Marriage Equality…
…pass it on. To echo Keori, the terrifying face of marriage equality: John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney (the link is to a PDF of their plaintiff statement in Woo v. Lockyer).
SF PRIDE banner in a MUNI station (the ad is also up on bus stops all over SF). Gee, the happiness and love on their faces is just terrifying, innit?
A Thousand Words
*sigh* The same place where I saw this poster now has this poster up.
It’s a poster of an East Asian-looking person wearing what looks like a surgical mask and sterile gloves (an allusion to SARS? I don’t know.). Someone defaced the poster by writing “ChinK” and “Fag” and drawing an arrow between the word “Fag” and the person’s head. There are two Chinese characters on the poster and it’s unclear as to whether they were part of the original piece or added in response to the graffiti. If anyone knows what the characters mean, please let me know and I’ll edit this post.
[ETA] Thanks to OD in the comments and SYW, the characters mean “Air” and are probably a reference to air pollution and Yellow Sand. That would also explain the face mask. [/ETA]
It just makes me sad and angry, y’know? I love street art. I love how creative it can be, how it interacts with landscapes and whimsy to raise questions about public vs. private property, transience, and anonymity. And where someone put up this poster, someone else saw it as a canvas for expressing hatred.
Someone is so full of racism and homophobia, is so steeped in it as part of the garden variety background noise in their head, that when they saw a poster of someone who looked East Asian, they thought, “Chink.” It wasn’t enough to merely think it, though, they had to express their hatred by scrawling it out for everyone to see, a reminder to me and to every other stereotypically chinky-looking person that we are not welcome, that we will be judged by our presumed ethnicity, by the color of our hair and the shape of our eyes, and found wanting.
The graffiti reminds me of every time people have yelled at me, “Go back where you came from!” or played the “Where are you really from?” guessing game or opened a conversation with, “Are you Chinese?” or run around pulling slanty eyes while yelling, “Ching chong ching chong!” *
Racism isn’t just a joke. The questions, the insults, the taunts add up over a lifetime and the sum is a great big get back on the boat and go home, Chink, because you’re not welcome here.
Now for the “fag.” The poster looks androgynous to me, neither particularly feminine nor particularly masculine–it doesn’t have markers that meet stereotypical depictions of masculine or feminine presentation. Yet, it’s still got “fag” scrawled across it. So either “fag” is just a generic insult, because being gay means that you’re worth less than a straight person (or just worthless, full stop), or the vandalizer read the poster’s subject as male and the use of “fag” to deface the poster is tied to the racist, misogynistic, and homophobic stereotype of East Asian men being effeminate and therefore gay, because gay men are practically like women and that makes them worthless.
As a queer, chinky-looking woman, I say, “Fuck off.” I’m not leaving and I’ll never sit down and shut up.
*“Go back where you came from!” You mean California, you idiot
“Where are you really from?” I’m from America. Yeah, America. California. San Francisco. THE UNITED FUCKING STATES. No, really, I was born and raised in the U.S., and if I had to call any place else home, it would be Italy, so if you want to ask what ethnicity I am, that’s not the same question. Don’t assume that I’m “really” from somewhere else.
“Are you Chinese?” No, I’m not, and that’s not the way to start the conversation if you want to hit on me, jerk.
Pictorial History
I saw both these pages today:
(Click through for legible images but beware, they’re full size screenshots. And no, that FB post is not mine, although I agree with its sentiments.)
The Facebook page has a No on Prop. 4 ad and a No on Prop. 8 ad in the sidebar. The YouTube page has a Yes on Prop. 8 ad, even though the Yes on 8 ads violate Google’s own advertising content policy.
Tomorrow night, one of those images will be obsolete.
Out and About: Political Signs
A cafe window at Market and Castro.
Yes on Prop. K fliers on a pole on Market, near Embarcadero
Ferry Building Farmers Market: complete with McCain and Palin cutouts!
Ferry Building Farmers Market: opposite the McCain-Palin table, Obama-Biden (sadly, no cutouts).
Cindy Sheehan for Congress sign in an apartment window on Carl and Hilway.
I wanted photos of signs and political materials from around the city, but since I haven’t seen any No on Prop. 4 signage anywhere, here’s my window.
