January 19, 2009
Maritime Museum rehab continues apace
Last week we walked by the Maritime Museum on our walkabout and commented that the rehab of the bleachers didn’t seem to be moving very fast. They seemed pretty much intact except for a couple rows where the facing concrete pavers had been removed.
What a difference a week makes.
January 18, 2009
Times change, thanks be.
On my way to looking for something else, I found the following …
Authorities pulled the liquor license of the Black Cat (710 Montgomery — the Bohemian Bar in Kerouac’s On the Road) in 1949. Why? Because it attracted (nay, in truth catered to) gay men.
Sol Stoumen, the straight owner, took the case all the way to state Supreme Court, which ruled in 1951 that a business couldn’t be shut down just because homosexuals gathered there.
But, backing up a bit, earlier the Superior Court and the Court of Appeals had sided against Stoumen. In fact Superior Court Judge Robert L. McWilliams wrote in his decision:
It would be a sorry commentary on the law as well as on the morals of the community to find that persons holding liquor licenses could permit their premises to be used month after month as meeting places for persons of known homosexual tendencies. … An occasional fortuitous meeting of such persons at restaurants for the innocent purpose mentioned is one thing. But for a proprietor of a restaurant knowlingly to permit his premises to be regularly used “as a meeting place” by persons of the type mentioned with all of the potentialities for evil and immorality drawing out of such meetings is, in my opinion, conduct of an entirely different nature.
Sheesh.
150 Strange Buildings of the World – TutzTutz.com
150 Strange Buildings of the World – TutzTutz.com
Amusing. Appalling. Delightful.
[via a tweet from James O’Reilly]
January 17, 2009
What you can find on the Web. Knopfler. Clapton. EmmyLou.
I don’t want to hear a love song. I got on this airplane just to fly.
Is there any wonder I love the Web? Muy muchas gracias, Tim Berners-Lee.
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce | Video on TED.com
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce
The videos at ted.com are pretty cool.
We saw Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and — most recently — Outliers and also staff writer for The New Yorker) last night at the City Arts & Lectures series at Herbst Theatre (“in conversation” with Kevin Berger, Salon) with tickets my brother gave his nibs for Christmas.
What a funny, bright guy Gladwell is. Sharp. Verbal. Quick.
I really don’t care if you think he dumbs down science or puts his own spin on things. I think he’d be a great guy to hang out with at a coffee shop and discuss the world and what he was working on.
I’ll be looking for his writing in The New Yorker even more than I was before.
Bits from last night.
KB: You start Outliers talking about hockey players (and why successful professional hockey players are usually born in January, February, and March). Why?
MG: Well, because I’m Canadian.
Jeb Bush quote about the struggles he had to reach where he is today, which MG characterized as an “heroic struggle against advantage.”
MG talked about the Beatles and how they became the best band evah. He mentioned that most people don’t consider the fact that for years before they came to America and were discovered, they’d been the house band at a Hamburg strip club where they played eight hours a day for six days a week. Live. On stage. They were playing live (and getting better and better) for thousands of hours before they “made it.”
“We have chosen to overlook the extraordinary discipline they devoted to their vocation.”
We say, oh, they’re talented. Or oh, they’re lucky. They were neither. They played over a thousand live gigs before they “made it.”
The talk was very interesting. Interesting enough that I’m Googling (Hi, Sergey! Hi, Larry!) as I speak. How many other videos are there out there of Gladwell doing his schtick.
He closed with a discussion of his mother, a brown Jamaican (as he called her), mixed race, and the advantages she had, and her parents, and her parents parents going back that made her what she is today.
His point is that just because you live here and are successful and don’t worry where your next meal is coming from or where the fresh water is or the fuel you need to cook … this all isn’t due to the fact you worked so hard and sacrificed and were lucky but is more due to the fact that you were born into circumstances that put you where you are today.
Don’t forget that.
Don’t forget that those in less fortunate circumstances weren’t born to your parents.
Or, as Phil Ochs would say
January 15, 2009
eightmaps — oh, my Prop 8
A mashup of pro-Prop8 donations and Google maps.
Want to know if your neighbors donated to the Yes-On-Prop8 campaign? Here’s your click.
(None of my neighbors donated according to this site, but then I live in a very not-Republican sector of town …)
(Oh. Here’s a student who donated $500 to the yes-on-8 campaign. Gosh. I wish I’d had that kind of money when I was a student.)
This day in history. January 14, 1954
Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio married at San Francisco’s City Hall and returned to North Beach for wedding photographs on the steps of Sts. Peter & Paul Church.
They could not be married in the church because DiMaggio was considered still married by the Roman Catholic church, which did not recognize his civil divorce from his first wife.
The DiMaggio-Monroe marriage lasted nine months.
Today you can see a photo of DiMaggio and first wife Dorothy Arnold displayed inside the church, but there can be seen no hide nor hair, no mention of the civil divorce nor of Monroe.
January 14, 2009
RIP Patrick McGoohan
Patrick McGoohan March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009
Peter Falk … described McGoohan as “the most underrated, under-appreciated talent on the face of the globe. I have never played a scene with another actor who commanded my attention the way Pat did.”
I grew up on Secret Agent. I moved on to The Prisoner. I enjoyed watching McGoohan in his handsome-boy secret agent younger days and his villainous older days.
Talented guy. I’m glad he got his accolades while he was around to hear them.