California Uber Alles

In the background of my brain there's a channel playing and it's about a vanity plate.

Had this idea on the way to work this morning as the song ripped through my headphones.

I love the smell of punk rock in the morning.

Tunnel Vision

Guy: Do you know what CB2 is?

Lou: A designer drug. Why?

Guy: HA. That's 2CB. No, the offshoot of Crate and Barrel.

Lou: HA! Oops.

"I am more punk rock than anyone else I've met in my life"

There is much to learn from the youth. Like lying in libraries doesn't count, and fascists are a cult religion that The Man belongs to.

thanks to alien laine for this bit of inspiro.

"It does not suck to be us"

Ever felt rich?

I grew up in a family that never didn’t have a teeny tiny budget only for “necessities.”

Necessities did not include beautifully made hand-forged oxidized outdoor furniture or gigantic brightly-colored market umbrellas in multiples or 800-gram poolside towels that were stored in a redwood trunk behind controls for a massive pool/spa in the backyard. Necessities did not include thick foam pool floats in a black-bottom pool or a cocktail cart or an arbor covered in grapevines that dripped big bunches of cabernet.

My friend whose family owns a prominent Napa Valley Winery did not have to worry about saving for necessities, however. Nope, she had all of those wonderful things, and she shared.

Every time my group of high school girlfriends and I would gather at her home, we would say the same thing after sitting down and inhaling the first scent of an oversized glass of sauvignon blanc, “It does not suck to be us.” 

We never took it for granted. Relaxing in a bathing suit with said towel fallen off our shoulders and bunched around our waists, with healthy tans and crazy swimming pool hair we sat and watched the sun set directly over the valley from our place in the middle of it, a group of cage-free teenagers amongst thousands of grapevines.

It did not suck.

Waking up leisurely after a big overnight party, each of us emerging from a different bedroom. The walk down the stairs of her geodesic dome with a two-story ceiling. The coffee already made. The two extra-long extra-wide burnished leather sofas facing each other, flanked by white Wassily chairs. The five pugs snorting and drooling balls of spit while cuddled up on the sofas in the crooks of my friends’ folded legs. The blurry eyes, the bathrobes, the slow wake-up of the extremely fortunate.

Yeah, it didn’t suck.

I grew up in a painfully frugal family but my friend showed me more. She shared her life, her home, dinners with her family, her dogs, her world and I’m grateful.

She gave me a glimpse of how it feels to be rich, and it’s beautiful.

Pillow Map

Ever notice that your pillow sometimes feels like small boulders, or a plane of cement?

On this particular morning,  I awoke to find that the ultimate pillow placement with the perfect face cove had been achieved at some point that night.

There is only one way to be sure of its replication.

Map.

PJ & Nick

They fell in love during the making of this video.

And other real-life stories behind 10 famous love songs here.

42 Belvedere, San Francisco, CA 94117

Prologue
It was 20 years ago this month that I met a young man named Moody. I had no idea that he would figure so prominently in my world from there on out. No idea that he would provide for me wonderful friends – an entire crew of subversive types engaged in every kind of career. They were lawyers and pharmacists and cab drivers, teachers and actors and programmers. I certainly had no idea that he would introduce to me the girl who would become my life-long best friend and partner in crime.

42 Belvedere
I found the ad in a big blue binder at Roommate Referral, a service bureau with a small office located on Carl at Haight. The year was 1992, five years before the Internet and Craigslist (first called List Foundation). Roommate Referral gave people looking for roommates a questionnaire to fill out. The questions were like, Smoking or non? Male, female, either? 20s, 30s, 40s? I was most interested in a home in the Haight that allowed smoking, and that's about it.

The ad read Michelle – 27, Tony – 28 and Peter – 32, Upper Haight, looking for a roommate interested in film, art, music and hairball living. 4 bedrooms, one split bath. Smoking.

I called.

