Big Red Dave: February 2008

Garage Post: 1, BRD's Car: 0

Everything was going pretty well last night. I saw Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, which was a lot better than I thought it would be. I had a nice dinner with friends. Then I returned to my car and promptly backed it into a concrete pillar in the garage.

Ugh.

Actually, it's was more of a glancing blow, so the damage is relatively contained. I missed the tail light and the wheel, so I think the damage is just to the body panels. I got an estimate this morning, and it was about what I thought it would be. The question is: do I go through insurance or not? The estimate was painful, but manageable. My big fear is that once the body shop gets it taken apart, they may find some more serious damage that is hidden.

But all-in-all, this could have been a lot worse. I didn't hit another car, or a person. Thanks to my vacation, I'm not going to need my car for the next couple of weeks, so I can just drop it off on Friday afternoon and pick it up when I get back.

7 Days

I leave on my Australian vacation in 7 days. Literally, 7 days from right now (my flight out of San Francisco leaves at 10:30pm next Saturday). So I figure that now is a good time to mention that I've created that travel blog I talked about:

Dave Down Under

At the Obama Rally

Last night, for the first time in my life, I went to a political rally. Michelle Obama spoke at the student union at San Jose State University.

I'm still processing the event. The general message was that life has been getting progressively more difficult over the decades. Which is something I agree with (that worker salaries have not kept up with improvements in worker productivity galls me in particular). What I did not hear is how, precisely, Obama intends to remedy this. However, merely by acknowledging this as a problem is an important step.

Anyway, I brought my camera, with the zoom lens attached (and was mistaken for a member of the press only once), so here are some pictures.

First, Kamela Harris (District Attorney for San Francisco) spoke:

Then Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (who represents the district I live in):

Then finally Michelle Obama. At one point she got a child who was in the crowd behind her to come up to the podium.

It's the 70s, Man!

Gus Van Sant is shooting his film about Harvey Milk's life, Milk, in the Castro. As part of the shooting, a number of stores have been dressed up to look like they did in the '70s.

Okay, that's an extreme example. Most of it is more mundane, like the way U.S. Bank has become Eureka Bank:

A lot of the time, it's hard to tell what (if anything) has changed:

This is actually the only change that I makes me nostalgic: this is a Diesel store now, but it was a Bank of America branch when I started coming to the Castro in the mid-90s. And so it is again (at least on the outside):

I've been getting slices at this place since the mid-90s. I had no idea it was 30 years old. The sign parallel to the street (with "Pizza", etc.) is for the film.

I was really worried when I heard that Hot Cookie had become Double Rainbow. Hot Cookie is my favorite cookie shop, and always a good place to go for some sugar before (or after) going out.

Fortunately, once you step inside, it's all cookies.

Here's the site of Milk's camera store. Other than a small mural in a second story window, this site is usually not marked. I only found it a couple of years ago.