For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘If I remember right, the beagle was very upset that we moved down the hall to my roommate David’s new apartment for the week before we departed for Michigan. He sulked under my bed when we got there and subsequently got himself stuck and had to be extricated …

‘Pouting

‘‘Mad beagle. Stuck under bed.

‘

‘—Posted by Steve at 00:24 | 09-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Many mega-dittoes from me on this one …

‘Things I’ll miss (not)

‘Within the space of fifteen minutes just after 7:30 on Monday morning, within a block of the center of the Financial District, I passed by an older bearded man in rags pulling down his trousers and shouting at bystanders for refusing to look at him; another somewhat younger man standing on the corner hawking Street Sheets and imploring people to give rather than receive; and a squalid lump of human stench squatting on one of the Market Street sitting blocks (I don’t know what else to call them; they aren’t benches, they aren’t planters) a block away from that, his belongings in a discolored heap inside, on top of, and overflowing a stolen shopping cart next to him.

‘I don’t know what the solutions to homelessness are. I don’t know that anybody does, especially not the politicians. I don’t think the homeless should be shipped out of town like many San Franciscans do. I also don’t think they are served by wandering the streets. All I do know is that I won’t miss the spectacle in my face every single day, and that there but for the grace of the universe go I.

‘—Posted by Frank at 14:33:27 | 8-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Well, it looks like this one saw me full of anxieties about leaving San Francisco for Ann Arbor:

‘Overwhelmed

‘Scenes from a farewell dinner for Frank with his colleagues

‘

‘

‘A lovely scene tonight as Frank’s co-workers treated him to a delicious pizza dinner and cake to say farewell. They’re a wonderful set of people, gracious and unpretentious and the evening was quite enjoyable. I was a bit too tired to fully enjoy it, I’m embarassed to admit, but it was both touching and bittersweet and yet another goodbye-to-San-Francisco moment. Many thanks to Mabel for hosting the event and doing such a fabulous job with preparing delicious food for us.

‘And then I came home. And here we have it … that overwhelmed feeling that hits every move. Overwhelmed by the sheer physical task ahead of me … moving all I own down to a truck to be driven across the bay and loaded onto a trailer for cross-country transport. Then unloading everything into the new home.

‘I’m not really that great with adaptation. Never has been my strong suit. As a matter of fact, it’s my old nemesis. And this is the beginning of that bugaboo.

‘And as my old nemesis, it’s a very familiar feeling. One which I know I will have and one which I know what it will feel like and one which I know how to fight and one which, thank goodness, I know will not last long.

‘I guess tonight’s problem is simply fatigue. I’ve been packing an entire two-bedroom apartment, throwing things away, scrounging boxes, running all the myriad errands all over town, handling all the logistics of finding an apartment, closing out the old one, switching off utilities here and turning them on there, another ‘plane trip to Detroit, job interviews, handling the last-minute and therefore urgent needs of my three clients, comforting the dog, packing up my fleet of airliner models, arranging moving trucks and trailers, saying goodbyes, traipsing around all over the bay area for final look-sees, last visits to the doctor (good news there … my health is excellent), mourning the imminent absence of the great and wonderful San Francisco fog from my life, finding another auto insurance carrier after GEICO wanted to increase my six-month premium from $638 to $2,594 (!), putting a new spare tire on the Jeep, inspecting it, changing its oil, washing it and lubing it and cleaning it out, reassuring friends and relatives and explaining why-oh-why, spackling nail holes in the walls, cleaning the grill and scrubbing the balcony, cleaning, arranging, numbering boxes, painting the rust spots in my medicine chest, final vet visits for a very discombobulated beagle, who knows exactly what’s going on (he’s done this 14 times before in a mere nine years of his life), and comforting said beagle by giving lots of snuggle hugs and assuring him that his own private patch of ivy awaits him out his back door, that there will be plenty of snow to romp about on in just about 3.5 short months and that yes, indeedy, he’s going to just love Michigan.

‘Which is pretty much where I am. I’m looking forward to the trip. I’m looking forward to the beginning of a new life in a new city with Frank. The townhouse we’ve rented is fabulous … in other words, it’s all good. I’m particularly excited to take in Yosemite again, and the new (to me) country up and over to Lee Vining, down to Bishop and Vegas and joining the Mother Road at Kingman.

