Doggie Diner Doggies Yarn-Bombed!

I posted images of the Doggie Diner Doggies on this blog in 2010. I did not explain at that time that each doggie once stood above a restaurant of the long defunct Doggie Diner chain. At the demise of the chain various collectors snapped up the doggies. A collector named John Law got three of them and put them on a trailer so that they could attend various events around town. Madame Le Chef and I spotted the doggies this Saturday past in front of a house on upper Folsom. They had been wonderfully yarn-bombed.

We stopped the car and I took several pictures. Other people were doing the same.

It turns out the doggies were there for a big Halloween party that was happening that night.

News of them spread around the hill and they came to the attention of Bernalwood, our neighborhood blog. They scooped me by a day and had lots of additional information and a photo of the Doggie Diner which once stood in our neighborhood.

Fiesta on the Hill

Bernal Heights had its annual street fair on the Sunday just past. Several blocks of the main drag, Cortland Ave., were closed to traffic and all the usual street fair things were there. Yes there were pony rides for the kids, food stands, bands, merchandise and information. The bureau chief got there later in the afternoon after a cold wind from the sea had thinned the crowd. It's interesting that some people make a living by traveling all around the state from fair to fair.

These stands have the classics.

These are more diverse.

It's all new to the kids.

This was new to me also.

Steam Powered Art

For ten years in a row, the San Francisco Center for the Book has hosted an event on the street outside their front door where prints are made from 3 ft. by 3 ft. linoleum blocks by making a sandwich of the inked block, paper and various protective layers and running a steamroller over it. We attended this event last Sunday. The photos are a mixture of mine and Madame Le Chef's. (Please click.)

Normally the steamroller is a modern compact machine but this year the organizers were able to get in contact with some steam enthusiasts up in Willets CA and voilà, an actual steam powered steamroller.

The paper was put down carefully.

The protective layers were added. You can see the backup modern steamroller in the background on the left side.

The steamroller got up a head of steam.

Things got rolling.

The layers were peeled away.

Success.

Blame it on Fidel

The bureau chief really likes this 2006 French film (La faute à Fidel) by Julie Gavras. When we first meet our nine-year-old heroine, Anna, she's not a very likable child. The influence of her Cuban refugee nanny and her conservative Catholic grand parents have turned her into a miniature right-wing snob. She's at a family wedding and is browbeating the other children into eating their oranges with a knife and fork, like proper people. Her political and social stances are particularly ironic since her parents, Parisian professionals, are moving further and further to the left. This is the early 1970s and her father has become a strong supporter of the Allende government in Chile, while her mother is working for abortion rights in France.

Anna has a will of steel but, like all children, has no autonomy and is forced to be pragmatic when the things around her start to change. The whole cast is excellent and Nina Kervel-Bey is wonderful as Anna.

Julie Gavras knows about growing up with leftist parents since her father is Costa-Gavras. She has made a film with a perfect balance of comedy and drama. I recommend it.

Ridiculously Intense Sunset

The bureau chief does not use any sort of photo manipulation with the exception of occasionally straightening the plane of a picture. Basically I snap the picture with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 and the result comes from the interaction of the light and the digital sensor. I make this preamble because the following shots, taken on the evening of September 1st, are rather otherworldly.

The reflection in the bureau's windows.

More.

And one more.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

We recently watched this 1971 film after not having seen it for decades. I would have to take another look at "Nashville" before crowning "McCabe" Altman's masterpiece but I strongly suspect it is. It has his usual dark humor but the wintery shots of the town of Presbyterian Church (actually built for the film), the purposely hazy photography and the use of Leonard Cohen's melancholy songs give a yearning quality to the film that's not present in most of his work. Cohen's "The Stranger Song" fits the film like it was written for it. It wasn't.

Apparently it was Altman's intention to debunk the Hollywood propagated myth of the American Frontier and he succeeded admirably but he also made his most beautiful film. The acting is all excellent and Julie Christie is amazing. Take another look at this film.

Local Pride

The invaluable neighborhood blog Bernalwood has again posted the news that, contrary to received wisdom, the steepest street in San Francisco is in our stomping ground of Bernal Heights and that the block of Ripley St. where the bureau is located is the 6th steepest street in San Francisco.

I'll repost a couple of photos that would make you suspect that our street is pretty steep.