Category Archives: Bay Area

Holi Hindu Festival of Colors at UC Berkeley

Two people touch hands at UC Berkeley's Holi festAs Spring festivals go, Holi is among the most fun. Forget about the Maypole, during the Indian Holi festival people douse each other with bright colors. It usually takes place during March, but UC Berkeley’s Indian Student Association has their Holi celebration in April.

at Holi festival a girl dumps color into another girl's hair.The UC Berkeley Holi festival is a dance party. The DJ mixed house hits with Indian pop music.

The event is free, and you can buy color from the Indian Student Association ahead  time, or day of, until they run out. Ten packets (500 grams altogether) is sufficient but you could use twice as much so it really depends. Try to hold your colors until you make eye contact with someone. Though it can be tempting to merrily toss color into the air when the bass drops or even to toss a little color on someone’s back if their shirt is looking a little too naked of the stuff in your hand. More than once I gave in to this temptation.

Preparing for Holi

The crowd at UC Berkeley's Holi festivalThe colored powder is not paint. Some reports say it is made of corn starch, others say rice flour. In any case it comes right off in the wash, or even with a light sweep or pat of the hand. When shopping for colors make sure to get one that is non-toxic and all natural. Trust, you will get it in your mouth or up your nose at some point!

Woman dancing at UC Berkeley Holi festWhen dressing for Holi try to wear all white, so the colors will stand out on your clothes. In a sea of color splatters, the white spots on clothes stand out, begging to be marked.

There are only a handful of parking spots;  most of the students walked from campus.

Some people bring squirt guns and water balloons. At UC Berkeley’s Holi most of the water play was in one area, so you could avoid it if you don’t like that aspect.

 History of Holi

crowd dancing at UC Berkley Holi festivalHoli Festival goes back to at least the fourth century. The word “Holi” hails from the demon Holika.  The myth goes that Holika pulled a loyal Hindu into a bonfire while wearing her magic, fire-resistant coat. But Vishu saw and magically switched the coat to the loyal fellow, causing Holika to perish instead. Thus the Holi festival is a celebration of good defeating evil, similar to many other Springtime traditions that celebrate survival of winter.

Because of this Holi festivals often have a bonfire. Some say that the tradition of throwing colors comes from putting ash on the face in remembrance of the defeat of Holika.

Holi is the celebration of amnesty and renewal. Old debts are forgiven, others are paid. It is a day of cleansing oneself of regret and staring anew. In this way, though the calendar doesn’t change, it is similar to the American tradition of New Years’ Eve, but a lot more colorful.

A stranger and I toss color onto another stranger at Holi
A stranger and I toss color onto another stranger.

Check out Holi next April and join in the camaraderie. It’s a great way to talk to strangers. You are supposed to throw color on everyone, stranger and friend alike. This is the best part of Holi: walking up to someone you don’t know and having a brightly-colored laugh together.

Acrobats Perform Aerial Show Off of Berkeley Sather Clocktower

This is the Sather Tower, the best known landmark of UC Berkeley…probably the most recognizable building in all of Berkeley. It is one of the few landmarks in the East Bay you can recognize from most vistas in San Francisco.

Today the Sather Clock Tower (also known as the Campanile) turned 100. The Berkeley Clock Tower is the third tallest tower in the world (correction: third tallest university clock tower).

Campanile (Sather Tower) on its centennial

Did you notice the tiny yellow and orange dots at the top there? Those are people. Let’s get a little closer.

bandaloop aerial show campanile 100

They’re acrobats. BANDALOOP do vertical dances hanging from the sides of buildings. Today they performed to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Campanile.

They started on the hour, so the dance was preceded by the sounds of the grand carillon of bells from the clock tower. It was a beautiful day, typical of the Bay Area. Hot and bright enough to burn you in the sun, surprisingly chilly inches away in the shade. We sat in the sun.

It was a solemn dance to music slow enough that the dancers seemed to flow. Like kites.

When they repel off the building, I wonder how hard they land. When they touched brick, sometimes they’d steady themselves, as if from a jolt. But only for a second, and they they’d leap off again, full of grace.

As BANDALOOP danced they’d gradually lower down their ropes, the song ending as they reached the bottom. I imagine they must choose music and choreography, in part, based on the height of the tower they are performing on.

 

BANDALOOP dancer standing on Sather tower holds another dancer in a handstand against a solid blue sky. The Berkeley clock tower is not empty.

Not by a long shot.

