jab #2

Some illustration reportage from the post-vaccination waiting area at the Moscone Center for shot #2. I picked someone with interesting hair to sit behind for my 15 minutes (ginger braids!). Then I went home, inhaled a plate of food, and slept for three and a half hours. Steve isn’t eligible for shots til next week and I imagine appointments will be scarce at first, so we’re just going to carry on in our hermity way for a while yet (which is fine cuz I have a huge project to finish). Feeling relieved as more people start getting vaccinated.
✨💉💉✨
The Moscone Center has done a great job at making getting jabbed a cheerful experience! The staff was super friendly and helpful and there were lots of encouraging signs. I appreciated the enormous cavernous space and plentiful keep-your-distance instruction as someone who hasn’t been inside a public building for more than a couple minutes in a year. As I left, a security guard dancing to Pharrell Williams’ Happy waved me out the door. SF D6 Supervisor Matt Haney’s twitter is a good one to follow to find available appointments and myturn.ca.gov navigating advice.

great highway

Nice seeing you distantly, San Franciscans!

long loan from the sfpl

The new due date for SF Public Library books is September 30th, which means on drop off day I’ll have had these books for 7 months! Actually, I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib was on its third renewal, so it’s lived with me since January and is pretty much my roommate. I really love this book and have read it many many times during its extended pandemic stay. I’m going to feel so weird dropping it off in the returns slot, but maybe it’ll find its way into the hands of another biracial, tricultural person who’ll love it just as much as I do!

Looking at these books all together is also a weird feeling – it’s a time capsule about stuff I was interested in during the last stretch of the before times. I’m still interested in all these things, but there’s been a chasm of sourdough, macguyvering, disinfectant, mask-sewing, grocery-washing, the Nothing gulping down vast swaths of the city, fascism and racism horror, reckoning with mortality and thoughts about legacy, hopeful picture booking, friends permanently fleeing town, hundreds of kitchen hours, wildfire freakouts, and anxious hand-wringing between then and now. Oof.

hotel utah open mic

Dispatches from various Monday nights on the balcony at the Hotel Utah Open Mic. This very slow sketchbooker appreciates how still musicians tend to stand during their 6 minute poses–errrr, sets.

skolstrejk för klimatet

Scene from yesterday’s school strike for climate in San Francisco. The kids did great. Climate action NOW!

on being ambiguously brown

5 panel comic! Click thumbnails below:

san francisco, 4è

Collected scenes from around town, quatrième edition.

The citywide Tuesday noon sirens (with unintelligible message), the Fruit Shelf/Gay Beach at Dolores Park (the highest spot in the park, perfect for views of either downtown or handsome young people wearing very little catching some sun), a glowy St. Ignatius on top of Lone Mountain, the hall closet: i.e. your lovely new baby’s bedroom, the cheese section at Rainbow Grocery that Gordonzola presides over, mint It’s-its: the most nostalgic ice cream sammich, the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, a BART train with requisite muffled announcements, Ritual Coffee Roasters, pan-fried soup dumplings (shen jiang bao) at Shanghai House in the Outer Richmond, majestic redwoods, wood type for letterpress at the San Francisco Center for the Book, my favorite bookstore: Green Apple Books.

san francisco, 3è

Collected scenes from around town, troisième edition.

Matcha/vanilla soft serve at Café Maiko in Japantown, Scoot electric rental scooters, Tank Hill for the secret best view of town, earthquakes, soup dumplings (xiao long bao), Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Presidio Picnic on summer Sundays, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (the geniuses behind, among other things, the Sexy Jesus contest every Easter in Dolores Park), Tandoori chicken pizza, California poppies, the Two o’clock Titty on St. Mary’s (a cheeky local landmark), citywide composting (fantastic!!), Cinderella Bakery for Russian pastries and lunch.

san francisco, 2è

Collected scenes from around town, deuxième edition.

The annual Bay to Breakers run/drunken slog from downtown to Ocean Beach (with tortilla toss and requisite naked dude and Waldo), the Russian honey cake at 20th Century Café, Church of 8 Wheels roller disco Thursdays, Nightgarden Piano at the Botanical Garden in  Golden Gate Park, Kabuki Springs japanese baths, brunch:  the citywide weekend sport (waiting in line until you are nothing but desiccated, benedictless bones), Café Jacqueline for a romantic soufflé, frozen yogurt with olive oil at Souvla, gin at Whitechapel, Victorian arcade amusements at the Musée Mécanique.

san francisco

Collected scenes from around town.

The big rainbow flag at Harvey Milk Plaza, Castro Theatre sign, Pirate Store at 826 Valencia, dahlias (the city flower), Inclines & wires, Boba Guys tea, Dia de los Muertos in Garfield Park, Karl the fog pummeling the neighborhood in Fogust, the Wiggle (the only way to get from Market Street to the Panhandle without dying), purple chandeliers at the Fillmore, Baker Beach (with nude area, setting for the first Burning Man), giant Mission burritos, steam buns, Trouble Coffee’s Build Your Own Damn House breakfast (a coffee, cinnamon toast, and a coconut).

café jacqueline

I keep meaning to go back to Café Jacqueline in North Beach for a soufflé. This is Chef Jacqueline’s egg bowl that she’s been using for ever with a pysanka perched on top of the pile.

women’s march 2018

I broke out a 22 year old shirt from my baby feminist marching days to support women today.

Unfinished foray into documentary illustration (I will never admit to regretting not taking that damnable perspective class in art school):

uji time

I looove Japantown. This was so. Good. 🤤 Matcha soft serve & Pocky with adzuki beans in a taiyaki cone.

mission paletero

A paletero waiting for school to let out in the Mission.
(a couple years in the making!)

emperor norton

letterpress project #4, Emperor Norton I, bay bridge visionary and a damn great san franciscan, with apocryphal canine companions bummer and lazarus.

>>a bit more about norton in an earlier post of mine<<

i printed norton on crane’s lettra paper. the texture is amazing!

falling

letterpress project #3, a wood type poster in two colors. the text is from an uncommonly charming article in the sf chronicle i saved a few years ago on the perseids. meteor-watching tip #5: take someone with whom you like to sit in the dark.

i found a pair of little lead owls in one of the type drawers to punctuate my sentence:

trouble musings

some watercolor practice on trouble coffee co from this photo of the owner: http://jeffsingerphotography.com/2014/1/7/giuliettacarrelli i painted giulietta’s skin tones using chai tea, which is what i usually order when i’m at trouble. tattoos are really fun to paint! do you have a whole gallimaufry of tattoos? will you send me a picture of yourself?

trouble itself viewed from its parklet:

san francisco drorings

some drorings from around town.

bike kitchen, birdseye

a couple of my friends are bike kitchen volunteers and they very nicely let me occupy the ladder for a couple hours and spy on the general kerfuffle from my lofty perch.

tintyped

my dearest wish was to get tintype portraits at photobooth done for my birthday. et voilà!

here’s the studio setup (i have achieved this unnatural good posture by leaning against the hidden noggin propper-upper):