Neptune Landing

      A San Francisco old-timer recently told me that the transients seek to consume this city while the tried-and-true seek to build it. Consumption has become the American past-time in this most American of cities but we've also been on a building spree (as evidenced by the slanted spines of cranes along Market Street). Richard Florida, the new urbanist, would pat us on the back as a premier lifestyle city that is making space for the depressing concept of  twitter apartments while nabbing the title of happiest city in America . But, surely, there's more to this place than laughter on the street and hunger in the fog.        Casting the world into producers and consumers has always seemed an impoverished division to me. Deep down, in my writer's vanity, I've subscribed to a third class of humans: that of connectors/interpreters. Right: Patio Garden         Gardening has...

     The hardest part of last week for me was feeling the existential angst of my home city and feeling like I had very few people to turn to in my adopted one. I felt heavily what Boston was suffering but only from afar. The nerves of the whole city were shot I'm sure (mine surely were) and yet we were so blessed to have a medical team placed so near the finish line. Thank God for our bevy of world-class hospitals and the particular can-do-spirit of everybody in Boston, Massachusetts on our very own Patriots' Day. It's a small but mighty city that left no nook and cranny uninspected.      I admittedly became a little unhinged with guilt and monomania. Housesitting in Twin Peaks starting on Monday afternoon, I became glued to the cable channels (a novelty for me) and clung to one of my chocolate labs for comfort as the news spilled out over five days. Many men in my family work for law enforcement or security. Heck, I...

     Mauricio constantly marvels at the lexical depth of the English language. It seems we have a word for everything while Hispanics use meandering oxygen on describing the English equivalent. Three examples are h eel as the end piece of a loaf of bread, serendipity as the joy evoked from the happy accident and the utilitarian verb outfit , to provide one with the necessary equipment. English, it seems, is a very rich language without the phoenetic beauty while Spanish is a very beautiful language without the linguistic richness.      In my new goal of learning Spanish, Italian and Irish, I've started to first practice Spanish as it is the lowest-hanging-fruit (a beautiful English phrase that has no Spanish equivalent, fyi). But it seemed like Spanish always seemed deficient in the vocabulary department. This morning, however, Mauricio and I started rapping about time and schedules. He described the gem trasnoch...

       Let's not kid ourselves. When people hear the word California, they imagine what Southern California offers with neat lines of solo palm trees (whom John Updike once described as "isolate, like psychopaths"), action movies, celebrities behaving badly and rollerblading, lots of rollerblading. Most Bay Areans recoil at the slightest mention of the second-largest city in the U.S. and fall over themselves in worshipping the largest (but that's another blogpost). It's a mixed case of good old-fashioned jealousy and a struggle for water rights. But for me ...        I like L.A.        Or I should say I like L.A. in small doses. Earlier in March, Mauricio and I drove down the coast to spend a few nights in a hippie cottage (named "StoryBook") in Topanga Canyon, a forested enclave fifteen minutes outside of Santa Monica where you couldn't hear a moving car if you tried. Over three days, we rented bikes ...

Happy Easter, Passover and Spring, everyone! chili in her kitchen I'm happy to announce that I am now the sole proprietor of my own dogwalking company. "Hounds Get Around" serves two packs a day, hiking the trails and dunes of Fort Funston, Bernal Heights, McLaren Park and Stern Grove. If you have a puppy in need of playtime, please contact me, as I have space for one additional furry friend. Hounds Get Around is fully bonded and insured and licensed with the city of San Francsico. My facebook community page  in still in its infancy but photos and text will be added soon. Crosby and Chili I purchased the company from my friend, Tina, so there was already a steady client list. The work itself is filled with lots of fresh air, exercise and sunshine so it's a rare day that a dog walker gets sick. Sometimes you need the patience of Mother Superior but any person who has an easy-going temperment will have an advantage in leading his pack. Dogs are psychic spong...

       March is a lovely month for the Irish. The world, in blustery, early spring is introduced to bits of green escaping the thawed soil. Then on the 17th we have the deluge of Kelly green and carry-around shamrocks. Many too are green with envy for not being Irish. Malarky, we say, for everyone can be Irish (all month if you'd like). All it takes is having fun and seeing the world through magical eyes.        As a matter of principle, I haven't attended the South Boston Irish parade (for as long as I can remember) because of its homophobic past which you can reference here . The 162nd Saint Patrick's Day Parade in San Francisco, however, was a chance to experience the holiday anew. Much to my surprise, I found that Irish organizations like labor unions and Irish Step Dancing Schools are in full swing in Baghdad-by-the-Bay. Most of the Irish live "out on the avenues" in the Sunset and Richmond distri...

I am an uncle again. Little Maggie Grace Burns was born on Monday, February 18, 2013 weighing 7.12 lbs. Here are pics with my nephew, Sean, and my niece, Emily, holding her. I'm proud of Emily, in particular, because this will be a whole new level of responsibility, having a baby sister! I can't wait to meet her come November! In other news, here out west, I've stepped it up and purchased my first adult car. The last one I owned was "Kit," a 1981 cream-colored Buick Skylark that I shared with my siblings during our high school and college years. His days were always numbered. Later on, as an insufferably liberal young adult, I was happy to take 'the T' everywhere around the Boston metro area but was also too eager to borrow the car of anyone close to me, be it my brother, my dad or my ex. Now my name is attached to a machine of financial gravity. Looks like little Emily is not the only one who has to show responsibility! Daedalus is the ...