minima moralia

2003-10-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

Today, thanks to a tip from Sasha Frere-Jones and the crazily generous Abe Abstract Dynamics, I move to a new home: www.philipsherburne.com, the new place for all things me. Hopefully this'll get me off my hiatus and back in the blogosphere. An added bonus: now with photos!

So stop coming 'round here... it's finished. Onward and upward!

2003-10-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

For anyone not turned off by self-promotion, I wanted to note Onitor's new compilation, Politronics, to which I contributed an essay on politics and electronic music. The CD contains tracks from the likes of Radio Boy, Scanner, Mouse on Mars, Terre Thaemlitz, V/VM, agf, Schneider TM remixing Pulseprogramming, Thomas Fehlmann, et al, with essays from Martin Büsser, Onitor head Thomas Venker, and the musicians themselves. Tracks range from goofy to clicky to caustic. The cover doesn't feature a blurb from Dee Snyder on Arnie's campgain, but it would be cool if it did.

2003-10-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

I'm still digging through a summer's worth of promos, pulling discs out more or less at random. Today I came across the Electric Soul compilation, "A Journey into Late Night Futuristic Psychedelic Soul Music Blended by the Unabombers." I'd forgive the needless adjectives -- despite my growing antipathy to all things nu jazz, having recently woken up with a wicked broken beat hangover, the track listing's not bad, between Focus' "Having Your Fun," Metro Area's sublime "Piña," and even Osunlade's "Touched My Soul." But whatever happened to mixing? Sure, it's "blended" -- meaning that the tracks fade into each other, more or less on beat. But have the Unabombers heard of keeping things in key? Punk rock mixstyles are fine if you're playing, well, punk rock, but smoove, melodic jams need to stay in key, lest you want to get a rash from all those clashing Rhodes lines. I know "proper" deejaying is going horribly out of favor, but come on guys, at least pretend to care. No wonder so many people call it "just playing other people's records."

2003-10-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

Although I'm sure the reviews will be flush with Talk Talk comparisons, is it just me, or does Electric Music AKA sound like an awful lot like the Dream Academy?

2003-09-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Well, kind of. No new scribings, alas, but I do have a brand-new mix up on the Beta Lounge. Many thanks to them for throwing me on the bill after Pole and making my homecoming, well, pretty damn sweet. Check the mix here. The lineup goes Metrologic, 370, Pole, and then I kick in around 2:42:10 (with Villalobos' "Easy Lee," such a lovely opening track, even if you don't get the, ahem, speed right at first...). The usual suspects are represented: Matthew Dear, Dimbiman, Sascha Funke, Ellen Allien, Ada (Areal), Sieg Uber Die Sonne, Superpitcher... I almost felt like I should apologize, playing such a frankly Germanic set after Pole.

2003-09-17T06:03:00.000-07:00

I've been quiet on the posting front lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been publishing. Two new pieces:

Tadd Mullinix (aka Dabrye, James Cotton) in SF Weekly

Christian Marclay in Frieze

...and, in further self-promotion, I've got an overview of Vienna's Sabotage Communications in the first print issue of The Blow Up, which is apparently very close to being sold out, so don't sleep on it if you're interested.

2003-09-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I'll be damned. I've gone and fallen in love with Hot Hot Heat's "No Not Now." They'll make a rocker of me yet.

2003-09-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

Plaid sure do love those steel drums, don't they?

2003-08-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

An amusing article about the life of a speed-metal lover amongst the indie rock snobs. But it's a bit of a straw-man's argument, really. To begin with, indie rock snobs, given their endless love of kitsch, uniformly (proclaim to) love schlock like Def Leppard (not speed metal, I know -- but wait for the article's punch line, it's relevant). Black metal, grindcore, etc., are currently soaring in popularity amongst the Aquarius-and-Other-Music set. And anyway, doesn't Salon bear at least some responsibility for indie rock hegemony? True, recent features are admirably diverse (spanning Warren Zevon, Neil Young, Led Zep, Benny Carter, Beyonce, and a curiously two-years-late piece on mashups). But if Salon isn't as insular as Insound, its recurring "What We're Listening To" music previews doesn't exactly cover the full spectrum. Recent picks like T-Love, Watchers, Antipop vs Matthew Shipp, Califone, Yo La Tengo, Willie Nelson, Smog, Les Nubians, Gravy Train, Deerhoof, et al, seem to speak to exactly the same self-congratulatory, edgy-as-NPR "aren't we all tasteful now" mentality. Don't see much Burzum in there, for instance, nor Dizzee Rascal (who, let's face it, has been adopted to support an entirely different hegemony of taste), nor Soundmurderer, Amen Andrews, Plastikman, Ellen Allien, and so on, and so on.

