Tomorrow has been declared the first Spare the Air Day of 2006. 25 bay area transit agencies will be free all day. This includes Muni, BART, AC Transit, Caltrain, SamTrans, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and Golden Gate Transit busses and ferries.
One of my favorite unique music sources is SomaFM (somafm.org), which describes itself as, “Listener-supported, commercial-free, underground/alternative radio broadcasting from San Francisco.” It’s run by Rusty, a guy I worked with back in the “tech TV” days; they play about ten streaming electronic music stations, including three new offerings. I’m sure my attempts at description won’t do it justice, especially since I’m not really dialed in to all the different electronic music genres. I just know that I like more ambient, reflective, dark, middle-of-the-night-when-the-city-is-quiet types of selections. Whatever that means.
I’m currently listening to one of the new streams, called “Space Station Soma.”
My friend Ryan runs a show at 9pm on Monday nights via 90hz.org. 90hz is not on the air full time like SOMAFM; they offer scheduled programming run by, as far as I can tell, a volunteer crew.
Bay to Breakers is going on right now, streaming past my building. Earlier the “serious” runners came through; the crowds were light and it was still quiet. Now the throngs are strolling by, the crowds are cheering — it’s in full swing:
Life has been really busy lately in very good ways. I’m not going to detail all of the specifics here, but I have been doing a lot within the social groups that I hang out with, I’m taking a short-term class every other weekend, and I am getting a lot done at work, including finishing off a large project and getting ready to travel to Minneapolis on business. I always think “on business” sounds kind of silly, but it gets the point across. I have not been to Minneapolis before, so I am looking forward to seeing a new town, at the very least. Perhaps I can find some cool things to do in the evenings? You betchya?
I like to say that San Francisco only has two seasons, winter and summer. Winter descends sometime around November when the skies suddenly get gray with a little cold and a decent amount of rain for about half a year. Then around now, start of May, it lifts away and becomes sunny and windy and warmer for the other half of the year. I think it has something to do with the Pacific High shielding the area from storms part of the time. Well, “summer” seems to be here at last; the time has changed to daylight savings, the sky is light past 8pm and the sailing should be starting up aggresively pretty soon. Needless to say, of the two seasons here, summer is what I prefer.
I recently read Dry by Augusten Burroughs. I couldn’t help comparing it to A Million Little Pieces. I feel like kind of dick by saying this, given all the mainstream press it received a couple months back, but I read Pieces before it was discredited, and when I did it seemed defensive and disengenous and a little “off” to me. Really, it did, I am not jumping on the “hindsight bandwagon” here! Ask my friend Loretta. Anyway, Dry is cool because it is very close to the same story but I think it’s a more genuine portrayal of the struggle to break through addiction and how hard that can be. The precursor to that story, Running with Scissors is also a good read.
It’s raining. Again. Earlier it was just overcast. The waters of the bay looked kind of grayish beige, reflecting the skies above. Now I can’t really see the water. It just kind of merges in to the sky; there’s a ship anchored in the harbor that is just on the cusp of disappearing in to the mist. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen some really heavy fog or heard the foghorns, but surely they must be blowing out by the Gate.
I keep thinking that spring is going to appear any minute now. The weather will start to get clear, then the rain returns and lasts for days. I miss the sun and those nice days of sailing. Any minute now.
I am taking the day to stay inside my cozy place, reading (a cheesy treasure-hunter type novel at the moment, Wikipedia likely at some point), snacking, listening to music and puttering around my apartment with the heat on and the string of little lights glowing softly. I’m listening to the radio which is unsual. I, like so many others, listen to music on my computer and portable music player — I don’t even own a regular stereo receiver anymore. But that can feel so isolated. Sometimes I think I have no idea what is going on, musically, out in the world. Then I remember I can listen to a radio station via its Internet stream. Oh yeah.
It really is a different world than it was even ten years ago.
The great thing about listening to a local station on a rainy day is the DJs, looking out their windows at the same misty world that I am looking at, play rainy day music. Or maybe I just think that’s the case.
