Why are trees in octopus sweaters? Why not?
From natural disasters like fires and hurricanes to manmade electoral disasters in the White House, the world seems pretty bleak right now. I don’t know about you, but it seems like everybody around here has the blues.
Here, then, is a collection of items to cheer us up — or at least provide a few minutes of distraction.
Walked through the Civic Center lately? Wondered why the trees are suddenly wearing sweaters? It’s a great question, and one I was determined to answer.
Little did I know it would involve interviewing a source as she stood high up on a ladder attaching a knitted octopus to a tree trunk. Hey, there’s a first time for everything.
Her name is Lorna Watt, and she and her sister, Jill Watt, are the professional yarn artists behind the San Mateo company Knits for Life. When
the folks at the Ferry Building needed a bench wrapped to look like a monster, they called the Watts. When the tech bros at Twitter needed a wall decorated with string, they called the Watts.
And when officials at the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit dedicated to creating parks and preserving open space, needed help improving the Civic Center, they, too, called the Watts. Because if there’s one thing the neighborhood famous for discarded needles, homeless people and grimy streets needs, it’s knitted octopuses.
I jest. Actually, the Watts’ art is fun, eyecatching and whimsical, traits we could use more of in this increasingly corporate city. They’ve wrapped trees in colorful stripes, giraffes, parrots and octopuses.
“I think people like weird stuff in San Francisco, and they also like to see an improvement,” said Lorna Watt, 40, of San Mateo.
“People thank us for making a happy part of their day,” echoed Jill Watt, 37, of Foster City.
Never fear — the $50,000 paid to the Watts for the project is not taxpayer money. It was part of a grant to the Trust for Public Land from Eric Rodenbeck, CEO of Stamen Design, who as a board member of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation was given a pot of discretionary money to dole out. (The foundation seeks to enhance the quality of life through art, among other causes.)
The yarn designs are a small part of the Civic Center Commons project, an effort to, um, knit together the plaza outside City Hall, the stretch of Fulton Street to its east and United Nations Plaza beyond that. Private groups and city agencies are working to improve the area through events, cleanup crews, new public toilets, and tables and chairs, as well as the renovation of the plaza’s two playgrounds, which is under way.
The yarn designs will be up for the next six to 18 months, depending on how they fare in the elements. Creating them to fit the trees takes a lot more work — i.e., math — than you’d think, if a glance at Lorna Watt’s complicated worksheets gives any indication.
“We have to measure the circumference and the height. It’s just arithmetic,” said Lorna Watt, sounding like a true older sister.
“She always does her math the legit way,” sighed Jill Watt, sounding like a true younger sister.
So far, some of the plain knit sheaths around the trees have been stolen, but none of the animals has been removed.
“I think it’s because they’re really exciting — who wants to see them disappear?” said Philip Vitale, a senior program manager at the Trust for Public Land. “Plus, it might be difficult to walk away with a big octopus or giraffe.”
True enough.
In a time when going to the movies with your family and buying popcorn and soda will set you back about a month’s rent, there’s good news: free flicks!
The San Francisco Public Library is the latest library system to partner with Kanopy, an on-demand video platform that will allow anybody with a city library card to stream eight movies for free every month.
The company started in 2008 as an educational tool for universities and admittedly is heavy on the serious stuff and documentaries. The collection includes 80 San Francisco-related movies, including the documentaries “The Times of Harvey Milk,” “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” and “The Bridge.”
“Film-nerdy people — who are not me — are really excited about it,” said Michelle Jeffers, a library spokeswoman. “I’ll watch anything. It doesn’t have to be good.”
Get started on the library’s home page and then stream the movies at home via Roku, iOS or Android — and, in a few weeks, Apple TV.
Internet trolls — they’re the bane of our existence, and they will not go away. But Brynn deLorimier has found a creative way of dealing with them: donating to charities in their name.
The 34-year-old Potrero Hill resident works for a consulting firm and administers its matchinggift program. She was researching ways to help the North Bay fire response the other day and saw state Sen. Scott Wiener’s tweet about a food drive.
She then saw a bunch of nasty comments left by trolls. (As I told you recently, some of Wiener’s LGBT-related legislation has sparked fury among Breitbart News readers and their ilk. They were supposedly convinced he wanted to spread AIDS through donated food, among other bizarre theories.)
Anyway deLorimier donated $2 of her own money — which will be matched by her firm — per troll, split between the American Red Cross and the San Francisco LGBT Center, in the trolls’ names. So far, she’s up to $216, or $432 with the match.
“They say love trumps hate, but hate-donating feels great,” she said.
Have you ever wondered what the city’s politicians do all day? And wondered why they don’t just pick up a broom in this filthy city and make an actual difference?
Well, kudos to Bevan Dufty, the former city supervisor turned member of the BART Board of Directors. Like anybody with eyesight or a sense of smell, he knew that the 16th Street Mission BART Station was a nasty embarrassment.
So on four recent Wednesday mornings, he has cleaned the street-level plazas himself.
“We had a lady who pooped on the stairs — that was my first week,” he recalled. “They’ve got something that’s like a super-high-powered kitty litter, and it really clumps up and dries. You shovel it out, and then you mop after. I definitely needed a little bit of training on this.”
The best part is he has recruited other top officials to clean with him. So far, BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas, Public Health Director Barbara Garcia and Supervisor Hillary Ronen have joined him — and Ronen says she’s going to make it a regular thing.
Dufty’s work prompted BART to assign a new cleaning person to the station every weekday, and Dufty is now pushing for a weekend shift to be added.
Asked whether Mayor Ed Lee should help him clean needles, poop and other San Francisco messes with him on an upcoming Wednesday, Dufty demurred. “I’m in a different sandbox now, so I’m going to pass on that,” he said.
Hey, we’re all in this dirty sandbox together. So the leader of the sandbox should participate. Let’s see you out there, Mr. Mayor! And if you clean, I’ll join you.
Lorna Watt, yarn artist “I think people like weird stuff in San Francisco, and they also like to see an improvement.”