Semi-coherent dispatches from the streets of San Francisco streamed to you at the speed of MUNI

Street entertainment is part of what makes cities so fantastic to live in, to visit, to participate in. I remember back-flips on the subway in Manhattan, puppet shows in Paris; I distinctly recall the weird carnivalesque atmosphere of the Wharf, as a kid, walking by motionless figures on pedestals who were activated into motion by the drop of a coin into their can. Sure, a small town is apt to have its own brand of eccentric or two. And lord yes, there are those half-baked performances that just beg for a streetside gong. But I really love the unexpected serenades which play against the theater of the city street.

Arias on Maiden Lane. That killer jazz trio I caught outside Amoeba in Berkeley, banging out hard bop with a cardboard box kick drum and a broken hi-hat. Or fright-mystic raconteur Omer, stepping out of a doorway on Valencia St to scare rock the shit out of you.

One of my favorite buskers is a guy who seems to go by “T” or “Charles T”. I usually see him at the northernmost end of the Powell St station. His presence is striking: dark skin, white guitar, playing against the monolithic white pebbled surface of the station walls. It’s a bit like walking onto the set of THX 1138 and seeing Jesus. I say this because the man’s voice is a revelation. You can hear him long before and long after you see him playing. He has made this hall his studio and wrapped the corners of it with his voice. Where the plaintive soul of Al Green meets a meditative but slow-burning african guitar strum, T sings originals that will sincerely stop you in your tracks. That’s what his music always does to me.

Three days in Portland. Hyper-caffeinated, hyper-pollinated (the sidewalks are literally paved with flowers and allergies have got my head spinning) and, well, pretty satisfied. I think m’lady and I barely scratched the surface of this town, even as we hopped on dozens of transit lines and trekked untold avenues. Portland is a town with a story to tell, how the working class grit and vagrant grime insinuates itself into the elegant natural beauty and how the disconcerting boom in development affects that narrative. I hope to make it back soon to learn more.

We stayed at the Ace Hotel, which was unquestionably the most fun I’ve had staying in a hotel. Records spin on a turntable in the lobby; Stumptown coffee shoots rich espresso from futuristic looking Marzoccos and a thin but nonetheless enticing brew from the Clovers; the rooms are minimalist in decor, but with a nod to the Northwest setting with rough-hewn wood, army green wool blankets and grey accents. Also, Powells is a block away.

The public transit is pretty stellar. Snow-capped mountains are within sight. Greenery abounds and you can practically follow your nose to excellent coffee. I think I saw more people on bikes than I did on the bus. Fam-dam-tastic. One of the best things we did was attend a cupping at the Stumptown annex on SE Belmont. There were a few curious people who happened by but I think we were the only ones who showed up specifically to sniff, slurp and spit. Moving from a couple Brazilians to Guatemala to a sexy Kenyan to Sumatran, this was a chance to really indulge the senses in the flavor profiles of very diverse beans. It was, for me, a religious experience, the coffee-lover’s eucharist, and the Stumptown folk were knowledgeable guides and super friendly.

For all the arts, craft and music that seems to flood out of Portland I was surprised by the relative calm of the place. Granted, it was a holiday weekend. But on public transit, in restaurants and shops, and on the streets there was never anything approaching a bustle. The lone exception was the Saturday farmers market which was insane. There seemed to be a special event coinciding that was bluntly though aptly named Graze Fest or something. It gave me the idea that the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market could utilize corrals to separate the grazers and Flickr whores from the locals actually trying to buy produce. That same dilemma was very much at play here, although the locals were not shy about swinging their baskets around to make progress. Don’t make the same mistake we did and step off MAX at the obvious neon sign proclaiming Portland Saturday Market. Had we checked our notes we would have avoided this location, which is what we did after two minutes stepping astride street urchins and craft tents selling dreamcatchers.

What else? We caught Spoon at the Doug Fir Lounge, which is an eye candy extravaganza but none too shy in its more modest surroundings. We also saw Arcade Fire in a beautiful theater. I apologize to Portlanders for taking your tickets, but these two shows just kind of fit with our trip. Give me a shout when you come down here and I’ll point you to some of our better venues.