When I went to interview I took my friend, Jenny. We rang the bell. The iron chime was misshapen from years of city wear. A curly-haired boy answered the door. He was jovial, friendly and excitable. He took us up an impossibly tall staircase leading to the third floor flat. 42 Belvedere is in a classic Victorian building. The staircase had elaborate wainscoting and postcards decorating every inch of wall, each neatly attached with tape, and numbering in the hundreds. They came from all over the world, with images and artwork reflecting the graphics of the time, each one sent to Peter – 32. These stairs only curved once, and at that landing stood a partially dressed female mannequin with blue hair, t-strap sandals and sunglasses from the Glitter Rock era. The stairs continued just a bit from there, depositing you at the intersection of Bedroom One and the fainting room. Tony – 28 slept there. Michelle – 27 slept in Bedroom One, a real beauty with deep crown molding and a fireplace. The next room would be mine, a regular-sized space with two big windows and ornate molding. A small closet faced the door from across the room. The walls were painted peach. 

Pushing further down the still-postcard-covered 12' walls, we came to a split bathroom; shower room first, with sink, then toilet room. Also classic Vic. At the end of the hallway there was a Y. To the left was the kitchen. I thought the postcards and the mannequin were impressive, but it turned out they were just a sampler plate of what was coming. 

The kitchen was painted stark white and was covered – 270 degrees of wall and ceiling space – with large patches of long-pile black fun fur. The design gave new meaning to "cow kitchen" and how to effectively decorate with black and white. Off a small window at the back a suction-cupped barbie bust jutted out at a 90 degree angle, like someone stuck her there during a party and no one took her down. 42 Belvedere was absurd and I loved it. A small table and chairs were provided along with a pantry, fridge, stove, sink and back door at the opposite end. A house phone hung on the wall: 864-8374. On the answering machine, Peter could be heard leaving his pager number in case of emergencies.

The living room, off to the right, had the coolest miss-matched furniture. It can be expected that there will be miss-matched furniture in a roommate house, bits and pieces left behind over the years. But this shit had style and innovation. A curving '50s sofa in purple Jacquard. A large drum used as a side table next to a red leather recliner.  A kidney bean-shaped coffee table, a relic from the '60s. Built-in bookshelves with leaded glass doors that held a record player and a large assortment of 12-inch vinyl in alphabetical order. A large bay window. A box beam ceiling. A fireplace out of commission…with a mantel that could only be described as a visual gift. Atop it stood a dried blowfish that had been repurposed as an ambient lamp, a red lava lamp and an accordion frame containing two photos. On the right was Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia from the Brady Bunch. It was signed to Peter – 32. On the left was Maxwell Smart, from Get Smart! signed to his grandson, Tony – 28. A bar stood in the corner. It was made of painted particle board built around a large fish tank. Nothing-special-fish darted here and there inside. A light illuminated the scene. Above the bar was a Moroccan lamp made of punched metal and on the walls were various odd paintings. Behind the bar was a small trampoline, used to shake martinis. The wainscoting circling the room up high was deep enough to act as a ledge. On top of it, all evenly spaced, were a dozen gleaming silver shower heads.

At the far end of the living room was Peter – 32's room. He was the house boss, having lived there for a decade already. This made our individual rents super cheap. The room I was interviewing for cost $300 a month. 

The back door in the kitchen led to a rickety staircase with a hundred layers of paint showing through its cracks. Tony – 28 was speaking of a Russian doghouse and a putt-putt golf course. When we reached the top, nothing else could describe what I was seeing. There before us was a papier mache and chicken wire-constructed doghouse with spires and onion domes, standing about three feet high. Astro turf covered the surface of the roof; planters and pots devoid of their foliage dotted the space around the epic scene. Tony – 28 explained the method behind this mad creativity. In 1967 Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fontaine, the famous Russian ballet dancers were caught in a police raid of a house party here. Pot smoke was rampant and the cops started arresting. They ran to the roof to hide but were found. The next day the SF Chronicle ran a headline, "The Great Ballet Bust." 

"This is an homage to Rudolf and Margot," Tony – 28 waited for my reaction, laughing nervously. There was only one word: WOW.

Peter – 32 wasn't home for the interview. Tony – 28 apologized for him as he sat us down on the purple sofa. Michelle – 27 joined us. We chatted about me. Tony – 28 was really excited when I told him I worked at the Psychedelic Shop, a famous head shop downtown. "Free whippets!" he declared. We smoked pot out of a brass pipe decorated with fimo, and hung out for two hours. As the conversation wound down, Tony – 28 asked me to come back the next day to interview with Peter – 32, "He needs to meet you."

