| August 25, 2009 | California Dreaming, Don Draper-Style |
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"I was in California. Everything's new, and it's clean. The people are filled with hope. New York City is in decay." --Don Draper, "Med Men" Season 3 episode "Love Among the Ruins" Earlier this Summer, Flavorpill honed in on "Mad Men" creator Matt Weiner's June Rolling Stone interview. Weiner says: I can't tell you if we're going to go to California in Season Three, but as a show, we’re following how the Sixties were about the rise of Los Angeles and the decline of New York. People talk about San Francisco but it was really Los Angeles, and I wanted to show that. In 1960, New York is the center of everything, and by 1975 New York is bankrupt and by 1977 it’s the most dangerous place in the United States. In Los Angeles, there were the Watts riots and obviously a lot of economic turmoil there, but at the same time, every cultural aspect that dominated the United States in the Sixties was coming from there, whether it was hot rods or roller disco. Labels: california, la, madmen, nyc, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 1:23 PM 
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| October 11, 2005 | Why Am I Leaving San Francisco for Santa Monica? |
 I'm excited to announce that next week I'm relocating to Yahoo!'s new Santa Monica office. I'll continue to fulfill my current role as Senior Editor for the U.S. broadband portals (SBC, BellSouth, Verizon, and Plus), but I'll be working among the Full Coverage and Yahoo! News teams who have recently moved down south to be part of the new Yahoo! Media Group. "Why the hell are you leaving San Francisco?" at least hundreds of people have asked, yelled, emailed, and pinged me. It sounds like some people think I have a lotta explainin' to do -- so here are the main reasons why I'm so glad to be making this move: 1. It's a great opportunity to work among colleagues in the Yahoo! Media Group where most of the new original content on the Yahoo! Network (including Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone ) is being created. I've worked in online web content creation for the past ten years (can you believe that -- ten years?! That's making me start to feel a bit old.), so now that Yahoo! is making a big commitment to creating original content it makes sense for me to be located where it's all happening. 2a. I love San Francisco, but to be honest I don't see as much of it as I'd like to. For the past five years(!) I've made the arduous commute from San Francisco down to Silicon Valley -- I worked for two years at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View and for the last three years at Yahoo!'s campus in Sunnyvale. I spend ten hours per week driving on the 101 freeway, and that's 10 hours too many at this point. Sure, I still do cool things up in SF, like produce a weekly pirate radio show with Allyson and go to my friend Derek's Walk-In Movies and occasionally to see bands -- but the truth is, I'm in Sunnyvale in the midst of Silicon Valley waaaay more hours per week than I'm up in SF. And since I never want to live down in the suburban sprawl of "The Valley," I'm looking at many more years of commuting ahead of me if I decided to continue living in San Francisco and working a decent tech job. Pretty much all the best tech companies: Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and eBay are each headquartered somewhere down on the Peninsula, an hour's drive from San Francisco. I love it when Bay Area people comment about all the traffic in Los Angeles. My commute in Northern California is far worse than any Southern California commute I've ever had. 2b. In Los Angeles, I can live near the Yahoo! office and still live in a great area with cafes, bars, and shops that I'll enjoy. My friend Laura and I just signed a lease on an amazing house right across the street from the beach in Venice . It's only 4 miles from the office, and it has trees in the living room growing down into the ground! (Have you ever heard of such a thing?!) And I just might *gasp* ride my bike to work along the Venice to Santa Monica beachfront bike path. 3. I've lived in San Francisco for exactly 5 years. I arrived in SF in October 2000 just as closing time was setting in over the drunken magic of the dotcom days -- the music was turned off and the dim lights were turned up and everyone had to go home alone to their cold, lonely beds.) My instincts are saying that five years is long enough to stay in one city at this point in my life. I've experienced two neighborhoods in two different housing experiments: I spent 3 years living in a loft in Lower Potrero/Dogpatch and 2 years living with some guy friends in a dilapidated Mission District Victorian. I've met tons of amazing people and been to great parties and seen some incredible things. I'll certainly miss my incredible SF friends (August, Owen, Bethany, Allyson , Bryan, Andy, Jen, Deneb, Derek, Leanne, John, Shannon, Daniel, Mici, and everyone else I'm not naming) and I'll definitely be back to visit, but it's time for a change. 4. I actually like Los Angeles. Here's what I wrote about it in my blog back in November 2001. (Four years ago!) I hope that I'll still like LA now that I'm five years older. We'll hafta see. I'll be sure to blog about it as always. 5. My dog and I are fans of warm weather. Bocce, my tiny fruit bat of a dog -- though velvety -- is practically hairless (and fat-less!). San Francisco weather -- though temperate when compared to Boston -- is still not warm enough for this little dog to go running on the beach. I also enjoy wearing flip-flops every day and walking barefoot in the sand. Do you love or hate Los Angeles? How about San Francisco? Do you have any tips for me? Well-wishes or anything to add? Labels: commute, la, moving, sanfrancisco, santamonica, sf, work, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 5:40 PM
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| September 13, 2005 | Gavin Admits He Likes Us |
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Check this out: Our cute, hot mayor and #1 fan Gavin Newsom was caught on camera, and he admitted he liked the idea of having a pirate TV station in SF (Pirate Cat TV 13, of which I'm a founding member along with Monkey and Junglebook). Watch this quick video clip (shot by Junglebook on Saturday at the Fulton Street Fair) where Gavin comes out of the closet as a Pirate Cat fan. As if that's not enough magical multimedia surprise for you -- you should download this mash-up made by Pirate Cat Radio DJ The Rat. It's called "Bang On," and it mixes together "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Nancy Sinatra (which you may remember from the 'Kill Bill' soundtrack) with "Dream On" by Aerosmith and "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. I think it's hauntingly beautiful. Labels: gavinnewsom, mashup, piratecatradio, pirateradio, radio, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 11:29 PM