It is filled with fossils.

Twenty tons of fossils.

You think I’m writing some kind of poem here, but no.

I mean this literally. There are 300,000 pieces on five levels within the tower.

Hauled out of the La Brea tar pits, the fossils have been at the Campanile since 1913.

Maybe that’s not relevant to this story.

Or maybe it means something that they do their perilous dance over a building filled with death.

They also did a jaunty swing number. The big band music piped through the speakers was impressively balanced: full, but not too loud. The fast pace was a nice contrast from the other song.

 

Just like swing dancers.  In fact, looking at these pictures, it’s easy to forget they’re not only dancing. But for the rope, it’s easy to think perhaps we’re looking down on ordinary dancers from above.

So we zoom out.

aerial swing dancers on the Campanileaerial swing dancers on the Campanile

 

aerial swing dancers on the Campanile

Did you know Carillonists play the clock tower bells with their feet as well as with their hands? It’s true.

Just one more photo of the aerial show.

Maybe this is off topic (again), but this morning I read a news story that declared the three worst places for renters are in the Bay Area. Oddly, instead of thinking, “gee, I should move,” I thought, “I hope other people see this and decide to move so the price of rent will go down.” I’m hooked on this place.

Maybe it’s not pertinent. But I see something like this, on a perfect day like today, and it feels all kinds of relevant.

aerial swing dancers on the Campanile

Check Out My Guest Posts on Learn HTML With Song

A cool new site just launched all about producing educational coding music videos. The idea is that if you’re going to get a catchy song stuck in your head, why not have those lyrics teach you HTML, the language of the web?

It’s called Learn HTML With Song, and it’s made by a San Francisco coder, Diane Presler, with more than 20 years experience as an HTML teacher. Here’s an example of one of their videos. Continue reading Check Out My Guest Posts on Learn HTML With Song

Decompression San Francisco 2014

Decompression is a street festival celebrating the return of Burning Man participants.  It’s a way for those who’ve returned from the Playa to get one last whiff of that Burning Man magic while giving tourists a chance to see some of the art, mutant vehicles and outfits still freshly covered in dust.

I’ve attended Decompression for years now, but it was my first time going after my freshman year as a burner. I found myself seeking people who’ve been there, not because I wanted to be exclusionary. I’d arrived several hours before my friends, which meant approaching strangers. It was easier to approach burners because I knew they would be likely to practice the principle of radical inclusion. I met some beautiful people in any case.

Below are some of my favorites moments.

The San Francisco Mission Brass Band

I’ve seen these guys around San Francisco and they always get people dancing. When they began playing in the park, I followed them. It reminded me of a miniature version of the way burners will follow the best DJed art cars around the playa, circling them and creating an impromptu dancefloor.

 Beautiful Burners

Some of the many beautiful people showing off their radical self-expression at Decompression. You may think of these as costumes, but I prefer to think of them as outfits. One of the principles is radical self-expression, so we are encouraged to wear clothes that stand out, rather than fit in. They only way to truly fit in at a burner event is to dress in a way that’s not quite like anyone else.

 Black Rock Roller Disco

One of many things I wanted to try out at Burning Man (but didn’t find the time) is the Black Rock Roller Disco. I was so happy they were at Decompression. There were some amazing skaters there, doing coordinated dances. After I got on the skates myself and realized how uneven the asphalt is, I was doubly impressed.

My Future Best Friends Will Be Good Dancers

I saw these dancers and they were so good that watching them made me want to dance too. So I told them and they welcomed me into their circle until my camp arrived. They were the members of Future Best Friends Camp. They gave me a necklace and made me promise to give it to my BFF. It was nice to see a camp still giving playa gifts (I brought fingerlights to give away). When I make it back to the playa, I will be sure to visit their camp. Who knows? Maybe a future best friend is there.

Art and Other Ephemera at Decompression

At every Burning Man event, there will be art that lights up and museum-worthy mutant vehicles playing music.

Hope to see you there next year!