When we went back to my friend's house afterward, I asked her if she thought they would choose me. She told me sitting around chatting for two hours is not common, so yeah.

When I returned to meet with Peter – 32 the next day, we spent the interview talking about the Coppola family. He had worked for Francis as a PA. He was trying to get a location scout career going. I went to school with Sofia and knew something about film. We laughed and talked with forced speech, the way you do when nerves mix with abundant energy.

Then he mentioned how cool it is that I work at the Psychedelic Shop, "Free whippets!"

I was in.

This is my morning commute voice

Get your rickety green ass out of my face.

An old CRV pulls in front of me. I know she can’t see that she’s in my lane within inches of the front of my car because the lanes are not clearly marked. But she doesn’t try to fix it. I give her no mercy and ride her. “See me now? Can you see me now.” She looks like a Berkeley pussy with rusty car parts and a window that doesn’t work. She's wearing an apron with pockets full of dirt. She’s got a big haul of shit that’ll end up in her bathtub while she figures out what to do with it. There’s something that can be done. These things are totally fine. Barely used.

One thing I never see is a slow VW. They just don’t exist. Now, slow Porsches, plenty of those. They're precious little objects that no one can touch.

Oh nice, the big fat ass of a Toyota minivan right in front of my face. What makes you think you can handle the fast lane? What the fuck is wrong with your eyes?? It’s uphill and no minivan has any business being in it. Not even a Mercedes minivan, if you can believe they make them.

There is little as mean as my mind in the morning and I’m not going to pretend anything else.

Palazzo Chupi & Julian Snob-el

My love-hate affair with Julian Schnabel has just been refueled since learning of the existence of his stunning building in NYC, Palazzo Chupi.

Hate: His awful artwork that made him rich and famous. Even with a love for the extra-whack, I can find nothing in his paintings that can explain his success.

Love: His movie, Basquiat. It’s beautiful, different – just like its subject. From beginning to end, it entrances. Before Basquiat, I’d never heard of Jeffrey Wright. His performance is so real, I would have googled him immediately, except in 1996 – haha – google didn’t exist yet.



In Basquiat, Julian cast the intense Gary Oldman as himself. You see Gary swooping around a crazy-massive building with crazy-tall ceilings in a red silk robe. Julian’s actual daughter, Stella is in these scenes making it easy to imagine how life might actually be when this is your daddy...



 ...and this is your home.

Sick

My baby is sick. She gets ear infections, I never did, so it’s hard to imagine how it feels. Yesterday we had to take her to the doctor for the 4^th or 5^th time since early October. 

For the past couple of days she wraps her legs around my waist so she cannot be lowered into her crib, crying in pain as she is laid down. She has a look in her eyes of an old man who’s lost some of his faculties. The dark circles under her glossy eyes and a pale pallor seem to point to a dangerous illness. I race to the doctor’s office from work after Guy calls me, very worried. He’s been watching her all day. He’s nonchalant, so when I hear his concern, mine rockets to the moon.

She reaches for me immediately and clings like a little monkey when we meet at the doctor’s. The nurse retrieves us quickly. They need to weigh her, and she won’t allow herself to be lowered onto the scale. They have to tear my shirt out of her clenched fingers. She begins to cry. She turns red and looks devastated like her world just fell apart, as she reaches for me. It seems to take forever for the electronic scale to register her weight. She continues to reach for me the whole time, begging me with her eyes, “Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?”  The nurse tells me to stand behind her, a whole person away from my baby. With each passing second Rx looks more and more desperately into my eyes, tears running down her face. It becomes torture, it’s been at least 15 seconds. I don’t care what the nurse says. I repeat over and over, “I’m right here, sweetie, I’m right here.” I decide that weighing her right now is stupid and unnecessary. I wait one, two, three more seconds…they can’t stop me, I’m going to pick her up off the cold stainless steel machine. I go in closer and suspend my hand inches from hers, knowing any second the scale will register her weight – any second now – and I can plunge forward and grab her. Her hair is wet from tears when it ends and I pull her to me as she thrusts her head into my shoulder. 

I won’t let her go again.