‘I can’t wait to see my native state again. From border to border, New Mexico makes my soul and spirit resonate … it vibrates in me with a hum and excitement … it revives a connection that has been there since birth. I can honestly say that, as far around the world as I’ve travelled, few (if any) places on the plant make me as truly happy as the Land of Enchantment makes me.

‘I’ll also enjoy showing Frank, I-40 virgin, what America is really like … that it’s not George W. Bush’s Amurrica, that it is, in fact, a vast and exciting and varied and colorful and wonderful place … peopled with the occasional fascist nut, but , hey, no place is perfect, right? Keep the radio off the AM dial and stop and take plenty of pics and … enjoy … the experience. A New Mexico sunset. The cool piney altitude of Flagstaff. The folks of Oklahoma. The Lisa Marie, Elvis’ DC-8, sitting in a park at Graceland. The Ryman Auditorium. And so on. The trip will be simply fabulous, as will the commencement of our new lives in a new city, state, time zone and mentality. It’s all good.

‘It’s just that here at 11:45 p.m. on the last night before the deluge, I have to rearrange all the boxes and furniture, load up the kitchen stuff, pack the fragile pics and posters, disconnect a huge home theater system and 46-inch TV … and make changes to a project for a client and start another one for her, pick up moving equipment at U-Haul, wait on a glass company to fix a chip on the windshield of the Jeep, meet with a client and then start hauling everything down the hall to our one-week temporary apartment.

‘It’s a long, exhausting, sometimes nightmarish thing, is moving. I have to say that this one, other than the physical demands on me, is turning out to be less problematic than the other 15 I’ve done myself since April 1994.

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Until I’m standing underneath a waterfall in Yosemite and then crossing the Nevada border a few hours later, it will be hard to believe it’s going to happen.

‘And yet, two weeks from right now, we should be sleeping in … Oklahoma City, OK. Whaddya know?

‘Good night, ya’ll.

‘—Posted by Steve at 03:12 | 05-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘I have to admit to being a snob here; I always preferred SF to Oakland, which never really grew on me, its storied past notwithstanding …

‘A note about Oakland

‘It may seem that I’m dissing Oakland by writing about things I’ll miss about the Bay Area (and concentrating most of them on San Francisco). I’m not dissing Oakland, but I’m not fully embracing it, either.

‘I live in Oakland much of the week, and there are things I love about it—its sprawling hugeness, its rolling hills, its vast parks, its hidden neighborhoods, its insistent heterogeneity, its stubborn retention of a certain working-class scarppiness in spite of all of Jerry Brown and Jacques Barzaghi’s efforts to domesticate it. (There are also things I don’t like so much about Oakland, but this post isn’t about dissing Oakland.)

‘But I don’t have a car (right now), and to properly love Oakland you have to have one, without a doubt. To properly love San Francisco all you need are a MUNI pass and two feet.

‘—Posted by Frank at 08:50:09 | 4-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Fog. Oh, the fog. Yes, indeedy, god knows I do miss that …

‘Things I’ll miss, #8

‘The fog. It doesn’t come in on “little cat feet,” as in the Carl Sandburg poem. It comes in like a crushing Genghis Khan army.

‘Friday night as I was on my way to Base Airbeagle, I walked along Kirkham and up the hill on Locksley—and the fog was so thick, it was exhilarating. You could see maybe ten yards in any direction, tops. The fog rolled over the neighborhood like a massive gray carpet being shaken by a giant pair of hands. The mist crashed against your face, driven by the wind. This wasn’t Cornwall or the Cotswolds, it was the Inner Sunset.

‘When I first looked for apartments in San Francisco, it was in the Inner and Outer Sunset that I looked, and I hesitated because I found the fog irritating, depressing, and forbidding. Now, I can’t think of any feature of San Francisco that I’ll miss more—and that I have already missed more living most of my week in Oakland.

‘—Posted by Frank at 08:40:29 | 4-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘I do miss the ease of BART … no cars, no traffic, you can sleep or read the paper or cruise hot guys, er, I mean, relax on the way to Oakland …

‘Things I’ll miss, #7

‘BART. It’s frequently overcrowded, more than often delayed by mechanical problems, it’s somewhat scary late at night, and it’s damn expensive. But if you’re trying to get around the Bay Area (or many parts of it) without a car, it’s indispensable.

