Are S.F. weirdos an endangered species?
Organizers of the 19th annual How Weird Street Faire, which is scheduled for May 6 around Howard and Second streets, have announced this year’s theme: “The Disco Ball Inferno.” The event, which will feature 10 stages, sprawls over several adjacent blocks, and costs $15 for advance tickets, $20 at the gate.
We attended last year; it seemed jolly and friendly, and a bit naughty — the image I retain is a naked man working on a painting — kind of like a mash-up of the Folsom Street Fair, the Pride Parade and the Bay to Breakers. But it’s not all sequins and glitter. According to organizer Justin Weiner, most of the proceeds go to the World Peace Through Technology Organization, which three years ago — as the event grew — had amassed enough money to create an Immersive Learning Center in downtown Vallejo. This, funded jointly by the San Francisco faire and the city of Vallejo, hosts students for after-school training and events focusing on technology and science.
Over the years, says Weiner, presenters of How Weird have noticed that there’s a certain “difficulty in keeping San Francisco weird, as the city goes through growth and changes, and many of the weird people are leaving for less expensive areas.” Perceiving that there are “few opportunities left for people to express themselves in creative and weird ways,” he says, “the faire is providing a much-needed service to the city” in several ways, including “creating a space where experimentation and weirdness can occur.”
License plate spotted by David Schneider: NOTABOT.
Meanwhile, Stephen Hochheiser passes along the news — spotted in the Chronicle of Higher Education — that in the next academic year, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts will become the first university in Switzerland to offer a bachelor’s or master’s degree in yodeling.
Seattle artist Peter Gorman creates line-drawing-like images based on maps of street intersections. He’d already done Manhattan, Seattle and Portland, Ore., when he turned to San Francisco. The 20 pictographs in his drawing look like Korean alphabet letters; the artist himself likens them to a Rorschach test. He sells versions of this on Etsy as posters and on T-shirts.
And now, for the winner — as judged by me after studying pictures — of the competition for the most complicated corner in San Francisco: The place where Mission meets South Van Ness meets Otis meets 12th Street.
“Remove shells before consuming,” said the message on a bag of pistachio nuts that Tom Walton bought at Costco. And peel bananas before putting them in your ears.
After the 49ers’ new quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, got signed to the team, the Niners made a reservation for him and his family for a celebration dinner at International Smoke, the new restaurant co-owned by Ayesha Curry and Michael Mina. The restaurant said he had a shellfish platter, caviar beignets, smoked burrata salad, duck wings and ribs. The team picked up the tab, a nice welcomeaboard gesture despite a contract that would enable him to cover it on his own. It’s goodwill, and we’re off to a good start.
Welcome to San Francisco: A family of tourists drove up to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel the other day, just the prey for a man hanging around and watching. He came up behind the car, threw himself on the ground, pounded on the trunk, got up and then told the tourists they had hit him, demanding their insurance information. Doorman Tom Sweeney was watching, and approached the family and the “victim.”
“You didn’t hit him,” he told the family, and “I’ve got it on video,” he told the man, pointing to hotel cameras out front. The man “took off like a deer down Powell Street,” said Sweeney. “It’s quite a scam.”
P.S. Nancy Fowler was at the 24th Street BART Station when an announcement came over the loudspeaker: “Attention, station agent. Man peeing on the wall. South end.” Was this a call for assistance or just a celebration of the urban environment?
P.P.S. At Sightglass Coffee on Divisadero, Bertie Brouhard overheard a middle-aged man say to a middle-aged woman (who winced): “You can adopt a drain in this city ... but not a homeless person.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING Woman 1: “The only thing he was wearing to cover himself was a sock.” Woman 2: “Anklet or over-the-calf ?” Conversation overheard in the Castro by Emmett Stanton