Reyhan Harmanci's Backstories - The Bold Italic - San Francisco

Getting Trashed

Reyhan Harmanci — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:48:29 -0700

Recycling is nothing new for artists – even a Renaissance man like Michelangelo reused canvases when he wanted to paint over a picture. But in San Francisco, we turn trash into treasure all year long. Since 1990, Recology (formerly SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc.) has run a unique artist-in-residence program: they select two artists to work side-by-side in a studio at the Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center for four months at a time. I decided to spend part of a day with two of these artists, David Hevel and James Sansing, a few days before their opening to figure out what it's like to create an entire show from scratch, using only the materials found during scavenging sessions at the dump.

Like many artists who go through the residency, Sansing and Hevel spent the first few weeks – actually, more like months – bummed out. Every day they showed up to the giant Public Access Dump (PAD) conveniently located next to the studio - where people line up to dump furniture, electronics, dry wall, etc. from their homes or offices – with shopping carts. They would dig through trash, fill up carts, dump it at the studio, and then repeat, ad nauseum. "I was really, really affected," Hevel said, "The PAD is so over-stimulating, visually – it's a lot to look at. And the way people's trash was being mixed together saddened me." Sansing concurred. "I was depressed, too. It was just never-ending." He added that he spoke to one former artist who warned him of this situation. This artist got so overwhelmed on his first day that he found a DVD player, a TV and a DVD in the dump, took them back to the studio and just watched movies instead of working. While sympathizing in theory, I didn't really understand what they were talking about until I went on a tour of the PAD. It's a huge concrete structure with a roof and openings at two ends. Cars and trucks wait in line to dump their contents into a giant pile, maybe 20 feet tall. Earthmovers rumble to and fro, compacting the gray debris into solid forms and occasionally, unbelievably, spearing a couch or some large object onto its claws. Torn and dirty mattresses stand at the edge of the entrance, having been dragged across the floor as some kind of oversize washcloth. The effect was disorienting, to say the least. I couldn't wait to leave.

Deborah Munk, director of the Art in Residence program, said that between the two of them, approximately 21,120 pounds have been hauled from the dump to the studio. Making art from trash is physically, as well as emotionally, demanding.

Without much prompting, Sansing and Hevel launched into a description of their most exciting finds: 100 Ikea chairs, barely worn; a $10 Confederate bill; a pair of matching platinum wedding rings; a brand-new gas grill; an untouched leather couch and so on. After they got over their shock at the noisy reality of working at a dump, they had to control collecting impulses. The process was, Sansing declared, "seductive." Hevel said, laughing, that he literally dreamed about finding a bag of diamonds. It's easy to lose track of time while sorting through the messy material, looking for that one last perfect thing. Hevel said that his stamina wasn't quite as much as Sansing's – four to five hours was his maximum – but he was equally lured into the collector mentality. The challenge for both of them was to do more than simply hoard interesting finds: they had to transform them into art. But, still, up through the last week of his residency, Sansing couldn't resist donning the fluorescent vest and venturing into the wilds.

Hevel and Sansing both managed to make grotesquely lovely sculptural pieces in spite of initial hardships. Hevel reacted to the mess of the dump by pulling out color: his 3-D framed portraits of bucktooth faces rely heavily on pinks and reds and oranges. They are funny and moving, like deranged Jim Henson puppets pinned to the wall. Sansing used a grey and brown palate in his deconstructed mechanical mini-landscapes. He took apart typewriters and adding machines and added organic touches from the few plants he found in the dump – tiny branches appear to be growing out of the industrial pieces.

Munk says that she has received over 107 applications for next year's class of five residents. San Francisco is the only municipality in the country to offer such a program. It's an idea whose time has come; Munk says that she routinely fields questions from other cities around the country about the program but none have yet to put the resources behind it. Perhaps artists have heard of another perk to the program: every artist-in-residence gets lifetime access to the dump, which is not a public salvage yard.

A tour of PAD and the neighboring transfer station unearthed great creativity in this unlikely location. On the hill overlooking the PAD, workers have taken it upon themselves to make an eerie monument to the stranger oversize objects that have come through – a giant fading tiger, a huge costume head (looking kind of like Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" creatures), many lawn ornaments. Near the smelly hole that is the transfer station – a wasteland of garbage that is roughly the length of a football field and 15 ft. deep – is the official sculpture garden. It is three acres long and composed of recycled plant materials from, of course, the dump. And on an even smaller scale, reclaimed objects and signs litter the place, from Munk's office to a small plastic gorilla perched on a concrete slab. The dump is noisy, dirty and alienating, for sure, but also inspiring.

Design: MacFadden & Thorpe

Local Spirits

Reyhan Harmanci — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:00:09 -0700

San Francisco is known for many things – organic food, fog, sandals-with-socks, tech companies, dive bars. But it’s also a great town for ghosts. With such a violent and colorful Barbary Coast past, as well as being home to modern blights like drive-by shootings and Golden Gate suicides, untimely deaths abound. While many of the most famous locales are outside of the city

proper—like Moss Beach Distillery and U.S.S. Hornet Aircraft Carrier in Alameda—S.F. has a lot to offer the aspiring ghost hunter. As proud owner of all 33 volumes of 1980s classic Time-Life “Mysteries of the Unknown” series (remember the commercials?), I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal. For this mission, I decided to look around S.F. for some ghosts.

Haunted Haight

The best introduction to local spirits is Tommy Netzband, head of the San Francisco Ghost Society, founder of Haunted Haight Walking Tour and a civic leader in ghostbusting. Tommy uses the proceeds of his tours to fund the Ghost Society work – namely investigating ghosts in personal residences and businesses for free.

We began our night with a chat at All You Knead, a diner in the upper Haight. Tommy was obviously a regular, as he chatted up the waitress (“Heard anything on the stairs lately?”) and we settled into a booth. Opening his large bag, he methodically explained his gadgets. The first was a small wand with a row of colored lights called an EMF reader, which measured electromagnetic waves. Tommy explained carefully that he approached ghost hunting from a skeptical point of view—he would measure the EMF readings upon entering a space that was rumored to have activity to see what the baseline electrical energy was like. Fluctuations had to be seen in the overall context of the room. It also could be used as a communication device if you held down the button and asked spirits to make the light flash, Morse-code style.

The next object was “the puck,” a small device that plugs into a USB port and does something rather unbelievable: analyzes a bunch of different indexes (EMF, temperature) and then translates that data into words. Even Tommy professed to have no real clue how the inventor makes this happen. After a few moments of data collection, the computer, in computer voice, spits out random words. We waited to hear clues like “cotton,” “gate,” “mother.” It bore an uncanny resemblance to a talking magnetic poetry machine.

We took the gear with us to one of the primary stops on Tommy’s tour, a haunted sidewalk. A third of the way up from Haight St. on Ashbury, a lovely little stretch of pavement flaked by trees and plants marks the spot where Larry Watts, 15, was shot in 1969–“running for his life,” Tommy intoned. Apparently, a disturbed man yelled at the group of four young guys walking down the street and then opened fire. Only Watts died. Hence, “the running man” has been heard by a number of Haight residents, as well

as people who have lived in the street-level apartments nearby. After futzing with the EMF reader, and asking some questions like “Larry, are you here? Blink once for yes, twice for no?” to the wand, with underwhelming results, Tommy turned to the puck. Out came the netbook and the cord. The air was certainly chilly, the street beautifully lit, the foot traffic light. Time for some ghosts! Alas, the puck only offered more mystery. “Cotton” seemed to be the word of the day.

