Phew, according to the Chronicle, the fire was contained by fire crews early this morning. The firefighters, quite rightly, decided to just let the building burn, rather than muck about with it. There’s some neat video here which hints at the scope of the blaze, and another article here with some more amazing pictures.

One thing that did concern me, reading these articles, was the statement that water pressure wasn’t high enough on the Island to put out the fire. By extrapolation, I assume that if part of the housing catches fire, there also would not be adequate water pressure. That could be rather disastrous, even with the fire boat, so I think the City might want to think about doing something to fix the situation.

I was peacefully working on a top secret project when I first became aware of the helicopters overhead. There were at least three, thockthockthock, and I assumed that someone had jumped off the bridge or become lost. I continued peacefully entering data, and then the phone rang. Who, I thought, would call me at this hour?

It was Puff, who had gone for a walk.

“What’s up,” I said, “need me to come drag you out of a ditch?”

“What?”

“Whats…going…on?”

“Dude, something is on fire! Avenue H!”

“What? Wait, where are you?”

“I’m on Ninth, something on Avenue H, it’s huge!”

“Should I bother coming out?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Pants!”

*click*

When I walked out of the house, the air felt a little duskier than usual, and when I looked to the south, I saw a plume of smoke. I started walking down the street, and tried to get a shot of the smoke, with a spurt of flame underneath.

You can’t see anything in the picture, but I think it’s the best picture to come out of my cell phone, so I’m posting it anyway. As I walked down Avenue H, I could see that the fire was getting progressively larger, and yet further away. A huge plume of smoke gusted down the street into my face, and soon I could make out Puff, leaning against a utility pole looking all casual.

This photo does not do it justice. One of the abandoned buildings was reduced to a skeleton of charred timbers. Only moments before, the entire roof caved in, sending out a cascade of sparks and smoke. It was pretty damn impressive. The cops, however, were less than pleased with our presence, and suggested that we depart the area. We started sauntering away, and I turned to get a parting shot while I schemed about getting around the other side to get more pictures.

As you can see, the cops blocked the street immediately in front of the fire, presumably to keep ruffians like us out. We waved at the nice policemen and started moving off down the street, ducking down a dark alley once we were out of view. As I suspected, it gave way to an ideal view of the fire.

The fire may look more contained here, but it was huge and majestic to behold. There was a chainlink fence in the way, but honestly I don’t think it would have been very safe to go much closer. It was…amazing. I could see firemen clustered around, outlined in the blaze, and I wondered if any of them were from the firefighting school down the block.

They had a huge hook and ladder spraying water down, and I was pleased to see that it kind of showed up in this shot. The news helicopter hovering overhead was sketching me out, though, so we headed back home for the night, helicopters lighting the way with spotlights.

Almost home, we ran into two gentlemen who asked us what was going on.

“A fire,” I said. “It’s pretty awesome, you should go check it out.”

And you know what? It was awesome. It wasn’t anyone’s house, and nothing major was in danger. It was just pure, beautiful destruction. Did the fire training school set it? Was it arson? A mistake? I don’t know, but it was an awesome way to round out my evening. The streets began to fill with curious onlookers, and I ducked inside to write this post and check news sites for a live feed, given all the helicopters. None such luck.

I smell a bit smoky and my throat’s all raspy. I guess that’s what I get for skulking around a fire. The things I do for you, dear readers.

Not for the first time, I long for a real camera. I could have gotten some amazing pictures out there tonight.

[Treasure Island fire]

I learned yesterday that Fast Passes only go as far as Balboa Park on BART, just in case anyone is curious. Perhaps other people actually bother to read the information on the MUNI website about Fast Passes, so they already know this. But I didn’t.

It all started when I ran into some friends when I was heading into the City to restock at Library. They were heading in for coffee, so we made it a joint mission, heading to the library before going to Philz. After we were done and grabbed some burritos, we were all a little bored, so we decided to hop on BART and go for an adventure. Our adventure actually began at the 24th Street station, because a man had apparently fallen down the escalator, attracting a large crowd of emergency services personnel. I caught a glimpse of European sneakers and an alarmingly still body, and saw a blonde paramedic leaning over the patient while two firemen rushed down the stairs with a backboard.