A Walk in Oakland

Small Bits of Beauty Between Temescal and West Oakland

My friend Jennifer has a tumblog, Mission Walks, where she chronicles the stuff she sees when she walks her dog (Poe) through the Mission. One thing I love about her blog is the spontaneity. It’s not that she sees the most interesting things you’ll find in the city. Instead each small item captures the weird and random detritus of a bustling metropolitan ecosystem. Maybe you didn’t know, but I too have a Bay Area tumblr blog wherein I strive to take a photograph of everything I see that makes me excited to live in the San Francisco Bay area. Sometimes I feel like the photographs I take on my own tumblog can’t capture how amazing NorCal is because each photo of each item is isolated. The odd things I find could be miles and weeks apart. But they’re not. Today on my walk to the post office and I decided to document all the little things. Many of these things aren’t spectacular on their own, but together these tiny things fill my world with joy on a daily basis.

vine grows on a wall in Oakland
Near where Shattuck meets Tele

For example, I was pleased by how thick and strong this vine was (just South of the post office near 51st and Shattuck). It was so thick I imagined a skinny girl could climb right up the wall. Is this worth photographing? Probably not, but seeing this lush vine made me one point happier. The vine was enough, but I was equally amused that this tightly entrenched plant, which basically covered the majority of the building, was not on the hallowed brick halls of a fraternity house, but on the side of a parking garage. A FREAKING PARKING GARAGE. I can tell you, in Florida they don’t grow vines on the side of parking garages. I don’t know why. But California is relentlessly verdant. The Berkeley Wal-Greens actually has a green wall, because it too is covered in vines. Passion flowers, their odd stamen waggling like the antennae on an alien specie, frequently grow on the wire fences of parking lots. Few people keep lawns; you’re more likely to see an abandoned garden that’s continued to thrive and is slowly taking over the property.

A short walk in Oakland will reveal attention to beauty. When I reach the post office, there’s a small shady bench surrounded by mosaics tucked away behind an otherwise generic shopping plaza. On the way back I pass the huge building that the owner allowed muralists to cover.  There’s graffiti and sticker art everywhere. All of these things were created by fellow humans, expressing themselves. The city itself is speaking to me, through the voice of its art, from the writing in the sidewalk to the architecture.

My desire to capture the random awesome of an Oakland walk started with this truck. The art on the truck isn’t outstanding compared to some of the paint you see in Oakland, but I was intrigued by the random WTFness of the artist’s placement of the ice cream cone.

painted truck seen on a walk in Oakland Caption: The art on the truck is not the only random thing in this picture.
The art on the truck is not the only random thing in this picture.

Though I like the quick and dirty nature of this graffiti (in style, it reminds me a bit of Josh Petker), there’s tons of great street art in Oakland so normally it wouldn’t make the cut of stuff I’d blog about. But there’s something else going on in this moment, and it’s that for no explainable reason there’s a toy rabbit chilling on the ledge of the truck.

The next thing I spot that’s photo-worthy is this art car. By far not the most elaborate art car I’ve seen around here, but really a car that’s been used as a canvas is a rare enough thing in the rest of the US that any art car is worth noting. The hood of the car had a painting of Munsch’s The Scream (sorry bad photo doesn’t do it justice…too much sunshine).

But here’s the thing. You might think this random bit of awesome was several blocks from the previous one…but in fact that truck you can see in the second picture is the same one with the beanie baby and the ice cream king. And when I look up in the distance, I get the Oakland hills.

The Oakland hills looking East from near Telegraph Ave
Any given glance North or East will give you a view like this.

Again, this isn’t a breathtaking view that you would download and set as the background on your desktop. But it is quite nice. So this is one sweeping moment in Oakland: two very different kinds of street art and lush vistas in the distance. Here are some of the houses I passed on my walk, which Map My Walk tells me was .88 miles.

With the fancy houses and artsy cars and hella hills and beanie babies, life is feeling good. Like Alice in Wonderland, Oakland is a Fairyland of whimsy. Curious and curiouser… But what’s this? While standing across the street from the second house, I realize someone has left a note wedged to a telephone pole. Remember how exciting it was in grade school to get the opportunity to read a note someone meant to pass along to another classmate? This is like that. It’s exactly how the protagonist of To Kill A Mockingbird would hide notes in the hollow of a tree, if Scout Finch were older and maybe a homeless junkie.

Of course I read it. Most of it contained professions of love, written in handwriting I’d associate with a thirteen year-old girl. The rest of the note indicates that she is going to purchase some entertainment for the evening, and has already acquired an evening coat appropriate to the occasion. Ah the rumblings of sweet love. How she woos!

Note stuck to telephone pole
Not for my eyes, but I read it anyway

 

Private note reads "Bought you a jacket already I'm still going to buy some speed. =)"
“Bought you a jacket already! I’m still going to buy some speed!” To be fair, the rest of the note was very romantic.