But Tommy was sanguine. At no time did he promise that we’d actually experience anything otherworldly– some people are more sensitive to these things than others and I’ve long suspected that I have the sensitivity of a potted plant when it comes to ghosts. The real rewards, Tommy said, come from the historic research. When he hears about a haunting, he heads for the library and asks around the neighborhood and more often than not, “authenticates” a reported ghost sighting with evidence of tragic past. He has a fantastic story about another Haight Street locale, Trax bar, for instance, that was the result of dedicated research and a bit of luck involving an old gun and a group picture. To learn more, you’ll just have to take the tour.

Haunted Hotel

Many hotels in San Francisco are rumored to be haunted, but the Hotel Majestic stands out: it has the temerity to announce on its web site that there is a resident ghost. To wit: “It is said that one room in particular may spook people when the bathtub mysteriously fills with water. Our ghost likes to walk our hallway late at night, with keys clanging along the walls. Another story involves a production manager who was staying here while filming ‘Sweet November.’ Late at night she reported to our front desk staff that her bed was shaking and thought we were having an earthquake, which we were not…. it is believed that the daughter of the first owner refused to leave the building after it was sold.”

I requested room 407, the most haunted room, but had to settle with the room next door, 408. “That one’s haunted, too,” the woman at the front desk assured me. “My roommate used to have my current job here and once she was delivering pillows to that room when she felt two hands on her shoulders, pushing her back. She was so scared.” Good enough for me.

The room was actually more like a suite. Modern touches—two TVs—competed with older furnishings. It was one thing to read about the friendly ghost, but the testimony from the front desk suddenly made everything so much creepier. One of the two closet doors wouldn’t shut, and would seem to keep opening farther. The windows were open, making the sheer curtains billow. Even the mimeographed paintings – like the one of the young girl – seemed ominous. The prospect of spending the night there suddenly felt overwhelmingly scary.

But, full disclosure, I didn’t go to the hotel alone: I brought my live-in boyfriend. He seemed amused by my skittishness. After one or two little jokes (turning around with an Edvard Munch-like silent scream), he took a hint. I was spooked.

After dinner, we settled in for the night. Two episodes of the “Rachel Zoe Project” later, the chill had left the room and we were ready for bed. I listened for any extra knocking and I brought my compass—courtesy of Tommy— but nothing strange seemed afoot. After some reading, we turned off the lights.

At around three a.m., I woke up to Patrick covered in cold sweat. He had had a nightmare that the floor was made of ants and the room was caving in. This, of course, suddenly made “The Shining” seem like a preamble to the horror we were about to experience. I pulled up the covers, closed my eyes, and had a strange waking dream that I was talking to a male ghost encased in a suit of armor. (A response to Rachel Zoe’s style tips?) I told the ghost to go away. The next time I opened my eyes, it was 8 a.m. The bathtub wasn’t full of water, the compass was level, no items were moved. Nothing had happened besides a bad night of sleep. When I checked out of the hotel, I asked the man behind the counter if he knew what haunting’s backstory was. “Isn’t on the web site?,” he said, barely looking up.

Pet Cemetery

Rents may have soared during the dot com boom but San Francisco has long been precious real estate. Too precious, in fact, to house the dead. In the 1930s and 1940s, all the cemeteries in city limits – save Mission Dolores – were moved to Colma (where 2 million dead currently reside, in contrast to the approximately 2,000 living) or the East Bay.

However, two gravesites that were on federal property in the Presidio remain, one for human and one for animals. Formerly part of the Army base, the Presidio Pet Cemetery is officially cared for by veteran group Swords to Plowshares. It dates back to the 1950s, according to the National Park Service’s web site and originally thought to house cavalry horses. The cemetery lot is technically full, although I’ve heard rumors of people sneaking in at night to bury their beloved pets.

I’ve also heard that it’s haunted. One chilly evening, I went with two friends to pay my respects. In the dark, it was rather hard to find – it’s a small plot underneath the bridge, with no foot traffic. Amid the clanging of cars above us, we worked our way through the little gravestones. Determining the level of spirit activity quickly fell by the wayside – it was all just too cute. Handmade notes stood next to professionally carved stones, with names like Whiskers, Champagne, Stoli, Fluffy, Little Bit, etc. Birds, iguanas, dogs, rats, cats, turtles and more all took their place as beloved friends and family members. The headstones veered between stoic and verbose, silly and profound. Why aren’t more human cemeteries this personal?

One favorite stone read “We knew love, we had this little dog.” Another, for “Killer,” said “To love a lifetime, no matter long, is never enough.”

But after 20 minutes or so, the highway noises and isolation got to us. We packed up our candles, said goodbye to cemetery and made our way out of the Presidio. The spot may well have some ghost dogs lurking around, but it’s about as a scary as a basket of kittens.

Alcatraz at Night

It was a great night to go to the Rock, dark and cloudy, with the fog rolling in. As the last person on the completely full ship that departed at 6:45 p.m. on the nose—the night tours are often sold out weeks in advance—I scurried onto the deck and listened to the tour guide deliver some facts. Alcatraz is only a mile and a half away but currents and tides made it almost impossible to survive escape attempts. The main structure was first built as a military prison in 1847 and then used as a federal prison starting in 1934, it got too expensive and rundown to operate and was shut down in 1963, and so it became a national park after an American Indian protest takeover from 1969-1971. Famously reserved only for the incorrigibles, Alcatraz was not a fun place to serve time. Amenities were few and amusements nonexistent.

With such a long history of imprisonment on such a lonely bit of land, it's not surprising that Alcatraz is widely reputed to be America's most haunted prison. On the short boat ride, I reminded myself what the internet told me to watch out for: the bloody prison riot in 1946 that killed two guards and a prisoner led to rumors that Cellblock C has spirits; the torn-down lighthouse has been known to appear as a ghostly vision; the grounds have known to be host to strange groaning, bad smells,

random cannon shots and the sensation of being watched. The most haunted spot of all is Cellblock D, where misbehaving inmates would be thrown into "the Hole," one of six dark, dank cells without sunlight. Mattresses were taken away during the day and inmates weren't allowed to go the yard, the showers and had no reading material. The maximum amount of time a prisoner could spend there was 19 days; insanity was a real risk of longer bouts in isolation.

The walk up to the actual prison was haunted, for me, by an earthly menace: standing next to a very loud man cracking jokes over the tour guide, whose canned spiel was itself irritating. As we passed by the prison morgue, I felt a chill, and then had to walk very fast to avoid more of loud guy's monologue about how awesome it would be to throw a party in the prison. Ugh. Luckily, Alcatraz requires everyone to take a self-guided audio tour. After queuing up in the shower area, we walked through the doorway into the prison itself. It was now dark outside. As I slipped on my headset, I was distracted by a racket above. Cell doors were opening and closing above me, seemingly automatically. The place was definitely creepy.

Being on the last tour of the day had several distinct advantages, the biggest one being that there were no groups coming up behind you. After travelling with a herd into Cellblocks C and D, listening to prisoner and guard voices talk about escape attempts and day-to-day life, I looped back around into the Hole. It was an unusually open part of the prison: all six cells were available for entry. I had gone inside them the first time, but in the empty gallery, I hesitated. My boyfriend, also on the tour, had no trouble disappearing into the darkness, happily trying to close the door behind him. Instead, I walked along the rows of open doors. A few minutes earlier, in the prison hospital upstairs -- which looked to be ripe for a horror movie involving grisly experiments -- an Alcatraz worker told me that psychics sometimes refuse to enter the building. The atmosphere was heavy with sadness, if not the paranormal.

