"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
8 p.m.: Between about 6:45 and 8, all the bags and candles were distributed and lit along the length of Holly Street. This kind of forgettable shot is from in front of our place, looking south to Cedar Street. Dozens of people have showed up to walk the streets this year. All the familiar faces from around the neighborhood, and lots of people we haven’t met before. Even the beat cops are coming by to check out what’s going on.
6:54 p.m. PST: The first luminaria in the neighborhood are lit. These are actually a block away from us, on Buena Street, looking east from California. All of these were in place by dark. And not only here. For nearly a half mile along California to the south and on many adjoining blocks, the luminaria were all set out and ready to go by nightfall, too. Amazing to think this has all spread from our little celebration on Holly Street, which started 13 years ago tonight. Ironically, folks on our street are just out now putting out the bags. More later.
The weather was so harsh here this afternoon that Tom (the guy in the cap) and some of his buddies sat out on the porch to play dominoes (yes, they actually play dominoes).
Even in Berkeley, overrun as it is by irreligious leftists (like me) and know-it-alls (like me) who will tell you (are you listening?) without you ever thinking of asking that you’d be better off (you would) to just skip this whole December holiday deal with its materialistic and reactionary churchish trappings, we have Christmas light displays. This one’s on a street called The Arlington, one of two streets in the north end of town that carry a definite article in their name but stand unadorned by designation as street or avenue or way. The Arlington has been in such bad repair for so long (it’s getting fixed now) that one refers to each of the multitude of pavement issues along the street as "a pothole." Indefinite article. Or maybe "other-abled asphalt." I’m sure a city commission has ruled on the matter.
In any case, a walk this evening took me from an automatic teller to a bookstore up some long flights of neighborhood steps to The Arlington, where the above-depicted scene held pedestrians and motorists in thrall. I walked back by way of the open-till-midnight drug store and several more quietly lighted streets.
More on Christmas lights tomorrow.
News from the world of online help-wanted ads (in the midst of all this blogging and freelancing and handwringing about life and the world in general, a job search is theoretically happening here at Infospigot World Headquarters; but that’s another long, sad story, for later; much later). Just now on Craigslist, I spot this posting: **MANAGING EDITOR FELLOWSHIP.**
Interesting! “Managing Editor Fellowship.” It’s for VegNews, “America’s premier vegetarian lifestyle magazine.” It looks like a real magazine, and it sounds like they want a real managing editor. The ad says, “The candidate will work alongside the editor-in-chief and with dozens of experienced writers to build a top-notch editorial department. Person will manage magazine’s editorial lineup, work with writers on revisions, read and pitch stories, field inquiries, plan future editorial, research story ideas, and have an opportunity to write for the magazine.”
And in return for the 50+ hours a week the ad, with admirable frankness, says this job will require, the managing editor fellow will get 100 bucks a week (it’s a stipend, not a salary). Plus a furnished cottage somewhere in San Francisco, and other perks, including ” all-you-can-eat vegan cookies.”
Hey, give them points for trying something creative. It’s not always true that you only get what you pay for. I’ve seen plenty of mediocre people pulling down big bucks and talented ones who were seriously underpaid. On the other hand, I always wonder about organizations that say they want the kind of talent that can “build a top-notch editorial department” while offering what amounts to spare change and (in this case) baked goods as part of the compensation package.
A constant feature of Berkeley life since I arrived here in the mid-’70s: lost pet posters (and all sorts of other fliers) on our local telephone poles. This one’s a little eye-catching. "Lost Congo African Grey Parrot." So we’ve got lost birds here pretty often, too. In fact, there’s a flock of feral parrots that sometimes makes an appearance in these parts. Lots of loud squawking and flapping and ganglike avian activity when they’re around. What interested me about this poster is what was going on when he vanished last Friday: "When last seen, Hannibal [editor’s note: the bird’s name] was being attacked by a hawk."
Yes, there are some little falcon-like hawks around town that dine on some of less fierce feathered types. One evening when my brother John was out here, we were walking up the street and saw feathers floating to the ground. Atop a telephone poll, a Cooper’s hawk was pulling apart a morning dove it had just caught for dinner. Urban wildlife. You could probably pitch it as a subject for a community-access TV program.
Just a note: It’s the coldest night of the season here so far. Usually that’s occasion for scoffing about Bay Area weather versus real weather (I’m one of the scoffers myself. But I note that the 9 p.m. temperature at Oakland airport was 39 degrees on the German-inspired Fahrenheit scale (our back-porch thermometer shows 40). The official temperature in Chicago at about the same time was 37. And in Central Park in New York City, another of the far-flung outposts of Brekke-dom, the mercury (or maybe it was alcohol) stood at 41.
The differences between here and those other cool places: They’ll get much, much colder in the weeks to come.. And most of our house is without heat as those east of the Berkeley Hills understand it.
Update: The thermometer shows 36 Tuesday morning on Holly Street (around the Bay Area, the lowest temperature I see for 7 a.m. was 28, about 35 miles southeast of here in Livermore), and sleeping in the unheated part of our house last night was more like camping out without a good down bag. The low at O’Hare this morning looks like it was 35. And in New York it was 39.
