Banged up

First thing I did with three of my twenty combs: cut my bangs:

I get that mood every once in a while. Except, I keep forgetting how biking can fuck up this hairdo. And of course, today is the day I got a new bike. This time it's the perfect one.

But I sure look like a wreck.

Time to dress up and head back in to the city for new years eve. By tram.
Happy New Year people, Happy New Year.

But they sure are pretty.

Today I went to buy a comb. At the Walgreens, the cheapest comb was still two dollars more than this set of twenty. I was totally lured into consumer overkill.
What the hell am I going to do with twenty combs?

Marvelous List

Now I know everyone says: Oh forget it Cunningham, there's no gentlemen anymore. Take off the gloves and let's have a fight.

I like reading the NY Times, even though it has shown itself to be a pretty snobbish newspaper. Now I don't mean to get all Sarah Palin on you guys, but it is really elitist. In times of economic repression they report on how to have dinner for under a hundred dollars (oh no!), or how to have personal shoppers come to your mansion so people don't have to see you spend extravagant amounts of cash on clothing as the masses suffer and are reduced to window shopping.
But there is one feature in the Style section that I absolutely adore. It is photographer Bill Cunningham's street style report. Put together as a slide show, he narrates along with the pictures. He seems to be the originator of fashion street photography long before the blogs started popping up, having worked for the Times since 1966 and navigating himself through the city only on his bicycle.
I particularly love listening to that old crackling voice exclaim about small details he points out to us, and his overuse of the word 'marvelous'. I love that word. Marvelous. If I could I'd name my son Marvelous.



Here is an episode I loved, where he goes on the streets and finds what he calls the Mark of a Gentleman.
It's an older one from about a month ago, but please take the time to press on the link, it will only take two minutes out of your life and you can thank me later.

Geo Storm

I was in Florida hanging out with grandma and uncle John.
I will write again soon. For now, the proof that I am actually learning to drive.

Check out that 1990 Geo Storm!
Also, listen to my soundtrack. Yeah.

Only in America

Rich people get to be really eccentric and toy around like little kids, because their money can make all kinds of crazy shit happen for real. I got to see one of the funniest examples of this today with my own two eyes.
In the lovely Presidio Park, right next to the Golden Gate Bridge, lies Lucasfilm. Industrial Light and Magic, a company owned by George Lucas and part of Lucasfilm, apparently touches just about any film made in Hollywood before it makes its way into the universe with their visual and audio effects. Even though the Presidio is a public park, George Lucas spent over 300 million dollars to obtain an extensive residential lease from the government and built his company buildings right in the park a few years ago. I went to take a look today. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take any pictures inside the office. They made me sign a release (digitally, they made me a part of the system, man) that I would not tell anything that happened inside or take any pictures.

Luckily, the sun was shining and I could take some pictures of the surroundings.


Behind the office buildings, there runs a creek. It's lovely, even though it looks a bit planted. I took a closer look and found this pole next to a little bridge crossing the water:

Can you believe that? Here's the story: the entire thing is a fake. Good ol' George decided that he didn't want artificial rocks by his creek because it would look like Disneyland and everything. So what did they do? They bought a creek from Marin County. They numbered every single fucking rock in the creek. They noted how it swirled. Then they moved the entire thing and planted it in the back yard.
That's right. This pole made me wonder, also, what the emergeny could be where a creek would need to be shut off?

There is also a Yoda fountain by the way. Very relaxing.

For more on me and my George Lucas adventures, keep an eye on Monobrow. Dutch readers only..

More please!

I added a link section.
Please let me know your websites, so I can add them.
Or anything you like, I can always use more distractions on the world wide web than the same three sites.
Thank you.

Fifties find

Not exactly the California Drivers License Handbook I set out to buy. But it's so shimmery!
The girls at Laura Dols would be so proud of me finding this for twenty bucks.

And to think I always thought I would do well in those spelling contests

I absolutely, beyond any doubt, categorically, clearly, decidedly, doubtlessly, explicitly, indubitably, no ifs ands or buts about it, obviously, plainly, positively, specifically, surely, undeniably, unequivocally, unmistakably, unquestionably, without doubt, without fail, without question have a hard time trying to spell that damn word. Every time.

DEFINITELY.

But apparently, I am not the only one struggling.

www.d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com

Sheesh!

My friend Maartje

Maartje and I, we like to go swimming.
Maartje and I lived on the same street, and I would pick her up and together we biked to the outdoor pool, rain or shine. Not particularly on a regular basis, just rain or shine. You know swimming is even better when it's not that great weather because there are less people wanting to jump the water right in front of you, and the pool doesn't feel like a gridlocked highway. It gives you plenty of space to swim next to each other and catch up on gossip like two old ladies, or talk about the more serious side of life.