OK, I admit that maybe this note is an example of the kind of thing that drives the baby-mamas to live in Berkeley and shout “NIMBY!” And true, this isn’t thought of as a “good” neighborhood. I think of the miles upon miles of boring, good neighborhoods in the monoculture where I grew up, and tiny bits of beauty like this were few and far between. It’s worth mentioning that even when Oakland is filthy, on the same streets with the soiled condoms and the broken glass, there is so much culture and beauty.

San Francisco Pride 2014 Photos

Photos from San Francisco Pride, Sunday. We started out at the Indie Oasis stage, because some of our favorite San Francisco DJs were working that stage: A Plus D of Bootie and the couple who DJ’s Fringe in the Haight. Unfortunately, they were blowing out the speakers in order to compete with the nonstop spectacle in every direction, so every song sounded terrible. After hanging out there for way too long, we found another stage that was thoroughly delightful. We danced through to the last song.

I like candid shots, so most of these aren’t posed. I also like to take photos of some of the people who aren’t getting as much attention as seven-foot drag queens in mirrorball leisure suits, etc. Which is to say, this collection of photos in no way captures the bounty of glitter, feathers, and gender-fucked awesome sauce that is the San Francisco Pride. Nor can my camera capture the perfect summer sunshine and cool Bay breezes or the camaraderie strangers found dancing together. It’s just a sample of the few of the things I enjoyed in our one little corner of the SF Pride festival.

Were you looking for more substantive social analysis of queerness in our times? Check out last year’s article on why I prefer the word “queer.”

Click on any photo to engage the slideshow and read the captions.

 

Year of the Horse

Happy Neigh Year!

OK, I stole that pun off the Internetz. I also heard from that same dubious source that the year of the fire horse in ancient China families would kill their baby girls, because a fire horse woman would be too powerful. Even as late as the 1960s the abortion rate went up in the year of the fire horse. But this is the year of the wooden horse, so all your babies are safe I suppose.

I happened to be in Nobb Hill during the final day of the Chinese New Year Parade. I made sure to head down hill to Chinatown to catch San Franciscans ringing in the year of the horse. Firecrackers for everyone! Continue reading Year of the Horse

Sneak a Listen at 826 Valencia Benefit Album Tracklist

This photo is from the pirate store at 826 Valencia St. in San Francisco. They have drawers full of swarthy things, a small theater that faces an aquarium, and a trap door that I can reveal no more about. They sell practical seafaring goods like sypglasses, powder horns, mermaid bait, etc., in order to fund the after-school writing program that meets there daily. The pirate store and writing center was designed by the same folks who make McSweeney’s, which is to poetry what Apple is computers, so you know it’s done with style. This enormously successful non-profit founded by Dave Eggars has gone on to birth other 826 after-school programs around the country. But each has their own focus: New York has a shop for superheros, the Seattle shop is for space travellers, Chicago’s “Boring Store” is secretly an undercover secret agent supply store. But all of them are a space for professional writers working one-on-one with local kids.

Now that you know how marvelous 826 Valencia is, you can bet that when they put out a benefit album, it’s going to feature a bunch of music that you’ll want to get your hands on.

826 valencia benefit album conver you be my heart

The album is called You Be My Heart and it features The Cloud Room, Melissa Nadler, Bowerbirds, Maps & Atlases and more. Here’s a taste.

The track Mrs. Marquis de Sade from The Cloud Room has an early-nineties jangly vibe.

The Bowerbirds track begins “I’ve seen seven wonders but two were your eyes” and has a lovely keyboard melody.

You’ll be able to buy your own copy of You Be My Heart on December 9th. If you want to know more about 826 Valencia, Dave Eggars’s TED Talk about it is a good start.

 

Father John Misty at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park

About an hour ago Father John Misty, whom some of you better know as J Tillman of Fleet Foxes, played a free show at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.

father john misty (J Tillman) golden gate park hsbg13
Father John Misty in Golden Gate Park

Continue reading Father John Misty at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park

Fake Blood and Alex Metric

Sadly I wasn’t able to get tickets to the Bag Raiders, Classixx and RAC show a few weeks back. So I’ve picked up tickets to Fake Blood an Alex Metric as a consolation prize. And as consolation prizes go, it’s sure to be better than a red ribbon.

Fake Blood plays the Mezzanine tonight
Fake Blood

Fake Blood

While last month’s featured DJs are known for dreamy remixes heavy on synth, Fake Blood builds bangers. Continue reading Fake Blood and Alex Metric