Rains and winds had their way,

then that brilliant November light

became brilliant December light.

 

 

Weather

and, when the chill sun shone down, December’s light

along the straits…and so into The Season in earnest with First Street’s Christmas Tree Lighting

and Open House, a big disappointment this year on two counts as, firstly, our favorite “get sushi and not pay”* opportunity was downgraded to guacamole and garlic dip while, even worse,

after fighting to the bottom of First we found the usual crew of punk elves belting out Christmas Classics but no hayrides! Without a draft horse in sight we sadly trudged upstream to alleviate our sorrows with wine, chevre and salad in our own little kitchen as the crowd, glowsticks, fuzzy boots and all the rest, raved against and into the night.

In the morning all evidence was miraculously erased, allowing Our Little Town to definitively open for binins, Christmas Binins, coincidentally at the very moment I was happily able to momentarily enjoy having the ’45 up and running in a fortuitous interim of sun.

Come afternoon we made a rare return to SF, surprisingly easily navigable, where we

investigated galleries.  At Brian Gross, for instance, Phil Sims and these DeForest Dogs whereas

in Dogpatch Ever Gold Projects and others in the Minnesota Street Project had lots to offer

including but not limited to Joey Wolf’s  accomplished if surprisingly extremely gooey paintings.

Then it was up Third to the Mission Street Garage and through crazy crowds of Santas [SF Christmas has become a cross between a mini-Mardi Gras and a Hallowe’en where everyone dresses up in variations of the same costume – hooker Santas, traditional Santas, black Santas, Blimp [good for shoplifting] Santas etc. etc.] to Britex Fabrics, still extant in the heart of the city, still friendly and professional, so L could find material to replace the cape “delivered” by USPS Priority three days late for Izel’s Bed-Stuy birthday and never seen again.  By anyone.

We subsequently witnessed Edward Burtynsky’s “Anthropocene” at Koch, phenomenal work…I was all set to buy the book but even on Amazon it’s nearly a hundred bucks…meanwhile before that intersected Patsy and eventually Jon, who’d endured the hordes of increasingly drunken Santas and masses of traffic seeking parking downtown, to see,

at Haines,

her exquisite [and impossible to photograph] show

before walking a few festive blocks to Claude on Claude Alley for a spendy if pleasantly delicious dinner with pleasantly delicious talk marred only at the end when one of those interchangeably ubiquitous techo-dip shaveheads prevailed upon the hapless hostess to evict us before Patsy had quite finished her dessert wine so he could install his entourage of acolytes and bimbos. But that’s [the new] SF fer ya, and though a bit abacked we left in good spirits to make it across the bridge and home in time for L to catch the last half hour of “Babylon 5”,  to which she is becoming increasingly addicted…all on a foggy foggy night which brought the same for

Sunday, all day, facilitating an interior life readying for yet another departure…

 

*one of many memorable lines from Repo Man, 1984