I salute Tom Bissell for his piece; it's spot-on and funny to boot. And I salute Salon for printing it. But they'd go along way toward helping avant-yobs like Bissell and me come out if they'd grant a few more column inches to our deviance.

2003-08-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

I can’t write, and it’s Barcelona’s fault.

There are so many things to blame, really. The heat, for one – here in the house and down on the street it’s all the same, and neither electric fan nor sea-breeze matters much, really. So you sit slicked with sweat in front of the stereo, or you trudge, stooped and obsessively mopping your brow, down the street, or you while away the hours at a not-too-distant café, reading El Pais as best you can and secretly grateful that the waiter is taking half a fucking hour to return with your check, because what do you really have to do, anyway? Besides, it’s shady here.

Or maybe you go to the beach for a mid-afternoon hour, thinking after all, it’s only a 20 minute walk away, and you’ll be home by six, but by the time you get there it’s so damned refreshing, between the clean(ish), swift-moving shallows and the actual, honest-to-goodness wind off the water, and one euro beers from the mini-mart – two euros if you’re sucker or lazy enough to buy from one of the roving Pakistanis (who ply their trade with strange, birdlike cries just begging to be sampled: fanta, cerveza fria, papas, chips -- agua wadder beer?), which you will inevitably do and then lie to your Argentine friend and say it was only one euro fifty when he looks over and chastises you, laughing, for your giri, or tourist, ways – and not to be machista but there are women playing paddle-ball in thongs, for God’s sake (and men in Speedos too, just to offer equal time for any libidinous but men-preferring readers out there), and so before you know it the sun has gone down behind the city, and in the brushed dusk-light bouncing off the water and the grey toytown of Barceloneta brushing the beach with its scruffy whiskers, your arms (if you’re as Anglo as I) are registering redness. And so you gather your things, your wet towel clutching a layer of sand as resolutely as a kid with a lollipop, your day-old copy of El Pais damper and sandier but not much more read, your paperback of Robert Hughes’ Barcelona dog-eared in preparation for a blog entry that will get written, well, if not tonight, soon, anyway, and you wander back to the city satisfied, and not a little dazed, and probably by the time you reach the Born district you’ll decide that it’s time for a lemonade, or just make that a clara (since half-lemonade and half-beer is basically just lemonade anyway), and you’ll sit there in the plaza, marveling at the Eiffel-like latticing of the nearby train station, and wincing at the nth version of “Redemption Song” you’ve had to endure a dreadlocked busker sing since you arrived however many months ago (wondering if that’s something they picked up in order to better target the summer-abroad fraternity/sorority market, or if it’s just something that hippies the world over just can’t get enough of), and you’ll attempt, finally, to make the cute waitress at Sandwich and Friends (the cheesier of the three terraza cafes, certainly, what with its Custo-inspired graphics of Ibiza-ready women in mirrored shades, but it does have the cute waitress in its favor) understand that there’s something significant in the way you say “Gracias” to her arrival with the change, looking at her meaningfully and then just as meaningfully looking down at your sneakers or at that suddenly very interesting tree on the plaza’s edge when she turns on a brisk heel and walks back into her house of brushed steel and cheesy murals. And then, with a guilty illumination of the clock on your mobile, you’ll head home, a short meandering walk through flocks of unsteady tourists, climb the three deadly flights of stairs to your apartment, take the beer out of the freezer and pour it into half a glass of half-frozen Fanta, and plop yourself in the sagging chair in front of the fan and the stereo and the infernal DSL connection broadcasting deadlines from two, maybe three continents, and sweat some more.

