Tag: berkeley

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Sax Guy

Berkeley Marina Sax Guy

This guy–where the heck he comes from I don’t know. He rides his bike out to the park on the old garbage dump by the marina, and he blows and blows on his tenor saxophone. You can hear him a half mile away, and Scout (a.k.a. The Dog) pricks up his ears whenever he hears the squalling blasts coming across the landfill’s little ridges and hills. The guy was out there playing today; puts me in mind of–who was it? Sonny Rollins?–who used to go out and practice on the Brooklyn Bridge (or maybe the Williamsburg Bridge). Scout wasn’t shy at all. Just walked up and lay down right next to where the guy was playing. Soon after we showed up, he realized I was there and not just moving along, and he stopped playing. I told him he sounded like Ian Underwood, who played with Frank Zappa; no response. He said, “I’m working.” I asked whether it was OK with him if I took some pictures. Eventually he said, “I really don’t think I take any pictures today.” I had been shooting a low-res video of him, but after he said that, we moved on.

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Stay-at-Home Blogger

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Monday night. Kate drove up to Eugene today. She’s at Thom’s house tonight. Scout and I are staying home. Scout to be Scout–a 10-hour drive is not a dog’s best friend, and Thom’s lease says no pets. Me, to take care of some work and shop and cook and otherwise get ready for Thanksgiving. I envied Kate the trip up to Oregon; it’s a long drive, but I like the way the route unrolls. But she’s off all week and it made more sense for her to go. I did the next best thing to driving up there; Before she left, I sat down and drew a map of the route and the key attractions: exits she needed to take, the locations of key towns, rest stops, features like Starbucks, In ‘n’ Out Burger (America’s favorite evangelical grilled-meat joint), the general characteristics of the road like the winding section once you get into the mountains north of Redding and the five passes you cross once you’re in Oregon. Drawing the map made me realize just how many times I’ve been over that road; I can picture so much of it, including beautiful Hilt, the very last town on your way north out of California.

Tonight: A spinning class at the gym. Dinner (some pesto spaghetti left over from the other night). A long walk with The Dog. A little Monday Night Football. An episode of “The Wire,” which, if I were to write about such things, I’d praise. And now this, and then bed.

(The picture? From late last week. An odd, persistent overcast that broke just enough at sunset to cast a striking light on the bay while I was out with The Dog (on right) at Chavez Park. That’s Alcatraz in the left distance, Thus concludes this November 20, 2006, slice of life.)

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The Night Mail

PostofficeYou know, there’s supposed to be an old British documentary called “The Night Mail.” I think that’s the title. About an overnight mail train. I’ve never seen it; it’s supposed to be a classic. But that’s not what I’m referring to here. Rather, it’s the arrival of today’s mail at 7 p.m. This after getting no mail yesterday (a regular delivery day despite the proximity to Veterans Day). And no mail on Saturday, which was Veterans Day. I got calls from neighbors the last couple of nights wondering what was going on.

I heard our mailbox open and went out to the porch before the mailperson, who was other than male, had departed.

“Boy,” I said cheerfully. “You guys are having a rough time. What happened to the mail yesterday?”

“The guy who had the route yesterday–I don’t think he had a flashlight,” the mailperson said. She scurried into the dark before I could fully process that. Didn’t have a flashlight? Yeah, sure, a flashlight would be nice if you’re out after dark. But since when did it become a requirement for finishing a mail route in the middle of a semi-lighted city?

“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” I’m one of many under the mistaken impression that these words were written with a United States postal agency in mind. The words paraphrase Herodotus, who was describing a Persian courier system of the 5th century B.C. Those guys knew how to deliver a message. The mistaken impression arises from the fact Herodotus’s words are inscribed on Manhattan’s old General Post Office

(a totally neoclassical pile if ever there was one).

Memo to Berkeley P.O.: Neither Herodotus nor his American translator mention anything about artificial lighting. No torches, electric or pre-electric. If you trust the Greek, the Persians were uncowed by undispelled night-time gloom. And you know, from a customer standpoint, I’m not even asking for “swift completion” of the appointed rounds; just plain old unmodified “completion” would do fine.

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Halloween Interrogative

Asking the tough questions:

How did we go from this …

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… to this?

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Maybe Berkeley is the last place Halloween has turned into pre-Christmas; maybe it’s the first; or maybe it’s in between. But it was striking this year how many folks had their houses decorated for weeks with Halloween trimmings.

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The Street Where You Live

Let’s just say you walked out to your car, the way you do every day if you have a car, and you looked in and saw the stereo was gone. Neatly and completely removed.

It happens. No sense getting too worked up. Nobody’s hurt, after all.

