New-to-me sidewalk chalk art by Kal Zakzouk at 20th & Irving: a lady and a dragon contemplate each other.
Sidewalk chalk art invites the viewer to contrast black chalk vs a patch of chewing gum on the ground. Which is darker? The chewing gum, by a mile. Yet you will never find it in art supplies.
2026-11-07T18:43:34.880610
This morning at 20th and Irving, #SanFrancisco:
2026-10-31T16:25:39.034413
San Francisco, City in Crisis: A full 23½ hours later, the Arch-Diabolo situation remains undealt with.
2026-10-25T16:00:18.862528
San Francisco, City in Crisis: Somebody lost their yo-yo on top of Fnnch's Solar Arch art installation.
[Update: I have been informed that the "yo-yo" is, in fact, a diablo]
2026-10-24T23:52:59.313133
2026-10-20T18:28:00.803151
I started replying to ActBlue messages mentioning political consultant James Carville by unsubscribing with a note a la "I don't want to give money to a campaign that's going to hand that money to James Carville. I think he's part of the problem." I kinda worried each time. Democrats have a "circular firing squad" reputation. Was I furthering that? Now I'm reminded: I'm just trying to take ammo away from the circular firing squad.
linked article headline: James Carville Says He’d Rather GOP Win House by 5 Seats Than Dems Win by 5: They’d Be ‘Hostage to DSA’
excerpt: “I would be disappointed if it comes in at 225 House seats,” Carville said. “That would almost be – I would rather the Republicans keep the House by five than the Democrats to win by five because if that happens, they’re hostage to the DSA. … Like Hakeem [Jeffries] cannot move. There’s no place for him to go.”
2026-10-19T13:24:46.410083
Some pics from the SF Old Car Picnic today:
2026-10-17T23:27:00.879556
This morning, I shoveled today's batch of political flyers out of my mailbox and into the recycling bin. I'd had enough, so I took action to make them stop. I walked back to my apartment, finished filling in my ballot and turned it in. This trick works in #SanFrancisco, I ?guess? other parts of California and probably other places too.
When the elections folks receive your ballot, they make a note of it. Companies that print+mail political flyers get their mailing list from the elections folks; they send flyers to registered voters who have not yet turned in their ballots. Thus, in a few days, the local billionaires should stop overstuffing my mailbox.
Probably they should have stopped mailing me flyers a while ago. ~Three weeks ago, I was pretty much on the fence between Connie Chan and Scott Wiener. After receiving a metric ton of billionaire-financed political flyers reminding me it was in billionaires' interest for me to vote for Wiener (citing articles in the billionaire-owned news site SF Standard, no less), I made up my mind to vote for Chan.
Anyhow, I guess this is my #GOtV post. Don't risk your mailbox bursting. Turn in your ballot, make the flyers stop.
2026-10-17T16:21:04.243910
New to me,* part of the #SanFrancisco Big Art Loop: Seed of Self by Kate Raudenbush, Golden Gate Park panhandle near Stanyan. Kinda tough to photograph; I dunno how to convince my clever clever smartphone not to freak out over the artwork's lights and got tired of hunting through the UI for manual controls.
Someone who is good at pranks should steal that Kezar Stadium equine vine thing, plunk it down next to this "Seed of Self" and label the new agglomerated artwork "Steed of Self."
*but its documentation says it was installed back in May, six months ago.
2026-10-12T16:27:28.083578
Email I got to send just now (details redacted):
Hello, excellent Department of Elections people!
I live at [address] [apartment number]. A few days back, I received my ballot (yay) and also the ballot for [someone else] [different address] (whoops) [same apartment number].
I put [her] ballot in a mailbox. When I checked my mail this morning, [her] ballot was there again, d'oh.
If it was once, I'd figure "accidents happen." Twice makes me wonder: uh, is some garbled scan code confusing some USPS autosorter or something i dunno
Anyhow, I'm gonna try writing a note to our postal carrier in hopes of getting this ballot delivered to the correct building. I'm attaching a snapshot of the envelope in case y'all want to look it over for things that might confuse a mail sorter.
-Larry H.
In tangentially-related news, it turns out that Louis DeJoy is no longer the head of USPS and hasn't been for some time. I'd grown comfortably accustomed to blaming him for all USPS failures, but apparently I should be shaking my head at David P. Steiner nowadays.
2026-10-08T14:35:14.245817
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