Beautiful Surprises
One of the joys of SOLE produce:
I was shucking an ear of corn and found that little caterpillar nestled under the husks and silk. It was curled up at the top on a bare patch where it’d eaten away the kernels. A small, ordinary miracle in the middle of an urban apartment, a connection with the cycle of birth, growth, transformation, and death. A sign that this corn wasn’t grown with pesticides and herbicides harmful to the pests, the farm workers, everyone living near the farm, and the plant, animal, and human communities that would’ve been affected by the chemical runoff.
I tossed the hungry caterpillar out the window and into the yard, where it’ll hopefully have a well fed life and grow to be one of the moths that likes to zoom into my flat.
Disenfranchisement: It’s the New Dem Thing!
Disenfranchisement: It’s Not Just For Republicans And The RBC Anymore!
I saw this bumper sticker on the way to get coffee after the roll call and oh, the irony:
Redstar liveblogged the roll call at H1K
Shakesville: Democratic National Convention Open Thread Day Three
Redstar took the percentages of roll call votes for Senator Clinton:
N/A CA, NM, IL, NY
Every vote counts. Obviously, not anymore. Y’know, that was one of the things that infuriated me the most about the Democratic party this primary season, that they were willing to disenfranchise voters in MI and FL for the sake of the primary schedule. Leaving aside how stupid that would be for the general election, it’s simply wrong. I don’t care who you vote for but every vote must be acknowledged in order for the system to be legitimate.
Due to the winner-take-all setup of the general elections, some votes are more influential than others. However, the difference between the impact of a PA voter’s ballot, a MA voter’s ballot and a GA voter’s ballot is not sufficient reason to disregard any of those ballots, whether in the primaries or in the general election.
Generations of people fought for suffrage, people that didn’t have the right to vote in this country because they weren’t landed, white, and male. And now the real votes are being erased because they disrupt the symbolic theatrics supposedly necessary for “party unity.” I can’t think of a better way to destroy party unity and discourage voters from turning out than to flip primary voters the bird by telling them that they can vote, but their votes won’t be represented.
Photos: Adverts
Some photos of ads and signs that caught my attention.
I like this ad:
SEX MAY SELL.
BUT, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO
WITH MAKING GREAT VODKA.
Truer words, y0. Sadly, the picture’s too blurry to see who the manufacturer is – I snapped this through a bus window yesterday, when it was drizzling that odd mist-rain that SF gets, the stuff that’s not heavy enough to be rain but too discrete to be mist. Teeny little rain drops blown about by the wind, whirling up and down through the air.
Some Photos: Miscellaneous
Things that caught my attention. Pictures below the cut.
July: The skyline at Fort Mason last weekend, when it was cloudy and sprinkling.
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Some photos: food
Some photos from the past two months: food.
Rosewater creme brulee and pistachio shortbread at Citizen Cake. The creme brulee was perfect and the caramelized top was sweet and burnt-bitter and shattered into pieces with each bite.
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Picture of the Day: San Francisco Doesn’t Live Here
The Millennium Tower is a 60-story luxury high rise going up in SoMa, a formerly industrial area that is rapidly being populated with towers full of luxury condos in order to capitalize on the relentless demand for upscale, expensive housing. Because what this city needs more of is sterile glass towers that cast shadows over the streets, block out the sky, raise the cost of goods in their surrounding areas, present cold, blank facades to the street, fail to create a sense of neighborhood, and drive current inhabitants out*. It doesn’t need affordable lower- and middle- income housing, it needs housing that goes for $2.5M a unit (SF Chronicle) … oh, wait a minute (SF Chronicle).
It’s difficult to read, but the tag line under “MILLENIUM TOWER” in the poster is “San Francisco Lives Here.” San Francisco most emphatically does not, and if it did, I wouldn’t want to. The eclectic vibrancy and the diversity of this city are two of the many reasons I love it and an exorbitantly priced tower that’s beyond the reach of 99.99% of San Franciscans has no claim to appropriating the city’s colorful, chaotic identity for itself. As marketing gimmicks go, it’s a stupid one.
*With respect to that aspect of urban development, I’m thinking more of the Fillmore redevelopment project and the current proposal to redeveop Hunters View / Baypoint. SF Chronicle articles on Propositions F and G here and here (ultimately, Prop G passed).