But what if it’s the third time it’s happened in this particular car, parked in the middle of your safe, seemingly immune little middle-class neighborhood (and when the stereo isn’t being ripped off, the car’s roof and hood are being kicked in or the windshield smashed)?

Then maybe you start thinking about all the other things that have happened on your safe, seemingly immune street since you moved in back in the late ’80s. You recall in no particular order:

The rapist who was caught after casing the house across the street.

The two laptops someone scooped up from your desk after smashing your kitchen window while you were out at the ballgame.

The innumerable late-evening front-door encounters with victims of empty gas tanks, freeway wrecks or other fictional misfortunes who just needed five or ten bucks to help them deal with the emergency.

The random misfortunate who snatched a purse from a neighbor’s house as the neighbor tried to verify the poor guy’s sketchy story.

The guy who showed up at 1 a.m., pounding on the door and demanding money from your wife while you were working.

The two or three or four other cars broken into in front of your house.

The neighbors who one day couldn’t find their car because it had been stolen overnight.

The stolen car that was dumped on the street, right in front of you, in broad daylight.

The break-in at the across-the-street neighbor’s place.

The break-in at the neighbor’s place three doors up.

The several occasions on which would-be burglars were interrupted while casing targets.

The bikes stolen from the back of your house and from behind one of your neighbors’ homes.

The commuter robbed at gunpoint up the street as he returned for his car after work.

The dad out walking with his kids who had a gun pulled on him during an attempted robbery.

The neighbor whose back-porch Sunday breakfast was interrupted by a guy coming over the fence with a suitcase. The neighbor asked what was going on, and the over-the-fence guy just said, “Stay out of my way” and kept on going.

One way I can look at all this: Hey, no one died. You can replace property, fix windows, buy a new car stereo, and get over your fear and sense of violation. But the way I looked at it when I discovered the stereo gone was not so reasoned and cool. It feels like this place asks a lot sometimes for the privilege of living here, and sometimes I detest the cost.

I’ve got no answers, or apologies, either. Just chewing it over.

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Random Sky Drama

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On a walk with the usual suspects in Chavez Park this evening. Above: Clouds running over the ridge between the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais (Angel Island is silhouetted in the middle distance). Below: Mount Tam from the Chavez Park meadow (left) and from one of the trails in the off-leash dog zone (right). Over the past 10 years, we probably went down to this park about once or twice a year; most of my walking and local outdoor recreatin’ has been done in the other direction, up in the hills. Since The Dog arrived among us in May, we’ve probably been down there three or four times a week on average. The view is different every day.

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Berkeley: Democracy Under Fire

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A sign and personal note to the world in a neighbor’s yard. Not sure what prompted the note, since anti-tax vandals have been in short supply in these parts. And since the area is full of these “Yes on A” signs–they generally appear to go unmolested–and it seems strange that anyone would single this one resident for political harassment.

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Big-Ass Tree Fungus

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Encountered on Francisco Street, between Milvia and Martin Luther King, earlier this week: A large mushroom-like fungus growing on an old non-flowering plum of some sort; it’s about 16 inches wide and 12 inches high and protrudes maybe a foot from the tree trunk; big enough to be considered a fellow citizen here in Berkeley. I took a couple pictures, but they didn’t come out. Went back today expecting that it had shriveled up or that some bored passer-by had decided to knock it off the tree for the fun of it. But there it still was. My mycologically inclined neighbor and friend Jill says this kind of organism actually is pretty woody and durable and likely to last a long time. She also said that it’s likely non-toxic and that if you ever find yourself hard up for food in the woods, the thing to do would be to break it up and boil it and drink the broth; of course, you’ll need to be carrying the right equipment to do that when you’re hard up for food in the woods.

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The ’77 Bulgemobiles Are Here!

1977 Lincoln Town Coupe

This showed up on the curb in front of our house yesterday afternoon: a ’70s vintage (1977 is the closest match I can make) Lincoln Town Coupe, outfitted with The Club to foil joyriders and a variety of bedding, personal-care items and plastic utensils that suggested that this is someone’s rolling domicile. I was more than half-expecting someone to show up to sleep in it last night. Around 10:30 or so, we came back from a movie and there were a couple of pairs of shoes placed neatly outside the driver’s-side door; across the street, someone was puttering around a van I hadn’t seen before, which also looked like a live-in vehicle. I guessed that the two vehicles were related and went to talk to the van person. He told me he owned the Lincoln and intended to leave it in front of our house for a couple days but wouldn’t be sleeping in it. I asked him about the shoes , and he said he’d left those by mistake and went to pick them up. He left a few minutes later. The Lincoln remains on the curb this morning.

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