I wonder sometimes about why we are so interested in the misfortune of others. I felt a sympathetic pain at the thought of falling down an escalator, because I had almost done the very same thing earlier. And the escalators at the Mission BART stops are long, too, so he could potentially have fallen quite a ways. Ugh.

Our original plan was to go Millbrae, and see what it was like, since none of us had been. However, we hopped a Daly City train, so when the train stopped at Daly City and booted us off, we decided to see what there was to be seen in Daly City. I’ve only been to the Daly City station once before, so it seemed like a world of opportunity, especially since we caught a glimpse of a big park.

Only…when you try to put a Fast Pass through a turnstile beyond Balboa Park, it flashes red and says “see agent.” So we got a dressing down for that and headed back towards downtown with our tails between our legs. Unwilling to give up entirely on the exploration mission, we jumped off at Glen Park, because none of us had ever been there.

My first impression of Glen Park was not favorable. The weather was gloomy, there was a freaky lady, and it looked weird. But we wandered a little further from the station and we found a totally awesome cheese store that also sold home made ravioli and an assortment of British imports. The lady looked at me strangely when I pulled out my cellphone to take a picture, so you’re going to have to take my word for it, but they had Marmite. We also discovered a rad grocery store with truly awful music playing over the intercom, and the most spectacular samples of fresh fruit. There was scrumptious water melon, and the best orange I have ever had. I was tempted to buy an orange, but I’m so terrible at picking oranges that I knew I’d pick a bad one. I resolved to go back when I actually needed groceries, because I saw all sorts of promising things like my favourite brand of Dutch cocoa, really good looking fresh fish, and the sexiest asparagus I have ever seen.

We wandered around for a little while longer and then took BART back whence we came, so that we could return to our Island home. I think one of my new missions is to visit every BART station I’ve never been to. The Glen Park one is actually quite nice, with marble and slate and brightly colored support beams. I think it may be the nicest BART station I have personally experienced, actually, although I did not appreciate the gust of wind which almost absconded with my Fast Pass. Who knows what other delights may lie in store within the BART system!

[Glen Park]

Why, what’s this, you ask.

This, my friends, is what happens when the power goes out on Treasure Island. I want you to know that I charged intrepidly out of the house in a towel to document it because the power normally goes out during the day, and it’s not nearly so impressive.

Why, you say, usually. What do you mean, usually?

Just that the power here goes out an awful lot. Like, rolling blackouts level of a lot. My grandmother’s power goes out less often than this, and she’s dead, that’s what I’m saying, G*.

And it was dark, and cold, and there were rustlings, and flashlights. I tell you what, it was like a whole different world.

I ran into the house to put pants on so that I could capture the contrast between brightly illuminated San Francisco, clearly visible from my window, and the dark lonely bastard child Island…but the power went back on.

God, I love it when the power goes out.

*Don’t look at me like that, G, it’s short for gentle reader. Duh. G.

Night often finds me sitting on the sea wall, fretting the label off a bottle of Fat Tire. Sometimes I sit so that I can see the lights of San Francisco, and when I’m finished sometimes I throw the bottle against the rocks so I can hear the crash and bitter tinkle, wasted glass sluicing through the boulders to cut an unsuspecting hand later. I feel momentarily guilty before I shrug and remember that life’s a bitch, eh, and I tuck the label into my pocket so that it will come out in the wash, filling the dryer with paper lint. Other times, I sit on the dark side, looking across the Bay to the indistinct muddle of Richmond, Berkeley, lights dancing along the bridge which glitter in an out like a tired disco ball.

For some reason, I had a dream last night that was so intense and vivid that for a moment I thought I was in a different place. I had two dreams, actually, but the one I’m going to tell you about is about books, childhood.

I remember when I was young, in Caspar, I would take my father’s coffee up to him every morning. He got in late at night from working at the bar, but somehow managed to be cheerful when I charged upstairs at eight in the morning, filled with a zest to do something. If the day was sunny, my father would say:

“Let’s make potato pancakes,” and we would, and I would see how many I could eat before I might feel faintly sick, and then we would do the dishes and pack a thermos of chocolate milk and go to the beach. Sometimes we would walk to Jughandle, and sometimes we would walk to Caspar beach, and we would build dams and pry limpets from the rocks and drink chocolate milk made with inky black Indonesian chocolate until the afternoon set in, and started to get cold, and then we would walk home and cook dinner.

