Bascom and Hamilton Avenues on the San Jose/Campbell border.

Yesterday, on the Bascom Ave. side of eBay, officers were conducting a roadside Heavy-Duty Vehicle Inspection. The CHP officer that I spoke with explained that the trucks were being checked for code violations. He added that they were also making sure that the drivers had the proper paper work, and a valid drivers licence.

This seemed like an odd spot for a roadside check point, but I liked that they stopped the old pickup truck with the pallets. They always make me nervous.

foster city

Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

On my scenic trip to lively “downtown” “Foster City” I had the eerie feeling that I was in an old Sim City game, especially surveying the wide streets and chunky grey buildings from above. Three colors: grey, green, and blue for water… really like a toy. It’s so clean and shiny and planned that I get the heebie-jeebies. Irvine, in Orange County in Southern California, was a lot like that.

I wonder why planned communities don’t allow for a little more variance and organic, messy development? So that the city would feel more human and less like a suspiciously dystopian space colony?

Foster City was built in 1958-1964 from Brewer’s Island, a levee-protected dairy farm and salt pond, and a bunch of sludge dredged from the Bay and the island’s central lagoon. The system of lagoons, which hold 425 million gallons, allow water to be pumped in and out of the island’s central basin. I had no idea that 30,000 people live there. Yikes!

We enjoyed walking around the central downtown with its giant police station, fire department, senior center, and office buildings that had all been blockily extruded from the spinnerets of an enormous concrete spider… the lagoon and fountains and trees were pretty, though also suffering from leaf-polishing syndrome, as if armies of zombies buffed them gently every night, removing stray twigs & squaring all the corners of the lonely begonias. With happy illegality we fed a package of saltines to the problematic, lagoon-polluting seagulls and ducks.

Reading Laughing Squid today about It’s It Google style. I was ready to poo-poo it as some rebranding of a Playland Treat by Google when I read that the Google chef wanted to make it non-trans-fatty and locally grown.

Wait, it’s full of transfats!!! The sticky treat I enjoyed each high school lunch? Is bad for me? I’m shocked and awed! Oh this is so sad.

My favorite is the mint, but on occasion, I will eat the Cappuccino. Go It’s It! I hope they start selling the locally grown ones outside of the ‘Plex. Also, if you’re missing Playland stuff, which is where the It’s It originally debuted, you can visit Musee Mechanique in Fisherman’s Wharf and see the creepy Laughing Sal.

caption: An artistically rendered It’s It from the web site, www.itsiticecream.com

MBSF readers who enjoy making things (e.g., those who liked my story on the Maker Faire back in April) will love this one: this weekend, TechShop opens in Menlo Park. The MAKE blog has more (and a podcast), but in essence, it’s an open workshop, offering daily, monthly, and annual access for people who want to use state-of-the-art gear to work on their projects. They have a massive array of classes in the works, and special opening festivities this weekend. I’m this close to hopping on Caltrain and checking it out.

Tonight sitting out in front of Amelia’s in Redwood City, my dining companion got kissed on top of his head by a very random woman walking by. She opened the conversation by offering to give him the Heimlich maneuver – he was coughing slightly – and he refused politely. She explained she was a nurse. Then the conversation went a little bit “off” in several directions as she began to explain to me how attractive my husband was. Not my husband . . . not my boyfriend . . . “Well, anyway, you should keep him.” There was some increasingly wacky rambling. And then she kissed his (bald) head in benediction. We didn’t really do anything to object; although it was outrageous and disturbing, it was also kind of sweet and sad. My friend is a mellow sort of person, and I’m generally benevolent to holy fools.

If a random dude on the street had kissed the top of my head I would have freaked out, though. Is it always women who are head-touchers? Strange women feel the back of my neck – probably this happens to many people with shaved heads, or bald guys.

I had just been explaining how downtown had been gentrifying, and then after the Kissing Incident explained further that the county jail, several halfway houses, and weekly residential hotels are all within about a block and a half of where we were sitting out at cafe tables. It’s part of what I like about this town. It doesn’t drive people who are down and out out, or at least not as much as Palo Alto does. Or at least not yet. I’ve heard objections to the downtown hotels, but, if they go away, where are the people who just got out of jail, or whose lives are a bit chaotic for some other reason, supposed to go? Where would be far away enough for them to live, to satisfy… whoever objects?

