big feelings

I used to stop by the Creativity Explored Gallery when  lived around the corner. I'd check out the current show, maybe buy cards or gift wrap, but I never ventured back into the studio to meet the artists or watch them work. I was probably in a hurry, or more likely just thought I was in a hurry. I imagined if I stepped over that threshold, all sorts of things could happen. What if I got into a long conversation I didn't know how to get out of? What if an artist wanted me to buy their art and I had to say no?  What if I couldn't understand what someone was saying to me? What if I was so overcome with Big Feelings that I cried? What if I didn't want to leave? From Tell You What: Friendship by Beth Lisick

Painting: Vincent Jackson: Bold and Beautiful

now i want to stay in bed and listen to the dogs snore

The book comes out a week from today and it's been thrilling and odd and unsettling. Lots of bloggers and reviewers got the book early, including this sixteen year old reviewer.  And you guys have been kind, unbelievably kind and supportive. I'm grateful.

Photo: Olivia Bee "The Magic Hour," Rookie

adobe books

All the books are now 60% off, but Andrew McKinley, among the kindest and most generous bookstore owners on earth, will still try and make you pay even less. Peter Orner on Adobe Books in The Rumpus 

Photo: Adobe Books by Chris Cobb

san francisco when you're in love

Below are several of M. and my favorite date night walks:

Takeout from Out the Door eaten on the benches outside the Ferry Building, watching the ferries go in and out. Followed by a walk up the Filbert Steps to North Beach, a quick viewing of the murals in Coit Tower (smash a penny), a stop in City Lights Books and then cocktails at Cafe Zoetrope. 

Walk to the top of Bernal Hill. Walk back down. Stop at Red Hill Books on the way to Wild Side West.

Flora Grubb for coffee. 

Cocktails at Mint 54.

Lunch at Darwin followed by a walk to SFMOMA. 

A visit to Headlands Center for the Arts followed by doing nothing at all on Rodeo Beach (aka Fort Cronkite)

A little shopping at Mollusk Surf Shop followed by the General Store. A meal at Outerlands and then canoodling on the beach.

A visit with Emmett and Deanna at Inside Modern and then cocktails and song at Martuni's. 

Happy hour tacos at Pancho Villa followed by window shopping up Valencia Street (Monument, Paxton Gate, Shoe Biz, 826 Valencia, The Curiosity Shoppe), a peek into Clarion Alley, a loop around Dolores Park and then pizza at the counter at Delfina's. 

Photo: our favorite bartender, Maura

fat and salt

Favorite places to eat in SF? ...Commonwealth, Delfina, Delfina Pizzeria, Flour and Water, Bar Tartine, Range, Zuni Cafe, Outerlands, and Kappou Gomi.  Leif with Ashley Rose Helvey

Photo: Mussel, salicornia, beach weeds, wildflowers 
(all foraged from Laird's Landing) by ARH

our have more plan

Adrienne and Jay of Vallejo's Food Rescue are growing kids, raising vegetables, building family and community, while playing records, facing cancer and being grateful. You can follow along at Muddy Feet Farms, Food Rescue, Muddy Feet Memoirs and deyoung deconstructed.

Photo: Adrienne and Jay via Northbay Uprising

in the bay area?

Marnie Webb and I have been doing some fun stuff over at Caravan and tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 25, we're teaming up with Local 123 (yum), Youth Uprising, Urban Adamah and Live Local Mission to host our first Community Hacks, a discussion series focusing on how communities make change. Please join us and if you do, introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you.

when this you see remember me

Untitled (Alice B. Toklas' and Gertrude Stein's Grave) by Felix Gonzalez Torres on view (ending today) at the Jewish Contemporary Museum in San Francisco.

17 reasons why

A few reasons why it's good to leave the house

• Coffee with Scott Simmon and a preview of National Film Preservation Foundation's upcoming Treasures 5: The West 1898 - 1938
• Vintage t-shirts at After Life
• Vegetable tacos and an Anchor Steam at Pancho Villa with my copy of In Zanesville
• Young muralists working in Clarion Alley
• and Margaret Killgallen at Ratio 3

and possibly much more wonderful

"Art ought to be a troublesome thing and one of the reasons for painting representationally is that this makes for much more troublesome pictures." David Park

Painting: Four Men, 1958. David Park

without finn, there would be no story

But most of all what I wanted was to see myself through his eyes, to define myself in relation to him, to sift out what was interesting in me (what he must have liked, however insignificant) and distill it into a purer, bolder, more compelling version of myself.

The truth is, for that brief period of my life I failed to exist if Finn wasn't looking at me. And so I copied him, strove to exist the way he existed: to stretch, languid and graceful when tired, to move swiftly and with determination when not, to speak rarely and with force, to smile in a way that rewarded the world. From What I Was by Meg Rosoff

Painting: Cy Twombly,

Note 1 (from Three Notes for Salah) 2005-7

On view at SFMOMA

the white album

Thanks to a tip from CityArts & Lectures' newest illustrator, I snagged us tickets to Joan Didion and Annie Leibovitz. If you move fast, they're still available.

Photo: Annie Leibovitz by John Keatley

that sort of gesture

I was just reminded that Ratio3 has a Margaret Kilgallen exhibit going up on June 23. M-W, 11-6. Rewatching/reading her Art21 feature.

Photo: production still from PBS Art21

clara

in the Salty Dirty Water Dress Tent by Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao. They'll be at artMKT this weekend.

competitive swinging

Paolo Salvagione's "Competitive Swinging" via The Rumpus

if you want to be crazy romantic

tie the ring to a string and propose to her on TOP of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Photos and proposal: my friend Drew of Improv Society

last night

M. and I saw Nicholas Nixon's The Brown Sisters at SFMOMA.

it's the telling

Writing isn’t just telling stories. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s telling everything at once. It’s the telling of a story, and the absence of a story. It’s telling a story through its absence. Practicalities, Marguerite Duras via le temps perdu (love this blog)

Bathers, David Park, 1954 on view at SFMOMA

an abstract beatitude

From NYT: "In Ms. Martin's case, this was a kind of abstract beatitude: floating disembodied fields and hazes of color and light, which upon closer examination are triggered by surprisingly mundane causes...

The combination of simplicity and optical snap..."

Photo: Agnes Martin
On view at SFMOMA, the Fisher Collection
Also, no digital image of her work could do it justice

Ara Peterson: Turns Into Stone

At Ratio 3 (since I missed him at MACRO).