On the way back down the hill, another tour guide told the story of Al Capone's sad stay on the Rock -- after being brought down for tax evasion, he went crazy with syphilis (although oddly the tour guide refused to say the word "syphilis"). It seemed like an appropriate end to my quest to see haunted San Francisco. This city is teeming with local legends, romantic larger-than-life figures. You don't need an EMF reader or the Puck to find evidence of this. As Loud Guy held forth on his plans to hold a concert inside the prison while we waited for the boat to come pick us up, I found myself wishing for an errant cannon shot or some loud poltergeist action. Ghosts can be preferable to people sometimes. One day, maybe I'll see one.

Facing the Music

Reyhan Harmanci — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:14 -0800

When you tell a karaoke person that you don’t sing karaoke, the response can be visceral. Cheeks redden, eyes narrow. “How can you come to karaoke and not sing?” they demand. I just can. “Why won’t you?” they ask. I just won’t. “Come on, just put a song in,” they beg. Like Bartleby, I prefer not to. Like a creepy wallflower at a strip club, I just like to watch.

But, really, that’s not the whole truth. After spending countless nights singing along on the sidelines, I can’t ignore the fact that part of me does want to be on stage. But when I have held the mic, in one of those lame duets or mass sing-alongs, nothing good comes out of my mouth – just a weak stream of thin sounds. Merciful KJs (karaoke djs) tend to crank up the backing vocals or dial down the song early when I’ve graced the room with my anemic tones.

This is no way to live. Nobody likes a lurker, and I’ve been Lady Lurks-a-Lot in San Francisco karaoke joints for years. Time to face the music.

The first stop in my karaoke turnaround was a singing lesson with Heather Pierce, who works out of The Voice Studio in Potrero. I arrived out of breath and soaking wet from an unexpected downpour, and found a calm and welcoming oasis in Heather’s soundproofed room. Seated behind a keyboard, Heather popped in a disc to record my lesson, and instructed me to begin by singing a few scales. Up and down we went, my voice wavering.

When we stopped, I asked her something that had been on my mind, as a possible explanation/permanent karaoke out: “Am I tone deaf?”

“No,” she said chuckling. “I have so many clients that think that they’re tone deaf, but they’re not.” A tone deaf person, she explained, would have trouble with the whole concept of chord progression. Even if I couldn’t hit the notes, my attempts betrayed some basic grasp of scales.

After going up and down the notes again, we chatted some more. In choosing a karaoke song, Heather recommended that I stay out of “the mix” — the high end — and aim for something closer to my speaking voice. Like, as close to talking as possible. The key to doing a pop song, when the choruses usually hit the mix, would be to transition as smoothly into the mix and then back again.

“Have you brought a song to practice?” she asked me. Stammering a bit, I reached into my bag and took out a burned CD. Earlier in the week, I had pondered this question. Heather had advised me over email to find some music to work on and I came up with Bonnie Raitt. I love Bonnie Raitt. I grew up on Bonnie Raitt. But, also, I threw some Bruce Springsteen to temper all that Bonnie, which was, frankly, a little embarrassing.

“Huh, Bonnie Raitt,” Heather said, as she put disc into stereo.

After trying “Something to Talk About,” Heather gave me some more instruction. Moving your jaw down, rather than widening your mouth, was a way to get a better sound. (Try it — it works!) Copping a pouty attitude while practicing, as silly as it feels, is another way to improve the sound, making the words and intonation less garbled. We decided, after a few more go-rounds, that Bruce might be a better fit for me. He doesn’t get in the mix as much as Bonnie. I left with the first few stanzas of “Brilliant Disguise” bouncing around in my head, and a promise to practice scales.

The next few days, I began singing loudly at home. My showers, never short affairs, went past the half hour mark. The day after the voice lesson, my boyfriend said that I was getting better. The day after that, he said I was going backward. He also said that I sounded schizophrenic singing along to my headphones constantly.

To assist my education, I procured a slim book from local publisher Chronicle Books called “Hit Me with Your Best Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Karaoke Domination,” by Raina Lee. It dealt with the history of karaoke (began in Japan in the late ‘60s as utagoe kissa, or singing cafes), fun factoids (South Korea sent North Korea ten karaoke machines in 2001 as part of a $900,000 peace package) and general karaoke tips.

I was particularly interested in the chapter about how to make your karaoke setlist. Bonnie and Bruce weren’t bad starts, but I needed to isolate and practice more beginner-level songs. I didn’t, however, want to be totally cliché. Does that mean Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes,” should be scrubbed off? So many songs, so little time.

Before venturing out into the harsh spotlight, I decided to test out another form of the karaoke experience — private rooms. With three friends in tow, I headed to Do Re Mi in Japantown in the late Saturday afternoon. I’d been before, but under the cover of darkness and much alcohol. It felt downright dirty to be getting a karaoke room in the sober daylight. Was this going to be very, very awkward?

Once inside the window-less room, it couldn’t have mattered less what time it was. I jumped on the mic first with a song that I thought would be easy — “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus. How many times have I sung along to that song? Hundreds? But the music started sooner than I thought and I instantly fell behind. I looked out, panicked, at the little crowd. They looked equally alarmed. When you bomb at karaoke, it doesn’t just affect you. It bums out your crew. The song ended and I dove into the couch.

Drinking is forbidden in karaoke rooms, so I’m not saying that alcohol played any part in loosening up and I can’t recommend packing a wine bottle and some cups. But things improved during our three-hour visit. Two songs seemed to lend themselves especially well to talk-singing: Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic.”

There are a number of great karaoke venues in city — Encore on California Street has a nice cruise-ship vibe, for instance — and a number of great karaoke nights at bars. I’m particularly fond of Mission dive Nap's, which has karaoke on the weekends. And for the sheer bonkers crowd, Bow Bow in Chinatown can’t be beat.

But if you want to be taken seriously as a performer, there’s only one venue in the city: The Mint, on Market Street. Arriving early is all-important, so I made a plan to meet some friends at 6 pm on a Wednesday. I was particularly pleased Jason and Kate were coming: they are two karaoke veterans, who actually met doing karaoke on the East Coast. If anyone could guide me through my first solo outing at The Mint, it’d be them.

When I arrived, the crowd was thin. A table of old men sat near the stage. A few lone karaoke wolves chatted with the bartender. They were clearly pros, the unlikely looking singers who pull a Susan Boyle, freaking you out with their voices. Thumbing nervously through the song book, I opted to wait until more troops arrived before submitting a song. I wrote down “Ironic” and “Dancing in the Dark” on two little slips of paper and balled both up in my palm.

Then I got a text from Jason. He and Kate were on the Bay Bridge. Maybe I should put in a mystery song for him?

A mystery song? That’s karaoke confidence.

Jason and Kate arrived as an older woman was tearing through “Love Hurts.” They immediately went to the song books and I reluctantly dropped “Ironic” in the KJ’s box. After fellow Bold Local Aaron did an emotional rendition of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” and Jason followed with an interpretation of Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” (the mystery song), my song came up.

I’m not going to lie; it didn’t feel like a total win. My first impression was that I had no sense of volume. Was I whispering or shouting? Feeling out the audience reaction was also a bust, as I couldn’t really hear or see anything but the karaoke screen as I tried to speak-sing. Heather’s advice on relaxing and enunciating words rather than rushing them was lost in my attempts to keep pace with the lyrics. The minutes felt like years, but it also was a rush. I simultaneously felt intense relief coming off the stage and a desperate desire to go again.

