Monday, September 10, 2012

Scenes from the Weekend: Labor Day in the City.

 
I've been a little behind on the 365 project posts as of late (and I was on such a roll for a few weeks there!), but here they are!  I'll begin with Labor Day, during which I kicked off a lovely weekend in the city (we have not had a blissful few days at home in quite some time!) with a fogged in happy hour with one of my favorite ladies... I worked from home Friday, so I was able to head on up to our blossoming garden in the morning to weed and water. Our thriving plot in the Presidio's community garden can be entirely attributed to SK's green thumb (and commitment to watering, an attribute that I have apparently lost) and I couldn't be more thrilled! We have an abundance of chard (three types!), carrots, leeks, beets, zucchini, cucumber, tarragon, marjoram, celery, lavender and a few bushels of wild flowers. Up next? I'm going to build a trellis for sweet peas!
 
I had already harvested our chard when I took this photo but it was a foot and a half high, and ohhh so delicious! I've chopped it up and frozen it in small bags for soup makings, so bring it on winter, I'm ready for you! Unfortunately, I think we waited a bit too long to uproot some of the herbs that were left over from an earlier planting, so we won't be able to grow any butternut squash or pumpkins this season, and we are in for *a lot* of leafy greens.
 

SK and I ran a bunch of errands in the afternoon (after tackling our inboxes), before setting out to A.Q. for date night, which turned out to be probably the most incredible meal I have ever had in San Francisco. It. Was. That. Good. And that's saying something. Before I launch into another love letter to my dinner, let me just say a few words about this place... A.Q. as you've probably seen on classic restaurant menus means "as quoted" and is used to describe (usually the market price of) fresh, seasonal or specialty items. Well A.Q. takes it a step further to not only reflect this in their incredible season menu, but also in the interior decor of the establishment! (I mean it's a bit of a joke because we don't really have seasons in San Francisco, but I like the idea nonetheless.)

If you're looking to make your mouth water, read on!  If you're starving, skip to the next section, this will make your tummy rumble. I could reminisce about the himachi starter, or the heavenly cloud-like gnocchi, but I really want to tell you the star of the show... dinner... or was it desert? I can't decide. I chose the BBQ pork which came two ways, a compressed piece of (fatty, juicy) pork belly and a perfect slice of pork shoulder, which lay over a bed of salty shelling beans and tuscan kale, with a dusting of ground mustard ash and dollop of cornbread. A dollop of cornbread? Yep, you read that right. The baked cornbread was blended with cream and dolloped on the plate as an incredible surprise to your palate. Honestly, I don't think I shared a bite of this meal with SK, it was that good (ok, maybe one...). Then desert came. A play on a Girl Scout Samoa cookie, a thick slice of chocolate mousse was perched atop a smear of caramel and freckled with coconut brittle. Right? I know. I thought I died and went to heaven. (Needless to say that between festivals, vacations, visits with family and wedding buffets August has not been kind to our waste lines... Maybe our garden is trying to tell us something.)

Thank you for an incredible date night, love.


We proceeded to spend the weekend celebrating a friend's birthday in Golden Gate Park with bocce, BBQ and beer (lovin those three B's) and being lazy around the house. Though I would have loved to see the sun and head down the beach, it was foggy and freezing, and the perfect excuse to stay at home.

 
Monday met us with the most extraordinary sunset I have ever seen in San Francisco, and if you were in the right part of the city you were also graced with a double rainbow!  (Check out the Chronicle for a few snapshots)  As we passed over the Bay Bridge we caught the tail end of the show...
 
All in all, a pretty fantastic weekend at home in our city by the bay.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Scenes from the Weekend: Palm Springs.

A little R&R in Palm Springs... Enjoying the sunshine by the pool, visiting with SK's family, and finishing up The Paris Wife, a spectacular tale about Hemingway's wife, Hadley - I would highly recommend it!!

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Scenes from the Weekend: Outside Lands.

Snapshots from Outside Lands... In it's fifth year, this proved to be the most spectacular of the festivals I've been to in Golden Gate Park: Eighty artists, four stages, a comedy tent, wine and beer lands and all of the fabulous food San Francisco has to offer in one place. Yes. Please.



Andrew Bird put a bird on it (Portlandia anyone? Anyone?), well, his fan did.  I was a intrgued by the number of personal "markers" this year such as this one, or the disco ball secured to a broom handle with neon duct tape, the glowing red gummy bear, the happy face balloons, and most of all the number of people carrying bouquets of sunflowers. Though we didn't carry one personally, those around us were a great aid in locating friends in the swarms of San Franciscans enjoying the festival.