‘And on a day like today, when it’s not too packed, when you don’t have to be any particular place at any particular time, and you’re not short on change, it’s a fun ride. You can fall asleep. You can peoplewatch. You can get reading done. And if you’re in a contemplative mood, there’s nothing more conducive to brainstorming or daydreaming than staring out the big windows as the train hurtles along the track and you watch the warehouses and the clotheslines and the churches and (in the distance) the hills glide past.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:54:01 | 3-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘The stairway walks are fabulous, but they totally kick your ass …

‘Things I’ll miss, #6

‘Stairway walks. San Francisco has more than 350 stairways, some of them obvious landmarks like the Lyon Steps, some of them completely hidden discoveries, like the series of stairs that winds through the neighborhoods above Castro and 17th Street, or the amazing convoluted stairway walk through the parkland at the edge of Glen Canyon Park that starts at Portola Drive and ends by dropping you out into Glen Park. You feel like you’re in an entirely separate landscape, bucolic and almost completely divorced from the general tumult of the urban cage that San Francisco can be.

‘I discovered these walks through my friend Steve C., who had a well-worn copy of Adah Bakalinsky’s Stairway Walks in San Francisco when he lived here. We both took the walks, individually and separately, and for me, the walks were a great form of exercise, a great way to do some weekend socializing, a kind of permissible semi-voyeurism (some of the stairs wend through some semi-private nooks of the city that most people wouldn’t bother searching out), and, of course, a great way to see the City.

‘One big regret I have is that I never took the long city-wide walk that Bakalinsky outlined. Another is that I didn’t do all of the walks.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:37:09 | 2-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Mitchell’s is pretty fabulous and we haven’t really found anything to equal it around AA, as of yet. Anyone have suggestions?

‘Things I’ll miss, #5

‘Mitchell’s Ice Cream. I had tasted Mitchell’s but today was the first time I’d actually been to the store, a cramped hole in the wall on a non-descript block on the edge of Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. Waiting in line was not my favorite thing: it had been a hot August day, and people were crowding around the door impatiently waiting to get their ice cream fix (and boy, do people get persnickety and weird about ice cream). Fortunately, the place has a strictly enforced take-a-number system that makes the line less of a nightmare; all you do is pick your number and wait (and wait, and wait). And the help behind the counter are polite, patient, and speedy, not surly and nasty like a lot of San Francisco service workers. And of course, there’s the payoff: possibly the best ice cream you’ll ever eat.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:19:15 | 2-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Oh yeah, I remember views. Unlike here in pancake country …

‘Things I’ll miss, #4

‘The views. There are spectacular views in San Francisco that you won’t see anywhere else in the world. This is true of many places, of course; but those places aren’t San Francisco, with its unique combination of maze-like neighborhoods, its myriad (actually, 42, if you’re counting) hills, and its unparalleled landmarks.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:07:33 | 02-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet. An extra note on this one: It’s especially sad to see how many of these bookstores no longer exist.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘I have to say that there are fabulous book stores around Ann Arbor, so I don’t miss these probably as much as Frank …

‘Things I’ll miss, #3

‘Green Apple Books. Haven’t ventured out there lately (it’s in the Richmond, and I now live in Oakland) but, for its selection, its sprawling looseness, and its rickety hardwood floors, it’s my favorite Bay Area bookstore.

‘Runners-up: 2. Stacey’s.

‘3. Moe’s Books in Berkeley.

‘4. Cody’s, also Berkeley.

‘5. Booksmith.

‘6. Aardvark (for the imperious tabby cat alone).

‘7. Kepler’s, in Menlo Park, although its atmosphere and clientele were often a little too snooty for my liking.

‘8. City Lights, a San Francisco institution, and one that was inexplicably attacked as a leftist hive (you would’ve thought it was an al-Qaida meeting hall) and a symbol of everything that’s wrong with America in several out-of-control letters to the editor in the Chronicle during its fiftieth anniversary earlier this year.

‘9. The defunct (the space is now a yoga facility) Ninth Avenue Books.

‘10. Alexander Book Co.

‘11. Modern Times.

