Gridlock and Protests - Obama is in town today

"Dust be my Destiny" -1939 (the Immigrant Influence on Hollywood)

this is a poignant film for reasons beyond the storyline. Tho the storyline is riveting. This was probably considered a minor film in the golden age of hollywood. It is never mentioned in John Garfield's canon.
Melodramatic title and all - it is piece with its time. No film historian, I see this artwork as another triumph of the immigrant influx (due to the prewar exodus from fascism in Europe) into the film business in this era.  A distrust of the "American way" whose caprice and cruelty routinely unjustly imprison the "disadvantaged" and "working stiffs" is a theme in this film, with its motif of cruel and inhuman authoritarian figures.
Another gift to our culture was the cinematographer, the sublime James Wong Howe. It took an immigrant from China to encapsulate the film noir look that is pure americana. His black and white photography is beautiful and a major component in making this film superior.
The good guys in this film are the Italian shopkeepers and other immigrants who show mercy on the unjustly persecuted working man hero - whose only dream is to have a decent job and a home to live in.
Lastly, John Garfield, who died at the young age of 39, was the son of Russian immigrants, was blacklisted during the McCarthy era for refusing to give names of Communist sympathizers even tho he himself was not a party member. He never worked in Hollywood again and died at age 39.

Drizzly Sunday morning

drizzly morning March 6th - that is a plastic orchid

drizzly morning - courthouse and federal bldg background

Brina in braids

my daughter

Brina

off to work...

the moped

altho Brina is bravely smiling here at my request, she was not feeling well...

please feel better soon, Sabrina!

red trees in the park

favorite park in the city is Yerba Buena park, where there are some beautiful red trees right now...

Hot Day- Sept. 25, 2010

Roller Girls Derby in Richmond

Brina and friends at Roller Girls game in Richmond

parking scam- or what other job is there?

the well known parking scam- a local takes over the parking lot when the real attendant is late or a no- show. this lot used to be attended 24/7. now it is more sporadic - another symptom of the ailing economy. the very resourceful locals who respond to this opportunity are taking a risk. a suspicious client has called the police in the past and tho the imposter was not arrested, still it was a spectacle of b&w cars and authority.
in the past 15 minutes the imposter has pocketed $40. will he continue to jeopardize his well being? will he be tempted to try for more income now? he has to be careful in case the real attendant shows up. so he crosses the street and stands in the shade under my window. he is well dressed in black pants, blue checked shirt and bright white athletic shoes. He is over sixty years old. He appears to have left the lot unattended now. The risk of staying is too great, and on this Labor Day shopping weekend with the mall just a few long blocks walk through skid row- this lot is usually full on such days, but not today. there are few cars today and our imposter has successfully gone for the day. no one is hurt and a very resourceful someone is able to work for some much needed pay when no other opportunities are out there.

San Francisco Mime Troupe 2010 Season - Posibilidad or Death of the Worker

the line waiting to get in on "free" day at the Science museum

yes, the line goes all the way around the concourse and out of sight, i could not see the end of the line. 

 

when we saw how long the line was we had to laugh- how could it be otherwise in this economy...museums are too expensive

San Francisco Mime Troupe 2010 Season - Posibilidad or Death of the Worker

 SF Mime Troupe performed today at Yerba Buena Park, giving us workers a moment of hopeful feeling of "posibilidad". Lets get those collectives going like in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

—Thomas Jefferson, 1802 

 

It's better to die upon your feet than to live upon your knees! -Emiliano Zapata (Mexican Revolution)

Eat, Pray Tell?

Checked out to see if there was some monetary connection between Penguin books, NYTimes and Columbia pictures to explain the faintly kind NYTimes review of Eat Pray Love. But no. Puzzling.
Ppl say that "well at least it isnt Sex in the City meets Cairo."
Still it appears to be about a woman finding her happy ending with a romance. Cinderella comes to mind.
Now just because she has the funds to travel to exotic locales and find exotic beaus-should that eliminate the story from artistic contention? - well what about Chekhov? Didnt he focus on boring self absorbed rich ppl? Well yes, the difference is self evident.

a little light on Tragedy Street

most of the time we don't see much that uplifts the human spirit here on Tragedy Street. This young man has been walking these little dogs down this sidewalk with care and consideration for several years. Who is he? He is not homeless because he looks relatively clean and healthy and content. He is not one of the rich people who live down the next block at the 500k and up condos next to the Federal Building (just a short walk thru Hell to the Opera House!) It was a puzzle. But then I saw the "Guardian Angels" headquarters down the street in an office above a Medical Assistant's Uniform store. There was the dogwalker and his girlfriend in red berets. Puzzle solved.
Most of the incidents here  on Tragedy Street include an Ambulance or an Argument.
The arguments we hear are enhanced by the wonderful alley-like acoustics around here. These "arguments" often occur after 2:30am. And these substance, desperation fueled yelling bouts make Mel Gibson sound like Dale Carnegie.