Other days, it wouldn’t be sunny, and I would be filled with restlessness. My father would let me set the Monopoly board up on the bed, and we would play for pennies and later dollars, or maybe we would play chess, and he would say:

“Do you really want to move there?”

And other days, oh, glorious day, I would coax him into taking me to Mendocino, so that we could go to the bookstore and visit Katy, and the smell of fresh ink and paper would fill my nostrils, and I would use my saved up pennies to buy a book, or sometimes I would wheedle him into buying one for me. Katy used to give me reader’s copies sometimes, although I didn’t know they were reader’s copies, then. Other times, when they stripped the covers off books to send to the publisher to get their money back, she would rescue the books from the recycling and give them to me. Knowing Katy, she’s still passing on good books to kids who need them.

In those days we still owned the white Volvo with the holes in the floor in the back, and I would bound into the front seat and my father would roll a cigarette while the engine warmed up, and then we would trundle down the road to Mendocino, speculating on whether or not the fog would lift.

In those days, Bookwinkles was still around the corner from the Gallery Bookshop, in the little white building with the tower, and my father would find a parking spot and I would race out into the bookstore to run my fingers longingly over all the books while my father went down the street. I still remember that in between stage, when I would go the Bookwinkles and realize there was nothing there for me, anymore, and I remember the first time my father pulled a piece of adult fiction from the shelf and said:

“I liked this when I was a kid, I think you might like it too,” and I took The Tin Drum home and read it from cover to cover.

In my dream, my father and I were driving down the road to Mendocino, and I was little, then, wearing my favorite blue a-line skirt left over from a dance performance. But my father was as old as he is now, with white hair and nervous hands and a distant look in his eye. When we arrived in Mendocino, everything was gone, some sort of strange yuppie paradise had arisen with condos and malls, and my father’s blue jeans and plaid shirt looked just as out of place as my shabby blue skirt and Keds, and he took me by the hand and we tried to find the ice cream store, but no one would answer us when we asked for directions. And then the dream was over, and I was waking up, tasting Black Forest and smelling the waffle cones they used to make at the ice cream store, right there, while you waited in line. The odd thing about the dream was that everything which is still there in Mendocino was gone, and yet I dreamed about the ice cream store, which hasn’t been there for years. Some sort of strange flipped time warp.

I remember the last time I tried to go to the ice cream store, it was New Year’s Day, 2000, and a bunch of us woke up late after a party and walked to the ice cream store and it was gone, empty, even the ice cream cases. Each of us tried to remember the last time we had been, and realized that it might have been gone for weeks, perhaps even months, and none of us had noticed.

What haven’t you noticed?

Sometimes I think I am too nice for this town, which is an odd thought, since people are usually calling me a misanthropic, anti-social lout with no social graces. And I tend to agree. I’m surly, utterly lacking in charm, and pathologically impatient. Yet, somehow, I manage to retain more kindness that most of the people I see in the city around me.

I was thinking about this today as I thanked a MUNI driver today (response: “What?! Oh, you’re welcome.) I recently thanked the driver on the 38 Geary, who thought I said something less friendly, and responded in a dangerously low voice with “what did you just say?” “Er…thank you?” “Oh.”

Then I was in the BART station, and a woman dropped her jacket, and I picked it up and tossed it to her, and she looked alarmed, startled, and offended all at once before realizing that I really was just handing her the jacket so that she wouldn’t miss her train.

Walking to the library, I gave directions to confused German tourists, helped a little old lady cross the road, rode a unicorn, and spontaneously burst into song with the homeless people in Civic Center. Just kidding. Well, I did help some German tourists. (Note to self: start carrying a City map to facilitate direction giving. And maybe cue cards.)

I think sometimes that people find City life very freeing because of the sense of anonymity, the ability to move at will through an environment filled with people. At one point, I thought that way too. But I find that I actually miss running into people I know everywhere I go. When I bump into someone at Safeway, they don’t say “oh, how’s your father,” they say “excuse me.” I walk down the street on a day bright and filled with promise, and no one meets me in the eye or asks if I know of any places coming up for rent. I used to hate living in a small town because I felt like everyone knew what I was doing before I was doing it, and now I miss it. How odd. I realize that I don’t know what I’m doing, anymore.