‘12. Bound Together, for shock value alone (not anymore, but when I first moved here, the concept of an anarchist bookstore was pretty amazing). The staff was surly at best, but as someone commented somewhere else on the Internet, “If you were a left-wing anarchist, would you be in a good mood?”

‘13. European Book Company. All kinds of Europe stuff, including supercilious French staff, supercilious being a particularly amusing quality to sport at the intersection of Larkin and Geary. Years ago, I found a fat English-Dutch dictionary here and just about died.

‘14. A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, which is last because it has a great deal of sumptuous and intriguing stock to distract you, but seemingly never has exactly what you’re looking for.

‘A Different Light should be on this list—when I first settled down in San Francisco ten years ago, I had some of my most exciting times as a newbie to the City participating in a rambunctious writing workshop there—but I’m not that fond of the place anymore; it’s become too generic, too much like all of the other touristy boutiques and chain stores in the Castro. As you can tell, I spend way too much of my spare time in bookstores.

‘—Posted by Frank at 11:55:10 | 02-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘I have to agree with Frank on this one … I miss it still!

‘Things I’ll miss, #2

‘The Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge is the celebrity. But the Bay Bridge has so much more majesty, solidity, and grandeur. It is my favorite bridge in the world.

‘—Posted by Frank at 11:52:19 | 1-Aug-03

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘In his first postings to aSquared, Frank talked about aspects of San Francisco he would and would not miss:

‘Things I’ll miss, #1:

‘Claes von Oldenburg (another friggin’ SWEDE!) and Coosje van Bruggen‘s “Cupid’s Span” at Rincon Park. You either love it or you hate it. I happen to love it.

‘I glanced at it a lot on my way in to work over the Bay Bridge. It added a lot of (well-needed) whimsy to the Embarcadero.

‘Von Oldenburg is now apparently adding a sculpture of a gigantic banana to the sterile Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford campus (van Bruggen riffs: “The banana is a fruit with many interpretations; it’s a flower, it’s a phallus . . . the banana is kind of a wit”), which, in my opinion, is an absolutely transcendent touch.

‘—Posted by Frank at 11:45:21 | 1-Aug-03’

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘Here’s another retro/anniversary post … skip it you’re not into my sentimentality. I apparently made a laundry list of things I would and would not miss about San Francisco. A year later, well, my list is holding up pretty well. I still agree with most every item on the list.

‘‘I’m Taking My Heart With Me

‘‘Frank makes note in his blog of a woman asking him for directions to Lombard Street today … quite possibly the last time he’ll have to give a tourist directions to the “Crookedest Street in the World.”

‘‘It reminds me of one afternoon after work while waiting for the cable car down to the Embarcadero at Grant and California, the heart of Chinatown, across from St. Mary’s Cathedral, etc., etc. Two tourists, obviously lost and confused, asked me how to ride the cable car. Turns out they were from Jonesboro, AR. They seemed to be enjoying themselves in Baghdad-by-the-Bay. It was just your average day in a tourist mecca, something that I’ve been rather blasé about; on the one hand, the geography, weather, history and … fabulousness … of this place is wonderful, but on the other, sometimes it can be a royal pain-in-the-tuckus.

‘‘Now, the encounter with the Jonesboro couple was pleasant, as was a 7 a.m. cable car ride up the hill to work one spring morning when I found myself riding with the members of a Swiss national folk singing choir, who sang a beautiful melody as we ‘climbed halfway to the stars.’ But other encounters weren’t as pleasant. During the summers, height of tourist season, it was often really annoying, and sometimes downright scary, to wade through the throngs in order to get to work at 700 California. Annoying because apparently people leave their brains at home when they go on vacation and tend to congregate in clumps on the sidewalk, impeding all progress by anyone else. Downright scary because I can’t count the times I’ve seen a tourist do something truly stupid in the street, either getting on/off the cable cars on California, or thinking that Grant is an open-air shopping mall, not a busy one-way street open to cars.

‘‘All-in-all, I kind of enjoyed the cachet of living in a cool place. I do grudgingly admit it. In certain ways, SF is very hip and very cool and I think the bottom line is that I’m pleased and proud to have been a resident of it once in my lifetime.

