Towse: views from the hill

Ten(count ‘em 10!)-minute video with pictures of cute kitties!

Caution: [1] Soundtrack. [2] Some borderline kitty abuse for those of you who are soft-hearted and don’t like to see kittens in hats or spats.

The Exploratorium is an entertaining place. We’ve supported it for decades and used to drive up with the younger guys to visit when they were younger.

The Exploratorium has outgrown its 100K sq ft at the Palace of Fine Arts and has been looking for new digs for years. The lease on the facility at the Palace of Fine Arts is up this spring and time grows short.

Judging by stuff I snoooooped out at the Port Authority Web site and (finally!) genuine news articles, the Exploratorium has been granted a three-year exclusive negotiating agreement with the Port of San Francisco to open a new facility at Pier 15 with an option to develop Pier 17 if they need more space in the future.

Yippee! x’d fingers. If they get Pier 15 (and it’s not a slam dunk by any stretch), it’ll take time to restore the pier and then to move the contents of the building at the Palace of Fine Arts.

I was talking with one of the honchos a couple months ago and she said they were hoping the Exploratorium would only be closed a very short while once they were ready to move. Preparing for the move, however, will take years.

When we were visiting last Saturday to see Hickok’s art, we also checked out the “Reconsidered Materials” exhibit. Here are some highlights from the exhibit, which continues showing through June 18, 2006.

A small herd of horses hang from the ceiling. Horses made of metals and old tires. Titled “Rubber Horses” by Dorothy Trojanowski. Originally created for the 2005 Burning Man.

This piece was created by Andrew Junge last year as part of the Artists In Residence program at the dump. A Hummer! Made out of junked styrofoam! Amazing. The rainbows are coming from the sun streaming through the skylights. Yes! There was sun on Saturday!

A collection of old bottles, mayonnaise jars and more, stained by chemicals, lit, collected and set together as a chandelier. Titled “A Constellation” by Jim Haynes. Here is a description of how he created the work.

… and for Auntie K, The Quilt by Claudia Tennyson.

I toddled over to the SFPL site, looking for something for a friend, and found this notice: Award-Winning Children’s Author/Illustrator Tomie dePaola to Speak at 10th Annual Effie Lee Morris Lecture on May 17. dePaola’s lecture entitled What Haven’t I Done Yet begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Koret Auditorium at the Main Library. Lecture is free, co-sponsored by the Women’s National Book Association and the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

In the area? Mark your calendar.

Friends pointed me in her direction eons ago. What’s not to like about an artist who’s made a specialty of San Francisco cityscapes made from gelatin/Jell-O? (Check out the one minute video clip.)

We were pleased to see that — as part of the run up to the aught-six festivities here in our fair ville — Hickok was going to be at the Exploratorium last Saturday with her latest cityscape.

The weather was relatively fine. There was a break in the rain, providing dry-ish weather for our three-mile walk there and the three-mile walk back. We hied over.

Hickok’s quivering cityscape was set on a shake table, which she shook every once in a bit. She had fog drifting past, a Golden Gate Bridge backdrop, and a line of people waiting to see her work up close and personal.

(For those unfamiliar with San Francisco and/or the Exploratorium, the Exploratorium is currently located in a vast warehousey building adjacent to the Palace of Fine Arts. Hickok’s choice of cityscape to render was perfect for the venue.)

The details!

The artist: Elizabeth Hickok.

If you’re in the area, Hickok has her studio open this Saturday (that’s tomorrow!)

Checked the courts’ site Sunday night. No need to go down to 400 McAllister Street on Monday.

Same Tuesday.

Same Wednesday.

Thursday, well, Thursday I was supposed to be there by 8:30 a.m. and, having been told by his nibs that the screening with the metal detector at the front door sometimes backed up, left at 7:30 a.m. to make sure I wasn’t dashing in at the last minute.

Caught the F Line over to U.N. Plaza and walked over to McAllister, arriving with plenty of time to spare.

Sat in the jury room all morning. They called up one panel, two, three … I was reading a really lame Og Mandino book and scribbling. Maybe I’d be spending all day in the jury room and never be called for a panel. Maybe I’d earn my one-year waiver just by sitting.

But no. A bit after 11:30 a.m., they called yet another panel and I was sent up to Room 306, Judge Kevin McCarthy’s courtroom, along with another forty or so people. We were the second panel sent up that day. Another panel would be sent up after lunch. They needed that many potential jurors to choose a jury and alternates.

McCarthy gave a general overview of what the civil trial would entail and went over the schedule, which days would be court days, which days would not. The trial had multiple defendants, multiple plaintiffs, multiple attorneys. Estimated duration: five weeks.

Those potential jurors who had a hardship (the judge explained what was and was not legally considered a “hardship”) filled out a short form explaining what the problem was, and the judge decided which hardship requests to grant. Those who had no hardship excuse for serving for a five week trial were given a very long questionnaire to fill out and were told to fill out the questionnaire, turn it in and be back in the courtroom at 10 a.m. Monday.