They say that cities have some sort of pulse, a vibrant living thread, but I actually disagree. I think that small towns have a pulse, because they function like an interconnected organism. The citizens are the pulse, blood circulating through all the parts of the organism, recycling and flushing through every inch. In a small town, everything is known, intimately. Cities are like a Man O’ War, the “jellyfish” that is actually a collection of independent polyps. We’re filled with poison to lure in our prey, and we know the organisms that live right next to us, but we have no connection with the rest of the organism.

Sometimes I just want to be a jellyfish with a heart.

I went to Safeway in the depths of the night, which is a tale for another day, and came back with ligature marks on my shoulders. I think I’ve been watching too much CSI lately, because I imagined the comments which might ensue during my autopsy as some dashing forensic pathologist tried to figure it out. The marks, of course, were from the heavy canvas straps of my fully laden grocery bags, which dug into my shoulders on the bus ride home, since I was forced to stand in the aisle.

And they got me thinking about riding public transit, and basic etiquette.

I mean, everyone knows you stand for seniors, disabled people, and pregnant women. Right? It seems pretty basic to me that if I am sitting down and I see someone who needs a seat more than I do, I should probably get up. It’s no sweat off my back to stand, normally. Of course, I also stand when I see someone with heavy grocery bags, or if someone appears to be having difficulty breathing. Others, apparently, do not feel this way, and are quite happy to sit and gossip with their friends while someone stands grimly in front of them, groping for an inhaler, with their grocery bags cutting angry red lines into their arms.

Oh, did I mention that I was in the beginning of the line for the bus and that a bunch of people cut in front of me?

What is it with people and not understanding the basic rules of courtesy on public transit?

1. Always let everyone get off the bus/train/boat/whatever before boarding. Please stand off to the side, allowing people to completely disembark. The train isn’t leaving without you. I promise.

2. Yield seats to people who need them more than you. Yes, I’m talking about you, smug businessman reading Fortune.

3. KEEP RIGHT! Jesus Christ, people, if you’re on an escalator and you want to stand, which is totally cool, KEEP RIGHT. Other people are racing to catch the train which is pulling into the station, or needing to make a connection on the surface. They walk, on the left. Or they are just assholes. You know, whatever. Just keep right. And keep your spawn right, too, or they’re going to get the evil eye and start crying. (Look, dude, the kid was running UP a DOWN escalator and I was trapped in the midst of half an elementary school, and I was tired, and I had about 40 pounds of library books.)

4. Uh, yeah, you with the huge piles of crap. Please pull it out of the aisle and off of the seat, and don’t glare at me when I ask you to do so. Believe me, I would sit, er, anywhere else, except that there is nowhere to sit. I also somehow manage to not take up three seats with my crap when I have a lot of belongings.

5. Books, headphones, and newspapers mean “please don’t talk to me.”

6. Voice modulation is a virtue. So is not using your cellphone in public. You also don’t need to sing along with your headphones, really.

7. Bathe. Please. That’s all I ask. I know that we can’t all smell rosy all the time, and I was a case in point earlier this evening, but…the manky sour smell of a long unwashed body is a terrible thing. Especially when you clearly have a home. And don’t pay your utilities. Because you live on a former military base. So it’s not like you pay to shower. Just bathe!

8. Please don’t harass the driver. It’s really not at all entertaining for the driver, and you’re going to hold the entire bus up with your cute antics while we wait for the police to come. Don’t fuck with MUNI, man.

9. You may want to possibly consider organizing your fare or bus pass before you get onto public transit, rather than holding everyone else up. Just a thought.

I feel as though living by these nine simple rules would be highly beneficial for us all. Public transit would run more smoothly and be more enjoyable to ride…and you would seem like so much less of an asshole. So let’s work on it, people.