Some highlights:
Coffee
Fresh Pot (french press just for you)
Stumptown (the annex does cuppings at 11:00 and 3:00)

Food
Pearl Bakery
Simpatica (great breakfast served on communal tables just outside the clamor of the caterer’s kitchen)

Place
North Portland - Mississippi Ave (fun neighborhood with views of bridges, river and downtown)
Washington Park (MAX takes you right there and we walked back to town via the Wildwood trail)

Other
Zinester’s Guide to Portland ($5 perfect size to whip out at a cafe and not look like a travel dork)

Sometimes between the bustle and relative sameness of the morning commute the strange little parts of life can slide right by. Thank god for the olfactory system to jolt your frontal lobes from slumber.

This bold soul found a fitting streetside commode and dropped trou as several folks stood waiting for the bus. I didn’t even notice until he was zipping up.

Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night. I don’t know how widely read he is these days, but several of his books are among my favorites. Underneath the irreverent humor and seemingly extemporaneous structure is a heart heavy with human-ness - both its capacity for malice as well as kindness and beauty. To him, God is a concept. Saints are people who act decently in an indecent society. Music represents the apotheosis of mankind.

In the face of all this madness - neo-conservatism, global warming, war, jihads, genocide, Paris Hilton - we must seek out those things, however small or fleeting, that can evince some glimmer of sanity. Whenever I stumble across such a moment, I always hearken back to this speech Vonnegut gave a few years ago reminding us to practice art, however poorly, and notice when we are happy. Perhaps an odd sentiment from a writer of dark humor, but Vonnegut called himself a Humanist and his canon reflects this duality.

Speaking of canons and, well, cannons, Hunter S. Thompson propelled his ashes into the atmosphere through one. I don’t know if Vonnegut had any last wishes as grand, but I can’t think of a better commemoration of the man than picking up a book of his one languid afternoon, laughing and thinking, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

Biking home from work a couple weeks ago, a couple of guys in an Olds with a ‘God Bless America’ sticker ran me off the road. They both got out of their car near a busy intersection and one ran towards me shouting ‘Get a car, you homo!’

There seems to be something about driving that can turn reasonable people into impatient, even obnoxious jerks. I definitely notice the tendency in myself on the rare occasions I’m behind the wheel. For a small group of individuals though, driving appears to trigger sociopathic tendencies. I’ve been run off the road many times. I’ve had trash thrown at me. A mom revved her car behind me while her young kids flipped me off from the back seat. I’ve even been head-butted - ok that was as a pedestrian.

A column on Monday reported that an angry swarm of Critical Mass bikers attacked a minivan while children were screaming away inside. No journalistic inquiry into the provocation. No eyewitness commentary. Just the driver’s account of a vicious mob acting inhumanely. Maybe it’s my own experience, or just say, common sense, but I was quite skeptical of this scenario. Over the last couple days a broader picture has emerged and the details are not surprising to me. A reporter at the Bay Guardian was present at the incident and gives his account

A driver gets angry and impatient after getting stuck in Critical Mass and tries to drive through the crowd (which is stupid, illegal, and dangerous). To prevent injuries, the standard practice in such cases is for riders to place themselves and their bikes in front of the car. She hits said bicyclist (sure, maybe not hard enough to produce an injury, as you pointed out, but contact is contact) and then keeps driving forward. The rest of the bicyclists urge her to just stop driving, please, which she refuses to do because at this point she’s agitated and indignant. They pound on her windows, pleading with her to stop driving into a crowd of hundreds of bicyclists with her deadly object. Pretty soon, a bicyclist loses it and smashes her window

And here’s a television interview with some women who also witnessed the incident.

This kind of reportage and the actions of this driver and many others stem from the same asinine, but thoroughly ingrained idea: a car has the absolute right of way on the road. Bicyclists and pedestrians in America make up a fraction of those on the road but suffer 11 to 36 times higher fatalities than car occupants. And yet there remains this perception by some that, golly, drivers have it tough out there. Hooey.

People are so bent on getting from point A to B as fast as possible they neglect the repercussions of their behavior. Unsafe streets, riled up commuters, pollution. The automobile has been a major negative force in public health, climate change, urban planning, not to mention sucking away the funding and infrastructure for decent public transit and high speed rail. Now is not the time to crack down on “rogue” bikers, but a time to push for education and real policy towards improving the safety and health of everyone. A city with more bikes, more pedestrians and for the love of jesus, a better MUNI is something I think most of us can agree is a positive thing.