2003-08-11T08:05:00.000-07:00

There’s something not quite right with Mu's Afro Ginger and Gel, beginning with the lyrics, which slide sideways across a filing cabinet brimming with jealousy, sex, drugs, sex, parties, love, and sex – rendered in Mustumi Kanamori’s hybrid English/Japanese. Small surprise, then, that Mu’s other half is one Maurice Fulton, who across an array of projects has put a singularly twisted spin on Techno-House (as Stress), deep downtempo (Ladyvipb), and House (Syclops). Afro Ginger and Gel is Fulton’s contribution to the increasingly top-heavy electro-punk stack, a pile he pretty much knocks to pieces. “Let’s Get Sick,” heavy with machine-gunning electro-toms, congas and cowbells, makes for faithful funk-punk fare, with an angry jab like !!!’s “Me and Guiliani.” But consider “My Name Is Tommy” which opens with CabVolt-meets-Oval droning but quickly dissolves into 808-intensive breakcore, as Kanamori squeals, coos, and reads personals ads over the top. Nightmarish arrangements are perfectly reflected in the otherworldly vocal treatments. “Hello Bored Biz Man,” featuring a vocal style only Nena Hagen’s mother could love, eats through salsa with high-test acid, and “Chair Girl” pairs drum-heavy splatterfunk with the rantings of an evil, robotic schoolmarm. “I Hate You,” like a hyper-filtered cross between Merzbow and EC8OR, distinguishes itself as possibly the world’s most effective floor-killer.

2003-07-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

Whither microhouse? Just days after his dissection of 8-bar, Skykicking comes back with an analysis of microhouse-as-landscape, making the essential distinction that it's not a genre, and then stepping back to create a rather breathless satellite view of the terrain, patching together hi-res snapshots of Areal's Bis Neun, Kompakt's Friends and Speicher, and Herbert's Let's All Make Mistakes. If only all readings of genre were this dynamic.

2003-07-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce the launch of Earplug, a new bi-monthly email newsletter of electronic music news, reviews, features, previews, and more. In our debut issue we've got reviews of Dizzee Rascal, Cedric Im Brooks (ok, so not strictly "electronic," but you know how it is), Mutek, Sonar, and more, plus links to streaming audio from Matthew Dear, Dego, Dizzee vs Asher D, et al.

Earplug is a production of David Prince (of the Miami Master List) and flavorpill, who kindly put me on the masthead as a co-editor. Awww.

Take a look, and if you like, please subscribe. Feedback and tips encouraged!

2003-07-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

A little thing about µ-Ziq.

2003-07-22T03:35:00.000-07:00

Fix up! Dizzee's lookin' sharp. Nice one, Ruben!

2003-07-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

Call for sources:

For months now, I've been following the intensification of US efforts to keep out foreign artists. After 9/11, the already onerous (not to mention prohibitively expensive) task of obtaining a performance visa in the US became much, much more difficult, entailing an extended lead-time, increased fees, and the necessity of using visa-procurement agencies (thus costing even more).

Now, I'm beginning to hear tales that some French artists are being more or less summarily turned away, despite crossing all t's and dotting all i's. If you are (or know of) an artist of whatever nationality who has tried to get into the US to perform, and encountered any difficulties, I'd like to hear the story.

Thanks!

2003-07-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've taken my time jumping into the Dizzee fray, just because so much has been said, and so well. Here's a first installment, to be picked up where it leaves off, later this week. I realized, midway through writing this (over a long, long day of drinking clara and enjoying the album on shuffle-play, in order to let it surprise me again) that it's one hell of a dense record, and that to grapple with it properly requires attentive listening -- far more attention than I've given to many records in a long time, frankly. I can only see this as a good thing...

2003-07-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

Skykicking steps up to the 8-bar and orders a tall, cool drink of wobble.

2003-07-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

So Ingram's all about the metal, is he?

I can jump a bandwagon, can't I?

More often than not I'm inclined lately to say "fuck rock," because I just can't get with the retro pose and careful disarray -- this goes not just for new old rock like, well, just anyone coming out of New York these days, but also the falling-down (and not in a Michael Douglas sense) noise rock of the Oakland BBQ crew. Still too studied.

But if you want a rock record, by which I mean a melt-your-socks-off metal maelstrom, you need Toadliquor (which, despite Southern Lord's non-updated site, is indeed on shelves).

I've clearly been writing within my comfort zone for far too long, because all my adjectives are as trite as they come: sludgy, doomy, massive, oppressive, asphixiating, slab-like, gi-fucking-normous, obliteratastic. (Ok, we're finding our groove here.)