‘‘But no place is perfect; even Eden had its snakes. San Francisco can be dirty, filthy, incredibly physically stressful, amazingly packed with people in a small area (or at least so it seems to this New Mexico/Okiehoma boy); it can be ridiculously provincial while being ridiculously pretentious, all at the same time. It’s a fabulous, glorious, stinky, seething … PLACE of a city. As much as I moan and groan about it sometimes, there are things I will dearly miss. The fog has been particularly thick and pervasive for the last few weeks and as I write this, I can barely see the buildings across the street. That won’t be easy to say goodbye to.

‘‘So I’m starting a little list: Things I’ll Miss About San Francisco and Things I Won’t Miss About San Francisco. Let’s take the negatives first so we can end on a positive note, shall we?

‘‘Things I Won’t Miss About San Francisco:

• The smell of urine-soaked doorways

‘‘• The possibility that my home might fall down in an earthquake

‘‘• The approaches to the Bay Bridge

‘‘• The bad attitude that the place seems to engender in its citizen

‘‘• That ‘Excuse me’ means, when it comes from a San Franciscan, ‘Get the f*** outta the way!’ and is said in a tone to match

‘‘• Feeling like a rabbit in a particularly crowded hutch

‘‘• The stench of my neighbor’s daily 4:30 p.m. fishhead soup binge

‘‘• San Franciscans attitude towards allowing dogs to run around without being leashed

‘‘• Muni (although that one might change after I’ve ridden Ann Arbor’s public transit a few times)

‘‘• Living in a tourist mecca

‘‘• The memory that is triggered whenever I pass the corner of Sansome and Market where the bike messenger was smacked in the back of the head by the Muni bus mirror. Trust me, it was very not pretty

‘‘• Hawai’i. So close, yet so far

‘‘• Living within range of Kim Jong-il’s nuclear missiles

‘‘• The fact that the San Andreas is within spittin’ distance

‘‘• Certain nameless local television ‘news’ personalities … particularly that weatherlady who thinks that cable-knit sweaters with tight leather miniskirts or a kicky little denim tuxedo jacket over a spaghetti-strap top is … acceptable fashion for the rest of us to have to see

‘‘• Not being able to get out and just … drive without having 45,000 other people sharing the experience with you

‘‘• The incredible physical toll the place takes on you when you’re commuting to work or just buying groceries. It’s all drama. All of it

‘‘• Did I mention the urine-soaked doorways?

‘‘Things I’ll Miss About San Francisco:

‘‘• #1: The fog

‘‘• The climate

‘‘• The hills and mountains

‘‘• The Pacific Ocean

‘‘• The Golden Gate

‘‘• The eucalyptus trees outside my windows

‘‘• The cliffs overlooking the GGB and Baker Beach

‘‘• The Presidio

‘‘• Swiss choirs singing on the cable cars

‘‘• The labyrinths at Grace Cathedral

‘‘• The view from Twin Peaks

‘‘• San Francisco International

‘‘• The Castro Theater

‘‘• Standing at Fort Point underneath the GGB at the spot where Jimmy Stewart jumped into the bay to save Kim Novak

‘‘• Driving in the rain in the winter through wine country

‘‘• La Cantina Mexican restaurant in Santa Rosa

‘‘• Virgin Megastore

‘‘• Milano’s Pizzeria

‘‘• Cheap Pete’s Frames on Geary

‘‘• Mt. Sutro rearing up behind my apartment

‘‘• Sassy raccoons going through the garbage bins at 3 a.m.

‘‘• The possibility that an big ol’ earthquake might add some drama to your life at any moment

‘‘• The beagle’s favorite trail to see the feral kitties behind the greenhouse in Golden Gate Park

‘‘• The National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park

‘‘• UCSF hospital

‘‘• The daily parades in Chinatown during the entire month of February to celebrate Chinese New Year

‘‘• Attempting to order breakfast at McDonald’s at Grant and California in Mandarin Chinese

‘‘• Being able to get on a 777 and be in Paris 12 hours later

‘‘• NorthPoint

‘‘• Ghirardelli’s ice cream shop

‘‘• Monterey Bay and Carmel

‘‘• Sausalito and the ferry ride to and from it

‘‘• Giovanni’s Pizza on Bridgeway in Sausalito

‘‘• The fact that I can pretty much be who I want to be and not be hassled by the Fascists for it (mostly)