Favorite moment: Though we didn't make it up into the "woods" in time to see Jack White play to a small, swooning crowd (who had hightailed it after receiving an alert from @ThirdManRecords), Tom Morello graced us with a lovely short acoustic set, including [a sing-along version of] "This Land Is Your Land"!

If you didn't see The Rolling Stones interview with Tom on Paul Ryan, you should read it now. "Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions."  Thank you, Tom.  I love this too: "My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected, he'll pardon Leonard Peltier. Maybe he'll throw U.S. military support behind the Zapatistas. Maybe he'll fill Guantanamo Bay with corporate criminals." (I personally wouldn't wish the atrocities of Guantanamo on anyone, but I see where you're going with that Tom.)

There was something very special about this intimate rebel show.


Wine Lands. Enough said.


This pretty much sums up the energy at Outside Lands. Good times.

Friday, August 17, 2012

The Pink Tutu Project.


This project is so incredibly hilarious and inspiring at the same time!

Via Katie at MyModernMet:  In 2003, when Bob Carey and his wife moved to the East Coast, Carey started making The Tutu Project as a way of mixing his old life with his new life, with a little pink frill. Six months after their move, he and his wife, Linda, discovered that she had breast cancer. Since then, Linda has been fighting the disease and Carey has dedicated his photography towards raising money for breast cancer research. Their goal is to raise $75,000 through the sale of his prints and an upcoming book, Ballerina, to be published this fall 2012.

The photographs will make viewers chuckle at this grown man wearing nothing but a pink tutu in absurd situations like frolicking in the snow, laying in the center of Times Square, or standing among rows of corn in the middle of a field. At the same time, we are reminded of the power and impact that this devastating disease can have on women everywhere, particularly in our own lives. Who knew a photograph of a man in a pink tutu could cause such an emotional rollercoaster!

Some say laughter is the best medicine and this project is evidence that Bob and Linda have really embraced that motto. The artist says, "Oddly enough, [Linda's] cancer has taught us that life is good, dealing with it can be hard, and sometimes the very best thing—no, the only thing—we can do to face another day is to laugh at ourselves, and share a laugh with others."

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Juxtaposition.


This would stop you in your tracks don't you think? (Be born again at the hands of Dr. Kim, plastic surgeon, ha!)

Via Socks Studio.

Mischievous Children: Ernest Zacharevic.


I love the playful nature of Malaysian painter Ernest Zacharevic works of children interacting with their physical surroundings: an old bicycle, a motorcycle, or even windows on the side of a building. This piece has become quite popular and the site of many creative photographs.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Voyeur at the Window: Gail Albert Halabran.


Photographer Gail Albert Halaban‘s series Out My Window is unsettling and beautiful at the same time... Luckily these are not of unsuspecting strangers, but staged with friends, though they are still intended to share something that Halaban says New Yorkers can relate to: “connecting” with neighbors through apartment windows.

Halaban says: "I’m a photographer and therefore I’m a voyeur, and I’m a New Yorker and therefore I’m a voyeur. I think every city has its own way that people connect to their neighbors. In LA it’s through the car window. In New York, I think it’s through the apartment window." (Find more at Out My Window by Gail Albert Halaban)

My proximity to my neighbors in San Francisco is undoubtedly nothing like in New York, but my Russian Hill room mates and I did develop quite the relationship with our neighbors in the kitchen across the alley - it was always fun to see what they were cooking up, or shaking up as was the case for one experienced mixologist.

Via PetaPixel.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Synchronized.


I have been in awe of synchronized swimming my whole life (it was always one of my favorite events at UCD's Picnic Day!). I love this experiment that the Huffington Post tried flipping photographs shot at the Olympics by Getty and AFP photographers upside down!  The results are fabulous, and truly impressive.

Via PetaPixel.

Guardians: Andy Freeberg.


Photographer Andy Freeberg captured these portraits of Russian women in the nation's museums in a project is titled “Guardians of Russian Art Museums“. Isn't it uncanny how they seem to somehow match the the paintings and sculptures they are protecting? I find their facial expressions to be the most striking.

Via PetaPixel.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Constellations: Kumi Yamashita.


Last weekend we made our annual summer pilgrimage to Huntington Lake in the Sierra National Forest to visit with friends around the fire pit, play cards and splash in the lake (and enjoy a blissful lack of cellular reception). One can see a spectacular array of stars from the lake, and I spent a few hours soaking in the sight from a chaise lounge on the deck as the fire died down one evening.

Kumi Yamashita's Constellation is an ongoing series of portraits constructed from a single unbroken black thread wound through a dense array of galvanized nails mounted on a painted white board. (The shading is formed solely by the density of the string!)