Hello, World! And Some Photos
Hey there, y’all! I’m still here, still alive. It’s just been a topsy turvy couple of months and then I was completely away from internet access last week (to say nothing of connectivity troubles with the modem and the wireless router throughout May and June).
I’m working on some stuff at the moment for H1K and generally trying to get back in the swing of things reading blogs and the news. In the meantime, have some pictures below the cut. -posts and flees-
Congratulations!
Congratulations to M! Best to you always, cher. 
Congratulations to the same-sex couples all over California who are getting married starting this week! In my own wonderful city, the county clerk’s office is staying open late today so that Mayor Newsom can marry “Lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, together for more than half a century” (SF Chronicle, 2008/06/16)today after the technical close of business on June 16, and therefore as soon as possible according to the May 15th ruling by the State Supreme Court. That kind of enthusiasm for equality and for affirming love is heartwarming. Other counties’ hours are listed here in the SF Chron.
SF Chronicle, Wyatt Buchanan, 2008/06/16 “Same-sex marriage plans around the Bay Area”
SF Chronicle, Rachel Gordon, 2008/06/16 “Lesbian pioneer activists see wish fulfilled”
Spam and OMGSHOEZ*
Something more lighthearted: spam, photos, and a note.
Note: If you left a comment within the last 2 days and it isn’t showing up, that’s because I accidentally deleted everything in the mod queue this morning when I was trying to get rid of the Car Insurance!!!! and VyAgra!!!!! spam. Sorry about that, and if you want to repost, I’ll try not to dump the whole filter this time.
Spam:
Dear Car Insurance Spam,
I do not need car insurance. While I might have once been a good candidate for extra car insurance, given that I’m a terrible driver (there’s a formerly giant bush by the side of a freeway in the suburbs that still hasn’t grown back), I no longer own a car and am fortunate enough to live in a city with public transit. One of my resolutions for 2008 was to go the entire year without driving a car. So please stop clogging the mod queue.
Thanks,
Pizza Diavola
Photos below the cut. LG Chocolate cameraphone, as usual.
Photoblogging
A photo post, to celebrate having working wireless and to provide some filler material for my brain tonight. Taken with the camera on an LG Chocolate phone. Images below the cut.
Monday, June 2
I had copies of my apartment keys made for a friend (should’ve done it a lot sooner, but oh, well, it didn’t occur to me), and found a cute, tacky tourist kitsch SF keychain to put them on while I was getting lightbulbs at Walgreens (they stock an amazing amount of touristy SF junk). The best part of it is that the round thing in the center spins: on one side is a cable car and on the other, the GG bridge!
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Half Week In Photos…from a few weeks ago
Photos beneath the cut. These are all taken with a cameraphone, since (a) my digital point and shoot is erratic and unreliable; (b) the Canon Eos 35mm is not exposing properly and I have to take it to a shop as soon as I get the current roll out. The cameraphone is surprisingly convenient, since I nearly always have my cell phone on me, and it’s light and fast. So I actually do take pictures with it on the go. And the ease of getting photos off of it in digital format is seductive. It still doesn’t match up to working in a dark room or shooting a person for an hour, though. There’s a whole different mentality to working with a person and concentrating on her or him, but consciously making the effort to take a photo a day is making me see things differently again, the way I did when I was taking photography in college and shooting three 36-exposure rolls a week.
Saturday, 2008/04/26, Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market
The tomatoes have been out since early March, I think (I’ve been losing track of time lately). They were so gorgeous, so vibrantly red they practically glowed in the bright sunlight at the market. I was ecstatic the first time I saw fresh tomatoes at the market this year, without even remembering what they tasted like. I knew I’d rather make pasta sauces with fresh tomatoes than canned, but it had been so long since I’d done it that I’d forgotten what the difference was. Then, back in March, I made spaghetti all’ amatriciana for my first fresh tomato sauce of the year and it was great. The phrase that comes to mind is one that I heard from an acquaintance in Athens last summer, “There’s a party in my mouth and no one else is invited!” (the flip side of that one is “There’s a party in my mouth and everyone’s throwing up.”). There’s an extra layer of taste, a zing, that comes from fresh tomatoes.