By the end of the night, though, after seeing some truly amazing performances — “Cherry Bomb” singer, you blew my mind — I had a moment of clarity. I belong in the bleachers. Karaoke isn’t about just about the singer, it’s about the communal experience of expressing yourself through song; without a screaming audience, what’s the point? I’m going to continue working on songs but the best moments of the night came from participating as a karaoke fan rather than a karaoke star.

San Francisco is a karaoke-heavy town. Besides The Mint, check out Encore; it’s better for groups. Nap's might be the most divey, and Bow Bow is certainly the most crazy. Also, karaoke bar nights abound. Check out Shout at the Devil, every Thursday at Pissed Off Pete's.

Mess Transit

Reyhan Harmanci — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:00:12 -0800

At 12:30 a.m. on a recent Friday night in Oakland, with the last BART train hurtling towards San Francisco, my friend Mara and I took in the scene at 14th and Broadway. We were waiting for the Owl, the Bay Area’s answer to all-night public transportation. Clusters of kids laughed and shouted near bus stops on both sides of the street as we stood, awkwardly. Where would the Owl be pulling up? According to the online schedule, we had a seven-minute window to catch the bus or we’d have to wait another hour in the chilly, empty city core. Mara spotted an AC Transit van and ran over to ask while I tried to discretely count my money. I didn’t even know how much the bus would cost. Like I had many times before, I mentally cursed BART for ending service so early. Why must we all turn into pumpkins at midnight if we want to hang out in the East Bay? What’s the deal with BART hours?

To try to understand why BART refuses to cater to my late-night transport needs, I went back to BART’s roots. It turns out that people have been arguing about what and who, exactly, BART is supposed to serve since its beginning. By the time BART broke ground in 1964, people had already been debating about it for almost two decades. After a joint Army-Navy panel recommended an underground railway linking the two sides of the Bay in 1947, years of studies and planning and committee meetings and task forces and environmental studies commenced. Out of all that came the notion that BART would be a revolutionary force in the Bay Area. It would re-sculpt the region, allowing suburban communities to partake in city jobs with a fast, efficient, comfortable (hence, the stained couches) commute.

When BART was built, it had been a half century since any city had attempted a rail service; in the intervening years, cars had happened, and that was supposed to be the American dream. And although the process was subject to long delays — BART ran into funding troubles, delaying the first rail service until 1971 — urban planners can point to San Francisco’s rail service as a success on its own, limited terms. BART, in its Californian utopian way, imagined a different way of dealing with the suburbanization of American cities. And yet, or perhaps because of its founding purpose, BART director Tom Radulovich characterizes BART as the “Betamax of public transit.” “It’s a really nice elegant, train that nobody uses. It’s a one-off,” he said, with no small amount of affection. BART is in a class of its own, as a hybrid city/suburban transit organ.

So, then, BART wasn’t ever intended to run much longer than peak commute times. In keeping with its 20th century spirit of man-made mechanical perfection, there are several practical reasons that BART can’t go at all hours (or even regularly extend them on weekends) even if it wanted to. BART runs on one track and BART runs on a timetable. Unlike, say, Washington D.C.’s Metro system, which was built post-BART and borrowed some features, it’s required that BART trains stick to schedule. Therefore, night maintenance is crucial; as any BART traveler knows, when one train gets stuck or delayed, very quickly, the whole system gets thrown off. And without other tracks, BART can’t do what New York City’s subway system does and switch tracks for late-night service, allowing for maintenance on others. There is no flex built into the system.

Two other big things conspire against BART smoothly chugging through the night. Due to union rules, it’s impossible to staff a station for, say, only part of a shift if BART wanted to stay open later on weekends. Keeping stations safe for late-night fares also means incurring all the daytime costs for station employees, lights, escalators, BART police, etc. Philosophically, practically and financially, BART officials are opposed to 24-hour or late night service, although they totally know that people would like more service — they explain all of this on the FAQ of their website.

As Radulovich pointed out, perhaps there are workarounds to these problems. What if, like other municipalities with subway systems, BART ran really excellent late-night bus service? The Owl in its current state is fairly limited; once an hour, to one destination in San Francisco.

In other words, who can I blame for the lack of creative solutions to this acknowledge issue? But then, another aspect of the Bay Area’s public transit reality rears its ugly, Medusa-like head: the turf wars. There are, by Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) spokesman Randy Rentschler’s count, 26 different transit agencies in the Bay Area, all of whom compete for funding. If BART wanted to get money to bring in more buses to San Francisco, MUNI might get pissy. In fact, Owl service itself is a rather new phenomenon, and not a BART initiative. Transform, an Oakland-based public transit advocacy group, worked hard to get bridge toll funding from 2004’s Regional Measure Two to finance the buses. Before that, swing shift workers, transbay bar-goers and anyone who missed their BART train was stuck on the wrong side of the Bay and shit out of luck.

What does this all boil down to? For Radulovich, BART is dealing an identity crisis. Is it a metro rail, designed to serve urban populations, or it is a commuter rail, designed to bring convenience to workers coming into the city? It’s an issue that is close to Radulovich, who told me that he used to live in Oakland but he moved to the Mission in part due to lack of late-night service.

Historically, of course, BART has been made for commuters but times have changed, and the cultural pendulum has swung back to the city. In 2008, BART adopted a plan that called for more metro-style priorities. The plan advocated more development around different BART stations that would encourage people to do things besides park their car there. “This counter-narrative bubbled up in strategic planning a few years ago,” Radulovich, who represents San Franciscans, “It would include beefed-up service in the urban core, adding more stations and concentrating on improving stations — with the idea that when you get to a station, you’re home.”

For a metro person like me, that is music to the ears. I vastly prefer taking BART to the MUNI experience, but have often bemoaned that there are a paltry eight San Francisco stations. But the economic reality is that with limited resources, public transit must pick and choose its priorities. MTC’s Rentschler pointed out that outlying, rich areas like Walnut Creek and Orinda contribute more money in taxes than, say, West Oakland, and have citizens and public officials who demand services in keeping with their economic contributions to BART and other agencies. Those kinds of arguments, made implicitly or explicitly, add layers of complexity to the mission of the already overburdened and under-funded various public transit organizations. At the end of all these talks, I was left more frustrated than ever, but with no one, exactly, to blame.

But all was not lost. After Mara and I paid our $4 and boarded Owl bus, we took stock of our surroundings. As everyone had told me, at some point during interviews, one of the sticking points of late-night service is the low number of riders. Indeed, on our Owl bus, there were only six people. But, man, did we fly across the traffic-less bridge. The harsh lighting only partially obscured the gorgeous cityscapes and sparkling lights as we quickly passed from East Bay to downtown S.F.

When the bus paused, about 20 minutes after we left Oakland, at Market and Octavia, Mara and I hopped off at the unofficial stop, pleasantly surprised by the speed and ease of our ride. Someday, hopefully, BART will be able to satisfy its city riders as well as it does its suburban commuters, and the tangle of public transit agencies can smartly consolidate. But until that happens, the Owl was a dream compared to the cold, lurching MUNI lines running at a similar hour. Mara and I stood on the pavement as it started to rain, looked at each other, and hailed a cab.