‘‘• That fact that Republicans can’t hurt you here

‘‘• And, of course, the friends I leave behind …

‘‘Hmmm. Well, THAT was an interesting exercise …

‘‘—Posted by Steve at 00:02 | 01-Aug-03’

‘Wonder what I’ll write about Ann Arbor when/if we leave here?’ [grin]

For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

Laid Up

‘I’ve been so laid up with carpal tunnel (and thank you Hillary, Michael and Dorothea for your wonderful advice and care, I do appreciate it) that I really dropped the ball on an important milestone for aSquared AirBeagle: Happy Birthday to Us! We’re a year old!

‘Because all of those entries are from my trashed Movable Type installation, I don’t have an archive of them any longer on the server. So I thought I’d do a little retrospective of our cross-country adventures while moving to Ann Arbor. Since I’m now an old fart of 40, I’ve already forgotten the particulars of last August’s continental brouhaha.

‘It appears that I had the first idea to do aSquared around 23-Jul-03:’

‘‘Beginning of the End’

‘‘Sorry for the few-and-far-between updates, folks, but things are a might busy around Le Maison du Beagle. See, we’re moving from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, MI, in just a very few weeks (in just a mere 23 days, in fact), so I’ve been a bit frenzied, flying to Detroit, looking for a new place (we scored a fairly spiffy new townhouse with plenty of outdoors for beagle to roam around in and not far from campus and Michigan Stadium) and packing up the books and DVDs, figuring out all the nagging logistics of a 2,800-mile, cross-country move and wrapping things up here.

‘‘It’s turning out to be possibly a month-long orgy of goodbyes … visiting favorite spots in San Francisco, taking final pictures, saying goodbyes to friends and the doctor and his staff and so on and on, so the ‘blogging is lagging. But I’m going to try to keep up. In fact, in a few days, I’m going to start a side journal, a little log of the beagle’s cross-country adventures, along with some pictures. So stay tuned.

‘—Posted by Steve at 23:33 | 23-Jul-03’’’

‘Oh, those heady days of preparing to push off into the unknown! What a fast year, in some respects, it’s been. Wow.

‘I suppose that aSquared’s official birthday was 1-Aug-03, when I posted the following:

‘‘Answering the Siren Call

‘‘Welcome to the first post in the ‘airbeagle moves to michigan’ ‘blog, your best way to track us as we move across country in the Jeep, from San Francisco to Ann Arbor. Or bust.

‘Here’s the way things work around here. The graphic at top provides a visual way to track us as we move across the country. [Ed. Note: The very first aSquared graphic, no longer available]. The first photo is, obviously, of the Golden Gate Bridge, which will we miss, here in San Francisco, which we won’t. Well, maybe just a tiny little bit. More on that later. The last photo on the right is of the Michigan Union on the campus of the University of Michigan, ground zero in Ann Arbor, where we will toil through two years, two Michigan winters, four semesters of grad school for Frank and lord knows what for me. The photos in the center will be replaced as we’re on the road with photos of spots we pass by on the way.

‘You can read each day’s journal posting, obviously, in this left-hand column and see what day and time it was posted and by whom. In the right column, you can see where we are, how far we’ve driven and an estimate of how far we have to go, plus ways to view previous entries and links to other sites, both internal to airbeagle.com and newspapers in the places we’ll pass through.

‘As the trip itself progresses, I’ll post photos of what we’ve seen that day. Fair warning: most of them will feature Bayley Murphy Beagle in some form or fashion. Just so you know.

‘Sound ambitious? Well, it is. But we’re lookin’ at 3,053 miles of America, folks. It’s a fascinating land and we want to document what we see of it. First, to see if we can document it or if we get bored or tired of it and blow it off towards the end. Second, to keep a record of what will be a strange and wonderful trip.

‘The route itself is pretty much planned thusly (although not set in stone):

‘• Day 1: San Francisco to Yosemite to Bishop, CA—because we want to avoid I-5, Bakersfield, Barstow and Needles at all costs. Been there, done that, didn’t enjoy it.

