I haven’t made a big deal out of my birthdays since my mother announced after my twelfth birthday party that there would be no more of them. I’d aged out. And nobody leaped into the breach. Not once since then has anyone thrown a birthday party for me. Not that I would have approved of […]

But maybe some whimpering. Faithful readers have perhaps noticed that I haven’t posted anything new in over a month. And fellow Bridge residents are now asking how I’m doing when they see me since they’ve seen so little of me recently. And close readers who look at my Production Reports will have observed that there’s […]

No, I’m not talking about the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, nor really about Vincent himself. Rather, it’s San Francisco’s “Immersive Van Gogh” show in the cavernous former home of Fillmore West. As befits the Fillmore, there is a musical accompaniment that draws from classical music through rock and roll, pausing briefly at “Non, Je […]

When I was an infant an aunt gave my mother a silver baby cup engraved with my initials, and Mother let me use it which left it banged up, teethed on, and thus all the more charming as a memento. So when my friends David and Sandy had their first kid, Casey, about 25 years […]

I started by tipping a full glass of Diet Dr Pepper onto the keyboard of my laptop. Ummm, make that into. Of course I snatched it up and turned it on its side; but, as expected, the lights went out. I’d bought the laptop to use as a travel computer, and it served that purpose […]

I’d have thought that the past week, considering the inauguration and all, would have been one during which four years of mounting stress would have dissipated into the ether. Well, no. It started when I went out on the Segway last week only to have the internal computer die six blocks from home in front […]

Here’s another post about someone who’s had a significant impact on my life. In 1984 when I was wasting my life in the limo business, my friend Al suggested to me that I apply for a tech writing job at the small computer company in Hayward named Qantel where he was a manager. I wouldn’t […]

The mountain came to Mohammed in the form of the Sky Star‘s arrival in San Francisco. It had previously been installed in Louisville, Norfolk, and Cincinnati, where it was wildly popular. It will stay here only a year, so go ahead and ride it. If you’re not here in SF, watch for it to arrive […]

Last week there was a minor ripple in the news and short articles in the NYT and elsewhere about the Justice Dept. not extending Jonathan Pollard’s travel restrictions. I was struck by one word common to these articles – “gave”.  They all said that Pollard “gave” classified information to Israel. Oh please. Pollard didn’t give […]

About thirty years ago there appeared on 24th Street a few doors east of Castro an enterprise known as Noe Valley Bakery. It flourished owing to the high quality of its baked goods; and I routinely bought the sublime asiago cheese bread, a delicious loaf with rich veins of cheese. And since I was in […]