a blog by Ian Kennedy
The power was out when I came home today, second time this week. Alameda Island has it’s own power company and several times a year they have trouble keeping the juice on. I think some poor squirrel was the cause last time.
Today the power was out for about an hour so we got to enjoy dinner by candlelight which Julia said was pretti-ful.
My sister finally fulfilled her dream and dragged me out for a night on the town. We piled into two taxi cabs and raced through the streets of San Francisco to an non-descript warehouse where DJs held fourth and mixed sonic waves of sound effects to titilate the crowd into a frenzy. I had a really good time and managed, in the course of the evening, to work out a kink in my neck that had been bothering me for the past week.
On Sunday, I went over to visit a colleague’s loft in West Oakland for some scrumptous BBQ and, while waddling back to my car, spotted a rad-looking mod car. The photo sucks (I really miss my digital camera!) but if you look closely, you might see that the whole car is covered in bones and skulls which give it a nice Mad Max effect. I’d hate to see that thing bearing down on me in my rearview mirror.
On July 4th, I hung out with neighbors in Alameda. The entire Island was decked out in red, white, and blue bunting and many of the streets were blocked off for block parties. Thompson Avenue had it’s own casual gathering and our neighbor (who is an old school longboarder) had his extended family which are all skateboarders. Everyone from the four year old up to grand-dad himself spent the afternoon listening to surf music and shredding on the street in front of our house.
A parade through town provided a break from the action and the entire town came out to see some 200 different groups parade the 5 mile loop that weaved down Park Avenue, along Shoreline Drive, up Grand Avenue, down Central and then back up Webster Street. I think the parade organizers wanted to mix things up a bit with some of the placements and put the Disabled Veterans right in front of Mother’s for Peace and the gay group Out on the Island in front of a local church group which is known to be anti-gay. The parade also requires some groups to boil their message down to the bare minimum with the Falun Gong foks passing out flyers to parade viewers while saying “It’s good exercise.”
While riding through town, I spotted a Zydeco band, a street beach volleyball tournament, and a frog jumping contest. I capped out the weekend with a view of the official (an unofficial) fireworks that were being launched all around us from when it got dark around 9:30 all the way to midnight.
Today Mie & Dav came over to Alameda with their bikes and we rode to several yacht clubs on the Island that opened their doors to visitors interested in becoming members. It was kind of like a pub crawl because each clubhouse has a bar and they all had food laid out for potential members. I had another meeting so joined them after they had already visited the posh Encinal Yacht Club and Oakland Yacht Club.
We met in front of the Alameda Yacht Club and immediately fell in love with it. The atmosphere was real casual and the people real friendly. Dav called it the, “working man’s yacht club” and the bartender (who we all think was sampling the inventory) went on about how they have lots of parties at this club and also give me the line that’s the title of this post. Membership is reasonable and they have an active group that goes out regularly and are always looking for extra crew. If I were to join a sailing club, this would be it.
We then went over the the Aeolian Yacht Club which I’ve been riding by each morning on my way to the ferry each morning. AYC was founded in 1905 and is the oldest club on the Island. There’s a functional clubhouse and they have a drydock and fully outfitted workshop for its members. The walls are lined with wonderful old black and white photos of old boats on that used to sail on the bay. I spotted one photo of a beautiful old catboat under full sail with the half-completed Bay Bridge in the background. Every Thursday evening, club members gather at 6:30 to row a large whaling dingy out into the bay to drink wine to the setting sun and sing sea shanties.
As Dav says, it’s good fun getting to know a new subculture.
Thanks again to Mie for the photo of the Alameda Marina. I miss my DSC-T1!
I’ve been seeing more and more of these funky looking mocs around town that I began to wonder if this was some kind of local favorite. Keen Footwear broke onto the scene with such subtle force that it was hard to pin where their fanbase was coming from – it just seemed to be that everyone you met at the local Edison School was sporting a pair.
I saw them again on the cover of the June issue of Business 2.0 where they were featured as one of The New Instant Companies and then again, today in Alameda Magazine where the article goes on to say that they are based in Alameda where they plan to stay, no matter how big they get.
Yeah! I cool and subtle badge to promote my local homies on the Island.
Tyler called me on Saturday and told me to look in the drawer under my sock drawer where Izumi and the kids had stashed a birthday card for me before I left. He was so excited to tell me about the suprise and it was so sweet to have something from them to kick off the weekend.
Thank you Mie, Dav, Doug, Brian, Emily and everyone else who spent time with me through the weekend. It was fun! Mie was in full moblog mode and documented everything down to each tiny detail. Dinner in North Beach, the band we saw at El Rio in the Mission, a visit to the Scrap House, the Alameda Antique Fair, and our visit to Lucky Juju’s Pinball Palace. Old friends from Tokyo, Brian and Emily joined us later on Sunday for a drive up to Tilden Park and dinner at Zachary’s Pizza on Solano Avenue. I should have more of these Birthday things, good for the soul they are!
This is the view from the High Street Bridge, about a ten minute walk from our house. I read somewhere that Alameda has something like one sailor for every three residents and I hope that we can join their ranks someday.
A popular topic in the Bay Area is real estate. With home prices reaching obcene levels, all the talk in the carpool is about which homes are on the market, what we think they’re worth, and, suprise, at what price they eventually close. This speculative topic has spilled over into the office as some of my work mates are thinking about a place to live. Overhearing two folks talking about home prices, I passed on the real estate section of my local paper which I was reading on the ride in. There is a laughable listing which not only raises the eyebrow but also got me checking the date just to be sure it wasn’t an April Fool’s gag. Byrne scanned it in and blogged about it.
The kicker is that this was a headline listing. Paid advertisement with a 1/4 page photo on the front page of the real estate section. They obviously thought this was a premier listing, and one to bank the reputation of the real estate companies name upon!
After some fun with Mie on Saturday, we stayed home on Easter Sunday to take part in the annual neighborhood easter egg hunt. We were told to leave a dozen eggs for every child under seven in the morning and the older kids on the block would hid them on the grass median in front of our house. At noon exactly, the elders of the block (second photo from the left) blew a whistle and all the kids ran across the street which had been blocked to traffic by two pickup trucks. For the next 30 minutes it was complete mayhem until all the eggs had been gathered up.
While we were away in Hawaii, my sister said that it was raining most of the time and, would you believe it, it’s raining again now. The rainfall has topped up all the reservoirs which has abated last Summer’s drought worries for now (these things take time to sort themselves out). Being on a small island on the Bay, our water table is something like 6 inches down. People that have below-ground garages have put sandbags at the top of their driveways to keep water from streaming from the street down into their garage and this evening we found a newt in our playroom, poor guy was looking for some relief from all the water!