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| July 14, 2005 | "Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous." |
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Sam Beauregarde: What is this Wonka, some kind of funhouse? Willy Wonka: Why? Are you having fun? --"Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (1971) Last night I went to see a Walk-In Movie on Potrero Hill (my old 'hood which I've lovingly photographed again and again over the past few years). Walk-In Movies are put on by my friend and Yahoo! co-worker Derek. The movie was the original 1971 version of "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." The last time I saw it was 10 years ago when it was played at Vassar's trippy Founder's Day. The weather was great -- not too cold, although we needed to wear scarves and hats and long coats. (It is, after all, San Francisco in the summertime.) Jason, Jackson, Andy, and August were there. And I brought Bocce with me too. The setting was gorgeous; the movies was projected on the side of a house and beside it was a view of the city and the Bay Bridge. I didn't have my digital camera with me, but here's a photo Jason took. (And here's what Jason wrote about it on SF Metroblogs. Gene Wilder's portrayal of Wonka is creepy, but it still seems like deep down his Wonka has a heart. (I'm wondering if Johnny Depp's Michael Jackson-ish Wonka will).) That scene where Wonka is driving the paddle boat through the tunnel scared me to death as child. It's still pretty freaky as an adult. With its flamboyant costumes, strange images projected on the walls and darkness and day-glow paint this scene reminds me of Ken Kesey's mid-1960s "Acid Tests," (which now that I think of it, were still probably figuring prominently in people's minds as the 1970s began and this first Wonka movie was being made). On of the father's in the movie, actually has a line where he says, "What is this, Wonka, some kind of freak-out?" Tim Burton allegedly hates the original 1971 "Wonka" movie, which I found a bit shocking, because it's truly dark, twisted, and funny in a way which I had assumed he would appreciate. Sure, it's a bit cheesy at times, but that just makes it more fun in a campy way. Check out these snippets of dialogue. Gene Wilder, apparently, is not very happy to hear they're re-making it There were elements to the original film which certainly deserve a modern re-make. For example, the scene where Wonka shows the children and their parents his chocolate river and candy meadow. When I saw this scene as a 5-year-old in the late 1970s, I thought it was incredible and magical. Now, in 2005, the candy meadow looks obviously fake, dingy and sort of sad. I also found myself wondering what had become of the child actors in the film. Lucky for me, Mike who writes Ask Yahoo! recently researched the answer to this question. If you're still left wanting to find out more about the 1971 film and cast, you should check out this documentary "Pure Imagination: The Story of 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.'" Have you seen the original 1971 "Wonka"? Did you like it or hate it? Are you looking forward to the new Tim Burton version? Labels: movie, sanfrancisco, sf, vassar posted by Jess Barron @ 11:46 AM
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| May 26, 2005 | "We're Sexy F#cking Outlaws" |
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SFist interviewed me today about our She Said, She Said radio show, and here's the piece they published about us. That's all well and good, but I'm still trying to get over the sting of Eve (from SFist) trying to steal my boyfriend last week. Labels: piratecatradio, press, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 4:31 PM
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| March 4, 2005 | Gavin, Give Us a Call |
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We're doing the radio show tonight from 6-8p.m PST. Tune in online or at 87.9 on your FM dial in San Fran-silly. Tonight's topics will include tales of hook-ups on waterbeds, Martha Stewart and male fantasies about women's prisons, and songs that made young girls cry in 1986. Also, we're hoping Jackson from SFist will call in again and tell us more stuff that cracks us up. And we're still waiting for our call from mayor Gavin Newsom. C'mon, if he's phoning Paris Hilton, he damn well better call us. Gavin -- call us on the studio line tonight: 415.401.7393. We promise we'll still respect you in the morning. Labels: gavinnewsom, piratecatradio, pirateradio, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 12:47 PM
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| January 27, 2005 | Los Angeles, I'm Yours(?) |
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"There's a city by the sea A gentle company I don't suppose you want to... Oh what a rush of ripe elan Languor on divans Dalliant and dainty Los Angeles I'm yours..." -the Decemberists "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" (a bitter love letter to the city off of a decent album) "Are you moving to Los Angeles?" several friends emailed and called to ask me this week, after reading Wednesday's LA Times article about Yahoo!s new office in Santa Monica. Though I am not among the group of Yahoo! folks who have been told they must relocate to LA -- you know how I like to keep you all guessing. As you know, I love San Francisco and my friends here but the truth of the matter is -- though I live in San Francisco, I don't work in San Francisco. Sunnyvale is such a long commute -- 2 hours each day down the traffic-encrusted, ugly 101 freeway that runs through the middle of Silicon Valley. When you work 12-hour days and then commute 2 hours round-trip on top of that, it really doesn't leave you with very much "life" left for experiencing the city, seeing friends and going to movies, or well, anything except maybe sleep and sometimes eating. The only time I see my friends and go out in the city is on the weekends. And even that is so tough -- because by the time friday rolls around mostly all I want to do is curl up in my bed and not go out to a club see a band. So, the option to live in Venice or Santa Monica and work at an office in Santa Monica seems rather appealing to me. As does the ability to be part of the group of people building Yahoo!'s editorial, news, and content realm. As someone who's worked in an news programming job at Yahoo! for the past 3 years, it's awesome to see the company getting behind the ideas of media and content, once again (after a bit of a hiatus after the dot-com downturn). Plus, as you know, dear readers -- unlike most people who love San Francisco, I also love Los Angeles. By doing this, I am breaking one of the cardinal laws of San Francisco, which is "You must look down dismissively at Los Angeles." I'm sorry -- but Los Angeles is much more of a cultural center than Sunnyvale, California. And Silicon Valley has at least as many ugly strip malls as LA. And plus, the housing and rental prices are still (a bit) cheaper down there. These are things I am thinking about. Labels: commute, dotcom, la, sanfrancisco, santamonica, sf, web, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 4:47 PM