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Friday Fluff
I’ve finally succumbed and subscribed to AT&T for DSL, which should turn on next week. Hopefully, my personal laptop will be fixed by then (Tuesday morning, it refused to turn on. I think there’s a short somewhere), so that I won’t be using the slow, lagging laptop I’m on in the interim, and won’t be trying to blog via iTouch. It’d be an interesting experiment, to say the least, although it might also be faster than this laptop.
In the meantime, have some fluff:
I really want to make this Soy Poached Roast Chicken (Bitten, 2008/04/30) with these Snow Peas (Bittman, 2008/04/30) this weekend. The peas have been out at the market for months and I’ve looked at them, tempted to try cooking some but not sure of how to do it.
I learned to enjoy food the first summer I was living in Rome and I learned to cook the year after, when I was living with a roommate of Italian descent. So pretty much everything I know how to cook is Italian (more specifically la cucina Romanesca) and I’m used to those tastes and methods. I have a sense of how they work and how to throw things together in the kitchen, whereas I lack that intuition and experience when it comes to Korean or any other Asian cuisine. It’s something that’ll come with experience, but I’d like a teacher or a cookbook to start with and I haven’t got either. Haven’t found a good English-language Korean cookbook, and while My Korean Kitchen is a good read and informative, it’s not hanshik the way my mom makes it. In the meantime I’m thinking of branching out into other cuisines, although it’s a bit difficult because most of the ingredients and spices I have in my kitchen right now aren’t ones that are used in Chinese or Korean cooking.
Photos below the cut. Pro-Clinton material (I like to get a heads up when I’m clicking on political content, so…fair’s fair, I guess.).
Half Week In Photos
More fluff. I’ve been withdrawing a bit–after some heated conversations, I’m thinking it’d probably be the better part of wisdom to pull back from election ’08 conversations and try to set some boundaries for myself. I don’t do a very good job of arguing with people politely and that’s a problem for me.
How do you manage blogging (reading, commenting, and writing), work, and other aspects of real life? Lately I’ve been thinking that there just isn’t enough time in the day. There isn’t enough time to work, read the news, read online, read books, participate in comment threads, write, cook, exercise, keep up with friends, shower, and sleep. How do you apportion time and stay on top of everything? This week was unusual in that I was out four out of five nights (work on Monday, friends on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) and events at work required frantically trying to catch up on new projects while keeping abreast of the ones I was already on. Still, I don’t expect things changing much. So how do I go about squeezing everything into one day?
Photos below the cut. I miss photography. It made me look at the world differently and spending time in the dark room was soothing. After I get my 35mm fixed, I’d like to start taking pictures and printing again. For now, though, I’m stuck with the camera on my phone. It’s surprisingly convenient, because I always have it on me and it’s much smaller and lighter than my point and shoot digital, which is unreliable and erratic these days, and the 35mm.
20 minutes later: OK, is it just me or is anyone else having a hard time posting photos in WordPress’ new template? The old layout used to be intuitive and nigh on idiot proof for uploading photos and inserting them into posts and now I’m having a hard time doing it with the new layout. It’s also stupid that there’s no way to batch upload photos or even upload them at all in the ‘manage photos’ tab on the dashboard. It makes no sense to only allow photo uploads through the ‘Add media’ link that shows up in the writing a post window.
5 minutes later: Great. Upload photos, open the ‘manage media library’ in a separate tab, click on the images to get their URLs, then insert the photos into the post using their URLs. Preview post to find out that due to the width constraints on the text column of this template, the photos get chopped in half. Briefly consider resizing all images in Photoshop and making them links to full size versions of the images. Give up and open a Flickr account.
10 minutes later: Flickr has a nifty photoblogging setup, where it takes care of all the image resizing and linking to full size images for you. However, it doesn’t look like it’s set up for posting a whole bunch of images in one blog post, which is what I want. I’d like to do a ‘week of random images’ thing rather than a photo post a day. ARGH.
5 minutes later: finally got the stupid ‘Add media’ interface to work, sort of. I think it takes care of the resizing problem because it has options to choose posting the photo as a thumbnail, medium size, or full size. It’s going to require a better internet connection than the one I have now, though, because when I try to use the interface, it freezes. I may have to give up and start paying AT&T $30/mo for DSL and dealing with the headache of a router.