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

".... for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Anselm Kiefer is the artist who created this assemblage sculpture on view at the current exhibition at SFMOMA. This Fisher exhibition is the best thing I have ever seen at this tiny museum.

a rube goes to the Opera

 My first mistake upon entering the Opera House of SF for only the second time in my life - was to ask the woman at the door where I could get a "brochure". She said to me: "You mean a program?"
After seeing the Opera "Faust" yesterday at the beautiful SF Opera house, which is always the true star of any event there, I read some of the reviews, which were tepid. Most reviewers disliked one of the leads- Stefano Secco, who played Faust. Pictured above is the actor Gustav Von Wangenheim, who played the hapless protaganist in F.W. Murnau's classic film "Nosferatu".  Watching the opera it struck me how similar the singer Secco was in appearance to this old silent film actor. Hence, I had a soft spot for Secco the singer, who also played his role a little in the style of Gustav in Nosferatu. After all Gustav faced evil as did Faust.
Other reviewers have snidely compared Secco to Elton John and feel him to have played the role as too much the dandy.  Rube that I am, I thought he had a beautiful voice - as stellar as the other great voices in this production.

 Secco as Faust with Marguerite

The roles of Marguerite, her brother Valentin, and Siebel as performed were gorgeous.

 Marguerite with the excellent Mulligan as Valentin
 Those who know something of Opera have told me to ignore the story and just consider the music.

 Daniela Mack is excellent as the young man Siebel
If so, then the music itself was not as enjoyable as was the only other performance I have seen - Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
Can you compare ballet and Opera. Probably not.
I was disappointed in the banality of the story of Faust.
Very impressed by the beauty of the voices I have mentioned.
The orchestration did not match that of Prokofiev. Did not really enjoy the music per se.
Much ballyhoo has accompanied the singer who played the devil - Relyea.

Perhaps it was just that the orchestra overwhelmed his vocals at our matinee, but his voice did not compel. He played the devil for laughs in most instances.
His character, and the production, was at its most effective when he and the orchestration emphasized the frightening overtones, rather than the humorous aspects of Mephistopheles.
Overall, it was disappointing as regards the "story" but I have been told by thems that knows something - that at the Opera - the story aint the thing.
Bravo.

the origin of the phrase "mean streets"

Well we know that Scorsese titled a movie after this phrase - "Mean Streets", most commonly attributed to Raymond Chandler - genius writer, alcoholic, ex-pat Londoner - who once said something like "anyone who doesnt love LA is either sane or doesn't drink" - only the way he said it was way better, wittier. It has been posited that Chandler did not originate "Mean Streets" but may have remembered it from London literature of his youth. Here is an interesting excerpt from an article on the origins of this phrase - "Mean Streets" that I use to describe the lives of both everyday working people of the city of today in addition to those who our society has discarded and who are invisible.

The Origin of Raymond Chandler's "Mean Streets"
Journal article by Arthur Wrobel; American Notes & Queries, Vol. 7, 1994
The Origin of Raymond Chandler's "Mean Streets"
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither 
tarnished nor afraid." 
 From the rhapsodic closing pararaph of Raymond Chandler's 
essay on detective fiction, "The Simple Art of Murder" ( 1944 ), the expression 
"mean streets" has passed into common use as the sign of Chandler's hardboiled 
understanding of the dangerous, crime-ridden modern city. George Grella 
entitled his essay on hardboiled detective fiction, "Murder and the Mean 
Streets." Chandler's immediate heir, Ross Macdonald, played with the expres- 
sion in his essay, "Down These Streets a Mean Man Must Go." After the Los 
Angeles riots, the Los Angeles Times headed its section on looting and burning, 
"Mean Streets." The expression is considered quintessentially "Chandler" and 
is a favored metaphor for urban crime and violence.1

In fact, the expression was not invented by Chandler, who may well have 
remembered it from its currency during his youth in London in the 1890s and 
early twentieth century--even, perhaps, from particular books he read in his 
youth. Moreover, "mean streets" at that time referred much less to crime than to 
the unproductive, unchanging banality of working-class London life.