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| October 14, 2004 | The Good Times Are Killing Me |
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"The good times are killing me. Jaws clenched tight we talked all night, oh but what the hell did we say?" --Modest Mouse, "The Good Times Are Killing Me" Tonight, Friday (Oct 14) from 6-8p.m. Pacific Time I will begin my radio show called "She Said, She Said" (which Allyson might later be joining me in co-hosting -- I have my fingers crossed) on Pirate Cat radio. Tune in tonight on 87.9 FM in San Francisco. You can listen on the web at: http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html. My show is mostly a talk show about sex, pop culture, and news events, but I will also play some music. Tonight August will be joining me and we'll be playing songs by I Am The World Trade Center (who I started blathering online about back in 2001), the decemberists, Bright Eyes, The Dears, belle & sebastian (of course) and others. Feel free to email me your music/talk topic requests. Also, I will be giving away free tickets to see SoCal devil punks Deep Eynde at El Rio on Sunday Oct 16. Two weekends ago, on October 2nd August and I joined Pirate Cat DJs Monkey Man and Flood Damage, broadcasting live from SF's first-ever Love Parade. Here's a pic of us standing in front of the DJ table. Flood Damage and I interviewed the revellers, and pondered on-air why SF couldn't just have a "Hate Parade"? Here's a pic Mici took of me interviewing a guy on stilts. We asked people to tell us what they hated, and most people just said "George Bush." (We were all wearing t-shirts made by Mici and Monkey that said "I hate George Bush.") A few brave folks gave a bit more colorful answers like "e-tards" and "anti-drug laws." It's funny how when you offer a microphone to people and tell them they can say anything on the air, they will mostly shy away. Here's my photoset from the event. By the way, this Saturday (Oct. 16) from 4-6p.m. PT you should listen to Punkture, hosted by Flood Damage. This week Flood will be interviewing President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (and former-SF-mayorial-candidate and resident hottie), Matt Gonzalez. If you're looking for some uncensored underground political commentary, I recommend you tune in to 87.9 FM in SF. (I will be tuning in online from Boston.) To tune in online, go to http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html. To see a schedule of all the shows on Pirate Cat radio, go to: http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/dj.html. So, where the hell have I been? Sadly, I had to take a 5-month break from blogging due to tendonitis/repetitive stress injury in my wrists which was really bad due to my crazy work schedule. I did several months of physical therapy on my hands and wrists, and learned that I need to cut-down my daily hours spent at a computer: 14-hours per day just isn't healthy. I remember years ago, reading Justin Hall's post about the dangers of repetitive stress due to coding HTML, but despite blogging and working on the web heavily since 1996, I had honestly never had a problem with my hands until last year. My mom, who is a waitress and florist, had surgery for carpal tunnel on her right hand last December -- and she said it hasn't made her hand 100% better. So, because I make my living through typing and coding and copying and pasting, I need to take care of my damn hands. Of course, I was still working at the computer approximately 10 hours each day for my jobby-job, but in addition to ditching my blog I also cut down on personal emailing and IM-ing whenever I could. (This explains why you haven't heard from me via email or IM in months.) And honestly, there has been more stuff than ever to write about. I've been to a power tools drag race, The Phoenix Festival up in Washington, Simone and David's wedding at Fairytale Land in Oakland (August and I went dressed-up as Alice and the White Rabbit), and we went camping in Yosemite with Owen and Bethany, and much more. My friends have also all been impressing me with all the stuff they've been up to, for instance: * Mindy drove cross-country to move from SF to NYC and is currently spending 30 days travelling with her mom in Croatia. * JP contacted me (after a year spent out-of-touch) and he is living in Texas he sounded like he is doing well. * Esther rode her bike down the coast from Oregon to California, and when she arrived in San Francisco we all partied (a bit too heavily) down at the Zeitgeist. * Missy published a book that was in the Top 10 on Amazon.com for much of the summer. * Lana finished her two-year stint in Teach For America, and found herself a job at an HIV/AIDS outreach center in Houston, TX. * Allyson and Bryan met Dave Mathews (Bryan's all-time favorite musician) while they were working up in Seattle on the Farm Aid show. * Heather and Eugene decided to leave SF and pack-up and move to my favorite city on the East Coast: Providence, Rhode Island. (I loved living there back in 1998, and would seriously consider living there again.) All of their friends in SF were teary-eyed saying goodbye, but August an I might be seeing them this weekend in Providence. (We're flying to Boston on the red-eye tonight after the radio show to visit my mom.) * Jeff spent 2 weeks in France with Lance and Daniel * Andy took a new super-secret job on the Yahoo! Search team. (He can't tell you what it is!) * Jen left Yahoo! (and the financial glory of stock options) to attend a graduate prgram at Berkeley in Information Science. So far, she says it's pretty freakin tough. * Mici is studying like mad for her LSAT test to apply to Law Schools for next year. * Selena and Carlos got engaged * Ellen and Jarrod got engaged * Leanne and John got a kitten * Owen and Bethany decided to get an apartment and move in together. (This means Ric and I will sadly be losing our fabulous housemate, and are now looking for someone to live in our dilapidatad