neighbors with sabers

Pike and 14th-ish. never ignore a seemingly vacant storefront. 

Greenwood. 

Cal Anderson.

didja know? "taxidermy" comes from the Greek taxis (to arrange) and dermis (skin). I've always wondered what sort of gruesome train of thought might have originated such a term: let's rip skin off shit and staple it back together so it looks like the thing we ripped it off of, hey we can call it taxidermy. 

the Latin term would be coria compositio. 

someone's failed plans for the evening. they got to where they were going and searched their pockets frantically. damn it!

sunsettish self-portrait at volunteer park. 

today on duolingo: j'entends tout, bien que je n'écoute pas. i hear everything although I do not listen. 

marchez dans les nuages

I wonder where these mouths are now. instead of "cheese" did they say "grrrr"? so many questions there will never be answers to. 

the eloquent facelessness of a city. 

watching a poppy bloom is always rather unsettling, like walking in on a stranger on the toilet. 

this is what a fucking pound of jawbreakers delivered to my door after my bleary late-night ordering looks like! adulthood is everything I expected it to be. 

making prudishness dainty! 

I turned this photo on its side to better capture the indignant earnestness. fools!

this sinuous anomaly lives outside my lair. I picture this flower drunkenly attempting to do the Worm at a nightclub and all its sober flower-friends standing rigidly in the background pretending to ignore it. 

this was once spankin' new and cooked meals and fed people and made the place smell like somebody gave a fuck, and now it's in a constant silent scream. 

it's spittlebug season! I can't think that without inserting an insufferable glottal stop, so I just call them "spit bugs" when I have to reference them aloud. the 'spit' is actually foamy sap that they suck from the plant they're on (lavender, here) and use as a bitter-tasting moist cocoon to house their nymphiness. eventually they'll be full-on froghoppers (that's actually their name, cringingly folksy) of the classification Cercopoidea and jump great distances relative to their body size. I've babbled about spit bugs before; I find their pervasiveness and unaesthetic acumen very pleasing.  

a Triumph! I wanted one of these so badly when I was a kid- a Triumph or an MGB to go with my straight blonde hair and honorary Sweet Valley High status. I'm far too gangly to feel comfortable in a car like this now, but I did see the owners get in (an older couple) and I mouthed "I love your car!" and gave them a thumbs-up and they waved back. they probably get that a lot. 

if you need a sackful of C batteries, the lightpole at 20th and E Union can hook you up. 

someone (or more likely, something) eats their bagels like I do: skin only! that was the first thing I saw, but then I noticed the myriad right angles and how everything within a 4' square slice of the universe fit together so casually beautifully. 

I have been in a really happy mood lately and I finally figured out why. 

like a pigeon

la pomme du mon œil! those fangs belong in an impala's throat. 

a bona fide shaggin' wagon, aka a Rambler Ambassador, outside the Laurelton, one of my favorite buildings in Seattle. The Laurelton was designed by Frank Baker and built in 1927 out of concrete and stucco. the building is shaped like an x with an interior courtyard, and the apartments all originally featured "centralized Kelvinator refrigerators!" 

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didja know? the Kelvinator company was founded in Detroit in 1914 and named in honor of William Thomson, the guy who invented the concept of absolute zero and the Kelvin scale. Kelvinator refrigerators were the first to have automatic temperature control and one of the first to replace iceboxes with electric freezers. 'twas a big deal for your rad three-room lair in 1927. 

I hate to see you leave but I love to watch you go.

Olive Way.

Republican Street.

what's with all the sexy-ass cars? Seattle's all San Francisco, pshaw. I got this. and the wheels turn curbside as they should. 

a net of cobwebs and slug excreta outside my door, bejeweled by the dawn! bedewled, if you will. 

Stewart Street.

the alley at 6th and Olive. 

thank you for never being boring. 

this fucking stone! every plant I put it into dies! I finally removed it from the pitiful dracaena from posts prior and said dracaena is thriving now! and when I did, I tenderly placed it with this guy specifically because this plant was doing so well! was this stone stolen from a fucking tomb before it was jauntily painted? I bought it for 25 cents at a garage sale years ago. 

covet nothing! 

essayez encore

this little dude hung out at the lair last week. the camera refused to focus where I wanted it to. 

the more I look at this picture, the more I like it. the parallelallelallelity, the crappy tags, the passive-aggressively covert core, the cement dribbles, the way the colors match. 

...and yesterday, my last day in San Francisco. 

Wednesday and Thursday I fell in thudding unreasonable infatuation; Friday felt like the morning after a one night stand, when you can see the appeal and forgive yourself for your actions and may even play with the possibility of potential, maybe we'll see each other again, but you still want to slink away as quietly as possible. 

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seductions like this lurked around every corner. 

there's a part in the Beverly Cleary novel "Fifteen" where they go to a restaurant in this very Chinatown. when I was a kid I loved that chapter because of the way it described the fog, the lights, the exoticness, her trying to feel mature. now I remember it as one of the most fucking racist things I've ever read. 

somewhere downtown. 

I like buildings that tell you exactly where you are. 

the "ghastly 1950s cookbook" filter. 

the sandwich board says "welcome to our store and become 'lucky'."

Grant Street. 

accidental San Francisco self-portrait.  

Powell Street station.

in contrast, seattle feels like someone who's a totally unpredictable affection-rationing asshole but about whom you masochistically think maybe this time it'll be different. 

San Francisco day two

yesterday in somewhat chronological order: 

Outer Sunset wires. 

perhaps duct-taping your license plate to your molester van will arouse suspicion no matter how austere your business logo.  

a church made of cake.

part of the UCSF Medical Center. I took this for its luscious brutalism and then was like how's it going, Hippocrates.

the Asian Art Museum. these characters are all about 6" long, made of porcelain and individually shipped from overseas. the whole shebang weighs over two tons. 

delicacy.

a snuff box to share with someone you dig. 

the camel of rutty triumph! this is what the very last tchotchke I bought from the Capitol Hill Valù Villâge is based on! I had no idea! this guy is about 4' long, encased in glass, c. 690-750. thank you, my fantastic cousin, for enlightening me! 

a duck ewer. when I just typed that my phone tried to autocorrect it to fuck eeee! admittedly, that's a far more plausible phrase.

fuck-off windowsills near the Civic Center, and me. 

Fell Street. no really. ha ha ha. 

the "bags of felt ammo" cost $5.95.

and the placard accompanying these patches introduced the artist as being "a recent member of the lactose-intolerant community." oh San Francisco. 

$3100/month, 700sq feet, month-to-month lease. 

pretty things. 

I was walking down the hill and saw half of it due to the angle and thought no, NO, it better not be. but it is. 

the statue gets its own view.

this is horrible angle because I had to basically straddle a Smartcar to get both the sidewalk and the stairs, but I love how they name stairwells here. Seattle needs to do that! 

Sutro Tower, 977' tall. 

Le Creuset egg cups. 

Castro & Market.

a random street. thanks, random street.

this store has effectively neutralized itself. 

the dog was more wisely clad than I. it was gorgeous except for the 20mph wind. I got a sunburn to go with my grey hands. 

trees under assault!

actually on the Golden Gate Bridge! I wussed out after the first tower. it's a long fucking way down. 

and looking up. the moon is waxing. 

the Legion of Honor museum grounds. this was a startling thing to glance over and be surprised by. 

the N-Judah line. 

the more I travel, and the more places I visit that I fucking love, the more I wonder if, despite loving a place, I really actually fit in anywhere. maybe everyone feels that way.