At a time when the City is cutting funding across all departments, not least Parks and Recreation, is there any way to turn this space into a vibrant landscape that engages the community? One potential answer - let the people grow food.

The paradigm is already at work elsewhere in the city through established neighborhood Victory Gardens and other local efforts. Alemany Farm grows organic food for residents of the nearby Alemany Community public housing. Even a median strip in Bayview was transformed into a garden whose offerings are freely available to the residents.

So I was excited to learn that a Civic Center Victory Garden will establish roots in just a matter of days. I can’t wait to take part and watch it grow. Not to get biblical on you, but the garden is where it all begins. As Michael Pollan said in his New York Times Magazine article “Why Bother?,” in the garden

you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen.

The Civic Center garden will transform a mundane space into an active, engaging, truly alive environment. On a fundamental level, it has the potential to instruct as well as nourish, bringing local, seasonal food to an under-served area. Perhaps most important is the example it sets for ecological sustainability. This is just one garden, but in ripping up a boring section of grass and building it in the City’s most stately plaza, hopefully locals will be inspired to do the same in their own backyards and communal spaces. The bees will be happy. More people will have access to fresh food. We just might reverse the effect of greenhouse gases one urban garden at a time.

Check out:

SF Civic Center Victory Garden Planting - July 11

I don’t mean to be daft, but the worst part of traveling on or around roads are the cars. One has to be vigilant to share the roads with traffic, but outside of personal safety there are environmental effects like the heat island effect, runoff and noise which shape the experience of a city-goer. More than perhaps we’re willing to acknowledge, cars have a tremendous impact on our enjoyment of city life. Walking across the Golden Gate Bridge these days can feel more like walking across the tarmac at SFO.

Whether it’s a 2-hour lunch (do as the Italians do…) or a 2-week vacation, I recognized in Italy a need to build more space into my life.  I need a break from the anxieties I’ve developed, the ambition I struggle with. Maybe it’s a middle-class myopia but I think many of us in this country are far too occupied with following a virtuous path of career, family, pinch and save, that we shortchange our own value. To indulge and celebrate oneself (I sense a Walt Whitman stanza in here somewhere…) is vital, and I think the Italian culture showed a stronger appreciation of that.  

We had just spent two-plus hours eating, drinking and communing at SoloCiccia and we were sitting on a bench off a quiet road, staring off lazily at the rows of vineyards and rolling verdant hills of Panzano. The clouds in the sky were luminous, architectural. It was so clear, so obvious that this place was paradise. When we were back in crazy, bustling Florence, or crowded back on the plane coming home, even back in SF, I kept daydreaming of Panzano…If we lived there we would have a simple, happy life. And that may be true, but I’m slowly beginning to accept that I don’t need to live in Chianti to experience beauty and calm and fulfillment in a place.  The Bay Area - this land, these people, the community values - has all those elements, I just need to reorient my life to better incorporate them.  To center myself, physically and spiritually, into this place.  I’ve felt it before and I’m grateful for it now, the best part of traveling is coming home. 

Like the Gocco, which was discontinued then revived through grassroots effort, I think the polaroid still has broad appeal to the DIY set. It’s a medium, like photography itself, that caters equally to the mundane as to fine art, and even in between. Call me naive but I believe somewhere in the mechanical-chemical processes involved in exposing and developing film there are mystical forces at work. Particles of life are captured, float mysteriously onto the film and are reorganized in some verisimilitude of the subject. The photograph for me is never as my eyes saw it, but how the film rendered it. As Garry Winogrand said, “what is photographed is changed by being photographed.”

Digital formats just don’t seem to have the same life. I wonder if we’re not losing something to the instantaneous high-bit capture and cataloging of the visual world - like the patrons stepping from Van Gogh to Matisse at the Musee d’Orsay and staring into the LCD’s of their cameras without actually appreciating the art in front of them. There’s transcendence and mystery in emulsion. I look at the work of master photographers and I can sense it.

Many moons ago a friend loaned me a hardcover copy of Phillippe Halsman’s Jump Book. The pictures sparkled with life, demonstrating an ingenious portrait technique that illuminated the character of each individual in ways that traditional portraiture could not. In the accompanying text, Halsman playfully introduces his science of “jumpology”, which analyzes airborne physical expression like a psychologist analyzes behavior. The series of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is one of my favorite pieces ever.

Halsmann’s brand of whimsy is also a principal force in the work of Lee Friedlander, whose retrospective is showing now at the SFMoMA. Though I’m pretty familiar with his work, I was still struck by the stunning composition of even his most improvised street shots. There’s a lot of life inside the frame.

As a weird aside to all this, the life of Philippe Halsmann recently found its way onto the big screen. Jump! explores a sensational murder trial during Halsmann’s youth and features the theatrical stylings of Patrick Swayze!

Related
An amusing modern take on Jumpology

Found Magazine Polaroid Caption Contest

Preview his new record (co-produced with Joe Pernice) at Luaka Bop, buy it, and then most certainly if you have the chance, go see him live. If nothing else, you’ll go home with an earful full of stories.

