Archive: May 2007

• San Francisco / Maps and earthquake shacks in architecture, san francisco, the ancient past, urban · May 29, 21:59

  This weekend I got an incredible book about San Francisco called San Francisco in Maps & Views. I usually avoid glossy coffee-table historical books because they’re so often filled with disappointments — bad color, bad printing, messy layout, uninspired writing, PLUS they’re really expensive. But THIS ONE. This one is different. The maps are very [...]

• Google street-view meets new apartment in san francisco, tech, visual · May 29, 19:52

  Mara and I just moved into the Lower Haight earlier this month, and Google just released a new Maps feature — Street View — that has a picture of our place. If I weren’t writing about this, I’d be speechless. Wow.

  Our place is the yellow two-story walk-up that is bustin out of the top of [...]

• Must-see movies / Killer of Sheep in cinema, inside art, tip, visual · May 23, 21:18

  A moment from a beautiful, riveting scene in Killer of Sheep. Photo: Milestone Films.
  Killer of Sheep is director Charles Burnett’s account of life in the LA neighborhood of Watts in the early 1970’s. It began life as his senior thesis at UCLA film school and until recently it was never seen outside art houses and [...]

• Weekend reading / Nuclear war, office drama in lit · May 23, 18:07

  William Langewiesche, The Atomic Bazaar
  I came upon the work of journalist William Langweische in pre-Internet times, reading a faded and dog-eared photocopy of “The World In Its Extreme,” a series of Atlantic Monthly articles that trace his travels across the Sahara desert. A vivid scene leaps to my whenever I’m in an airplane: He is [...]

• Rachell Sumpter / Ethereal, still, and strange in inside art, visual · May 22, 20:22

  Rachell Sumpter, Argonauts. From her collection at the Richard Heller Gallery.
  Her stuff reminds me of lots of other artists I like — Evah Fan and some aspects of Julianna Bright, for two. Maybe it’s something about the West Coast, but they’re all simple and light at first glance, but also deeply still, and it’s a [...]

• Warriors / Drama, elevation, a posterization, terrible officiating in basketball, san francisco, visual · May 17, 20:52

  The Warriors playoff ride is over, the Jazz’s ride will come to an end sometime in the next week or so, but Baron’s dunk over Kirilenko will live on FOREVER. Let’s just sit back and appreciate it for a minute. (It’s much better live).

  Baron elevates and elevates; he begins his leap before Kirilenko and is [...]

• Gamers / That’s not even your blood in basketball · May 10, 21:14

  SI’s Jack McCallum just published an article about the Suns-Spurs series that includes an intriguing peek into the mind of Robert Horry. As every NBA fan knows, Horry’s blood runs cold during the playoffs, evidenced by his penchant for hitting dagger-like three-point bombs and his nickname, “Big Shot Rob.” (NBA.com has a page dedicated to [...]