So to those good ol boys in the Oldsmobile and others, I say: Get a bike, you 20th century troglodyte. It’s good clean fun.

The title of this post, by the way, is from friend to the people, Willie Brown, who shook his Italian-tailored cuff at the bikers in Critical Mass back in the day.

I know there are far more troubling things to occupy my mind than bad music, but damn it if it doesn’t make me feel crestfallen to find a good band fall flat.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were uninspiring if not somnambulant live, but I loved their debut record. Their recent sophomore release, Some Loud Thunder, is to my ears virtually unlistenable. Any decent song or melody is obscured by muddy, over-modulated production. A thumb in yer eye, or ear, as it were. That Dave Friedmann, who has helmed some of my favorite records, sat in as producer on this is perplexing.

This Saturday I caught Brightblack Morning Light at the Great American. The floor was half-filled with kids sitting around like it was a knit-in. When the band came on, some of those in the crowd implored others to sit, but I don’t know how that would have helped. I wasn’t expecting anything mind-blowing - somehow I thought the molasses-groove southern soul would entrance instead of embalm. But the guitarist could hardly open his eyes to find the strings, so it was a lost cause.

Lastly, Wilco, a band that as the years go by I respect more than appreciate their music, offered a streaming online preview of their upcoming album (out May 15) over the weekend. A kindly gesture to those of us who as they said, “remember when they used to do that on the radio.” Very cool. I only went through it once and the first half sounded pleasant enough, but soon the songs devolved into the guitar and piano honky-skronk of A Ghost Is Born and then it was only a matter of time until the harmonizing guitar leads kicked in. And then what do you have?! Fucking prog. The only thing worse than prog is hearing it the second time around. Jeff, I’m glad you’re making music, but I liked it better when you were writing the bridge between Gram Parsons and ELO.

Thank Elvis, then, when a record comes out that reminds you why you’re even bothering with all this anyway. Arcade Fire released Neon Bible today and thanks to Merge, I’ve been enjoying the deluxe CD set all weekend. It may not have the immediate and incendiary power of Funeral but it’s a moving record that resonates more with each listen.

Under Pages now is a link to some of my photographs. The selection is rather arbitrary. The artistry is no doubt questionable. But this is my site and I’ll do what I damn please, thank you very much.

I love clouds and I took rolls of film of them at one time. Not so much anymore. More recently, I’m interested in what I call “backwards portraits”, some of which you’ll find under the category City. They’re probably more a result of me shying away from putting a camera in somebody’s face, but I also love the idea of (literally) capturing a side of a person they themselves never see.

I used to walk by the corner of Seventh and Market on a daily basis. No single place in the city can hold the dubious honor of homeless epicenter, but to my mind this area is definitely one of many. The drunk, destitute, strung-out and mentally ill are always present. Camped out around the fabled fountain of United Nations Plaza, begging in front of the 24-hour check-cashing storefront, or simply passed out on the sidewalk. Scattered fragments from the riven social welfare programs.

On the opposite side of the street was a sign that would always catch my eye on my walk to MUNI. It read

Rot In Hell Reagan

A strangely poetic epitaph, in the face of all this mayhem. Reagan’s legacy is rendered cruelly and plainly on the streets as well as on MUNI, which seems to attract more than its share of the mentally unstable.

Sometimes these MUNI rides are slightly amusing.

There was the guy who whipped out a garage opener, held it up to his ear and started mimicking the cell phone conversation of another passenger.

Or the ragged fellow in fluorescent lipstick and Sharpie eyeshadow who brought an ab machine on the bus and proceeded to peer at people through its holes.

The unidentifiable hobbit drawing everyone’s attention in an ersatz black burka.More often the scenario is like it was yesterday. A man boards the back of a packed bus shouting epithets in a jumbled conversation with himself. He flips off the driver. He dares anyone to intervene. We just have to endure it. It’s time like these I curse MUNI and think, rot in hell Reagan.

Band of Horses Everything All The Time
With ringing guitars and pedal steel, this impeccable debut builds upon the Northwest sound of bands like the Shins and Built To Spill, while borrowing a little twang and a heaping measure of reverb from My Morning Jacket. A record that you can flip from side to side over and over again.

