Land's End

The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association was out in force at Nickie's last night, a new Lower Haight bar/nightclub, to support the fundraising efforts of Muir Elementary School. District 5 Supervisor Ros Mirkarimi made his way down to the club as Halloween bedecked Critical Mass riders filtered through the streets, Alex and I played a set in the corner, and the Nickie's staff served school teachers and their supporters an array of appetizers. After chatting with some HVNA board members and Ross about the upcoming election and UC extensions, we found the streets were alive with the evening's second shift of entertainment seekers, many in costume.
It's taken me two years to claim San Francisco as my own since I came "back" to the city in 2005, after spending nearly a decade hemming and hawing about whether to move here or somewhere else. While I was born and raised in Santa Cruz County, both my parent were born in San Francisco and my childhood was marked by drives up the coast to visit a place rife with family baggage, err history. So I didn't trust that SF was a pretty cool city that I might choose on my own when I was initially pulled back to California a decade ago by family after living in Colorado. So I went all over the world checking out other places. While I still think of moving to Paris or Austin or NYC and spending more time in Mysore someday, more often I'm loving SF on my own terms. So it was fitting that earlier in the day, Steven sent me new mixes of songs written amid all this deciding, Land's End and Raising Cain, which both mull personal aspects of San Francisco. I'm always struck by the unpredictable, but apt timing of work getting completed and out into the world...