It can also be an ersatz homeless shelter. A fun-park ride for young children (for hours, I’m told). For me, it’s a continual fount of insight into the range and qualities of human behavior. Like a living portrayal of Walker Evans’ subway photos.

Undoubtedly, it is also one of the great venues for an improvised and surreal brand of entertainment, provided you are in the right frame of mind to appreciate it. iPods can be valuable tools when you don’t want to engage certain “entertainers”, but when the reincarnation of Ray Charles walks onto your train,
unplugged microphone in hand (no need for amplification when you’ve got spirit!), you know the night time, whoah is the right time, to take off your headphones and take in the gospel of city life and the community around you.

In the space of just a few weeks, most of them glum and rainy, one of my favorite filmmakers and his crew descended upon the Castro to film Milk - a biopic about Harvey Milk, the “Mayor of Castro Street” and the first openly gay man to win office just about anywhere. The film stars Sean Penn as Milk and while I’m not sure I ever caught Mr. Penn in action I couldn’t help but walk wide-eyed every day through the set, as it were, of Castro Street circa 1978.

The most enchanting part of the whole experience was participating as an extra in crowd scenes. I’m certain my likeness won’t amount to anything more on the big screen than one of hundreds of other figures, but walking down Market St in a hushed recreation of a candlelight vigil is a wonderful, if somber, memory to savor until Milk hits the theaters.

While the location shooting is over for the most part (there’s still a call for extras on March 9th) and the neighborhood reverts back to its same boring facades, there remains one spectacular part of the set left intact: the restored Castro Theater marquee. The neon is ablaze and even the letters blink their way down the sign. I don’t remember it looking this good…ever.

If you’ve ever had the superb coffee from those funny carts tucked into garages and farmer’s markets on both sides of the bay, there is now a fully-fledged structure beckoning converts and philistines alike. The austere interior is befitting a modern chapel for the coffee faithful. Its future-primitive array of chemistry lab-like curios stands ready to proselytize with the particular method of extraction/intoxication you desire. Espresso drinks, single-origin espresso, siphon coffee and what I assume is a contraption for decanting coffee concentrate.

I’m glad that Blue Bottle decided to go with a coffee brewer other than a Clover. They’re cool machines, to be sure, but I’ve never been too impressed with the coffee they produce. I’ll have to try more of this siphon coffee before I’m totally taken with it; at the very least it’s a more interesting process to watch. Still, as a part of both our urban and coffee landscapes, Blue Bottle’s cafe is a welcome beacon of renewal.

Update:
m’ladyfriend and I have made a weekly habit of breakfast and coffee at Blue Bottle. We also seem to have a knack for choosing venues that are the subjects of media coverage. Dig the video featuring P as she sits in the window in this gripping ABC7News story

keep your eye out for a possible cameo in an upcoming story on Pizzeria Delfina…
Update 2:
Oh, brother.  She might as well get her SAG card.  Now appearing on SFGate’s Pizza Friday

I normally detest the idea of a new year’s resolution but this year I aim to do more. Travel, take classes, cook, bike, hike, actually follow through on those art projects. The pictures from 2008 may not prove any more interesting but I hope the year ahead is full of more of the following.

Walking all over this town, with my lady

Picking tomatoes at Mariquita farm, canning them and making a simple pasta with some of the fresh tomatoes

Going home and swimming in the river, a summer rite. I’m loath to use any words here like peace, meditation, etc but if pushed to define it, this would be my ‘happy place’

The Saturday farmer’s market as sustenance, inspiration, and friendly meet-and-greet. Top, a summer’s bounty; Bottom, handmade foods we started making this year

clockwise from left: tortillas and masa cakes (here with chorizo and potatoes); whole chicken carving (head edited for your viewing pleasure); hand-cranked pasta; pizzas with any imaginable topping, including an egg; roasted beet salad with olive oil-marinated goat cheese

Farm tours (here at Marin Sun Farms)

Journeying in the oft-frustrating, occasionally euphoric art of espresso. I started to roast my own coffee this year too.

Camping and hiking on the California coast

We ended up choosing a loop from segments of Matt Davis, Coastal, Cataract and Old Mine trails. It was one of the best hikes we’ve ever been on, certainly one within 20 minutes of our apartment, but that’s an unnecessary qualifier. The ground was soft and fragrant with downed douglas fir and bay leaf branches; the waterfalls were many and active; the vistas were extraordinary and clear; and strangest of all, only a handful of people appeared to share the mountain with us that day. I think we saw more hawks and falcons than other hikers.

Each time I go to Mt Tam I find it more remarkable. There are seemingly endless ways to traverse its slopes whether on foot or bike, as a backpacker, beachgoer or run of the mill nature-jerk. And though the concept of ‘the Bay Area’s backyard’ doesn’t inspire faith in its preservation or pristine-ness, I think the more people that get out of their cars and onto trails, the more politically viable reclaiming open spaces becomes.