Like Mommy

I hope you enjoy this little joke while I try to figure out what to post next.
Have a nice WE, everybody! :)


Rough translation for French speaking bloggers:

"Chère Mme. Jones:

Je tiens à expliquer le dessin de ma fille Sarah. Je ne suis pas danceuse dans un club, je suis vendeuse dans une quincaillerie. La semaine derniere, j'avais racconté à Sarah qu'après la derniere tempête de neige, nous avions été envahis de clients qui nous acheté toutes les pelles qui restaient dans le magasin, sauf une, oubliée dans un coin. Le dessin ne me represente PAS entrain de dancer autour d'un pole, mais avec la dernière pelle, alors que les gens se battaient pour l'acheter. Veuillez agreer, etc."

Street Artists

(Musician: Kippy Marks, Photographed at Powell BART station)

Walking around in the streets of the City will expose you to unlimited photo opportunities and surprises, some positive, some negative.

On the negative side, you will undoubtedly notice people sleeping in cardboxes, roaming around with nothing more than the clothes on their back and what they drag in front of them in a cart.

On the positive side, you may run into all kinds of musicians, street artists, or impromptu entertainment...

Blogger / photographer Brad Evans photographed another musician at that very same location. I highly recommend you check out the caption Brad wrote to go with the picture. It won't take any time at all to read, and just might make you feel really good inside! Sure worked for me! :)

Have a good week, everybody!

I left my heart in San Francisco

It is still raining on and off in the Bay Area, so I thought I'd post this photograph, taken a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco Union Square.

New heart sculptures have just been installed recently, presumably for the 4th annual fundraiser luncheon to benefit the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.

Not all heart sculptures are created equal, I suppose, and strictly visually speaking, some are clearly more appealing than others, but personally I always thought they were kind of cool.

Wanna see more heart sculptures? Click here.

Keeping it Simple on Valentine Day

Somebody complained that I did not acknowledge Valentine Day, so here you go.

I was going to write an elaborate post about the things and people we love, even started taking various pictures and everything, but the best laid plans sometimes go awry and I ended up having to spend the week-end away from the computer (which isn't really a bad thing).

This booth (photograph above), located across the Bank of America building in SF, has been empty for the past year or so. It used to house a flower shop, but when the price of flowers went up too much, people stopped buying and the guy had to close shop.

Early on Friday morning, this lady in the red coat showed up with a stack of interesting-looking chocolate boxes and people lined up to buy them for Valentine's Day. This morning, she was gone, and the booth is now empty again.



I always thought Valentine Day was something mostly very young people care about, and/or something that couples or wannabe-couples celebrate in private, with each other... you know, they go out to restaurants, sometimes proposed to each other, sometimes fight...

So I was a little surprised when perfect strangers (people in stores, or in the street) wished me a happy Valentine Day, as if it was an accepted legal holiday. Not that I mind exactly, but what's up with that?!

What about you, did you do anything special for V-Day?
Do you feel that Valentine Day is yet another Hallmark holiday blown out of proportion, or the most romantic day in the year?
Better yet, what was your most memorable Valentine Day?
(Er... keep it clean, uh? ;) :D

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By the way, those of you with Facebook accounts, might be interested in this article in the paper this morning.

Ordinary Day in the City by the Bay

From time to time I get email from young people in France, asking me general information about "what it's like to live in the States."

Some of the emails range from the very vague and impossible to respond to "Tell me all about your life in the States" to the highly specific "I will be in San Francisco shortly and need driving directions from my hotel on X street to the Coit Tower" (not making it up).

As far as I can tell from these emails, the expectations for a better life here are always very high, and somewhat unrealistic.

I hate to disappoint you, people, but most of us around here lead hurried, pretty stressed, ordinary lives, just like most working class people in cities all over the world.

You get up in the morning, go to work, and come back tired at the end of the day, too tired, usually, to do anything else, and the next day you do it all over again.

Don't let the romanticsm associated with San Francisco, or the extraordinary landscape, or all the fun pictures you see posted on expat blogs fool you. In reality, most of us lead pretty ordinary, uneventful lives.