[public transit]

Walking on the seawall, the City looks like a chalky smear of tall buildings in fog, burnt orange by the setting sun. The ocean was choppy today, coarse and rough with spitting plumes of spray which occasionally smacked my face, turning it salty and tight in little clouds of droplets. Raw white crests on the waves danced, turning yellow and spongy before disappearing when they hit the shore. There is a cold, sharp wind which tries to whistle in under my jacket, and my earrings clack in the wind, growing colder and brushing my neck like icy fingers. My mouth tastes bitter and metallic. My eyelashes are crusted with salt and I want to tear my garments and rub myself with earth, rub myself in the Earth.

There are so many things and people I miss right now. I feel sometimes that I cannot hold all the missing in, it is like a black hole which gapes hungrily out from me. I am going to collapse and suck the world inside of me.

I am the elephant in the room.

Sometimes I am surprised by the words and language which come out of me, much as I imagine a woman is embarrassed when her water breaks in public. It’s such an intrinsically private act, suddenly there for the whole world to see, and everyone is solicitous and caring. I wonder, sometimes, if women like that secretly wish they could disappear, melt away, like I do. If the attention of people concerned about them almost makes it worse, highlights the glaring error of what is not in the scene. I don’t want a concerned bystander to call a cab, I want to see the face of someone I love. I long for something which I may never have again, not the hand of a stranger on my arm, sickly sweet syllables in my ear, shaking my head, confusion. I am filled with jagged anger and longing which orbit each other around my sun. I am reminded of my bitterness and sorrow daily, I taste these things in my food and see them in my dreams.

Everything is broken.

More and more lately, I feel like the rock in a middle of a stream of water, fixed and going nowhere while everyone else rushes by. They brush me as they bustle past, but I cannot reach out to them because I am immovable and hard, brittle. They are moving by too quickly to stop.

Nothing is broken. Everything is fine. Carry on.

Sometimes I want to just disappear, slip away over the horizon to a place where no one can find me. More and more these days, I feel like no one would really notice.

So I went to the library again yesterday. For those of you who have not caught this, I read a lot. I am, however, limited by my physical ability to carry books on MUNI, so I go to the library about twice a week to drop off one batch and pick up a new one. As a side note, I really wish people would not read library books while smoking, applying cologne, eating stinky food, examining dead bodies, vomiting, urinating, or bleeding, because I can smell/see many substances related to these activities on an alarming number of library books. I have, however, learned caution…which is why if you happened to be in the San Francisco Public Library and you noticed some crazy woman sniffing books…well, that was me, sniffing books. Because the last batch I got contained one that smelled so bad that I couldn’t even read it. And yes, I did complain to the librarian when I returned it, and she sympathized, because it smelled awful.

So anyway, on the way back, I decided to be charitable and give the Metro a shot. I usually take BART, because it’s faster, cleaner, and less, well, stinky, but I thought, what the heck, ought to have the Metro organized by now, right? Also, the goddamn BART machines shock me every time I go out, and it’s starting to piss me off.

Can someone please explain why BART turnstiles shock me? Thank you.

So I went down to the Metro, which informed me that there was an Inbound T in three minutes, an N in four, an N in seven, a J in 10…etc. To my surprised, right as I came down the stairs, a one car T was pulling in, while the sign still said that there was an incoming T in 3 minutes. Despite being somewhat confused, because of the whole lack of information on the overhead boards about it, I hopped on…to the ghost train!

We duly stopped at Powell to disgorge some passengers and pick up a few mall rats, and then we trundled down the tunnel to stop at Montgomery, where a businessman who felt obliged to spread his crotch in my face got on. And groaned. Did I mention the groaning? Because I was nose deep in Over There and then I saw this looming crotch, and groaning.

Then, we set off for Embarcadero.

“Next stop, Embarcadro,” the overhead speaker said. The businessman grunted, and I checked my phone. 4:07. Sweet, I thought if I hoof it when we get to Embarcadero, I can catch the 4:15 108.

Suddenly, the train lurched to a stop. I didn’t think we were there already, but I peered out the window just in case, heart brimming with hope and then a sudden icy cold fear. Nope, seeing tunnel. I went back to reading when the train lurched forward again, and then stopped. We sat there for what seemed like an eternity, but was really only about 10 minutes. I know because I checked my phone and muttered “damnit.”

