Travel Log - 10/08/2011 - The First Mission Mission, Mission District, San Francisco, CA
From charlesreid1
(Camera out-of-action on this mission because of dead batteries. I really need a camera with longer battery life...)
Ah, the Mission District! Alternately, as a Yuma farmboy, a chemical engineering computer nerd, and a curious and eager reader, this place has a slice of home for each face.
I got the whilrwind Tour O' Good Stuff compliments of my buddy Adam. Starting at Rodger's Coffee, a coffee shop of delights, where I had a Turkish coffee with the weight of a porter beer and rich, complex flavor. After some jaw jackin', we went to Dog Eared Books - which must be a sister bookshop to Red Hill Books, since most of the price tags in Red Hill books had "Dog Eared Books" price tags on them. A great new/used selection there - superb philosophy and beat poetry selections, lots of interesting non-traditional local guide books and maps, lots of fiction and science writing, some very interesting maps (one of SF from 1909), etc.
Next was Borderlands Science Fiction Bookstore, which is a science fiction bookstore, in case you did not notice. Adam and I were having this continuous and extremely interesting conversation the entire time we were in the coffee shop, then walking from the coffee shop to the bookstore (covering varied topics like, why you can't take math and science at an Ivy League School unless you're a savaunt, and being the stand-in for Christendom and white people in general while teaching the history of said groups to students in Cambodia), in the bookstore (Guns of the South, how fields of study form as these well-developed branches of philosophy, like psychology, political studies, economics, ethics, literary criticism coming from a few essays by Aristotle, whereupon they break off and form separate branches; and how one may watch these branches growing, in slow motion, ) from the bookstore to the other bookstore, etc. So we're having this very interesting conversation that converges on really great science fiction authors who aren't dead, and the difficulty of finding them. The value in a bookstore like this, Adam said, is that you can go into one and get expert recommendations based on what you already read (alluding to a prior branch of conversation about how there is a desperate need for a book and poetry rating and recommendation system like Netflix). He told me he walked in one day and said he liked Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick, and asked for a recommended living author; he was recommended (..........).
And sure enough, the guy working there jumped into the conversation and had some great insight into genres, topics, and authors. We were talking about alternate history and Harry Turtledove (something else alluded to earlier in the conversation), and his prolific writing, and alternate history, and the idea of being transported backward in time, with primitive implements, and how maker skills would be valuable, but computer and electronics skills useless; discussed some books and science fiction playing off of that idea; he brought up a novel by Eric Flint (I think?) called 1634, wherein a town from the American South in 2000 is dropped into the midst of rural Germany in the midst of the 30 Years' War. They end up converging on a Civil War-type fighting force.
This guy found that book, and then another recommendation for Adam about a U.N. fleet transported into the past, and ends up in the midst of the Allied Midway carrier group, whereupon an engagement ensues and they completely destroy the Allied Midway group. The Borderlands employee gave a very passionate and enlightened discourse on the political strands of the novel, how it was making very interesting statements about war and sustained conflict and integration of non-male non-whites into the army, and how it was (slyly?) marketed to the Tom Clancy crowd as a military thriller but ended up being even more. Adam ended up walking out with a copy. I am definitely looking forward to frequenting that place.
Next was 836 Valencia. Arrrrr!
Noisebridge. Where to begin? It was quite awesome to be walking in the midst of what is essentially the physical embodiment of the open source philosophy. A workshop - a workspace - an adult play space and giant public toy bin - made available for anybody.
It was mind-boggling to thumb through drawers and drawers of screws of particular sizes, to find all sorts of different materials, to see payphones and electrophotorotometers and oscillioscopophonic gizmowoodgets all over the place, all in the midst of being hacked. I parted ways with Adam at the 16th Mission BART station, and continued along Mission, cutting across to Valencia. I spotted the Off The Grid food trucks and it was time for a lunch break. Off The Grid even brought some tunes - a jazz trio - to go with the street tacos.
A full belly, sunshine, and some jazz. Life is good.
Continuing on Valencia brought me to Mission, where there was a huge art store called Flax. This place feels like an art supplies castle. You walk in and think, wow, big place. Then you find a second storefront, and think, wow, really big place. Then you find a side-entrance to a back warehouse area of art supplies, specialty paper, textiles, frames (think Home Depot for art supplies). Flax also hosts workshops and meetings for art groups. They had some bookbinding workshops , along with some bound journals, and all the materials to do it. The extent of the art supplies here is actually really amazing. With literally every item, the store had every imaginable parameterization of it. Bag sizes, number of erasers, sizes of pen tips, weights and patterns of paper, sizes of frames.......... a truly exhaustive art supply store.
My last waypoint was the San Francisco Public Library. This building has six stories, with multimedia material on the 1st floor, like in SLC public library (separate area). Can check out up to 50 items, once you verify your address with a piece of mail. FIFTY. And once you're done there, you can stop by the library store on the way out. They had an interesting shelf of publisher's pre-print copies of books for mega cheap. All of them had logos printed on the cover that said "For Sale in April 2011" and such. Odd - but I won't complain. I picked up an epic historical account of the Crimean War (Russia, Turkey, Britain) that cost me all of $2.
Books:
- Anatomy by Gray (Dog Eared Books)
- Atlas of the Bay Area by Rebecca Solnit (Dog Eared Books)
- The Crimean War by Orlando Figes (SFPL store)
- Draw Sketches by Hans Schwarz (from Flax art store)
- Perspective by Ray Smith (from Flax art store)