‘• Day 2: Bishop to Las Vegas—not because we want to gamble or anything, but because there are lots of cheap hotel rooms and everyone should see the epitome of wretched American excess at least once before they die. It’s kinda like Frenchmen in the sixteenth century making the journey to Versailles, then dying happy.

‘• Day 3: Las Vegas to Gallup, NM—yes, you heard me, Gallup, NM, because there might be a pow-wow going on and Gallup is probably as far as we’ll want to go that day.

‘• Day 4: Gallup to Santa Fe—because I can’t pass through my native state, my spiritual homeland without stopping off and showing off the nation’s oldest and highest state capital to Frank. If you just stay on I-40 through New Mexico, well, you’re just sad, that’s all.

‘• Day 5: Santa Fe to Oklahoma City—because it’s 527 miles of absolutely nothingness and we wish to spend as little time as possible in the Texas panhandle. Like Barstow, been there many times, bought many t-shirts, felt as spiritually flattened as the landscape, no thanks.

‘• Day 6: Oklahoma City to Memphis, TN—because Graceland is in Memphis and, as with Vegas, how can you call yourself an American if you haven’t paid homage to the King?

‘• Day 7: Memphis to Nashville—because scoring tickets to something bluegrass-y at the Ryman would be extremely cool,

‘• Day 8: Nashville to Lexington, KY—because bluegrass country is even prettier than bluegrass music.

‘• Day 9: Lexington to Ann Arbor, via Cincinnati and Dayton, OH—because an airplane nut like me can’t be that close to Orville and Wilbur and the Air Force Museum without taking a quick gander.

‘Yes, I know, we could go down here a couple of miles from the apartment and get on I-80 and go all the way to Chicago, then join I-94 on up to AA. It’s shorter, faster … and as boring as Lynne Cheney giving a patriotism lecture to a college professor. Plus you gotta go through Salt Lake City. And, just as with Barstow and the Texas panhandle, well, you get the idea.

‘So there’s the route. One can see a fair piece of road going that way, and a fair piece of America and Americans. El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. Siegfried and Roy. Hoover Dam. Palace of the Governors. The Sangre de Cristos. A giant stainless steel cross and Cadillacs stuck in the earth west of Amarillo. The Oklahoma City National Memorial. The under-construction library of our last democratically elected president. Lisa Marie, Elvis’ DC-8. Georgetown, KY. And at the end of the road, a new life. New adventures. New friends (and a couple of old ones thrown in for good measure).

‘More, ever so much more, later. The packing has just begun and I’m just plumb wore out with it all. Y’all stay tuned. The Mother Road beckons and gets more insistent every day. We’ll heed her siren call.

‘But first, I’ve got to disentangle the beagle from the bubble wrap …’

‘And so it began, a year ago last Sunday.

‘Like I said, from now until 23-Aug, I believe I’ll read last year’s posts into the record, since they don’t exist in the archives, and I’ll start with these other posts from 1-Aug-03:

‘‘Just to get things kicked off, here’s a pic of the packing frenzy beginning, followed by four pics of how worn out it made the beagle.

…

‘‘There’s nothing more pathetic than a beagle whose couch/throne has been displaced from its regular position. So, he elected to sleep through much of the brouhaha.

‘‘I just know that’s gonna be one mad beagle when he hops in the Jeep on 14-Aug … and hops out on 22-Aug in a whole new state.

‘‘Shhhh. Let’s not tell him.

‘—Posted by Steve at 00:02 | 01-Aug-03’’

Sorry about the confusing nature of this first one from ten years ago; it’s hard to quote quotes and make it coherent. Ongoing will be easier to understand. More retro posts to follow …

For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be.

The last time I’ll give directions in San Francisco?

‘“Is Lombard down that way or up the other way?”

‘A short hip-looking woman with black hair was asking me directions.

‘I pointed up Van Ness and told her it was twenty blocks or so north (actually, it’s more like 28 from Market, a good 45-minute hike with all the red lights along Van Ness) and that she’d probably want to catch a bus.

‘Weird feeling, to realize that that may be the last time I ever get asked for directions here.’