We posted The Amazing Chest Bed on Craigslist on Tuesday, got about a dozen inquiries in all, and had a buyer Friday night. This morning, Kate and I delivered it to a couple who live in San Francisco’s Richmond District — out around 20th Avenue and Geary Boulevard. We took it apart and packed it into the Amazing Dodge Caravan last night, then drove it over there this morning. I meant to take my camera along to take a picture of where the bed wound up — the buyers had what amounted to a walk-in closed with a window that the bed fit into perfectly. Kate did most of the reassembly, we got paid, Kate had the purchaser sign a little receipt she made up (she made two copies, so he got one, too). The we drove home by way of the Golden Gate Bridge, stopping in Tiburon for a mediocre breakfast on the way.
That is all from Amazing Chest Bed Central.
For months now, we’ve had Tom’s old bed — a pretty nice twin-size platform bed with six drawers — sitting in our living room. I thought it would be easy to sell. I posted ads on Craigslist, which for the uninitiated is a kind of online flea market where you can find anything. The service started here in San Francisco, and I actually worked with the founder briefly at the online project I joined when I left The Examiner. It was a big mailing list then, and now it’s a hugely successful community and e-commerce site that eBay has bought into. I’ve sold a bike there and bought A’s playoff tickets on zero notice, so I know it works.
That knowledge aside, Tom’s bed will just not move from our cramped premises. I posted two perfectly competent and ordinary ads in June for a "twin-size chest bed and mattress." I linked to the maker’s fine pictures of the bed. I gave a very clear description. We didn’t get a single response. And there in our living room the bed still sits. Kate and I have talked about giving it to a charity. But yesterday, I was seized with just enough initiative to take a few digital pictures of the bed and try another Craigslist posting.
When I sat down to write this time, though, I realized I had it all wrong. So without thinking about it, the "twin-size chest bed and mattress" became "It’s The Amazing Chest Bed." After I wrote that heading, everything else fell into place (check this link for the Craigslist posting for the full effect; the ad text is below). The bed is now a happening.
Has it sold, you ask? Well, not yet. I’ve had seven inquiries about it since yesterday, though. So maybe it’ll move this time.
***
It’s The Amazing Chest Bed
It’s the ultimate experience in sleep for persons of a certain size and/or age. A chest bed with six generous drawers and a headboard that offers extra storage. The mattress is a nearly new extra-long twin size (requires extra-long twin sheets; regular twin size won’t fit; more on dimensions below). If you’re tall and skinny, it’s perfect for you. If you have a family member who may someday get tall and skinny (we do, but he quickly outgrew this mattress), it’s a perfect size for you (and whoever that person is), too. But don’t take our word for it — check it out for yourself! While we’d like to offer test sleepovers in our smartly appointed Berkeley digs — we could have hot chocolate and a warm fire and listen to "Winnie-the-Pooh" — we can’t accommodate the throngs we expect to demand the right to purchase this article. So you’ll have to be content with checking out pictures of The Amazing Chest Bed, images taken at great expense by a locally renowned furniture photographer.
We’re asking $250 for The Amazing Chest Bed — a small price for a piece of furniture that could conceivably have had a featured role as a prop in the popular USA Network series "Monk," starring Tony Shalhoub. We paid $900 for the bed, headboard and mattress.
Act now, and we, the soon-to-be former owners of The Amazing Chest Bed will consider bringing it over to your place (please: Western Hemisphere addresses only) at no extra cost. For the extra-practical-minded: Dimensions are: Bed platform/drawer unit: 76 1/4 inches long x 38 inches wide x 24 inches tall. Mattress: 80 inches long x 38 inches wide x 10 inches high. Headboard: 8 1/2 inches deep x 38 inches wide x 50 inches tall. So combined length of mattress, platform and headboard is about 88 1/2 inches. Combined height of platform and mattress is about 34 inches.
We’ve had two days of gusty northerly winds. The result today was you could see forever. Kate and I walked up to the upper reaches of the hills in town. Up above Grizzly Peak Boulevard and adjacent to Tilden Park there’s a steep, narrow lane called Hill Street. It ends in a short footpath named for Scott Newhall, a legendary editor of the San Francisco Chronicle who lived up there and in the 1960s dreamed up a story on why coffee in the city was so bad (the also-legendary headline: "A Great City Forced to Drink Swill"). The path connects to a southern segment of Hill Street, which runs back down to Grizzly Peak but also leads by a couple other small lanes into Tilden (the street geography won’t mean much to non-Berkeleyites). The picture above was taken right where the northern part of Hill Street runs into the path; we were looking back across the northern part of Tilden (the hills are already starting to green up) to the mountains in Napa County. You can just make out a little nub sticking up near the center of the picture, above the distant ridge (it was much clearer just eyeballing it). That’s Mount Saint Helena, which stands at the northern end of the Napa Valley, 58 miles from where we were standing (I checked the distance on mapping software).
And the second picture is the dusk silhouette of Mount Tamalpais taken just as we headed down Buena Vista Way back toward the Berkeley flatlands. A great day to be out for a walk.