SPOILER ALERT for Stranger Things 3. The Neverending Story scene in Stranger Things is perhaps the most delightful moment of season 3 for me. It really says it all: Nerds save the world, but you gotta sing or everything will die. Love wins, but you gotta account for your absences to your loved ones. … Continue reading Tactical Comms of Stranger Things: Harmonizing on the HandiTalkies!
To be totally fair, my interest in the building at 2323 Market had nothing to do with the building and everything to do with what is inside of it, namely piles of glittering jewels, wine on tap, and attractive, stylish people that will feed you wine and put the jewels on your body so you … Continue reading Gems, Chert, Love: the history of a jewelry store in the Castro
Sometimes when I am standing on a street corner in San Francisco, I think back through the previous iterations of that exact patch of land, through the layers of drywall and wallpaper and plaster and lathe to the soil and marsh and silt. Sometimes it feels like the bar on the corner of 19th and … Continue reading BOOTHS FOR LADIES: An Unauthorized History of the Lexington Club
Nothing in San Francisco seems to change. I mean, it does, but the engine thrust of the boom and bust seems to continue on some kind of subterranean, internal axis. The scheming is always under the surface, and the movement of money is always perceptible, swirling over swiftly closing tracts of land like puffs of … Continue reading No Winds, No Fogs, No Credit Needed: Historic Home Buying (and beards) in the Mission
Sometimes historical records are dry — maps and lines and numbers and facts entered into the official realm of public documentation — but each transaction record, each property line, represents a physical exchange between two or more humans, and social elements sometimes leak out of dry documents, the way that ash floats through the California … Continue reading The Real Queer Housewives of Progressive Era Orange County
In a recent 99% Invisible podcast, Roman Mars introduced me to the concept of Thomassons A Thomasson is an object in the urban environment that previously had a purpose but now does not serve a purpose, but is maintained as if it does. A San Francisco example is a pair of crossing guard poles on … Continue reading The Unbearable Beingness of Junk
Note: I took down a lot of old, irrelevant stuff at ye olde blogge, but decided to really start fresh here. This is the story of long-lost lovers reuniting through space and time. I absolutely guarantee it, and if this story disappoints, I will come to your house and buy back the 10 minutes you … Continue reading A Building for Lovers
Professor Ives' History Party 