Fort Mason, San Francisco

In fall and winter, the skies in San Francisco are the clearest and bluest, the light the most blessed gold. Last December, my wife/then-fiancée and I stopped here as part of our wedding planning. There is a theater on the end of a long hallway at the end of a pier. I remember rehearsal on that stage when I was a teenaged ballet student - how when the music stopped, we could hear sea gulls crying. 

Muir Woods again, Stinson Beach all burned up

January 2025. My then-fiancée, now-wife and I showed Muir Woods to two transplant friends who hadn't seen it before, followed by a jaunt up the winding cliffside part of Highway 1 to Stinson Beach. I opened the back of my camera at some point in error. Light licks at the edges of some images, nearly obliterates others. Sometimes when the tourists are in the way of the photo, it means they are the photo, you know?

Last August, farewells

On a foggy late-summer day, farewell to a house I lived in for a long time but hadn't lived in for a long time. It looked more beautiful than usual that day, nearly empty, filled with diffuse light, recently repainted with the floors refinished (and more) to get ready for sale.

A farewell that didn't turn out to have been a farewell after all, after my father changed his mind and moved back into the only house we ever all lived in.

A farewell to my mother, moving several states away after 40+ years in San Francisco. 

This was the evening after the moving truck came and went, the evening before my mother and her sweet kitty left with my big sister. Zinnia was a bit at loose ends in the nearly unfurnished space, trying to understand it all, I expect.

The movers hadn't been willing to pack some spillable items (cooking oils, hair products, etc.). My mother was fretting slightly about what to do with them. I said I could use some of them. I still laugh remembering my sister pressing the whole box of them into my hands, saying with a smile but a heavy emphasis, "Just. Make them. Go away." We have that mega bottle of vanilla extract in our kitchen still. 

I stood at the back window and remembered the many, many, many times I had looked out at the ocean here, or in the ocean's direction on these foggy days. The five-story building that went up when I was in elementary school, painted a glaring coral color, that filled one of our western windows instead. How we grieved the old view. The breeze coming off the Pacific into my bunk bed on warm nights, the traffic noise that one could almost, with a great deal of effort, mistake for the noise of waves breaking.

When it's clear, you can see the tiny bumps of the the Farallon Islands on the western horizon. On the clearest days of all, not just the southern but the northern Farallones, and Point Reyes to the northwest. The spray of the surf visible from more than a mile away, on wild days.What a wide sash of blue, blue, blue that we climbed the hill behind our house to see better on sunny days.  How it turned a glancing silver in certain lights, or the mysterious streaks of darker gray-green on its surface that I found so enchanting. I think now perhaps it was the shadows of clouds too distant for me to notice. 

But some days I love my commute

It's too long, it's too early, it's inconvenient...but some days, nonetheless, I love my commute.

I begin by shutting our cat in the bedroom, sneaking a bicycle out of a closet and then out the front door, letting the cat out, and then letting myself out. Don't be too bright, don't be too noisy, let sleeping girlfriends lie. Out the front gate, stars, cold air, headlights, deepest blue, pulling my muffler up.

The first half of my journey is the train, in which hopefully I am not too tired and in which hopefully there is no one wantonly broadcasting smartphone noise. I take the train that gets me to my destination fifteen minutes early, rather than five minutes late. I write, usually needing to take a few extra moments on the train platform at the end of my ride to finish up, hurrying the last of my dreams out onto paper before they can scuttle away into my forgetfulness.

The second half of it takes me along the shore of the bay by bicycle. At this time of year: The pre-dawn sky is painted a delicate ombre over the hills of the East Bay, and overhead it is ornamented with moon and morning star. I hear seagulls crying and watch pelicans fly across the panorama. The water dances in black and silver beneath the Bay Bridge. I take note of the speed of traffic on the bridge's westbound deck today, as my coworker is meeting her own commuting fate in her car there. The newer, glassier skyscrapers begin to glisten. I feel alive, alert, grateful. The world is not yet noisy. I have been at home in this city for so long.

Redwood Creek

Muir Woods - a deep pocket of green and old-growth beauty nestled in a cranny of a valley in Marin, just north of San Francisco. A place many Bay Area kids go on elementary field trips, and a place I try to take any out-of-town visitor. A place I've taken you before, in a manner of speaking.

This spring I went with my girlfriend for her first visit ever, and after a winter of torrential rains, it was the creek that particularly captivated my eye. 

Have you ever been? What is the name of a beautiful forest near you, or that you have loved while traveling?

