Laughing Meme

Clearly the economy is in a bad way.

What I can’t figure out is why I’m seeing a huge spike in employment inquiries (most totally ridiculous head hunter crap, and some really awesome “work on stuff that matters” style projects), the Web is full of the most innovative stuff I’ve seen in years, and everyoneiknowisdoingawesomeshit.

Some days its hard to stay pessimistic.

Jasmine has a set of photos up from the short road trip we took with my parents to southern Vermont to see the changing of the leaves.

Some of my earliest photos on Flickr are of going to see fall colors in VT and NH, with our friends Rob and Rima, in October 2004. (whose son Elias was a month old yesterday)

Took the bike out for a spin on what might be the last truly hot and sunny weekend of the year.

Head out in search of the fabled Red Hook ball field food vendors. For 30 years they’ve been congregating on the weekends in Red Hook to feed the hordes who show up to play and watch soccer. And its widely agreed to be the best Mexican and Latin American food in the 5 boroughs.

Last year they had a brush with extinction as the city, in its bid to clean up the neighborhood and make it yuppy/Ikea safe shut down the proceedings citing sanitation issues. Eventually a compromise was struck, and a handful of the vendors are back, now in plumbed trucks. The food is still very very good, but their numbers are reduced. My favorite was the pupusas loroco con queso.

But even before that a flat tire drove me into the The Bike Shop and the Coffee Den across the way, where they serve a decent cup of Gorilla. Need to get those kevlar tires.

From there we walked along the water front, dramatically changed from our last visit two years ago. And found to our glee that Steve’s was still serving their swingles, frozen chocolate dipped key lime pie on a stick.

On the ride back I wandered into Fort Greene park, and wondered if I’d found a portal back to Dolores Park. So startled I forgot to take a photo.

And then, at the end of the 13 mile loop, blocks from home, tripped over a fafi and Koralie piece, paint not quite dry.

I hear 4Barrel is open. Congrats to Jeremy and the crew!

This photo is from a morning when MSG, Blaine, and I wandered over to find the back door closed, and so peaked our head. Jeremy took a break from painting and sanding to pull some shots, and show us around the bones of the store. Excited to see the finished product, but I think I’ll be nostalgic for how it looked that morning.

We tromped up to our roof with friends and neighbors to watch the fireworks in the rain.

IMG_3450, originally uploaded by curlyjazz.

A family ritual, originally uploaded by curlyjazz.

We go for coffee at Gayles every Saturday morning I’m in Santa Cruz.

Some of you have heard, some of you haven’t, but Jasmine and I are getting up next week (June 12th) and moving to New York.

The plan is to go on working for Flickr, and fly back to SF once a month or so. So if you could plan your camps/parties/meetups/conferences accordingly that would be swell.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the East Coast. (And while we haven’t really gotten a feel for the new apartment [in Williamsburg], its looking like we might even have something resembling a guest room.)

We’ll be driving back via the not most direct route (which will surprise no one who knows us) that takes us past the Grand Canyon, Austin, and New Orleans. (thats as far as the map I’m looking at goes) So any suggestions for anything from sights, to food, to places to stay, to good people along those stretches, to great audiobooks to fill up empty bits in the road are all appreciated.

And what a long, strange 10 years it’s been.

Skipped lunch to spend a couple of hours this afternoon hanging at Mojo cafe this afternoon with Mroth and Blaine getting trained up by Steve. Love this photo Mroth snapped.

I didn’t make it to the keynote to see our new CTO speak (meetings that morning), but it was very strange, bordering on deeply surreal to watch the video of it.

1. Interesting to see my “Flickr is the 2nd largest API ” meme work its way up the tree. I didn’t make that factoid up per se, and I’d probably stand behind it if pushed, but I did reason from very limited data. (also AWS screws up the story, is utility computing an API?)

2. Still haven’t quite adjusted to the transition of OAuth from being a personal project that the “Paranoids” (official title of Yahoo’s internal security experts) were angry at me for working on (against Yahoo policy for Yahoos to work on security related projects), to a the company wide standard, at least on paper.

Historically there were a few days between the end of one year, and the beginning of the next that people took to be days out of the normal flow, a chance to do the things you didn’t have time to do, or weren’t allowed to do the rest of the year. This is the origin of Carnival, and Mardi Gras and related ceremonies. (this is according to Bakhtin, I’m not wearing my calendar geek hat when I say this, so be warned)

We no longer have the wonderful concept of a few days each year out of time, but once, every four years we do get a leap day. Don’t waste it. – Happy Leap Day – 2004/02/29

I totally wasted it today. We had been planning a dystopian leap year party. I wrangled databases instead.

Renewed protest.net. First registered 1998-2-24. Last time I renewed it was for 5 years. Time passes.

Got ambushed by the calendar again. At some point “way far away in the future” became “like tomorrow”.

Which is how I find myself caught a bit by surprise by the fact that I’m getting on a plane this weekend with Jazz to go meet some friends in Sayulita, MX having done nothing remotely resembling research or planning.

This will be my first real visit to Mexico, so any tips you have for me on Mexico, or Sayulita would be great!

update: everybody is telling me to take lots of books to Sayulita, and my brain is going blank this week. Suggestions on books to take to the beach?

Jasmine and I headed to Los Angeles for the new year. And we had an amazing time. This is hard for me. As a native of Northern California I was raised to despise Los Angeles. (and really I’m more a Central/Southern California, but culturally we identified as NorCal.) Studies on environmentalism and conservation just reinforced the point.

Part of the deal for us going to LA was that I’d do a chunk of the driving as Jasmine’s wrist is sprained. This was problematic as I don’t drive, and didn’t have a license. So on Dec. 24th we spent some time driving, and on Dec. 26th I proved that CA will give a driver’s license to just about anyone. And Dec. 28th we drove the 350 miles to LA. And so ends a 15 year boycott of car culture.

The weather was great, we saw amazing art, we ate great food, we caught a good show, and saw good friends. We took a bunch of photos, I’ve got a small sampling of them, and Jasmine has a more complete set.

We drove down to Watts Tower.

The Smart House, Venice, CA

Shepard Fairey might be over saturated, but he is also at the top of his game. The execution on his new work, Imperfect Union, is flawless, and gorgeous. Also sold out. Literally. Every piece was sold. We tried to beg/borrow/steal anything with War by the Numbers on it. Without success.

The Murakami show was overwhelming. On paper doesn’t it look that large, but the live experience is different. Interesting to see his work all together, you realize how weak the painting is, and how amazing his sculpture is. The security presence was so intense, I almost felt like I was in a performance piece, the © in the show’s name being acted out as authoritarian dystopic future. Which is to say, we were only able to sneak a handful of photos. Or a plot to make you buy the catalog. (which we did)

We met up with Jasmine’s people from NYC at the Varla NYE party. The Dickies were the headliners, but the Airliner is a great funky dive bar, with 3 stages, which they kept busy that night, including our favorite act of the night, Vegas based “Objex”, the only one we got photos of.

More then any other year I can remember “Happy New Year!” congratulations seemed to roll in every hour on the hour all day long. This diversified geography thing is starting to look unscalable.