References are what you'd expect: Grief, Floor, Eyehategod, Earth -- all those bands derived from the slow-it-down school of kids who grew up playing Sabbath on rickety turntables that were already pitched at -8, straight out the box. And if you suspect a drug influence, look no further than the homonym of the name: this isn't just stoner metal, this is some exotic, psychedelic shit.

The Horator's Lament collects their 1994 LP as well as assorted singles and compilation tracks. Near as I can tell, they came out of Florida, which makes sense. If I lived in the state that would eventually make Dubya president, and had a toadlicker's prognosticatory powers, I'd have made music like this too, if for no other reason to beat back the coastline and pound the entire infernal state back into the ocean. (Sorry, Schematic).

"(Opening Selections Of) Inter-stellar Space," which kicks off the record, starts with a demure bit of feedback -- hey, this might almost be pretty! -- before low-slung guitars and bass take the tune by the neck and drag it down into the devastating opening wallop. The singer doesn't just scream: he turns himself inside out with the very first howl. Imagine Rollins being worked over at Guantanamo Bay while the Red Cross observers are out on their lunch break. And it proceeds from there, never developing, never going anywhere, exactly, but somehow it takes hold of you.

It's all very minor key, of course, very half-steps and black keys, with lots of devil's fifths to keep the Baroque satanists happy. But the exquisiteness isn't in the tropes -- which are as standard as they come -- but the delivery. The repetitions. The trash-can cymbals. The golden blooms inside peals of feedback -- orchids in negative space. The way the bass moves against downward-sliding guitars, like the guilty enabler pacing as he watches his friend turn blue from an OD.

The recording is also exquisite: while the CD's add-ons are appropriately lo-fi, the first eight tracks achieve a sound I've never heard before or since, a kind of mottled, water-logged fullness. Toadliquor's sound is total, and it sucks you up and holds you in thrall.

2003-07-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

Deciphering Dizzee, part one (the first in what will certainly be a continuing series):

What the hell does Dizzee Rascal mean when he says (in the misogynistic, misanthropic, Nor-Plant endorsed, "Jezebel"), "I really hope you're not a crim."

Criminal? Nah, in context it sounds more like he's saying, "I hope you're not infected." Am I misinterpreting or mishearing? Does it just mean "shady"?

Also: in "I Luv U," I'm assuming that in the second part of chorus, the woman is saying "She got juiced up... she got [tacked?] up" -- as in, "knocked up," pregnant. And Dizzee's response is, "He got hurted up"?

I'm the first to confess that I'm absolutely shit when it comes to lyrics in any language (hence my breathless joy for Barbara Morgenstern's ballads, which it took me about seven listens to realize weren't even in English, and only seemed the more emotive for that very reason), but Dizzee's tindersticks drawl, ready to burst into flame at any moment, really tries my interpretive abilities.

And while I'm writing about Dizzee: has anyone else noticed that the first two notes of "2 For" are dead ringers for the first two notes of "In da Club"? Except that 50’s tune goes deep immediately, opening with a chord resonating five fathoms below, while Dizzee’s starts thin on a lone Asian string line and then skimboards across the surface - before bellyflopping on his backhand crackle, bristling with knuckles and scabs.

2003-07-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, Luka, I've got more negative capability than I know what to do with. (I know, you're talking about something else - I had to look it up! I never was very good with English lit, despite having two and a half degrees in it. So much for core curricula!)

And if you keep posting lovely prosepoem Celan-style bread-house loam-sofa passages like those, I might even be persuaded to loosen up and post something teenagery.

For now, we apologize for this interruption; back to your regularly scheduled delay in posting ought of consequence.

2003-07-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Quick, someone please tell me now, who is Colleen?

2003-06-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

I have heard the record of the year, and it is Ricardo Villalobos' Alcachofa, due out this fall on Playhouse. "Dexter" -- the plaintive, melodic merry-go-round that he played live at MUTEK 2002 -- is here, and so is "Easy Lee," recently heard in after hours sets from Richie Hawtin and Villalobos himself. Villalobos of old is still in effect -- margin-scribbling details, hard-scrabble percussion, Latin rhythmic scraps weighted with magnets and tossed into the scrapheap. But it's the plangent vocalizing, vocoded but somehow new-sounding, as though reading the larynx with a geiger counter, that sets the record apart and declares Villalobos the king of a new style of microhouse. This is a sad, solitary record -- a stuck-in-the-brain, hungover brood of a record -- that nonetheless rocks dancefloors, as though uniting us by bringing out our essential autism. All its grooves spiral deeper and deeper into the heart of things.