Miss the last BART train? Fear not, AC Transit has your back. Go to their web site, www.actransit.org, and check out the all-night, transbay bus service. (Dear AC Transit, please work on making the Owl schedule easier to find). If you want to get more involved in the metro-vs.-commuter BART culture struggle, contact your local BART director. There are nine of them, and they are elected, so your voice matters. http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/index.aspx

Photo by Myelectricsheep

Oh Broth, Where are Thou?

Reyhan Harmanci — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:13 -0800

For many, “Bay Area cuisine” conjures up images of avocados, tacos, small plates, Alice Waters and disappointingly, for David Chang, the vision of a few balsamic vinegar-drizzled figs on a plate. But for me, San Francisco is all about the pho. For the uninitiated, pho (pronounced “pha”) is Vietnamese noodle soup. It’s served in bowls bigger than your head and it is the most satisfying food on the planet. The basic components — broth, vermicelli, meat and/or vegetables — along with the extras — mung bean sprouts, basil, lime, hot sauce — are standard enough to allow for fair comparison between the dozens (hundreds?) of Vietnamese restaurants in the city, but varied enough to account for obsessive cataloging of small differences.

For instance, a basic variation is between Northern and Southern Vietnamese pho. Northern pho, as exemplified by both locations of S.F.’s popular Turtle Tower restaurant, doesn’t do it with all the fixings and uses flat broader noodles instead of thin vermicelli. The broth also tends to be less spicy than Southern style. Pho purists stick with version of beef pho — the original pho — that can be ordered any number of ways, with any number of beef parts. Beef balls; flank; tendons; thinly sliced; done as a brisket; and rare enough to cook in the soup are all popular options.

TAKING STOCK

Personally, though, I do not prefer cow in my pho. And as delicious as I find Turtle Tower, I crave the little plate with basil, lime, and bean sprouts next to my soup. In thinking about how to best write about my pho romance, I thought about trying to prepare it myself — but no pho that I make could possibly contain my favorite parts (and good pho broth alone can take years to perfect.) Also, frankly, I failed in my attempt to make basil simple syrup lately. I am a horrible cook. Another notion came to the fore. What if I combined all the elements from my favorite pho joints?

After soliciting recommendations from friends, scouring interweb, and then drawing upon weeks of delicious research, behold… FrankenPho.Like the original monster, FrankenPho is an unholy thing, and I know that my elements aren’t to everyone’s taste. I also mean no disrespect to the fine purveyors of pho from whom I’ve pillaged for materials: your whole soup is a beautiful thing. But I gotta say, FrankenPho was literally a dream come true. For one glorious afternoon, a friend and I drove around S.F. on a pho’tastic voyage.

THE BROTH

The broth is probably the most important single element of pho. After sifting through recommendations — Vietnam II, on Larkin Street’s Little Saigon strip was particularly popular — I decided to go with beef broth from Evergreen. After walking by the restaurant, which sits on an especially desolate strip of Harrison Street near 18th Street in the Mission, for years, I went in a few months ago. Since then, I’ve been averaging one trip a week. While the meat can be uneven and the vegetables in the veggie pho aren’t my favorite, the broth is a dream.

For making FrankenPho, hot broth is good broth. Once home, I pulled out a big bowl and dumped it in. After smelling a few others, the broth from Evergreen was the clear standout. Bits of clove added a spicy element to the aroma, while the long-simmered beef essence gave a smooth, buttery mouth-feel. Is it too much to want to bathe in the stuff?

THE NOODLES

Next up, the noodles. In addition to pho, I am also a huge bun (Vietnamese vermicelli dish, with meat, veggies and/or fried imperial rolls) lover but for FrankenPho, only Turtle Tower’s flat pasta would do. They are just more fun to eat: slippery but with good flavor. Given that the big bowls always contain quite a large mass of noodles, the bland rice

vermicelli can feel heavy. The flat noodles are softer, as well, so no need to let them linger in the broth too long before eating or they might get too fluffy. For those with any desire to make a FrankenPho of your own, Turtle Tower offers noodles by themselves on the menu for a mere $1.50.

THE MEAT

As previously noted, I rarely go for pho ga (chicken pho), usually ordering veggie. At many restaurants, the chicken is an afterthought and tastes that way: soggy and grey with little flavor. On a friend’s recommendation, I checked out Golden Star Vietnamese in Chinatown, apparently known for their poultry. Found on a little street off of Clay, Golden Star has the same

no-nonsense serving style as most pho places, but takes a strangely long time to bring out the chicken dishes. After sampling a chicken bun, I realized the wait was worth it — I was in love. Five Spice Chicken Special was tangy, fragrant, savory. Inside the FrankenPho, Golden Star’s chicken contrasted nicely with the broth. Definitely worth a trip past Little Saigon.

THE VEGGIES

Pho has traditionally been a meat-heavy dish, so most traditionalists might shriek about throwing too many things into the pot. At some places, too, veggie pho is scorned to the point of not being on the menu. But Sunflower, a restaurant with two entrances around 16th and Valencia, makes a great meal out of its vegetable pho. Broccoli, red peppers, cauliflower and sometimes even squash perk up what can be a rather dull-looking bowl. With FrankenPho, the more elements, the merrier.

Voila! Franken-effing-Pho! It took two people to assemble (thanks Heidi!) and two people, at the least, to consume. After the bean sprouts, basil and lime were all liberally added, and with Sriracha bottle in hand, I grabbed a giant spoon and dug in. It was lovely. Just then, I got a text about a friend of a friend’s favorite secret pho joint that apparently operates out of a donut shop on San Bruno Avenue. Was I interested? Mais oui! As a true aficionado, I love that San Francisco is one pho’d up city.

DO IT YOURSELF

What would you put in your FrankenPho? What am I missing? If you’re looking to start sampling the different pho options, Little Saigon — a neighborhood surrounding Larkin Street between McAllister and Geary — is a great place to start.

Stop by Turtle Tower there or check out their Richmond location. For the chicken, head to Golden Star Vietnamese Restaurant. In the Mission, check out Evergreen Garden Restaurant and Sunflower Authentic Vietnamese Restaurant. Go forth and pho!

Fruitful Living

Reyhan Harmanci — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:00:12 -0800

My first friend from California, Emma, grew up vegetarian. This seems perfectly normal now, but when I learned that she had never sunk her teeth into a hamburger or tasted a chicken wing, it was like meeting someone with three thumbs. How did she get dressed in the morning without pork chops? Keep in mind that at this point in my life, high school, I had never seen a sushi roll or eaten tofu; as a culinary ignoramus, my diet was equal doses of Mac and Cheese.

But Emma's lettuce-eating ways affirmed my sense that the Left Coast was a hotbed of strange

food. And Emma claimed that as fish-eating lover of omelets, she was a lax vegetarian. Some "vegans" didn't touch Jell-O because of the gelatin (horse hooves!) and her parents knew a pair of fruitarians, a couple with translucent skin who only consumed what fell from trees.

During college, after being pelted with PETA videos, I considered vegetarianism but it didn't seem desirable until I moved here. San Francisco has long been a locus of food trends, from raw foodies to urban foragers to the Slow Food movement. It's hard to live in the Bay Area and not have any

vegan friends or know someone who is currently fasting. As the laziest of eaters, someone who pretty much eats what ever is closest to me, I wanted to get into the super veggie experience.

Why not go the distance? I thought back to Emma's description of her parents' fruitarian friends. I may not have skin like a baby's bottom if I spent a week not cooking or killing anything for food, but it could make me feel better after so much holiday overindulgence. Plus, recent studies point to signs that plants exhibit feelings too. Fuck it, I'm going fruitarian.

