Sept 6th

Every once in a while, we have days when just about every minute is scheduled, and various obligations and curiousity will smeer us all over the Bay Area in a single day. Yesterday was such a day.

St Mary's Cathedral.


Jesus

This is a landmark building. It has graced the skyline of my consciousness for years, inspiring names like "The Mighty Maytag" and "The Great Agitator", and yesterday I actually got to go in. While the inside was a little more on the Soylent Green side of the 60s aesthetic than I'd normally like to worship in, they did have a fine Jesus.

Celebrating Little Sister's 32nd Birthday


View North Toward Devil's Slide

Dutch and I visited the Ancestral Manse yesterday to celebrate the LS's birthday. The highlight (which vies with sampling the KB's first chocolate cake) was a family hike up Mt Mtn. to watch the biannual Flight of the Whales. We saw a whole pod zoom by, breeching, smooching and spouting. You can't see them in this picture, because they are under the water.

The Fillmore




We rushed through birthday cake so we could get to the Fillmore to see the Yard Dogs, a local band I first saw two summers ago (one of those Pivotal Nights That Started It All) with El Caballero, Dutch and a woman who later that night ran off with a man in a turkish hat (I spent that night, alone, in a monastery, but that is a different story).


The Belly Dancer

This time, it was just Dutch and I. No tequila, no glitter, no fire dancing, no priests, just love and commitment accompanied by a single gin and tonic. It was a fantastic show. Through patience and perseverence, Dutch and I were able to get spots right at the foot of the stage, which allowed me to take some fine pics. It also allowed us to get utterly crushed and suffocated by the crowd. We even got to nearly participate in a fight (this drunken frat boy, who kept doing "devil horns" at inappropriate times, started hitting and spitting on some random woman, also crushed a lightbulb with his fist, and then a gentleman, who happened to be 6 feet tall, decided that the frat boy needed a lesson). Dutch would have joined the melee but for his obligation to shield me from flailing limbs, which I apprecieted. Once the frat boy was dispatched (hopefully to jail) the show got going.


Black and Blue Burlesque Revue

It was vaudeville-style, with a cavalcade of acts, including belly dancers, cancan girls, sword swallowing, skits, contraptions, giant blue bunnies, male strip tease (imagine the Full Monty without any monty), show girls, a chanteuse with a trumpet, accordions, disappearing/reappearing chickens, burnt-out rockers, three-year-old incidental belly dancers, and mysterious banjos that get played like a chinese fiddle. In short, it was heaven.