Victorian without any gingerbread. A replacement Owen: a "faux-en," if you will...) And by the way, I haven't eaten anything in three days! After hearing Bryan talk about the two three-day fasts he completed over the past few months, and noticing that he seems so incredibly healthy now -- both Allyson and I decided to try it, and we are both fasting RIGHT NOW. I'm on day 3 of my fast, and I can't believe I've gone three full days without any food or beverages other than water. (The only thing I'm consuming with calories in it is a drink of hot water mixed with two tablespoons of molasses and a fresh-squeezed lemon 3 times per day.) Allyson is on Day 1 of the fast. It's pretty crazy-sounding, but I think it will help us make positive changes in our lives/habits. The caffeine withdrawal was the hardest thing for me. It was terrible. I had a headache behind my eyes for 10 hours yesterday. I couldn't take any painkillers, because I was worried about upsetting my delicate and empty stomach, so I just rode through the pain. But it sure sucked. I'm now considering cutting caffeine out of my diet completely. That might be blasphemy since my workplace (Yahoo! in Sunnyvale) has coffee bars with free lattes and espresso all day long. The three days' of fasting fasting has had rough parts (the caffeine withdrawal, a bit of lightheadedness, and some nausea), but right now I feel FANTASTIC. I'll break my fast with a banana tomorrow morning at 7a.m. ET when I wake up from my red-eye flight from SF to Boston. That's right -- after we finish tonight's radio show, August and Bocce and I are heading to SFO to hop on a plane to Boston to visit my mom. Labels: photos, piratecatradio, radio, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 1:11 PM
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| May 11, 2004 | You Should Get to Bed |
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I was choking on a cornflake You said, "Have some toast instead." I was sleeping maybe three hours You said, "You should get to bed." -belle & sebastian, "Stay Loose" (my favorite song off of 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' which is still a pretty damn near perfect album, if you ask me.) A lot of days this spring had belle & sebastian soundtracks and the sun has been so warm and all the colors look so highly saturated, and as a cute boy I know has said, "It just seems like everything's going faster when you're in a convertible." It's true, and also you can smell the jasmine and eucalyptus trees. You prolly think I've been neglecting my blog 'cause I've been off in love or something like that running around, having fun. Well if you bet on that, you're only half right. I've been working whack amounts -- we're talking 70-80 hour weeks for the past few months. Basically, I'm working on work for almost all of my waking hours. It's pretty insane. No lunch breaks, and no blog breaks. In fact right now, it's 2:30a.m., and there's a boy in my bed trying to sleep, and I'm typing on my laptop propped on the pillow 'cause I'm so caffeinated/agitated that I can't sleep (I got home from the office at midnight), and I need to be online starting work again at 6:30a.m. in just 4 hours. It's vicious. I'm also suffering from tendonitis in my wrists from too many work hours spent using my keyboard/mouse. I hafta wear big, hard plastic wrist braces to bed to help my hands get proper blood circulation. They're hot, lemme tell ya. I sense a new fetish will be created around these things, as more and more tech workers need to wear them. But somehow, I've still been managing to have some fun. It's just sleep I'm lacking. For Owen's 30th birthday, our housemate Ric built a 9-hole mini-golf course inside our apartment. See, it was pretty freakin' impressive. Here's a drunken video we shot of the mini golf mayhem. And then lots of people came over and we played pac man drank lots of beer and sangria and ate copious and plentiful meats augmented by cotton candy (brought by Mindy) and a fabulous birthday cake (brought by Bethany). I saw my favorite show yet -- belle & sebastian at the Warfield on April 30. The accoustics in that venue are amazing! They sounded like velvet. And, appropriately, they performed (a pretty much impromptu) cover of one of my favorite Velvet Underground songs, "I'll be Your Mirror." (A boy in the audience said that it was his birthday, so they offered to play him a song. They asked what his name was, and the boy said "Nico." So, they started into the Velvet Underground cover for him.) Bobby has amazing stage presence and charisma without being too contrived. When he said, "I hope you all realize how lucky you are to live in this town. We love visiting this place," he really meant it -- they talked about Pac Bell Park and baseball games, and then launched into "Piazza, New York Catcher" with its San Francisco-themed lyrics. They also played my all-time favorite b&s song "Sleep the Clock Around" off of 'Boy With the Arab Strap.' I first heard it years ago when Jeff put it on a mix tape for me, and I've never gotten even a tiny bit sick of it. One of my friends from Vassar days, Jon Swerdloff, visited California for the first time (from NYC) last month, and we spent some time at the end of April hanging out -- I showed him around the city and took him to wine country. For Daniel's birthday, Mici threw him a surprise party at the Ebb Tide. I fell asleep (damn work!) and missed the beginning part, but everyone said he was really surprised. Mici did a kick-ass job. Everyone had fun. And then Daniel gave Mici a kiss. Oh, and I must be getting sleepy, 'cause I almost forgot about the karaoke with the live band at El Rio. Allyson took pictures that made me look like Jack White. Labels: karaoke, owen, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 2:31 AM
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| March 28, 2004 | One Near-Perfect Thing |
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"If I could do just one near-perfect thing, I'd be happy." -belle & sebastian, "If She Wants Me" ('Dear Catastrophe Waitress' is a pretty damn near perfect album, if you ask me) It's been warm at nights, and we sleep tangled up in the sheets with the window open and in the breeze you can smell the jasmine. We spend the weekend mornings giggling in my bed watching every single Strong Bad Email on HomestarRunner.com. When we get hungry, we go eat eggs bambina (and sip mimosas with friends) at Kelleigh's Ebb Tide. Afterward we drive the convertible down Dolores to August's apartment and drink beers and listen to the pirate radio station on the deck in the sun. Sometimes we barbeque with my nextdoor neighbors. On weekday mornings we walk Bocce down 24th St., and a drunk guy often tells me "greyhounds are the only dog mentioned by name in the bible!" On Wednesday nights we go to Dr. Hal at the Odeon (and sometimes we convince our friends to meet us there... and sometimes our friends' brother wins a shot of fernet for asking funny questions). We don't get very much accomplished, unless you count kisses. Labels: sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 8:33 PM