2003-06-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

Pity the backpackers.

That tourists should fall prey to pickpockets in the "Easy Everything" internet cafe -- not just even here, but especially -- seems a particularly cruel irony. Shouldn't the internet, and its house of worship -- this sadly necessary (and thus artificially peppy, dressed up in orange and cheerful fat serif fonts) physical point-of-entry -- afford a kind of diplomatic immunity?

2003-06-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

"Some argue that holding a vote now would favor a handful of groups in Iraq — well-organized religious fundamentalists, politically sophisticated exile groups and anyone with cash to burn," writes David Rohre in the New York Times' Week in Review section this week, analyzing why democracy remains a problematic concept in Iraq, and free elections moreso.

Assuming that tax-dodging expat corporations like Tyco count as "politically sophisticated exile groups," this differs from the situation in the U.S. exactly how?

2003-06-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

Friday night in Barcelona. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about The Loft -- aside from the fact that it's housed in an old warehouse, which is always cool and nightclubby, even when it's clear that hundreds of thousands of euros have been spent to maintain the working-class illusion of the place -- is that it's air-conditioned. Barcelona is swelteringly, painfully, mind-numbingly, cliche-inducingly hot this year, even the locals are saying it. And it's only June. But The Loft is air-conditioned, or something like it -- perhaps it's just the residual effect of the dry ice machines -- so that even at 3 a.m. it's vastly preferable to the sticky world outside.

Strangely, however, even at 3 a.m. on a Friday night, the club is essentially empty. Now, I learned the hard way that people here like to go out late -- showing up at midnight has about as much cachet as taking your date to the early bird supper -- but by 4 a.m. it's not much better. Is it the bill? We've got one of the Closer Musik DJs and Omar (my housemate) and Mousseup; Omar, at least, is one of Barcelona's top DJs, and Closer Musik should draw the Teutonophile crowd (although, granted, the promoters flubbed up in not listing Kompakt on the flyer). Closer Musik guy's room is nearly empty, and it's not surprising -- he plays a clunky, uncouth set that doesn't accomplish much in the groove department. The main floor is techno, techno, techno, though I'm happy when Omar gets his three song rotations in (it's an extended tag-team session, or, as they say here, ping-pong), as he brings a bit more subtlety to the proceedings. (And as every rockcrit knows, subtlely is always good.) No, but really -- so much of this is so thuddingly obvious, I can't see why even the people who are clearly rolling their faces off can find something to move them. No funk, no swing, no nuance, not even any force -- just boom chikka boom chikka boom chikka and then a bit of filtering boom boom boom chikka chikka chikka chikka almost literally ad nauseum.

4:30 a.m. and there are a few more people trickling in now; the club strangely seems to be discouraging the rolling of joints, even though the storklike pose with one hand extended, cupping a ball of hash while the other softens it with a lighter, seems to be the national pose of Spain, so ubiquitous you hardly see it any more.

5 a.m. and people are dancing, but only with the chemically-addled energy you expect to see at 5 a.m. And I wonder: have the Spanish always been such night owls? And if so: what on earth did they do before there were drugs?

2003-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Don't hate me because I'm wordy: finally, after a three week absence, I've returned with a long, long, long (and did I mention long?) account of Montreal's MUTEK festival for my supposed-to-be-weekly column, Needle Drops. Sonar review coming in one week. Meanwhile, watch this space for facile cultural commentary and pithy observations about women's fashions in tropical climes. All hail the tube top!

2003-06-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

Spain should come with a warning label. Only my second night here and already I was getting home at 5:25 in the morning, without even trying. Thanks to Nitsa's brainstorm to put three separate dance floors, each with its own sound system, in one small theatre, all competing with each other (during quiet moments on the main floor all you hear is a clashing thud-thud-thud from the balcony salas), I can't hear for shit -- only a pale yellow ringing in my ears. Add in the smoke, the endless beers, the careening mopeds, the errant M-80s and cherry bombs -- this place will kill you, fast.

