AUTHOR: linda TITLE: Yoga in the park DATE: 8:53:00 PM ----- BODY:
Completely dispensing of our brightly-colored slippery plastic mats altogether, our group of three took to rooting our sit-bones into the damp grass (worms underfoot; Cypresses wild with a spring wind), cold feet facing one another, and at his cue, progressed at varied cadence from seated bend, flinging legs backward into Plow, pulling them forward crossed Indian-style through arms, then straight into Chaturanga, V-ed at the waist into Down-Dog, crossing them once again to send back through the arms, and straight into a seated bend.


Though giggling -- and toppling part-way though -- it felt good. Probably due to being outside in the fresh elements: wind blowing hard enough to knock you out of your Warrior One, sun so bring you have to squint into your Bridge, and the beauty of Strybing blowing about with brightness and life. And with others who have gathered here word-of-mouth, to this spot that's so close I can walk to it.

Yoga in the park has become one of my Saturday morning traditions -- usually occurring between an early-morning ride, and the over-easy eggs or stack of pancakes I save for lazy weekend breakfasts.

Aside from storing up on positive ions, I'm feeling good from practicing head-stand and learning a new Warrior One/Warrior Two/Warrior Three movement series. Plus I get to be around good people. Namaste!

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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: "Honey, WHO does your color??" DATE: 10:02:00 PM ----- BODY:
"Hi I'm your four o'clock."

He was mid-bite, jumping from a perch on the stair behind a mirrored panel at the back of the store.


"Oh! Hi, hi. So -- um. Hi, can you, uh. Read this to me..."


He pointed to the appointment book where my name was written in pencil, the sweeping block letters barely fit in the box. He smiled at me and giggled, unabashed, and swept his hand over the absurdity of the question. He was right to be a little confused: the "L" looked like a lazy "C."


I laughed and he took me over to the swivel chair in the back room, instructed me to go ahead and clear off a pile of stuff from the seat, and sat me down. I pulled off a baseball hat and tore out the ponytail band. He looked at me in the mirror and asked "Ok: What do we have here?" tugging on chunks of hair, and watching them humbly fall. Of course why would I do my hair that day if I was going to get it styled? I felt the teary urge to dump my entire hair history-- but refrained, rather saying, "I want to see what you're going to do..."


He didn't hear me, suddenly spitting a horrified, "Honey, WHO does your color??"


Uh, me. A blond bottle wash to be exact, and it was just for fun. Over five months ago. An excuse started to bubble up but before I could finish it he shushed me with a cheery fix it and before I knew it he was already puttering around with a bowl and mixer -- "This is an OPPORTUNITY!" he declared -- and oh yeah, not to tell them up front.


That was how Abel ("like Cain and Abel"), the sole stylist at the Pure Beauty Inner Sunset became my best friend for about 45 minutes on a sunny Sunday afternoon, while he worked magic with dye, shampoo, hairdryer, flat-iron, giggles and stories... about people who work with computers trying to press the delete key in real life, about General Funston of San Francisco who fought fire with dynamite, and do I have a social calendar because I need to let him do tresses, and about his City Hall wedding right before it was outlawed again, about his engineer brother-in-law "working for da OIL Man, but I still love him," and "ooo, I know THIS kind of hair! if you just talk near it... whoosh!" blowing his cheeks out and splaying his hands behind my head for effect.


We chuckled about 20-somethings, and recovering catholics, and how it's too windy to walk by Ocean Beach. Then just like that, I said goodbye to the barrel-chested, baby faced Central Valleyan, who'd just made my day.

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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: I *heart* my houseguest DATE: 7:45:00 PM ----- BODY:





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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: Super Tuesday, at Saint Anne's of the Sunset DATE: 7:39:00 PM ----- BODY:




















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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: Locked out DATE: 7:28:00 AM ----- BODY:


Relishing a rare opportunity to work from home for the afternoon, on a beautiful sunny winter day, I make my way to my flat in the Inner Sunset as usual, until, I was struck by the sudden sober notion that I may not have my house keys.

Frantically emptying my bag of all its contents, I don't see them. Wildly searching my memory of the last times I laid eyes on them, I search again -- cursing myself for needing to do so.

It can't be! -- but it is. Yes: I forgot my keys. Now, stranded on the sidewalk in front of my home, wistfully watching everyone else who has someplace to go, I wonder what to do next.

I can't believe that after all those times I'd been sure to pause on the way out the door in order to lay my hands on that key before exiting -- that precaution obviously slipped my mind today. Of all days.

Who would have thought that a tiny two-inch piece of metal could tip the scale of my entire day?

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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: Inner Sunset: Birth of a Neighborhood DATE: 6:42:00 PM ----- BODY:
I've lived in the Inner Sunset for six and a half years, and today I learned about the birth Of my neighborhood on a free SF City Guides walking tour beginning on the corner of Hugo, the charming neighborhood street named after Victor Hugo, on a sunny winter
morning in the shadow of the concrete mass of UCSF, with tour guide Lorri Ungaretti, who used to live on 7th Avenue but can't afford the housing and now lives on Polk. The one other tour attendee was a girl named Choi who lives on 20th Avenue.









The story begins in the 1860's, when the uninhabitable windswept dunes of the lands outside of the busy downtown, the developed Richmond District, near the swath of land to be Golden Gate Park, and unreachable by train like the the one leading to Sutro Heights, was officially incorporated into the City.

Houses that had only existed near the Stanyan train line and spotted between gunpowder factories and dairy ranches, began to pop up
along a stream train line that followed what's now Lincoln. The first map of the area shows an intricate grid of numbered avenues and
alphabet streets, which hadn't even begun to be developed at that time, and wasn't completed until the 50's -- due in a large part to
a local maverick developer named Henry Doelger who bought up Sutro's land and built & sold $5,000 single-family homes like Model
Fords (that now sell for $800,000) in the 30s and 40s.