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| February 10, 2004 | Blue Skies Are Up Ahead? |
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"Need a little joy Need a little joy and some dancing Need a little joy Come on baby boy Come on blue skies. I, I, I I, I see Blue skies are in my head, said, blue skies are up ahead." -- Tori Amos, "Blue Skies" (yeah, yeah I know Tori's not "cool," but I don't care, so piss off, you pretentious indie rock wankers.) Just like a clear California day in February, she makes me so happy. Can't you see? After all that Vassar talk last week, tomorrow my work is flying me to New York City to meet with ABC TV to work out some details to our production system/schedule. (We run their news video on-demand on our broadband portals.) It'll be weird to be back in the ABC buildings. Nine years ago, I spent a semester of my senior year at Vassar interning at "Prime Time Live" with Diane Sawyer. (Yeah, yeah: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.") In addition to all the Vassar stuff, New York will always be the city where my brother died. But, on the positive, side -- it's also where Jeff lives now, in Brooklyn. And I'll get to see him. And the ever-fabulous August is flying out to stay with me for the weekend. Now I just hafta find some warm, East Coast wintery clothes to pack. 02.09.2004. So, some readers have implored me -- "San Francisco seems pretty pretentious... How can you say that SF is less pretentious than NYC?" 'Tis true. San Francisco is not entirely lacking in pretension. But SF brings a smile to my face because of the utterly silly shenanigans so many of da people are engaged in every day. For instance, if you lose a bet about proper grammar usage, you might hafta walk 8 blocks of Valencia Street dressed up like a chicken. Or, if you fly home to SFO, after spending some time abroad, your friends just might show up at the airport dressed in dalmation costumes and playing accordians. "And who are all the good, fun, non-pretentious San Francisco people?" those same readers asked. Well, there's Allyson, Jen, and Leanne for starters. posted by Jess Barron @ 7:39 PM
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| January 9, 2004 | Wood and Fresh Paint |
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"That's all we do, isn't it -- look at things and try new drinks?" -The girl in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" He talked in his sleep and said, "Mmmmmmm. You smell good -- like wood and fresh paint." Since he's a painter, I took it as a compliment. His eyes never looked as blue and large as when he quickly sketched my portrait in pencil and colored pens as I sprawled naked across his bed last weekend. When he's reading to me or sketching --that's when he looks the most beautiful. I loved the portrait, but he says he's still trying to learn my face. I understand, because I am too and it's been mine for nearly 30 years. Last night I was at the Suicide Girls burlesque show at the Great American Music Hall. The show was sold out, but Missy put Andy, August, and me on the guest list. (Here's my obligatory cell phone camera snapshot of the marquee. No cameras allowed inside. Sorry.) I know, it seems like all I do lately is go to burlesque shows and try new drinks, but really, I do other things too... like makeout with boys and write... and take photos. As you can expect from heavily tattooed goth/punk chicks, The Suicide Girls didn't exactly put on the classical burlesque show. (No, this was not your grandma's burlesque.) I'm telling you, you haven't lived until you've seen six pale girls wearing little frilly g-string underwear and tiny duct tape "X"s over their nipples squirting entire bottles of Hershey's chocolate sauce all over each other and rolling around together on a plastic sheet. If pictchas of girls gettin' it on with each other is what you're into -- you should definitely check out Esther's extremely artful and well-directed Barbie lesbian photoshoot starring Roberta (who you may recognize from our Burning Man camp last year). I'll leave you with an alt-rock album cover photo I took of Selena and August on Tuesday night at Sadie's where we co-opted the jukebox for a solid hour or so. Labels: august, esther, photos, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 1:00 PM
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| December 12, 2003 | The P-Dawg is Not for Pussies |
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"I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert but I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime. In a big country dreams stay with you like a lover's voice fires the mountainside. - Big Country "In a Big Country" When we woke up on Sunday, it was sunny. We went to the Ebb Tide for breakfast (I had a goat cheese and spinach omelette), and then drove to his house so he could change his shirt. We watched Trogdor and all the Radiskull episodes on his laptop, until the afternoon sun heated up his tiny room. Then we opened up the windows, I took off all my clothes, and the sunlight trickled in and made patterns across my legs and back. He read me Nietzsche's "Geneology of Morals" while we listened to the Velvet Underground. I watched his eyelashes skim across the pages and his mouth as his lips sculpted out the sentences, and somehow I still managed to follow some of the ideas. When the sun went down we headed to Zeitgeist where we sat outside in the back and shared a pitcher of Anchor Christmas Ale with Andy. After Zeitgeist we stopped at a corner store and picked up some cheese, Syrah, and unfiltered sake and headed to Andy's place where we proceeded to consume all of the liquor, and most of the cheese, but did not have enough combined attention span to finish "The Big Lebowski" or even a single episode of South Park. Andy told us stories about all-boys' boarding school, and when we got tired, we created a new drink by mixing Pernod with Red Bull. We called it the "P-Dawg," and it's not for pussies. Sometime after midnight we were back in my bed, and he read me some Rilke and then we fell asleep. It's cold today -- it was like 42 degrees outside this morning when I woke up. This is about as cold as San Francisco gets, and I can't really take it. Makes me want to move back to Los Angeles. I dunno how I'm gonna handle Christmas in Boston next week. I think it's in the twenties there and no doubt there will be snowstorms. I'm not physically or mentally prepared. I think the next season of "Survivor" should be held in a small, cold Massachusetts town in December or January. The frigidity would surely drive those contestants insane. Another version of "Survivor" I'd like to see would send twelve Mission hipsters to live for one month entirely in the Marina. Yes, that would be entertaining. Labels: andy, august, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 9:17 AM