We continued with this delicate waltz for another 10 minutes, inching forward, stopping, inching forward, until suddenly I could see the platform, the edge of it, and I thought that maybe if the train would just get a few feet further down I could run and grab the 4:30 bus, when the train stopped again, and sat there. And sat there. And sat there. We turned and peered restlessly to no avail. I expectantly bookmarked my book, nothing doing.

Finally, the train crept along the platform to let us out, and I raced up the stairs to Fremont Street. On the way, I was flyered, despite my best efforts, and I shoved the flyer into my bag to look at later. Peering down Market, I saw that it was now 4:35, I had missed two 108s while sitting in the tunnel, and I had a leisurely 10 minutes to make my way to the Transbay.

10 minutes later, sitting on an on-time 108, which is more rare than a unicorn, I pulled the crumpled flyer out of my bag.

“Honor Our Contract: Is that too much to ask?”

Indeed, I think it is. While I understand that the shitty operations of MUNI are not the fault of the employees on the ground…when you’ve just spent close to thirty minutes trapped underground within feet of a station, you do not take amenably to flyering. Also, the flyer had no website or further information about the terms of said contract, and it also didn’t tell me what I should do if I thought that a contract needed to be honored. Some sleuthing turned up a website for Transport Workers Union Local 200, but it didn’t have much information either.

Two tops for the MUNI flyer people:

1. Do not flyer during rush hour. You seem pathologically incapable of running an on time train system between about three and seven, and infuriated commuters are going to start shoving your flyers in unsavory places.

2. More information, people! This is the digital age, perhaps you’ve heard of it. Set up a damn website.

As for me, I am staying far, far away from the Metro at all costs until they get their shit together. The surface buses are decent, and for everything else, there’s BART. I can see why MUNI is getting a failing grade, because I’d rather chew dessicated durians than take the Metro every day.

[MUNI]

Driving a borrowed car into the City today, I was struck with several things.

Have signals for bicyclists changed? I understand left, right, slowing or stopping, but what does making an obscene gesture and comparing a driver to an unaltered female dog mean?

Seriously. What is up with double parking? Double parking has to be the most infuriating thing, ever. (For those readers who are blessed, and don’t know what double parking is, it means parking in an active lane of traffic, next to parked cars. As in, the active lane of traffic that people are trying to drive in.) I read an article in the Chronicle recently that said that many large delivery companies like UPS, FexEx, etc. just pay the tickets for double parking, rather than finding real parking to make deliveries, because it would take so long. But the problem is when a huge delivery truck is blocking an entire lane of traffic…it really sucks. It’s even more infuriating when yuppies do it so that they can run into a coffee house and get their lattes. Grmph.

I’m not an old lady when it comes to driving, but the speed limit is a limit, rather than a suggestion. Especially in a borrowed car, I try to be aware of this. I would rather not camp out in the left hand lane going 65 on a freeway with a 65 mile per hour speed limit, really, except that the exit for my house is on the left, and there’s no way I’m going to fight across five lanes of bridge traffic to get to it. So deal. I’m going 65. Chill. Oh, wait, the speed limit on the bridge is 55, isn’t it?

Is CalTrans in San Francisco actually trying to drive citizens insane? I think that they are colluding with MUNI, to try and get more people to take public transit. When they aren’t moving lanes around endlessly, they are randomly closing huge stretches of the freeway, or removing all signage which might suggest what lane people should be in to get to various locations. This is actually a general problem throughout California, a state which is famous for having a plethora of mysterious freeways.

I understand that San Francisco is hard to drive in. Really, I do. I hate doing it, as a matter of fact. But for pete’s sake, stay the fuck out of the BUS ONLY lane, and if you are confused, pull over and get a map or ask for directions. You will not find your destination by driving around aimlessly, because the streets of San Francisco, much like the citizens, are noncomformists. Never trust a street to remain straight, and above all…never trust the street signs.

There’s a reason you can’t turn left on Market.

I realize that driving in California is a unique challenge, and that not everyone is up to the task. It’s like a video game out there, I tell you what. But I really do think that 98% of traffic problems could be solved by people growing a brain and actually using it, as most of the snarls in traffic I encounter are related to people being boneheads. If you’re too stupid to drive, you’re probably too stupid to live, in my opinion. It’s not rocket science, it just requires a little bit of common sense. Perhaps some day, the driving test will include an IQ test as well…