From Hugo Street, up 7th, to Judah, and down Funston, she pointed out original buildings with their circa 1920's tell-tale beige brick facing on top of white siding and with false fronts, alongside rows of euro-styled "arts & crafts" homes of the 40s, and between all kinds of more recent miscellaneous designs. The only art deco building is Doelger's offices, still on Judah near 9th, used as office space though in sad disrepair.





Judah Street is named after "crazy" Theodore Judah, who inspired the Big Four to fund his crazy idea of a transcontinental railroad
and who built the first rail line from Sacramento to the lower Sierra so that miners could more quickly get their gold to the Capital for cash. St Anne's of the Sunset was the first (of now five) Catholic parishes in the Sunset, holding their first masses during the 1900's at the Parkview Hotel on 9th and Lincoln, where Canvas Cafe used to stand. Andronico's used to be a massive lot called the boneyard where old cable cars went to die, and there was a short-lived movie theater on 14th next to an early Safeway sometime around the 60's.

When our little tour got to 9th and Irving, I introduced Lorri to Jim Ng who was working the neighborhood beat, and we chatted pleasantly about how SF cops have moved from cars to walking and how it's too expensive for cops and firefighters to live in the neighborhoods they serve.


From this central intersection, Lorri described how this neighborhood is such because it's not trendy like Cow Hollow or Fillmore neighborhoods without chain stores, though Jamba and Starbucks were the first (Blockbuster flubbed on taking over the SE corner and the tiny, quiet Burger King eventually died). PJ's Oyster Bed used to be office space for the other Doelger brother, who died suddenly at the early age of 37. She ended the tour with the story of the Shamrock, began by a successful entrepreneur who offered free food with purchase of a beer to workers building for the Midwinter Fair of 1894 -- which left as legacy the Japanese Tea Garden, bandshell and park museum (later becoming the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum).

The Golden Gate Heights Stairway Tour is next, where I do my early-morning runs.

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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: Sliding Doors: Adventures on MUNI and the Streets of San Francisco DATE: 10:21:00 AM ----- BODY:



In the glum silence of commute-hour, squashed among earbuds, cellphones, paperback books, and pink plastic shopping bags, a striking woman dressed in a proper school-girl skirt, crisp collared shirt and a friendly crop of braids, seats herself next to me for the 33-minute rail ride.

We talk about world travels and young secretaries who think themselves too good to wipe down the office kitchen, and mystery novels... and since she has my same commute, I promised to lend her the first of Bonnie Hearn Hill's newspaper thriller series.



Sure enough, the week I put "If it Bleeds" in my bag for Antione, the kind-hearted Brit, I ran into her. But then for weeks after that, no sign of the pleated skirt and friendly braids. I had no way of contacting her other than MUNI, but I felt sure we'd run into one another again someday.

Then, on a Tuesday morning, as my commute took me up Sansome Street past Mr. Two Twenty and we exchanged a familiar wave, I spotted Antione walking the opposite direction right in front of me and the Two Twenty building.

"Why -- hello!"

And with an excited exchange like old friends under the green awning, about missing one another with no way of contact, writing down phone numbers and such things, Andre himself emerged from between the glass doors to say that he'd the story I wrote about him and how it touched his heart.


It was a real-world vortex of story!

I promptly thanked him, and turned to introduce Andre to Antione, who reflected kind energy to one another with a polite handshake.

Doppelganger?

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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: October's Hunter Moon DATE: 12:11:00 PM ----- BODY:
Moonrise...



















... and set, over the Sunset.

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-------- AUTHOR: linda TITLE: A Sunset Shoe Repair Story DATE: 8:37:00 PM ----- BODY:
A frantic Friday evening errand destination: the tiny outfit smashed between a dry cleaners and an athletic shoe store on Irving Street, just shy of 7th Ave., with a giant, unlit neon sign shaped like a shoe, reading "Sunset Shoe Repair."

Rain pouring, soaking the ink off a paper bag that held a few items intended for Crossroads all over my fingers and white raincoat.

Wet on the outside and on the inside from the 5-block run uphill, Glen welcomed me in from the dark outside, and exclaimed about the rain, offering me a pink plastic "Have a Nice Day" bag to replace the wilted paper one, while examining the item in question, a pair of Spring 2007 Franco Sarto vinyl boots, with a strange bendy thing happening on the inside of the left heel.

His prognosis: the heel had shattered on the inside, which could be fixed... for $20. He said it as a question, and I answered, no problem, thinking it was merely a quarter of the cost of the shoes. Then he turned the boot over and noted that the bottom of each heel was worn off to the nails, to which I quickly said no problem about replacing those, too.

As he pointed to where I should fill out my name and phone number on the purple order slip, he made a final exclamation about the holes on the bottom of the pointy heels.

"See the hole?" he asked. I nodded.

"I'd be able to fix it if there was something for me to attach material to, but this goes all the way through; I can't fix it."

"Ok..."

"Are you sure it's worth keeping these? I can take a black marker to the holes, if you want to try to sell them at Crossroads.'

Faced with fixes adding to almost half the cost of the boots along with a new, unfixable problem, and the rain coming down outside and sure to continue, I decided to go with it.

Glen gleefully proceeded to prepare the boots for sale, turning the heel against a nearby rotating wheel, markering the tips, and buffing the tops with a white towel, till they looked about as new as I'd bought them, seven months ago.


Across the street, Crossroads examined them, sought a second opinion, and priced them at $32 (taking none of the other items), half of which I got as store credit.

Since his door was still open, I stopped in at Sunset Shoe Repair to report the outcome to Glen on my way back. He smiled.

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