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| November 13, 2003 | Polishing the Turtle Shell |
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"Imagine your back is a turtle shell, and use your breath to polish it." -my yoga teacher, a Hungarian contortionist who goes by the name of Pretzel I spent most of today wandering Valencia Street and driving around the Mission. Although I still have love for my nearby former 'hoods The Dogpatch and Potrero Hill, I'm truly feeling the love for my new home, the Mission. Saturday afternoon I was caught outside in a downpour -- San Francisco's first real rainstorm in months. Even though I hate getting wet, the rain altered my mood in ways that weren't entirely negative. It's weird how it can go so long without raining here that I forget that the rain has the power to effect my emotions. It's this sort of somber cleansing, and I'm sure the grimy, pissed-on streets of the city feel the same way. They need a serious bath! The great thing for me is that the coming rainy season will enable me to stay indoors and get writing done in the same way that this year's glorious sunny summer seemingly seduced me outdoors and into trouble. Labels: sanfrancisco, sf, yoga posted by Jess Barron @ 7:20 PM
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| November 4, 2003 | SF Mayoral Candidates' Voight-Kampff Empathy Test |
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Deckard: She's a replicant. Tyrell: I'm impressed, Mr. Deckard. How many questions does it normally take? Deckard: I don't get it... Tyrell: How many? Deckard: Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced. Tyrell: But with Rachael it took more than a hundred. Deckard: She doesn't know. Tyrell: She is beginning to suspect I think. Deckard: Beginning to suspect? How can it not know what it is? -Blade Runner (1982) Someone at The Wave magazine came up with the idea to give the San Francisco mayoral candidates the Voight-Kampff empathy test from Blade Runner. The results are pretty amusing. Only Ammiano figured out what was going on. Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom for Gavin Newsom's test. (Courtesy of Andy.) Labels: gavinnewsom, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 6:49 PM
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| October 31, 2003 | 'A Girl As Brave and Dangerous as Aeon Flux' |
He said, "I want a girl as brave and dangerous as Aeon Flux." I said, "I dressed up as Aeon Flux for Halloween one year." After that it was silence, and sometimes I think I just don't get it. Today Andy and I drove to work down the 101, and it was cold and there were enormous clouds everywhere all around us. It felt so strange -- like a completely foreign planet. It's been sunny and warm forever now, so when I saw the clouds they made me feel weird. There was even a patch of rain, and I realized I hadn't seen rain in months. Rain -- even 30 seconds of drizzle -- snapped me out of the amazing, sunny, warm and seemingly neverending California summer we had this year. (Unusual for San Francisco.) As you would imagine, rain is completely out of place in Sunnyvale. Up until today our daily weather was pretty much always this. Labels: andy, commute, costume, halloween, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 4:07 PM
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| April 4, 2003 | The Party Car |
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About an hour ago I entered my apartment building and I walked into the elevator along with my neighbor. We were both coming home after at the conclusion of our day's at work. "I don't always carry half full bottles of beer in my gym bag," I said when he looked down at my half open duffle bag and noticed the Pete's Wicked Ale poking out between my sports bra and my running shoes. "I've just come from the party car!" He just looked at me quixotically. This evening -- after spending the past two years riding caltrain round-trip from San Francisco down to Silicon Valley almost every day -- I found out about the "party car," which apparently has been in existence for the past 8 years. Tonight I left work on the 5p.m. shuttle from Yahoo campus to the Sunnyvale caltrain station. I never usually leave as early as 5 p.m., but now that I'm starting work at 6a.m., I'm making an effort to leave on the 5 p.m. shuttle. So anyway, on the shuttle, everyone's all rowdy and talkative 'cause it's Friday (usually everyone's pretty quiet), and I meet this girl Jen, and she goes, "So, are we all getting on the party car?" "Ummm, what's the party car?" I asked. "On the 81 north train the front-most car is the party car. People bring beer and snacks and they play music and it's a party car. They even have a website," she said, "partycar.com" "What?! I didn't know you could drink on the Caltrain?!" I exclaimed, somewhat shocked. I had never seen anyone imbibing on the train before. Everyone on the Caltrain -- myself included -- always reads the newspaper, types on their laptop, or sends emails on their Blackberry and/or Palm. People don't often talk with the others around them, and no one ever has a flask, beers, or a bottle of wine... "I must experience this party car," I said to Jen, still doubting its existence. At the Sunnyvale station, we boarded the train in the front car. Jen told me that most of the party car peeps get on around Palo Alto. Sure enough, people boarded and started cracking open beers, and within five minutes they asked us, "Hey, do you ladies want a beer?" Jen and I met all the party car peeps and drank a few beers, and I hafta tell you, the hour-long train ride went by really fast. If you take the caltrain, I highly recommend you try out the party car. You won't be disapointed. Next time I'm bringing beer and snacks to share. The message of the story, dear readers, is never let the work-week get you down. There is often an unexpected party car somewhere on the horizon, just waiting to be discovered... The party car has even inspired some phat rhymes from its many attendees. It really doesn't surprise me. The artist behind this one, breaks it down about why the party car is far uperior to driving in your ass up the 101 freeway home to the city: driving on the 101: Mack truck on your rear head on collision traffic frustration mortal fear flirting with death stewing about some thoughtless ass getting cut off by a stupid jerk death wish insanity CHP ticker getting flipped off being stuck in a rubber-neck delay scream and shout breaking down with a car riding in the party car: joining in our weekly cheer ale vs. lager decision friendly conversation Tecate beer TGIF relaxing with Harp and Bass winding down from a hard week at work beer buzz serenity Schlitz Malt Liquor tying one on getting home the partycar way Guiness Stout fortifying with vitamin R Labels: commute, sanfrancisco, sf, siliconvalley, work posted by Jess Barron @ 8:26 PM
