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california
So I was catching up with the haps in my new city today on Berkeleyside, and I noticed a reference to yet another cool thing that originated in Oakland. No, it’s not turf dancing, or whistle tips, or ghost riding, or even hyphy. It’s scraperbikes, old beaters totally tricked out with colorful, cheap, homespun decorations. [...]
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Cycling seems more dangerous, more hassle-filled, and generally more aggro than when I moved here. Why? Maybe it’s me. I moved to Berkeley recently, and I’m pretty close to having a lawn that I can tell kids to get off of. Maybe it’s that the city has changed a lot. There are more cyclists, more [...]
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My old friend Michael Ramage has a hand in this installation in the Yerba Buena Center for Art’s Sculpture Garden. He’s designing and building a pair of domes, made from layers of bricks and mortar and styled on ancient techniques. The artist behind it is Jewlia Eisenberg & Charming Hostess, and the vision is that [...]
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When the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was published in late 60s and early 70s, the idea was to create a finely curated list of everything “useful, relevant to independent education, high quality or low cost, not already common knowledge, and easily available by mail.” The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller, Fall 1968. From Arts & Ecology. [...]
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Oh wow, our pal Greg Gardner put together a really nice collection of new music from local bands. It’s called In A Cloud, which describes the recent winter weather and the album itself is a time capsule of San Francisco sounds in 2009-10. My favorite song is a sweet little thing called “Baby Held” by [...]
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I tend to obsess over outdoors gear. The pinnacle (or nadir, as the case may be) of this obsession was the spring/summer of 2001, when I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Over four months, I sampled a ton of gear — six pairs of shoes, a few different shirts, jackets, socks, shelters, cookware. I had dozens (maybe [...]
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Sarah brought over an excellent old book called The Trees of California, by Willis Linn Jepson. It was published in 1909, and it had some amazing photos of the redwoods up north. The caption reads: “Fig 15. REDWOOD (Sequoia sempervirens Endl.) Making the “undercut”, which determines the direction of the fall, on a tree 16 feet [...]
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If you haven’t been to San Juan Bautista, you need to go. It’s a little ways south of San Jose, an hour east of Big Sur, a long but not impossible trip from San Francisco. Mara and I were there last winter, and I keep meaning to spread the word. It’s a real getaway with [...]
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Last Friday, we improvised a parlor game during a visit to Sarah’s parents’ East Bay homestead. They’ve got tons of books on California history, including a gem called California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names by one Erwin Gudde, a Cal professor and friend of Sarah’s fam. There wasn’t much “game” [...]
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My name is Doug LeMoine. I work both on, and for, the Internet. You can find more about me in the 
