Winter’s over and we’re getting fixed up
If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So strap on your tool belt:
A San Rafael Nextdoor listing, pointed out by keen-eyed Larken Bradley: “Does anybody know of a good woman handyman person or company? I don’t need a mansplainer to tell me how something needs to be done, I just need it done competently.”
Driving past Truitt & White Lumber in West Berkeley one day last week, Miltiades Mandros saw a truck “piled high with construction materials come tearing out of the lot. In an obvious hurry, he sped around the first corner a half-block away. As he did this, a plastic cooler came flying out of the bed of the pickup, spilling its contents — a couple of sandwiches, chips, a thermos, etc. — onto the street.” The driver, unaware, continued down the street. But dayworkers gathered there in hopes of being hired for jobs were astonished. After a few seconds, several ran out into the road to gather up the bounty inadvertently shared by the impatient driver.
Contractor Stephen Byrne drove over to the SF Recycling Center (in unhappier times, the dump), and rolled down his window to be greeted by the man at the entrance gate: “Good morning, sir, what gifts did you bring us this fine morning?” “Construction debris,” said Byrne. “As you are one of our preferred customers,” said the gatekeeper, “I am directing you to Bay No. 9, one of our VIP spaces.” Upon which thank-yous were exchanged, and business as unusual proceeded.
P.S. In other news of recycling, that repurposed-Materials company described herein for Earth Day is selling 4- by 8foot pieces of the UC Berkeley gym floor for $128. This is some cause for local pride — or dismay over the cost of everything in the Bay Area — because the same size pieces of gym floor from Penn State are selling for $48. What color to paint the house? Maybe it’s best to take a poll. H.L. Brown came upon a Victorian on the 500 block of 14th Street in San Francisco with a sign out on the outside showing slabs of color — all pastel — with a note, “Pick a color. It might matter.” Next to each color was a spot where passersby could put marks.
A few dozen connoisseurs had voted.
At a recent “Break Walls Open Doors” fundraiser for the Imagine Bus Project, which supports art education for incarcerated young people, speaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom talked about helping kids achieve their dreams.
“This work, in today’s Trump era, regardless of your politics, is more critical than ever,” she said. To boys and men particularly, she added, “empathy, emotion and compassion are considered signs of weakness. And to be a man means physical dominance, sexual prowess and financial control. Something that I explore in my second directorial film, ‘The Mask You Live in,’ but we are seeing live onstage in the White House.”
The license plate spotted by Eileen Denny Alexander was “BEAR DWN.” “I was not sure if it was a message from a hunter or a midwife,” she says.
At Playa in Mill Valley, Kathleen Gifford came upon a woman taking photos of the bathroom entrances. “We’re from Texas, and we just don’t have these there,” she explained. The signs on the doors read, “Gender Neutral.”
Crime and not-yet-punishment: Allen Matthews says a bold squirrel has been stealing cookies from the front desk of the UC Berkeley Faculty Club.
On Lok Lifeways, a health plan for seniors, and the Academy of Art University partnered on Wednesday, May 3, for an event in which 20 Academy students made drawings of On Lok-served seniors. Their teacher, Craig Marshall, spoke of the mutual benefits of the project: “Everyone is important on this day, model and artist alike.” When the three-hour sessions were done, the drawings were given to the students who posed for them.
A Dear Abby correspondent began her question (published in a recent Chronicle): “Dear Abby: I raised all five of my children without much help from their deadbeat dad, who was never around.” Observes reader David Schwoegler: “Well, maybe never is an exaggeration?”