They’re giving up some of the comfort of authority, is the first thing we’re noticing. Discarding Civics must speak to whatever lessons we take from the election, whether civics is dead now as a result, or whether the corpse was already stinking and elected Trump in its stench. If this is participating in democracy, then … Continue reading A review of some books left in a cardboard box on the street for anyone to take, and the zeitgeist of which it speaks →

“State scientists predict more than a foot of bay rise by 2050 and more than 6 feet by the end of the century in the worst-case scenario” but now there’s a PLAN.  “Many landlords now use a single company’s software — which uses an algorithm based on proprietary lease information — to help set rent … Continue reading Sunday Reading (Bay Area Edition) →

What does it do to one's sense of the world, of its potential and possibility, if the full content of the category of "the news" is death? I wandered over to KTVU, one of the local horrible TV channels owned by some horrible branch of the mouse, and an interesting thing about every single story … Continue reading Death is all the future holds is death →

It has been suggested within my earshot that lard is important for tamales, and that, perhaps, they don’t use enough lard “these days” in tamales. This was proposed as an explanation for why the tamales one purchases are often only adequate and no more: a time in the mythical past in which a general sufficiency … Continue reading A review of reading the opening of Yuri Herrera’s Season of the Swamp from the new location of East Bay Booksellers while eating holiday tamales at Cactus →

“In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry." Those are the first lines of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, a novel about a spirit that can’t decide if it wants … Continue reading Temescal Creek Park Review →

I saw this poster on the street, and aspirationally tweeted a photo of it because I wanted to go to it, wanted to do the bike ride from El Cerrito Bart to the Palestinian Holiday Crafts Bazaar in Berkeley. Every year I see signs for MECA’s holiday bazaar, and I think to myself “Oh, I … Continue reading Things that aren’t things, unless you say they are, and then they are: an overwrought ode to not going to a thing and then overwroughting it →

Yesterday, the venerable San Francisco Chronicle ran a story whose headline was “Bay Area tech giant reinstates free coffee for employees after mass layoffs.” Your reaction to that story interests me. This is the coffee I am drinking. I spilled a little of it. Mine was to question whether what I was reading was satire. … Continue reading There is nothing funny about free coffee →

There are playgrounds that feel managed, that give you the sense that someone in a uniform might sometimes swing by, that there’s a committee, a fund, or a person with a salary and maybe even a desk. There are playgrounds that should probably be a particular way, one feels, and if they aren’t, if something … Continue reading Dover Street Playground Review →

I went to Willard Park playground the dark night of the election, as the votes were being counted, as things were getting bad, but still hadn’t really gotten bad yet. I’m not sure why I picked that playground—I told the boys in the chat that I was trying to decide whether to spend that time … Continue reading Willard Park Playground Review →

(recent google street view of the park location, before it was quite a park yet) Huchiun Park is too new for google street view to give you any current images, or for its trees to give shade, though if you time it right, the adjacent apartment buildings will blot out the sun. Toddlers love the … Continue reading Huchiun Park Review →