The first thing to do, of course, was to define the fruitarian diet. On the fruitarian wikipedia page, basic semantic problems emerged; namely, what is a fruit? Some fruitarians only eat things that have literally fallen to the ground, other eat things that many consider vegetables but technically are fruits‚ tomatoes, cucumbers, nuts, etc. Many think that you can maintain a diet of 75% fruitarian things and still be considered a fruitie. I'm going to go with the broadest possible definition, nuts and all. After research into fruitarian alcoholic options yielded only further confusion, I decided that my 25% would be mostly liquid. It is the holidays, after all.

To kick of a week of raw fruit stuff, I headed down to a meeting room at the police station on Valencia Street around lunchtime on a recent Sunday for the monthly raw food potluck, put on by SF-LiFE, a group of living food enthusiasts' that has been around since 1987. For members who bring a dish, it's free, but I happily doled out my $9 to come to the table. I was greeted by Alvin, a bright-eyed older man who took my money and welcomed me, then inquired if I brought my own plate and utensils. Oops. Already failing as a fruitarian. He gave my friend and I a plastic tray to share.

Immediately, some of the difficulties of the fruitarian diet became clear. I knew everything in front of me was raw and vegetable but how could I tell what were all the ingredients to, say, the "pumpkin pie" made of butternut squash with an almond crust? Did the fake tuna fish have non-fruitarian seasonings? And, on a more basic level, could I even correctly identify which organic objects came from a tree or the ground? Confused, I just started piling things on under Alvin's watchful eye. Maybe I'd ease into fruitarian diet.

My pal Heidi and I took our seats at Alvin's table, and introduced ourselves. A group of older women sat at the end, chatting happily. A younger Russian women sat across from me, digging into a leafy salad. One of my goals of attending the potluck was to meet some fruitarians in person, but when I asked Alvin, he stared blankly. I got the distinct impression that fruitarianism was not regarded highly, even by the raw foodies. Alvin himself counseled "moderation" in an approach to eating and said that, on occasion, he cooks things.

This month's potluck took the theme of "holiday food," so there were nods to the Thanksgiving menu. Not perhaps the best way

to go, considering the deliciousness of gravy, stuffing, and so forth (like setting loose a miniature pony in a race against thoroughbreds), but the dishes in general were tasty. I particularly admired the raw hummus, the fresh persimmons and the fake tuna.

As the meeting went on, with people delivering earnest book reviews of recently read books, like "How to Make Air," about houseplants, for instance, my mind wandered. A woman announced that her persimmons came from a century-old tree that was nourished by spring water, not sprinkler water. "Some people say they can taste it," she offered and people nodded enthusiastically. I thanked Alvin, dropped a few business cards, and continued on.

To do this right, I'd need provisions. Rainbow Grocery in the Mission was an obvious stop for such a task. I started in the bulk food section, an under-explored area for me. Bags of nuts and dried fruit began to stack up. Again, questions of food provenance came into play. Are olives considered raw? I saw some at the potluck, so I dove in. Went wild in the produce aisles, getting fattier foods (avocados, bananas) along with apples, bell peppers, cucumbers. Gazed longingly at the cheese aisle, and then got some refrigerated proteins; the sprouted tofu seemed mostly okay. Surprisingly hungry only a few hours since the potluck, I took my goods into the long line.

Waking up on Monday morning, I faced the hard truth that coffee beans were not fruitarian. Too bad, I thought, staring at the bag of beans, coffee is a non-negotiable. I brewed some up and took a gander at more interweb information about my new lifestyle. The major fruitarian web site promised many, many advantages to this diet. To wit: "Fruitarians experience a feeling of finely tuned body, light, with few or no headaches, need less sleep and develop a greater resistance to illness, pain and aging. Fruitarians become more sensitive persons both physically and emotionally, becoming more wise and expanding their conscience." Baldness, apparently, can also be cured through fruit eating.

To get a better sense of what only eating fruit would do to a person, I sought out Thomas Billings, who runs a local website called "Beyond Vegetarianism." Billings spent a good part of the 1970s and 80s as a fruitarian and then a raw foodie, before eventually settling into a version of regular vegetarianism. He got into fruitarism by degrees, being influenced by various food gurus of that age. Living in Florida, at the time, he ate lots of citrus and this worked out for a while, but then things began to get weird.

He lost tons of weight and became addicted to sugary dates, eating upwards of a pound every day. He went through two major physical crashes. When traveling to northern places for work, with limited fruits available, he would get sick. Once, when getting vaccinated for a trip, he passed out in the doctor's office and literally seemed to sweat out the vaccine.

When reached by phone, Billings repeated what he wrote about and added some more gripes with all-fruit diet. He came to a fruitarian diet in stages, being influenced by a food philosopher called Arnold Ehret (author of "Rational Fasting") and moved to the Bay Area in the mid-80s as an active member of the raw food community. For him, and for many who experiment with extreme dietary restriction, the compulsion to limit food verges on orthorexia nervosa (anorexia for health freaks.) "I believed that what I was eating making my mental processes clearer, thought I was smarter than the people around me," he said, chuckling, "The self-delusion was really extreme."

For Monday and Tuesday, I could definitely relate to that. As I dutifully made cold tomato and cucumber salads and picked apart pomegranates, I felt my energy and smugness surge. But with so many sugary dried fruits to eat, my sugar highs and lows were intense. Mid-afternoon, I was soaring. Late afternoon, I was miserable, main-lining cranberries until I felt right.

On Wednesday, after a glum morning staring at the fruit bowl, I decided it was time to treat myself with a raw meal out. Social isolation, Billings had told me, was a side effect of being on such a severe diet and I was feeling lonely. Cafe Gratitude, a raw food mini-chain, was nearby but ordering things like "I am Happy" and "I am Fulfilled" makes me stabby. Luckily, there's another spot in S.F. Alive!, on Lombard Street.

The place was empty, save for a pair near the back. The man jumped up and gave us menus, with items marked "hot" and "cold," code for raw foodies. Since we were in the midst of a cold spell that almost brought snow to S.F., I opted for soup and a salad, totally violating fruitarian principles. (That 25% saved me again!) It was delicious, and as I gazed at the wall-size picture of bean sprouts, I vowed to return.

As the week wound up, my supplies dwindled. I ate all the good nuts and favorite dried fruits, leaving me with a strange berry trail mix and copious amounts of prunes. I think you know where this story is going: to the bathroom. I spent quite a bit of time at home over the course of the week, doubled over in digestive distress. And adding insult to injury, my skin started breaking out. I wasn't feeling mentally and physically pure and clean, I was feeling tired and gross.

Billings had told me that fruitarianism, like many extreme diets, had a quasi-religious aspect to them, as maintaining a sense of culinary purity was a stand-in for less tangible desires. Without any belief system (or end goal) to pin my attempt at all-fruit business to, it all seemed pointless. Then, on Saturday, I woke up with a cold. Cold, raw food wasn't going to cut it. My soul needed some chicken soup.

DO IT YOURSELF

It's San Francisco, so finding local and organic fruit is a piece of cake. I went to Rainbow Grocery in the Mission, but heard rave reviews about Other Avenues Food Store at 3930 Judah Street. Raw food restaurants include Cafe Gratitude and Alive!. Alive! owner Leland Jung also teaches classes on raw food preparation, so call 415-923-1052 for more information. The SF-LiFE network has monthly potlucks open to the public; call the "sproutline" for hours and location at 415-701-2855.