Although the expression may have an even earlier origin, it was established 
in British cultural discourse by Arthur Morrison very popular Tales of Mean 
Streets ( 1894 ). (Beginning in 1891 Morrison had published the individual pieces 
in Macmillan's Magazine and W. E. Henley National Observer [Bleiler viii- 
ix].) This collection of realistic tales of London's East End quickly became a 
classic of late Victorian slum literature. G.K. Chesterton referred to it as "Slum 
Novelists and the Slums," a chapter of Heretics ( 1905 ). In the 1920s, Tales of 
Mean Streets was still deemed important enough to merit a Modern Library 
edition with a preface by H.L. Mencken, who cites the frequency of its being 
imitated and the permanence of its "note in our fiction" (xi).
"Mean streets" for Morrison implies the banality, lack of purpose, and 
joylessness of life in the East End. Although stark poverty is involved in several 
stories, and violence and criminality in a few, these are not the primary 
signification. All the men of the mean streets are decently employed in the docks, 
in the gasworks, in the few remaining shipbuilding yards. For their daughters, 
marriage is the unquestioned vocation: "domestic service is a social descent, and
little under millinery and dressmaking is compatible with self-respect" (xv). The
mean street is, indeed, respectable: "This is not a dirty street, taken as a whole"
(xxii). It represents, however, the "grim" culture of the urban working class.
Wholly separated from the world of affairs, their daily round a death in life, they
find "every day is hopelessly the same . . . here the colorless day will work
through its twenty-four hours just as it did yesterday, and just as it will
tomorrow" (xvii-xix). All the East End "can be more properly called a single
street, because of its dismal lack of accent, its sordid uniformity, its utter
remoteness from delight" (xxvii).2
Chesterton echoes Morrison phrase in his detective spoof, The Club of
Queer Trades ( 1905 ): "those really mean streets...those genuine slums which
lie round the Thames and the City" (28). Almost certainly by this time "mean
streets" had become commonplace to designate London's slums. Chesterton
plays with the accepted signification, and his usage, like Morrison's, most serves
a Romantic (and high bourgeois) critique of urban common life. His characters
argue that the deep slums, however grim, are not as "mean" as the typical
"plebeian places" of North London: "the real horror of the poor parts of London
is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists who depict
it as being a matter of narrow streets, filthy houses, criminals and maniacs." In
the North London venues of respectable mediocrity, "civilisation only showed
its morbidity, and order only its monotony." The most significant meanness of
these streets is their "fourth-rate civilisation" (27-28).

Chesterton and Morrison were literary notables in the London of Chandler's
young manhood, publishing in the same periodicals that the aspiring man of
letters sought access to between 1908 and 1912 ( Bruccolixiv-xvii, MacShane
15-23). It seems plausible that he knew at least some of their work or at the very
least knew the term to which they had helped to give currency. That both writers
were detective writers adds interest to this discovery. Between 1894 and 1903
Morrison published stories ...

the identical twins

Since moving up here 2.5 years ago, selling my Kia Rio,  I have been walking instead of driving. You get to noticing the regulars in the neighborhood. Pictured above is a regular who is usually seen with her identical twin sister.  I don't know if they are homeless. But they always wear identical complex ensembles. If one has a pink hoodie under a red sweater under a lavender coat over a floral dress over velvet slacks over hello kitty socks in gold metallic clogs - then both of them do. But here is the one sister without the other. I have never seen this before. I have seen them both relaxing on a bench in the sun of Yerba Buena park, both with identical purple rolling suitcases, but i have never seen one without the other. I have no idea what their story is. They are colorful inhabitants of these mean streets.

life on pigeon terrace

these baby pigeons are waiting for their mother to return to feed them directly from her beak. they have been nesting on the glass "terrace" under my window for the past weeks and now are almost as big as their mom. they have explored "walking" gingerly along the glass "awnings" below my window, but haven't flown yet. I always wondered where did the pigeons come from. Not from Storks apparently. Is this proof that life goes on despite all signs to the contrary. the pigeon appears to be a city survivor. pigeon- miracle? pest? you decide.

Spring is here?

Laff in the Dark ride the Funhouse Slide!

 There is a new documentary playing at the Balboa Theatre now called "Remembering Playland at the Beach".  Reading the review in the paper this week, I had an "aha" moment. Those hazy memories of Dr. Caligari spinning wood floors and long long wooden slides in a place darkly -turned out to be real - memories of Playland circa about 1955 when I was five.

It was scary! Scary Howling Clown faces two  stories tall! -

Cackling Gypsy woman statues!

Circling, spinning wooden platforms that would spin you right off and onto the "floor". It was weird, but it was real. It was right there on the Ocean, near the Cliff House.

Our family came up to Playland and the Fleishhacker zoo from So. Cal. several times in the early 1950s,

before Disneyland came along and "cleaned up" (carnival rides) in more ways than one.

Here is one SF native's memories of Playland.
It was a cheap weekend for my family. Dad drove us up here, we all piled into a cheap hotel room off Market St. The Zoo was free. Never forgot the pink popcorn that they sold at the zoo.

We rode the electric cars. My folks wore us out, walking to Fisherman's Wharf and then the zoo and Playland. Then the Sunday drive back home to Lynwood. Mission accomplished - we three kids asleep.