At Decompression you’ll find amazing costumes, interactive art, and beautiful people. I posted more Decompression pictures on the tumblog bayisbetter.tumblr.com.
Decompression: Post-Burning Man After Party
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Category Archives: san francisco
Bay to Breakers II: This is How We Run A Footrace in San Francisco
If you like to see sweaty people wearing costumes and running shoes, boy are you in luck: here’s my second batch of photos from San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers race. There’s even more photos in this batch.
Here we have Towely, Elvis, Carmen Sandiego, Tellytubbies, Ghostbusters, (more) Marios (and carts, actually saw a much better set of Mario Carts but didn’t get a picture), three Divo heads (the fourth was crossing the street), bathroom boy and girl,a boyscout, Jesus Christ and his two wenches, and a magic lamp that wins any contest for “most phallic costume.” And some other stuff…you can look at the pictures faster than I can list them.
Which ones are running to raise money for charity and which ones are just looking for an excuse to get very drunk early on a Sunday morning? I’ll leave that to you.
Bay to Breakers: This is How We Run A Footrace in San Francisco
Every city has their big charity race; in San Francisco it’s Bay to Breakers. Folks run from the beautiful Bay, through the city and all the way through Golden Gate Park. Unlike most cities, San Franciscans like to do it in costumes. And unlike other cities that get dressed up, these gold rush kids take their costumes seriously.
My first experience with Bay to Breakers was being handed a paper cup while running, the typical side-of-the-road refresher offered to runners, only to find out the cup was filled with beer. This year I decided to be lazy and wait at the finish line to get photos of some of the fantastic outfits. Nostalgia was in full force this year, with more Mario and Luigis than you can squeeze into a hidden green pipe and so many red-striped Waldos that the irony of finding so many of them was completely lost. There were also a ton of Smurfs, muppets and Angry Birds.
The Day Of the Tsunami
My mom awoke me at seven this morning. The first thing she said was, “I just want to hear your voice before you die.” She was a theater major in college so she has a flair for drama. She explained about the terrible earthquake in Japan and that CNN said a tsunami was likely to hit the West Coast in the next fifteen minutes.
What to do? At that point I was thoroughly awake, so I said, “fuck it.” We got in @Mirrorshade’s car and we drove to Lawrence Berkeley Lab, high in the Berkeley hills. There wasn’t a wave in site, but the vista made me realize something: even if there’s a hundred aftershocks and I die under the crash of a terrible wave, I will never regret moving to California.
I wish this photo taken with my camera could capture the beauty.
Treasure Island Music Festival: Saturday Evening
Brazilian Girls greet the San Francisco sunset
As a Floridian, most bands arouse the crowd by saying how surprised they are to see a lively crowd in the netherworld of Suburban hell. All day at Treasure Island the bands were raving about how much they loved our city. While every band wants to sweet talk their audience, it’s easy to believe. Treasure Island has one of the best views of the city and I can only imagine, as a performer, what it must have been like to be standing on that stage with water all around you and the city leaping up across the bay bridge. The weather was perfect when the sunset greeted the Brazilian Girls on Saturday night. They raved quite a bit about what a joy it was to come and perform at this festival. With the clouds turning yellow and gold and a warm breeze blowing through the autumn eve, I think most of us were happy to be there.
Sabina Sciubba of Brazilian Girls
Look at that outfit!
Brazilian Girls keyboardist Didi Gutman does not disappoint
Even though they’re not actually Brazilian, I kept comparing the Brazilian Girls to the Brazilian act Cansei de ser Sexy. Both rely on a wordly, outrageous front woman that wears ridiculous outfits. Both have fantastic keyboardists. Both have a sense of humor and a touch of sexy. Where they differ is in their experience as musicians. Brazilian Girls have that been-around-the-block quality while CSS is still drunk on their own fame. For this reason CSS puts on a better show—there’s a ton of energy and excitement that it’s a thrill to be a part of. But Brazilian Girls were satisfying, even if their audience was mostly drawing blanks when it came to their multi-lingual songs. I’d like to see them again when they are the main act and have an audience that truly appreciates them.
Really shitty bootleg photo of MSTRKRFT
Once Treasure Island was fully cloaked by the dark of night, MSTRKRFT took the stage. Seeing a live DJ-set is always like ordering the mystery meat, and MSTRKRFT was no exception. Simply because someone is a good producer doesn’t mean they are any good at throwing down tracks on the fly or anticipating what the audience is feeling. I had hoped that since half of MSTRKRFT was once in a rock band (Death From Above 1979) that they would be more committed to playing entire melodies unlike some other DJs I won’t mention *here. And they were slightly better. But I won’t say they picked the freshest dance tracks. More importantly, they did a lot of egotistical showing off of skillful song transitions that completely abandoned playing the best part of the song. A *lot of DJ’s do this and it drives me crazy. It wasn’t terrible but I would say the DJ that wasn’t even listed on the schedule was playing more songs that made me want to wiggle and jiggle than this all-star DJ.
MGMT at Treasure Island Music Festival
MGMT
MGMT was the headliner for Saturday night. MGMT started their set by announcing that this would be the last time they would be able to play these songs for a long time so they were going to play the entire album from start to finish. Holy smokes, right?! This implied that they are ready to hop into the studio to start working on new material, which is great news because we’ve all overplayed their first album and all it’s subsequent remixes till the phrase “Shock me like electric eel” leads me to **violent twitching.
It also meant that we of the mp3 generation were going to hear how the album was intended to be listened to. Hearing the whole thing played through really did give it more of a narrative quality that was more cohesive than, say, the entire ***Green Day’s American Idiot musical. I have often described MGMT to the uninitiated as a disco-folk band. But now that I’ve seen them I’d have to say they’re a psychedelic-disco-folk band. I caught some happy folks gazing at their shoes from time to time, including members of the band. They’re not a roof-raising show but they were skilled musicians and a good time was had by all.
The overwhelming sentiment
*I lied: Bloody Beetroots, Crookers: shame shame shame
** not literally. It’s just overplayed, I’m saying.
***which was terrible. Just so you know.