Getting Soaked

Reyhan Harmanci — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:04:30 -0800

I’ve never liked bathing. My parents like to tell stories of struggling to get me out of dirty diapers – apparently I would protest that even the stinkiest pair were clean and then run away screaming when they tried to drag me to bathroom. After a brief stint taking freakishly long baths as a ten year old, I took to literally jumping in and out of the shower. Soap and shampoo were largely ignored throughout college. I don’t think I’ve drawn myself a bath in at least a decade, possibly longer.

And that’s just private bathing. In the Bay Area, there’s an unusually high concentration of public bathing opportunities. Between Japantown’s Kabuki to the hippie hot springs that dot the Northern California coast, getting clean around here is a social opportunity. As a half-Turk, I’m familiar with Turkish baths, but I decided to stretch my bathing limits with a trio of distinct submersions into water of various temperatures. Let’s call it Extreme Bathing.

The location of Imperial Spa, the Korean bathhouse on Geary Street at the edge of Japantown, is not luxe. Sitting next to a dual Pizza Hut/Taco Bell, it seems quite possible that a happy ending massage waits inside the double doors of the squat concrete building, part of a mini-strip mall.

But Imperial’s interior belies its skuzzy environs, and the Korean spa is San Francisco’s answer to New York’s famous Russian bathhouses. Upon arriving and paying for a ($90) massage-and-scrub, I get a key and a robe.

Now, my reluctance for bathing, public and private, is not based on sheer prudery: I’ve been to many a Folsom Street Fair, I believe that bodies of all shapes and sizes are beautiful and body shame is a terrible thing and Americans should be more like Europeans and it’s all just skin, after all. Generally, though, I’m happier when clothing is not optional. I just am. But Imperial Spa was a wonderfully low-key kind of clothing optional situation.

Hanging my robe on the hook near the sinks, I walked into the main bathing area, lit by skylights and sat on a plastic stool. Following one set of the posted instructions, I turned on the shower head to wash before entering the hot tub and promptly doused myself in freezing cold water, then scalding water.

Before I could try out all the hot and cold tubs, it was time for the main event – a massage scrub. I had gone once before on the advice of a trusted friend, and remember whimpering as a woman in a matching lace bra and panty set took what felt like steel wool to my naked body. Then, I decided to go to the beach. My back still has a weird tan line where I fell asleep and seared it in the sun, failing to appreciate the effect of having ten layers of skin forcibly removed.

This time around was even more brutal. A woman in maroon underwear greeted me with a nod and motioned to a massage table, which I gracelessly climbed onto. Down came the loofah, and off came the dead skin. I flopped over and my front side got the same work up as my back side. Without getting gross, let’s just say that very little was deemed too sacred to be scoured by the scrub-cloth. Every now and then I’d open my eyes and see these little gray booger-like things: my excised skin. Good riddance, gray skin! After being scrubbed pink, I was instructed to stand up. Basins of warm water were heaved at me, front and back.

The massage portion commenced. The experience is intense yet methodical, from toes to scalp. I’m not sure about the technique – no hot stones, lots of elbows – but it was very, very vigorous and quite uncomfortable. At one point, the Imperial Spa professional jumped onto the table, ground down my back, and then hopped off, not missing a beat.

After a few rounds of massage, I opened my eyes to find myself covered in a milky-looking liquid, being squirted on me from plastic bottles. Huh. The facial was also a bit shocking: no token cucumber slices over the eyes, instead a mush of cold vegetables to my face. By the time I stood up for my final water-throw, I felt thoroughly stoned.

About an hour after I got home, the fog lifted and I felt fantastic. My skin was as soft as the proverbial baby’s bottom. Imperial Spa might not be for everyone, but after my muscles stopped aching and the epidermis grew back, returning seemed inevitable.

A few months after I moved to San Francisco in 2001, my friend organized a trip to some hot springs in Mendocino. “It’s very Northern California,” she said, “But I think you’ll like it.” At that point, I was so new to the area that I had no idea what she meant – what was Northern California like? Rainbow flags? Hilly streets?

On the car ride up with my friend and three other women, all of whom were very nice but I hadn’t ever met, I began to understand what going to hot springs meant: a communal kitchen, no TV, co-ed naked hot tubbing in the woods. Eager to prove myself to my new friends, I marched out in a towel to the water areas and flung it off dramatically, because I was just that cool with the whole thing. But after a few minutes of making conversation with an incredibly hairy guy in the big pool, all the while trying to ignore the couple sucking face (and more) in the adjacent small pool, I fled to the cabin to read a book. For five hours. Then, I just hung out in the kitchen. It was a very long weekend.

With that primal wound in mind, I went about looking for a cool hot springs experience. I happened upon the web site for Vichy Hot Springs, a national historic landmark that has a special “champagne” bath that has been curing the physical and metaphysical ills of everyone from Jack London to Nancy Pelosi. The price was right for an overnight trip to Ukiah, and my boyfriend and I jumped in the car.

Vichy Springs sits on a 700-acre bit of property a few miles out of Ukiah proper. We arrived on a lovely October afternoon and after an hour’s hike to a waterfall, I felt prepared to enter the lightly carbonated Vichy water. The tubs sit in a row: there are a series of private tubs in a wooden shed and then four out in the open. I opted for an open air one at the end of the row. The tub looked all of its 150 years. Rust colored and deeply grooved by the flow of water from one end to the other, it was turned on by removing a pipe from one end and jamming it down a hole in the other.

Like a little geyser, the Vichy water burst forth and quickly filled the area. I lowered myself in, surprised at the lukewarm temperature. According to the web site, the water’s chemical composition is similar to Alka Seltzer and it helps heal everything from cuts and abrasions to poison oak (“instantly”) and long-term circulation problems. And indeed, as the bubbles formed all over my body, my skin began to warm up. It was a very odd feeling: being warmed internally from increased blood flow.

After 20 minutes or so, I got out of the tub. My skin felt very soft and warm, even in the cool early evening air. The sensation was akin to being buzzed by the first glass of wine on an empty stomach, without actually, you know, being drunk. The larger, conventional hot tub was a few steps away and I jumped in, my nose turning a bit at the chemical smell of chlorine. Repeating this experience the next day, only for longer, I found myself wishing for a champagne bath closer to home. Once you go Vichy, it’s hard to go back.

A day at the beach in San Francisco is always a tease: you’re so close to the water, and yet so many Fahrenheit degrees away from comfortable swimming. But there are a small legion of hardy souls who brave the cold and the currents for a refreshing dive. I aimed to join their ranks.

Many go to the Aquatic Park near Fort Mason, the home of San Francisco’s Dolphin Club, a group dedicated to swimming with and without wet suits. On my frosty day of choice, I decided to go try out the beach near Crissy Field. (This decision, like so many in S.F., was based on parking.) My friend Jason was kind enough to bring me a wetsuit; since I was trying to bathe, be immersed in the water and the waves, I needed to not go into hypothermic shock. (Also, I’m a wimp.)

The first order of business was getting myself into the wetsuit, another first for me. It didn’t have any zippers. Ten minutes of tugging and hopping and the thing was on.

Like a fat scarecrow, I waded into the water. There was a kid who would periodically jump into a wave and then jump out, but besides him and a few dogs, the coast was clear. The wetsuit had an odd effect: immediately, my feet and hands were painfully cold but my torso seemed dry. I stood in the greenish water for a few seconds and then went a bit further out, to float on my back.