When I attended junior high school, our fave burn out music station called this month Rock-tober!

… and indeed, I will carry on in this noble tradition. That is despite the fact many of these events I’m listing might just qualify as Hip Hop, Folk, Reggae, Bluegrass or whatnot…

Yet no matter yer fave genre, I bet there’s some excuse for ya to turn off that darn screen and get yer badself down to a decent venue of yer choice and catch at least one of these fine autumnal shows…

Amongst the details are dates and venues for acts like Bert Jansch, Mickey Avalon, Lily Allen, Pogues, Sufjan Stevens, The Twilight Singers and many more.

If ya don’t like the hella harvest season hubub I’ve got listed here, I’ve provided a link to a new opt in web service that will automatically scan yer mp3 collection on yer hard drive and start sending ya free & quite handy personalized updates on the particular performers & music that even you actually might like…

Don’t say we never did nothing for ya… So here’s how you can easy fa sheezy just keep rawkin in the free world ( plus obligatory service charge & handling fees)
(more…)

A 64-year-old woman was still missing today after walking away from an Alzheimer’s care facility in Redwood City Tuesday, the Mercury News reported.

The woman, Gloria Morrow, has diabetes and requires medication. She is said to have “slight dementia” so I have the feeling she would respond when asked her name. So if you’re in the mid-Peninsula area and see a heavy-set 5’3″ African American woman who looks lost, ask her if her name is Gloria, and contact Redwood City Police.

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gutted fridge

Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

The Lady Who Calls the Cops, across the street, has the best gossip if you sweeten her up. Her yard is pristine down to every prim blade of grass. Her gutter is swept. She owns a little yappy Chihuahua. She’s lived here for 40 years. You can’t do better than that!

In scattered bits and pieces, between harangues about “apartment people who are in and out, you can’t keep up,” I gather pieces of neighborhood history. Old Joe, who used to be my neighbor in the condo building down the street, finally died. We would hear him yelling for help in a weak voice, quite often, and call 911. The EMS people all knew him. A lonely bitter man in bad health, a Korean war vet, confused why his ex wives and children didn’t want to talk with him. (Hint: because he was awful.) Sorry Joe.

Jula, the teenager next door to me whose shrieking laughter on the phone with her friends would split your eardrums? Married now and pregnant! Oh! I didn’t know! And how sad it has been since Mary died, her mother, who used to have that same big beautiful laugh and who would sit on the porch swing with her husband the landscaper and Tongan holiday roaster of pigs on spits, who now hangs with his buddies on that same porch drinking endless gallons of Bud Lite.

The guy who threw firecrackers got evicted, leaving a 3 foot long snake dead on the floor. “It’s lucky it didn’t crawl down the pipes, imagine having that thing coming up through the toilet while you’re sitting there!” she says without a trace of irony.

We agreed virtuously that it was a Good Thing that the Redwood City fire department came to pull the doors off the abandoned fridge in what I shall forever think of as Snake House. And again discussed having a block party; you can get $300 from the city to have a block party and neighborhood meeting! City Trees, as well, if we figure out how to sign up for it, might help us plant trees up and down our street. My campaign is to direct the fierce energies of The Lady Who Calls the Cops, now renamed The Oracle, into civic duty projects and real leadership. “We could have a community bulletin board with the information about trash pickup, since the renters never get that info!” (Instead of hating them and badmouthing them.) Will it work?

The price for gas is falling fast; should level off at $2.50. This was the ARCO at Homestead Rd. and Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara.

Driving to San Jose last night, took a break at Rancho San Antonio for a quick hike. It was 6PM and everything had a warm, early evening glow. Fifteen minutes into the hike, about 100 ft up a grassy hill, and just entering a little grove of oaks, a bobcat crossed my trail. At first I thought it was a cat, but the white fur around its but, and the distinctive peaked ears definitely described the bobcat. I feel so lucky, because I had heard of them in these hills, and at this park, all my life, but had never run into one. Usually I see quails here, and deer. Some other folks on the trail said they’d seen “this guy” around a lot.

Then, on the way down the hill not ten minutes later, an adolescent deer buck with huge antlers bounds out of the brush to my right, near a little creek bed, and runs across the trail into a meadow, then starts eating the top of the grass (it’s really high). This is the most wildlife I’ve ever seen at one time, at this park! And I was only there for 25 minutes! Too funny.