Friday afternoon traffic

I drive to the city, walk on the beach with my mom at mid-day. The sand has been packed down by the recent rains. Get stuck in a bit of traffic coming back, eat carrot sticks from a jar clamped between my thighs, sing along to "High by the Beach." Marvel at the billboards for cocktails, spirits, B2B tech nonsense, a movie that was supposed to come out in March of last year and still hasn't been released. Marvel at the city streets, parks, and apartment buildings that suddenly look different now that I could feasibly live there if I wanted. It's always been a strange thing, being from a city I couldn't afford to live in myself, and now finally, at my 31-year-old income bracket, partnered, and with rents crashing, that's maybe not the case.

When I land back in the East Bay, I hunt down a very well-hyped, expensive apple that I have sold but not yet laid eyes on, buy two of them back from the little grocery I sold them to. As I promised my girlfriend, I go in two masks deep, face shield and all. It's over ten months that I've been working primarily or entirely remote now. Tasting our fruits is one of the things I miss.

Proper outings are such a rarity now that it's all refreshing in a way (save for those walkers who are unmasked). Even traffic has become semi-interesting, now that I spend my afternoons - and evenings and nights and mornings... - stuck at home rather than stuck in a car on my way home. Safe in a car with a good long playlist, what's to complain about?

Of lights, night, and early morning

In winter, night photography becomes less of a whim and more of a...must. First photo: don't miss the moon. Last photo: I woke (I wake early) to a strangely diffuse white glow outside - a magical overnight fog had had a most interesting transformative effect on the light of the street lamps.

Happy New Year, you all.

Autumn fog walk

This is the beach I grew up with, and this is the type of beach I grew up thinking of as normal - gray, cool, dangerous to swim at, and sweetly melancholy in appearance.

Walking on this cool morning, bundled up, I chatted on the phone with my dad and then simply kept myself company with song and camera. As the sun gradually brightened the fog, I was struck by how the color of the sky melded into that of the water's shine.

Thank you to the gulls and sanderlings for making the beach even more enchanting, and thanks to the surfers for making me feel extra warm by comparison.

Indian summer sea

Home is here, always. Anywhere where I am standing in this ocean. (Any ocean).

On a warm, warm day in San Francisco, the beach can't be missed. I took the train out after work and was too late for sunset, but the light took its time fading, and I still got to enjoy the soft water on my legs and the soft fine sand under my feet.

Accidental dreams photojournalism

I went to the natural sciences museum here in San Francisco with only a toy camera - not really suited to indoors. The photos came out dark and confusing.

 I was pleased with the textures and shapes and shadows, though. These actually remind me of how my remembered dreams look.

Small haven of sweets

Near my train station, there is an artisanal Japanese sweet shop that is, weirdly enough, something of a sanctuary to me. I don't treat myself to a $5 handmade mochi very often, but even if I know I will buy nothing, I still go in often after a stressful day to enjoy the warmth, the quiet, the meticulous displays, and the traditional instrumental music playing softly in the background.

For part of the year they carry boxes of these perfect little rabbit-shaped pastries called usagi manju (look at them!) that I swear I will have someday...someday when I have $32 to drop on pastries.

Good night to the Lex (4/30/15)

One thing I'm grateful I didn't miss out on doing in 2015: going to the Lexington Club, SF's last lesbian bar, on its very last night open. The owner had announced the closure, for financial reasons, some six months prior. She gave a good interview here. I really appreciated that she discussed gentrification, and the particular economic vulnerability of lesbians to its effects:

"Why is there only one lesbian bar when there are so many gay male bars? Even if you take queerness out of it, women make less money than men and a two male household is going to have more capital potential to start a business than a two female household. How many bars or restaurants do you see being run by women? So few. And that’s just the supply side. Because women have less disposable income and consume less than men, the spending power isn’t the same when you are talking about having a bar for mostly women."

The Huffington Post did a decent job expanding on this topic (though there is one statement in that article that really offends me with its inaccuracy; see if you can spot it). I don't go out drinking often, and at the time the closing was announced, I'd only been to the Lex once. But it mattered so much that it was there. After I heard the news, I made an effort to make it there a few more times.

I want to remember:

• The night of my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner, when the Lex was just around the corner and I escaped under the full moon in a long dress and a big coat to drink alone among its crowd and feel free again.
• The whiskey gingers there on a rainy February Friday night with my lover. We slow-danced in the next bar we went to, a straight bar full of men where nobody else danced, but I knew we weren't alone.
• This last night, spontaneously decided on. My girlfriend met me after work on the steps of Mission Dolores, already drinking and winding a fresh roll of 1600 film into my camera. I didn't know how much I would succeed at capturing on film, in the dark, without a tripod or a timer, but I knew I had to try.