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| January 11, 2002 | Vassar's Wet Dream |
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"This is Vassar's wet dream!" Mindy squealed, as Ethan Zohn won Survivor. "I mean c'mon, he's a heterosexual male and he's an athelete..." "Yeah, no one's gonna think it's an all girls school anymore... This is almost like when you worked in the school's publicity department and you were making the recruitment videos, and you wouldn't use me as a stand-in because I wasn't black or male or athletic or Asian," I responded, still bitter from missing my big break in Vassar's promotional video due to my white female majority status. "What I want to know," said Adam a.k.a. Atom, "Is do they get one million dollars and then have the 40% taxes taken out or do they give them enough money so that they have a million after taxes?" "I can't believe our classmate won Survivor!" Mindy said. "Yeah, if someone from Vassar was going to win Survivor, I would've expected it to be a catty gay boy like J.P. or a pissed-off Women's Studies major," I said. Mindy immediately called Helen on her cell phone, and I called Allyson who is at CES in Vegas, and probably right now shaking her ass at Rum Jungle. (Oh, I'm not jealous. Noooooo. But what if she's hanging out with Bill?!) Allyson didn't answer, so I didn't even know if she knew yet that Ethan won. Damn. No She Said, She Said tonight. After that we thought about who else to call, and I ended up calling Lee to point out how, once again, Vassar's superiority to his alma mater Occidental College (which incidentally goes by the nickname of "Oxy," Eww!) has been made evident. We considered calling J.P. because he's such a pop culture addict, but I remembered how he keeps telling me that he doesn't watch reality TV because his own life is much more interesting. Perhaps the best part about Ethan winning Survivor is that I won $80 in my office's Survivor pool. It may not be a million dollars, but it's enough to buy me a few cocktails (even at San Francisco prices). After the Survivor excitement Mindy and Adam busted out Dance Dance Revolution and started jumpin' around my living space. And then Mindy and I busted into the duet that she and I are singing Saturday night during my birthday festivities at The Mint. My birthday is coming up very soon. We're celebrating two days early on Saturday night. What song should I karaoke? People keep asking me what I did on New Year's Eve, and it's not such an easy question to answer: "Ummm, well, we built drunken pyramids on my kitchen floor and scared the dog." Seriously, how the hell do I explain what was going on in this photo?. Heather also posted some New Year's pics on her site too. Labels: allyson, jp, lee, mindy, sanfrancisco, sf, vassar posted by Jess Barron @ 7:01 PM
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| November 9, 2001 | California -- It's the Cheese |
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"Happy cows make great cheese, and happy cows live in California." --a cheesy quote from California dairy farmers’ ubiquitous "It's the Cheese" tv ad campaign. "California is the only state that touches both Mexico and Canada." --Mindy, my (actually quite) intelligent friend who received her B.A. from Vassar. Three things: 1. It's November 9, and it's 75 degrees, and I'm wearing sandals. 2. As of next week, I will have lived in my loft for one calendar year. I'm actually planning to stay here one more year. This fact may not sound exciting to you, but this will be the first time since I was 17-years-old (ten years ago) that I've lived in the same dwelling for longer than 12 months. 3. I really do love California. Well, mostly I love Los Angeles and San Francisco (I can say with some certainty that I do not love Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, San Diego, or Davis. But I will admit that there is still something interesting about places like Pasadena, pre-fab Palo Alto, and Sausalito.) Though I do not unconditionally love all the other California cities, there is something I do love about driving the 5 from bottom to top, my eyes lingering along the vast bountiful fields filled with fruit year-round, intersected by elaborate aqueducts, and lined with neat rows of plants and trees. As I reach northern California, I can't help but ogle the gorgeous soft rolling grassy green hills. Unlike the jutting mountain-like hills of New Hampshire or Vermont, northern California's hills seem take special care not to block out the sun. Sometimes I think I'm one of the only people who loves both San Francisco and Los Angeles. I am, quite possibly, the only person foolish enough to admit in writing that I love Los Angeles a bit more. A few days after moving to SF last fall, I was invited to a loft party in SOMA. While being introduced to a woman around my age, I accidentally mentioned that I had just moved to the city from Los Angeles. Her immediate self-satisfied response was, "Well, at least you're in a better city now!" I tried to explain to her that not everyone is completely brainwashed that the Bay Area is the best place to live, but it wasn't worth getting in a bitch fight and/or shattering her idea of reality. When I lived on the East Coast in Boston in 1996, I always assumed I would move to San Francisco. SF was so cool -- it was the dot.com epicenter -- (and I was already working at Monster.com and completely bought in on "The Revolution," as stupid as that now sounds.) Los Angeles seemed sort of tacky in comparison. When I was trying to get my employers at Wildweb to pay for my transfer to Los Angeles in 1999 (from Boston) my friend and manager, Eliot, a former Angeleno, had warned me, "People in the Bay-Area treat Los Angeles as if it's this big, dumb dog. And Los Angeles maybe kind of just accepts that stereotype, because I don't think LA really cares about the image as much as people might think. But anyone who lives there knows that LA actually has a lot of things, particularly in Los Feliz and Silverlake, that are just