—Posted by Frank at 20:00:31 | 31-Jul-03

For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

Beginning of the End

‘Sorry for the few-and-far-between updates, folks, but things are a might busy around Le Maison du Beagle. See, we’re moving from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, MI, in just a very few weeks (in just a mere 23 days, in fact), so I’ve been a bit frenzied, flying to Detroit, looking for a new place (we scored a fairly spiffy new townhouse with plenty of outdoors for beagle to roam around in and not far from campus and Michigan Stadium) and packing up the books and DVDs, figuring out all the nagging logistics of a 2,800-mile, cross-country move and wrapping things up here.

‘It’s turning out to be possibly a month-long orgy of goodbyes … visiting favorite spots in San Francisco, taking final pictures, saying goodbyes to friends and the doctor and his staff and so on and on, so the ‘blogging is lagging. But I’m going to try to keep up. In fact, in a few days, I’m going to start a side journal, a little log of the beagle’s cross-country adventures, along with some pictures. So stay tuned.

—Posted by Steve at 23:33 | 23-Jul-03’

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

Oh, those heady first days … and now it seems like we’ve been here forever instead of just a year.

Ann Arbor: Day Three

It’s a puzzling place.

The lush greenery is almost headache-inducing in its vastness and omnipresence. The traffic, alas, is not much better than the traffic in the Bay Area was. You see lots of cars with militaristic stickers like “AIR ASSAULT” nestled next to University of Michigan logos. Everyone seems to be in sort of a hurry, though it is unclear why.

The home improvement stores are a smash hit, with lots of big-muscled, tightly-wound Michigan dads and husbands taking self-important walks into the hugeness of the outlets with their wives and kids, almost as though to demonstrate how all-American they are.

The churches are not prominent and those who frequent them seem to be enraged that this is the case, judging from the perversity and intensity with which one of the patrons of one of the said churches tailgated us on our way home from Lowe’s today.

The Borders bookstore I went into while Steve bought beagle food at Petco was a strange and conflicting melange of not-quite-identifiable styles and feels, with the store music system playing Warren Zevon’s “Sacrificial Lambs” (“Krishnamurti said,/’I’ll set you free/Write a check/and make it out to me’”) while a line of customers waited patiently to make their buys.

Everything seems a little too well-appointed, a little too eager to please, a little too perfect. It reminds me some of Palo Alto, though shorn of that town’s always-aggressive yuppie ethos.

Every four blocks in Ann Arbor has a neighborhood name, which, even by the standards of name-crazy San Freancisco, is a bit on the obnoxious side. Our little housing subdivision, in a neighborhood helpfully called Bryant/Pattengill (most of the neighborhoods are named after the K-12 schools in their midst), seems very quiet, almost oddly so, and yet also very much each one to his own, with not much in the way of demonstrable neighborliness either from the current residents to newcomers or between the denizens already ensconced.

I saw and apologized to our next-door neighbor today for our trailer being parked in front of her door while we unloaded and she nodded and grimaced a tight, grimacing smile at me, as though I had just boasted to her that Bayley had taken a dump in her yard.

There is a real and pleasurable beauty about the surroundings, a large-ish park next door, a gym with a bunch of new equipment, a modest showiness about the houses and apartments, yet something does not quite fall together.

I think that the reality is that I still feel unsettled, and not just because things have not quite fallen together yet for me and for us, and the clash between this still, tranquil place and the memory I have of commuting every day to work and strolling through the urine-soaked passageways of MUNI up to the homeless-draped sidewalks of Van Ness and Market, with the same pathetic old woman sitting on her stoop every morning and squeaking an emphysematic “Morning” to the changing cast of harried and exhausted and studiously indifferent passersby, and the painfully buzzingly hectic pace of life in the Bay Area, and the rush of the packing and the semi-goodbyes and the cross-country voyage, and the urban sounds of sirens and car horns and yells and squawks, have yet to leave me. It’s all just very strange.

There are tons and tons of boisterous, chattering, fearless squirrels everywhere here, another reminder of Palo Alto, except the ones in California are brown and these are squirrels with patches of fiery orange and yellow on their breasts and legs. There are also insects that make strange rising and falling whirring sounds all day long in the bushes, like a cross between the hiss of an angry cat and the sound of a rattlesnake rattling. Steve tells me these are cicadas. The squirrels and cicadas own Ann Arbor, no matter what the people who allegedly live here think.

—Posted by Frank at 23:59:00 | 24-Aug-03