Here, we were obviously not talking about the more serious side of life.

On September 14th, a nice autumn day two weeks after our outdoor pool closed down for winter, Maartje and I decided to go swimming in the North Sea. Drove up to Wijk aan Zee, walked down the beach, and even though it was sunny out, people were wearing coats and scarves. Not us. We stripped down and acted like it was midsummer. Look!





And what happened? We swam and swam and it was dead cold and we swam some more, and then someone whistled. A wave had soaked our bags. Our clothes: soaked. Maartjes phone: ruined. The newspaper: dripping with water and sand. But a few things were saved: Good spirits, and my grandmothers camera.




When we drove home in nothing but swimsuits and wet tops (thank God we didn't come by train) I realized I was going to have to walk out of the car in this outfit with a terrace full of people right next to my house.
Actually, I don't think anyone even noticed.



Maartje is in Buenos Aires right now, and I am in San Francisco. But mark my words.
We will go swimming again.


Cheers!

Pepernoten

Tomorrow is Sinterklaas. I don't actually really even like to celebrate this holiday. It includes spoiled children, nasty poems, surprises with gook and paper maché, and a national excuse to celebrate slavery.
But, I have the newfound identity of an expatriate, so I felt the urge to go Dutch. Real Dutch.
I decided to bake pepernoten, the tradition sweets that come with the festivities. You know, Saint Nic's slaves hand them out.
Now I haven't baked a real anything since, say, 1996. I didn't have an oven for the larger part of my life and I don't have a sweet tooth. I looked up the recipe on the internet, and set myself to work.
Here goes.


I started out real neat om my batches, making them really orderly. And cute, might I add.


It failed pretty miserably. The were flat, uncooked or overcooked, and altogether gross.


My second batch went extremely well, after I had googled 'cookies too flat' and got some advice from my fellow online housewives. Too bad they didn't tell me to cut down on the baking paper, which decided to set afire in the oven, making me slightly panic, and having to throw my second, perfect, batch in the sink.


But you live you learn, and as we speak I have made batch after batch of pepernoten, to hand out tomorrow to anyone who will eat them.

I was so ridiculously happy I made it work, I did a little dance for you guys.

Hahaha!

So, who wants some?

Biking under influence

Transportation in this city scares the shit out of me. Not the BART. The Bay Area Rapid Transport is just fine with me. But the rest..
Whenever I am in a foreign place, I act all cool in public, especially if I am on my own. It kills me when someone asks me for directions. This means, I have done a successful job at 'going native' (a term us anthropologists like to throw around casually). I feel right at home on the L train in Brooklyn, the Erasmuslijn in Rotterdam, the RER in Paris and the N Judah line I take everyday, right here in the beautiful city of San Francisco. That said, I am going to be a little more honest with you guys. I may look as calm as ever riding the night bus in the middle of the night, sitting there all squeezed between drunks and bums, trying to read my book. But it freaks me out.
It all started when I rode my bike over to a party, and everyone was all shocked that I rode 45 minutes in heels ánd was planning on making the same trip on the way home. This is completely normal to me, but when they started telling me about the tickets they hand out for biking drunk (BUI's!) it made me think. Maybe I should just take the bus. They go all night anyway, stop in front of my house, and cost a buck fifty.
So, there I was, all waiting for the bus in the Mission, getting on, having a nice conversation with some hobo. We were fine up until then. Then, came the stopover on Market Street. Now Market Street may be downtown but right along Civic Centre, it gets all sketchy. So my conversations became conversations with pimps and beggars (mostly me saying 'no' to every question and ignoring the rest). On the bus, I was the only woman. A guy with no teeth tried flirting with me. I got through two chapters of my new book, before I arrived in my safe, residential and Chinese neighbourhood.
Next time, I decided I wasn't going to be as cheap, and took a cab. The first cab wouldn't drive me to Sunset. The second one did, as long as I didn't pay with a creditcard. While driving, he turned up the fucking house music (international taxidriver vice?) and I realized I had a camera pointing straight at my face. Who the hell films that? They should film the drivers.
I can not wait to get a decent bike and ride my bike home again. BUI shmiyoueye.

By the way, I found some interesting and quite different modes of transportation as well. Check it out:


Slides instead of stairs in the Google office makes working so much more fun and creative! And at the end of the slide you can play some Wii! Sit in the massage chair! Drink some free soda! Fun! Creative! Work!


Sofa's on elevators are just so classy. They made me want to ride this one for hours, but they wouldn't let me.

Homesick

Sometimes you stumble upon a windmill next to the Pacific and it makes you think of sunny days and a sweet glass of Zotte at the Ij brewery.. Except there are no palm trees around the Mauritskade!