as cool, if not cooler than anything they have up there. Plus there are more artists." With Eliot's assistance and a bit of luck, I did end up being transferred from Boston to Los Angeles, and when I arrived there, I found a place that was so strange and filled with people who all had huge dreams and bizarre quirks. I was convinced, and still am, that it had to have been created by someone's imagination like some kind of trippy cartoon. The way the sunlight hits the buildings at 3 in the afternoon, the shadows and colors are so dramatic, you constantly feel like those scenes in a movie where they close-up on the lover beaming down over the beloved's face. (I swear I wasn't much of a romantic until I moved to Los California.) I know, no one's supposed to love Hell-ay, but I did. I fell in love with the city no one was supposed to love, just as easily as I fell in love with the goofy messed-up boy in my life who was daring me to love him. When my friend Jeff and I decided to go west just over two years ago, he was living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which he loved, except for the sweltering summer heat waves that kept everyone inside hovering around an air conditioner. Jeff and I had been friends since we were fifteen. We grew up in a Massachusetts suburb and met in a public school Latin class. Three years after my graduation from Vassar, I was living in Cambridge, MA and hating everything about the uptight Bostonian East Coast attitude. I had already been bitten by the Burning Man bug, and realized that the majority of Black Rock City's inhabitants hailed from the West Coast. "When a lot of people get together in the best places things go glimmering. The thing is to have a lot of people in the center of the world, wherever that happens to be. Then things go glimmering." I beckoned Jeff to move west with me, peppering my speech with lines from "Absolution," one of my favorite F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories. Two of our other friends Paul and Hillary already lived in the City of Quartz. Paul lived in Santa Monica studying architecture at Sci Arc and Hillary lived in Hollywood and worked in acquisitions at Fox. Jeff became convinced. The only decision was whether to find an apartment in cool-kid Los Feliz or out by the sparkly ocean in Santa Monica. Our jobs on the Westside dictated our choice, and I found that I could be happy living anywhere in Los Angeles, even in West LA where we were surrounded by UCLA kids and families with Spanish-style bungalows with immaculate lawns. Maybe I loved Los Angeles most because I hit it at an interesting time in my life. I was really ready to begin everything. I wanted to dance all night to glam rock in Hollywood clubs with strippers and guys in bands. I wanted to dress even more flamboyantly. I wanted to learn to rollerblade while watching the sun set over the ocean and licking the salt from my lips. Maybe I loved Los Angeles because I hit it at an interesting time in its life. I saw the entertainment dot.com bubble from the inside. My P-2-P MP3 start-up company was headquartered in Beverly Hills and majority-owned by mogul Michael Ovitz. The people I met were writers, photographers, painters, musicians, and actors (some whose names you’d recognize, and some who you would not), and they didn’t all hail from New England or go to college in the Northeast. They had their own unique dreams and they weren't doing these things just because their families expected them to. A few weekends ago while walking barefoot on San Francisco's Ocean Beach, Mindy and I were speculating about which, if any, states could successfully succeed from the Union. "California is probably the only one that could do it, right?" I ventured. "Well, California is the only state that touches both Mexico and Canada," Mindy said. "California doesn't touch Canada!" I exclaimed, and both of us immediately started laughing. "I can’t believe I said that," Mindy said, while still giggling. "It's stuff like that that makes people in Washington and Oregon hate Californians." I admitted that I sometimes pictured the map that way too. I suppose that confirms it -- we're officially Californians now. Labels: california, jeff, la, losangeles, mindy, quotes, sanfrancisco, sf, web posted by Jess Barron @ 8:39 PM
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| May 7, 2001 | Pier Parties and Dog Saboteurs |
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I loved stumbling upon that pier party yesterday (thanks to Mindy and Matt...) So fun even though we didn't know who the DJs were. I'm starting to appreciate San Francisco a bit more. I mean, how many cities have great local DJs throwing free parties in warehouses (like that Supernatural thing we went to a few weekends ago) and on postapocalyptic piers. My favorite overheard conversation snippet: Someone said to a guy with a little Yorkshire Terrier: "Hey, your dog looks different -- I can see his eyes now -- did he get a haircut?" Other guy, holding up dog: "Yeah, I took him to the groomer last week. When they gave him back to me, I was like, 'Dude! You sabotaged my dog!" Last night I had dreams about dog saboteurs... Labels: dog, quotes, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 4:31 PM
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| April 25, 2001 | Dog's Life in Pre-Crash San Francisco |
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When I moved to San Francisco way back 4 or 5 months ago (i.e. pre-major economy crash) -- no apartments WITHOUT concrete floors would even consider accepting our two tiny dogs, even with a $5000 security deposit. Some landlords even wanted a non-refundable pet rent of a few hundred bucks per month... Others suggested I kill one of the dogs (the comment was tongue in cheek, but still -- it wasn't making me feel very good as I desperately combed Craigslist and Rent Tech looking for pet friendly apartments). Here is an actual email exchange I had on Craigslist back in November 2000: From: Jess Barron To: Bill Newcomb Subject: Your SOMA live/work loft Hi Bill, I'm interested in taking a look at your live/work loft that is posted on Craigslist for $2500. (The posting said you would consider pets.) I have two tiny dogs. They are both 3-years-old and come with great references. Let me know if the unit will allow my dogs and also if you are showing it this Saturday. Thanks! --Jess From: Bill Newcomb To: Jess Barron Subject: RE: Your SOMA live/work loft Hi Jess, Unfortunately, the building only allows 1 pet per unit... So you're gonna have to kill one of your little tiny doggies ;-) Sorry, Bill Labels: dog, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 11:20 AM
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