The currents, though, eliminated any real floating or bathing possibilities. I swam back until I could stand, and then hung out in the water. Not totally unpleasant, but not more fun than say, not being in the water. I watched a shaggy dog with a tennis ball paddle back to shore. Trudging up to the sand, my skin now suctioned to the sides of wetsuit, I wondered how long crawling out would take. After three encounters with warm and cold water, carbonated and saline, loofah'd and unscrubbed, I was finally ready for a long, hot shower.

––– Photo by visualpanic

Intoxicating Knowledge

Reyhan Harmanci — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:36:18 -0800

When you think about it, a pub isn't the best place to take a quiz. It's loud, crowded and full of drunks (present company included.) But on the other hand, trivia knowledge needs a public platform to shine. Sure, you can impress friends with your recitation of all the U.S. presidents, in alphabetical order, but will they give you cash prizes? Drink tickets? High-fives from strangers? Of course not.

San Francisco is blessed with many pubs and many pub quizzes, but one stands apart: Edinburgh Castle Pub. It's well known to be the toughest in the city. I've been before most recently a few months ago but have never gotten the glory (or the cash) of a trivia winner. No time like the present to change things, so I spent a week preparing to take top honors, to win some lucre and self-esteem.

Teaming with the strength

As a previous participant at the Castle, I knew the basic outlines of the quiz. There is a music round, a photo round, and at least one current events and one special themed round. My first focus would be current events. I did my best to be in front of a TV at 6 p.m. for the weekdays, to catch the local and national news shows. (I already read the internet every day.) It was harder than I thought. It turns out that I am always somewhere besides near a TV at that time of day. Also, it turns out that both local and national news are painfully boring to watch. Flipping around, I just heard re-treads of stories I've already read or listened to online. My time ended being spent on a far more worthwhile program: Antiques Roadshow, which is on for hours every weeknight. I might not be able to answer any questions about local crime stories, but ask me about the value of a Picasso ceramic piece or a mid-century porcelain doll collection. Seriously, ask me!

My attention then turned to composing the perfect quiz team. My strengths – YouTube videos of puppies, the Golden Girls, literary theory – were not going to secure the grand prize. For the music round, we need some music nerds: my pal Troy, a former record store employee, was a powerhouse during the last Castle quiz. He had to come. We needed some sports knowledge (fellow Bold Local Aaron is a baseball aficionado), some pop culture and maybe tech knowledge (Omar always has the latest gadgets), science smarts (Heidi is taking chemistry classes), historical knowledge (Bold Local Drew) and people who go to pub quizzes often (Michael, Shoshana). Then, of course, just people who appreciate a few pitchers of beer (you know who you are.)

As an aside, here's something that seemed like a good idea that I didn't have time to do – so much Antiques Roadshow to watch! – go to a quiz night a few days before hitting the Castle. As a warm-up. Practice makes perfect.

Between the lines

With the team assembled and my current events knowledge sharpened, I showed up early to the Castle with a friend to have one, final bit of cramming with a real, paper newspaper. I was surprised at how much potential trivia I had missed reading stuff online – who knew that the Nobel Committee had never awarded the Medicine prize to more than one woman before this year? Surveying the room, though, I felt good about our chances. We had prime seating, we had fish and chips, we were ready to go.

The thing that really sets the Castle apart is the quiz master, Carl. Seated at the front of the room behind a table, Carl was part disciplinarian, part stand-up comic, and a paragon of efficiency. "I know that you want to show that your education at Chico State wasn't in vain, but keep in mind that there are two kinds of people in the world," Carl intoned, "The kind who shout out the answers to questions and the kind who don't. The kind who do are assholes."

I had miscounted: there were two special themed rounds. Tonight's themes were the state of Ohio and character actors in situation comedies. My heart sunk. No one at the table was from Ohio and while I pride myself in recognizing character actors when I see them (That's the cousin from Cheers!) I am not going to know their names. But still, we soldiered on.

First round was current events. I quickly found that my study technique was appropriate for a school quiz, not a pub quiz. As Carl told me later, he writes questions that about events that have nothing to do with the actual event. For instance, he acknowledged the terrible earthquake and tsunami action in the South Pacific by asking what is the capital of American Samoa. Shamefully, our team didn't know. Also, the general interest questions dredged up facts buried just too deep in our collective brains like the original surname of Malcolm X. Troy said he knew, I said I knew, we ended up writing Jones on the piece of paper. Fail.

Even with our struggles, we had emerged as one of the frontrunners. Our real competition became clear: a group at the back of the room called Ahmadinejew. We were within two points of them after two rounds.

What about Bea Arthur???

Carl cleverly consolidated three rounds into one during the middle portion of the quiz: we would be listening to ten songs (and naming the artist) while passing around a page of photographs to identify and another page of characters from sitcoms with space to write in the actors names. Another pitcher was ordered. The photos had enough current event cache to validate my diet of TV and internet news. Troy led the charge on the music round but the character actors just killed us. Thurston Howell, III from Gilligans Island? Agent 86 from Get Smart? Murray Slaughter from Mary Tyler Moore?

Miraculously, even after missing most of the character actors, we were tied with Ahmadinejew. Five rounds down, two to go.

Hi in the middle and round on both ends

Next up, the round dedicated to the state of Ohio. Michael declared early that geography is a strength for me, so all eyes were on him. He wasn't kidding about that, correctly naming the Ohio River as a boundary with Kentucky (tricky, Carl!). (Also, I had no idea Ohio even bordered Kentucky.) We got stumped on what member of the Brat Pack hailed from the great state, though. Aaron argued Peter Lawford, I pointed out Lawford married a Kennedy, an improbable event for a boy from Steubenville and offered Sammy Davis, Jr. as a possible answer but we were both wrong. It was Dino.

Down by two now, one round to go. Carl promised that the last one would be ridiculously easy but his idea of easy differed greatly from mine. I got hung up on the fact that I couldn't remember who wrote the fake autobiography of Howard Hughes even though I totally saw the Richard Gere movie "Hoax" last year. The author of "Love Story" also stumped us. We began to feel the smell of defeat wafting over the table as groups began passing us to drop their answer sheets into Carl's cardboard box. Finally, we gave up.

Then, a minute later, Omar remembered the name of imprisoned author Clifford Irving! Carl accepted a late answer but it wasn't quite enough. We lost by two points, placing second. With our five winning drink tickets, another pitcher was procured but it wasn't the same as actually winning. Ahmedinejew whooped it up in the back.

Is that your final answer?

A day after the quiz, I called Jon Korn, an East Bay quiz lover and a recent contestant on Jeopardy!, where he took home $26,000, for a post-mortem. His team had placed fourth in their Tuesday night pub quiz, but they were missing a member.

In his opinion, there's no way to really prepare for a pub quiz. The nature of trivia is that it can't be crammed, he said. For the big leagues, when it became clear to him after a written test and two studio trips, that he actually would be on Jeopardy!, he did do a few things: memorize presidents, state capitals, world capitals. But that's it.

The quiz master himself, Carl, told me that he played at Edinburgh Castle for two years before the other quiz master quit and he asked Castle owner, Alan Black, for a chance to make up questions and get unfettered access to alcohol. As a quiz taker, though, Carl's proudest moment wasn't naming the capital of Syria, it was knowing the number painted on Herbie the Love Bug. Next time, our team will blow through the competition and I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a question about 19th century antique plates that will put us over the top.

Pub quiz action shots courtesy of paul.luminos.nl