Alas. I had a hardship. We already had plane tickets and plans for two different jaunts that conflicted with the judge’s schedule. I couldn’t be part of what Judge McCarthy characterized as a very interesting trial. The judge excused me and I had to choose a date within the next six months to reschedule my jury duty.

Jury duty delayed until the first week in August.

Headed out. Stopped by for a quick look-see at what’s happening at the Asian Art Museum a block or two away, then walked down Market to Taqueria Cancún for a burrito before hoofing the rest of the 2.4 miles home.

Cancún’s carne asada burrito was just what I needed. Cheap. $3.99. Filling. I like Taqueria El Zorro‘s fare better — Taqueria El Zorro is the neighborhood taqueria at the corner of Columbus and Grant– but their burritos are $5.45. Cancún was what I needed, right price, right space, right time.

Need to know where to find the best burritos in the city? Check out Burrito Eater.

We live an exciting life, we do, reading newspapers and magazines to each other over dinner.

His nibs was reading an article from the Brown University alumni magazine to me — an obit for Sidney Frank, who’d given a bucketload of money (the most of anyone ever) to Brown, even though he’d dropped out and never graduated.

Sidney Frank’s $100 million donation to Brown in 2004 was targeted for undergraduate scholarships, to make sure other students didn’t drop out, as he had, because they couldn’t afford school.

Frank started Sidney Frank Importing in 1972 after a career with Schenley Distillers where he helped market brands such as Dewar’s White Label.

Sidney Frank Importing had hard times at the beginning. Sidney Frank developed a habit of wandering around, checking into bars, seeing what people were drinking. He noticed the Germans in Yorkville bars were drinking something called Jägermeister. The sales weren’t spectacular, but they were steady, and he decided to secure the U.S. importing rights.

Well, fine, Sidney Frank Importing had the importing rights to Jägermeister but the sales were just steady at 500 cases a year from 1972, when he acquired the rights, until a decade later when a newspaper story in the Baton Rouge Advocate passed on rumors that Jägermeister was an aphrodisiac. No dummy he, Sidney Frank made photocopies of the story and sent a crew of hotties to the bars to distribute the photocopies. Allzasudden Jägermeister took off.

In the first half of 2005, Sidney Frank Importing sold two million cases of Jägermeister.

Marketing genius? Your call.

Later (1996), Sidney Frank decided the time was ripe for a cult vodka. He created Grey Goose, which he marketed. He contracted with the French to make an elegant French vodka. He named it Grey Goose and priced it at a premium, rather than try to undercut the competition. He designed the smoked glass bottle. He shipped it in wood boxes.

Sidney Frank wanted to make a trendy vodka. He did. Sex and the City helped move the vodka when the characters asked for Grey Goose cosmos.

A couple years back Sidney Frank sold Grey Goose to Bacardi for $2 billion cash. His $100 million donation to Brown followed, as did bonuses to everyone in the company. Grey Goose made everyone at Sidney Frank Importing rich.

Sidney Frank, creator of Grey Goose vodka, dies at 86.

Dead.

Age 86.

But what a ride he had.

RIP.

After Katrina, San Francisco began to really gear up for a possible catastrophe.

The most likely one, of course, is a mammoth quake, most probably on the [Susan] Hayward fault over in the East Bay, but there could be other catastrophes, heaven knows.

Hence, the 72 Hours Are you prepared? Web site.

The Web site provides information on what preparations to make at home for the possibility that something will happen and the government can’t “make it better” for at minimum 72 hours later.

Do you have medical supplies? First aid supplies? Necessary drugs? Food? Water? Sanitizing handcleaner? Flashlights? Heat? Radio? Batteries? All that other sort of stuff you might need? What if the toilets don’t work? Do you have walking shoes stashed in your car in case you have to walk home because the roads are impassable? Do you have something warm stashed in your car to wear if you have to leave your car and walk out?

Even those of you’ns who don’t live in quake-prone California could take a gander. Useful information.

This has been a public service announcement …

His nibs has already served his jury duty for the year. He spent days a few months back on a jury deciding the fate of someone who asked that a jury decide whether he was guilty of possession of paraphernalia with intent to commit graffiti, or some such crime.

I was called for jury duty in February, but asked to have the jury duty postponed until this week because we were due in St. Louis for AAAS for an extended Presidents’ Holiday weekend and then were heading out a day after we got back from St. Louis for three weeks on a trip to South America and places souther.

This week’s the week, and luckily for me, I can check a Web site after 5:30 p.m. to see if my Juror Group needs to be down at the courthouse the next day, and if so, when.

A “nope” for today. (I felt like I was on holiday.)

A “nope” for tomorrow. (… which is good because I have a date down in Los Gatos to sign some papers for the escrow that may close some day soon)

We’ll see how the rest of the week goes. Maybe I’ll get on a jury with a decision to be made about the guilt or innocence of someone accused of possession of paraphernalia with intent to commit graffiti.