Beirut Gulag Orkestar
Like picking up a balkan republic radio feed from past and present, simultaneously mixing traditional folk music, marching anthems, and casio arpeggios. Elegiac vocals slide over accordion, horns, ukulele, and shuffling percussion. This is the album most unlike anything else in your collection.

Camera Obscura Let’s Get Out Of This Country
Referencing polished songwriters like Lloyd Cole and Dory Previn, Let’s Get Out Of This Country shows a band flourishing from the folk-pop Belle & Sebastian homage of their last effort to an uptempo pop and white soul outfit. Their sound is rounded out too with plenty of strings, organ, and horns that never obscure the sweet and pretty songs.

Cat Power The Greatest
Out of all these albums I will probably still be listening to this in 50 years. Chan’s songwriting is elevated to a whole other plane here, channeling heartache and longing over Stax grooves and Steve Cropper riffs. She’s looking from the bottom of an empty bottle and singing like a darker, more bittersweet Dusty in Memphis but every bit as touching.

TV On The Radio Return To Cookie Mountain
Possibly beamed in from the same planet as Sun Ra though featuring a double-headed Peter Gabriel thrashing behind a fifty-foot drum kit and armed with guitars set for stun. A rock and roll monster both beautiful and frightening.

Joanna Newsom - Ys
Though we grew up in the same small town, there’s no bias here. Ys (’Yeez’) is a five song suite of inimitable craft that captivated me more with every listen. Collaborating with Van Dyke Parks to weave a rich string orchestration lithely around her beguiling pixie voice and harp, Newsom also utilizes the talents of Jim O’Rourke and Steve Albini to push her sound far beyond the whisper of The Milk-Eyed Mender.

Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Less the fox confessor than the mystical harpy, Neko’s swooping down to spook you with eerie laments that rip the flesh from your neck. On this album she’s inventing her own idiom, moving away from anything countrypolitan and into the dark Appalachian forests.

Nicolai Dunger Here’s My Song…
Seemed to fall under the radar of most everyone, this american release features Mercury Rev using every inch of the studio to support Dunger’s lovelorn, plaintive odes concerning ‘how we live this life of love and hurt’. Feels like a great 60’s singer-songwriter confessional album, but sounds timeless.

Sonic Youth Rather Ripped
Rather Ripped burns with the focused energy and supple melodicism of classic Wire, yet is resolutely the work of the Youth. Inventive 3 minute pop songs, including the Keith Richards-meets-Tom Verlaine sendup on opener ‘Reena’, make this unlike any other SY album and a pleasure to listen to.

Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
The perfect answer to the question left behind by their last middling effort. Rocking, fun, exploratory, and melancholy - in all the right ways. Yo La spin their way through all the aisles of a record shop past doo wop, memphis horns, crackling guitar squall, Bacharach and the Kinks to create their most entertaining record since I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One.

Almost but not quite:
Hot Chip - The Warning
Bouncy and fun without sounding artificial. ‘And I Was A Boy From School’ was one of my favorite songs from the year
Tortoise & Bonnie Prince Billy - The Brave & The Bold
Seriously cool collaboration yields unique interpretations of eclectic covers ranging from Devo’s ‘That’s Pep’ to Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’.
Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Possibly sacrilege not to put Bob up there. It’s great, but not mind-alteringly so.
Brightblack Morning Light - s/t
Intoxicating slow-burning organ and guitar grooves for the early morning comedown

also
Calexico - Hits and misses while stretching out with a more straight-ahead sound
Concretes
Grandaddy - Their last, sadly. Grew on me.
Grizzly Bear
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint

Stalwarts who fumbled
from fair to fairly awful (I’m looking at you, Wayne)
Belle & Sebastian
Beck
Pernice Brothers
Mogwai
Sparklehorse
Walkmen
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Flaming Lips

And one from 2004 that I missed
Feist - Let It Die
Lovely, outstanding. There’s a demo version of ‘Mushaboom’ out there that I love even better than the album version.

A recent shot that didn’t quite capture the moment as elegantly as I was hoping, but I still like the idea. Man uses a pay phone - something you don’t see that often anymore - and a tree sprouts from him to spread out over the wall.

More photos (many of which you’ve already seen) coming soon.