2003-05-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

Electronic Tax Return

"Fucking laptop shows are like watching live accounting."
--Aaron McConnoy, Intr_version Records, Montreal

2003-05-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

For anyone interested in reading more about Otomo Yoshihide's show the other night, I've got a review up in my column this week. (Though I'm not sure why I'm bothering to link it, since if you're reading this you probably already know my column; for the moment, this blog is kind of like that "you've reached the end of the internet" joke pages that used to be funny, back when people weren't sure if the internet maybe really did have finite reach. Which is to say, ain't bloody likely anyone is going to start here. Whatever, links are fun.)

2003-05-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

Tigerbeat6 reinvents themselves once again. Nudge's Elaborate Devices for Filtering Crisis comes across like a dinner party heard through the walls, with the stereo on low, the wine glasses humming, the guests alternately jitterbugging and fretting over politics. There are scraps of Burnt Friedman washed down with gulps of Laub, and more Portlanders than you can shake an umbrella at seem to be sitting 'round the table. It's impossible to take your ear from the wall -- and impossible to shake that sense that mere feet away someone's living a richer life than you.

2003-05-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

Otomo Yoshihide played a slow explosion of a set last night at Naut Humon's Compound, down in Hunter's Point. More to come on that, but for now one detail stands out. A lone moth, hardly bigger than a housefly, spent the evening fluttering up into one of Otomo's desk lamps, and then falling back to lie on one of the unused records scattered around the turntables, a smoggy white figure against glistening black plastic. While Otomo bashed away, altering his prepared turntables mid song (if "preparing" is something you do in advance, perhaps he could be said to be "paring"?), playing film reels and drum cymbals instead of records, lifting the decks to allow the needle to stumble downhill, and finally piling the decks high with cymbals and detritus and pressing all his weight against them, summoning vast, squealing blasts of feedback, the poor moth kept up his futile lunar quest, fluttering and falling: instinct amidst the apocalypse. Such determination!

2003-05-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Invisible Ditties:an occasional feature highlighting bands so absurd that if they didn't exist, someone would have to invent them. And so I did.

Philip K. Dickens: a midwestern emo band given to Victorian costumes and lyrics about cloning, identity theft, and pre-crime. Their lineup includes cello, theremin, and stovepipe.

2003-05-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Understatement of the Week

ABC Public Relations notes that Gene Loves Jezebel's forthcoming comeback album "Exploding Girls is an album that raises some serious questions."

Indeed. For instance - and if you're reading this, the thought must already have occurred to you - who the hell decided that the world needed another Gene Loves Jezebel record?

2003-05-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

New genre alert! Over on I Love Music, in a thread on the new Luomo album, Tim Finney has just coined the term of the year, as far as I'm concerned. Identifying "a shift within the broader microhouse scene towards a conscious, dance-oriented version of New Pop" (think Coloma, Digital Disco, Borneo & Sporenburg, in fact most of the Italic catalog), he calls this new tendency -

neuromanticism!

2003-05-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

It is a perfect summer day in San Francisco -- in fact, it's not an overstatement to note that this is the first perfect day of 2003. Not that that doesn't carry its own particular kind of melancholy: the tank-topped, skirted women in my neighborhood walk uphill, pushing determinedly into the sun, looking straight ahead of them, unblinking, unsmiling, on the way home from their marketing jobs, clutching demure handbags, slim notebooks holding collateral, action items, PowerPoint printouts. Their summery outfits seem like meterological footnotes, worn with no indication of the joys of bare flesh or sun-lit skin. Cold, asexual San Francisco is a no-nonsense town, all business these days, and it seems undeserving of both this almost extravagant sun and also the dramatic, Gothic fog for which it's better known.

I am the only person eating in the neighborhood burrito restaurant, a sunny, red-and-blue room that's usually overflowing with diners popped fresh from the 24th Street BART station. How is it that I'm the only person here? Does every single resident of San Francisco have a deck that they've suddenly remembered? Is there an enormous BBQ going on at Dolores Park that I don't know about? Strange how even the "best" weather can leave one out in the cold, as it were. I eat my burrito while reading Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon and then trudge home, squinting into the explosion of light above Twin Peaks.

This is my last week in San Francisco - for a time, anyway - but my numbered days have so far failed to make an impact on me. There is Soutro Tower, and here am I, homing in on it as I climb the hill; ever it has been and ever it shall be.

2003-05-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

a new day, a new name. only two posts in over at decaydecor.blogspot.com i've decided to change identities. stay tuned.