and a framing shop. The awning for Nob Hill Cigars is still visible on the corner unit, but they’ve also left the world of commerce, probably another victim of an economic downturn and a vogue for something that turned out to be very unhealthy.

(starbucks stuff after long rambly bit about ME)

I used to chat with one of them. He was a security guard at my old building, and his most challenging part of the Academy was the racial mediation. Well, yours truly was asked by the captain of the Northern station (forget his name, this was like 6 years ago) to apply (being a tallish Swedish descent woman who looks like she could take down 3 guys at once? Your Valkyrie!) the entire situation was lost on me until a few days later when I was recapping the conversation to my Mom. “He kept showing me the fun barbecues they have, and how the Academy admittance test isn’t that hard, and how they need to reach quotas…” I was in his office to get a one-day liquor license for an event.

Anywho, I learned from our esteemed Central precinct captain Dudley that we are in desperate need of cops. Our precinct actually “lends out” two cops per other precincts in the city that aren’t as low crime and well-covered as we are.

Other facts I learned: Capt. Dudley, besides being a nice, rational, friendly sort, goes to Starbucks. Stop this travesty now! Email him and tell him to go to your Mom & Pop cafe of choice. james.dudley-at-sfgov.org