Pacificapocalypse

Yay! New Walt Disney Family Museum just opened in the Presidio!

Boo! They won’t let you take pictures there.

WTF? I thought we were over this nonsense; when are museums going to learn that a ‘no photography’ policy is absurd, almost impossible to enforce and absolutely pointless? What are they protecting? I see art students all the time at the De Young or the SFMOMA sketching or painting from the art there. Why is a photograph any different?
Thomas Hawk has some great takes on this and other such ridiculous photography polices.

….when you can find parking in the Mission.
Yes, indeed, once again, it’s Burning Man.
Take it away Violet Blue:

While attendees of the yearly arts festival known as Burning Man come from all over the nation and the world, the impact of the costly desert bacchanalia is felt pretty strongly around San Francisco. Many rejoice at the sudden lack of rich hippies and art cars dripping Barbie heads and Legos onto the roads when fog breaks down cheap art-store epoxy, and the ease with which one can get brunch in the Mission. There are virtually no white dudes with dreadlocks for seven square miles. San Francisco smug levels ratchet back to tolerable in the absence of arty hipster trust fund brats and Web 2.0 lets-resurrect-Pets.com-as-a-vlog leeches. Super annoying guys don’t hit on me in bars assuming I know what the hell they’re talking about when they use terms like “the burn,” “the man” and “off the grid.”

And at house parties, there are no chicks that become uncontrollably drunk and then attempt to show you how they can “fire dance,” accidentally setting fire to the host’s potted plant/small dog/infant

From the article, how to enjoy Burning Man and not have to leave the City:

• Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.
• Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.
• Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.
• Get so drunk you can’t recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for five hours.
• Have a 3 a.m. soul-baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you’re hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.
• Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don’t go to a doctor.
• Pay an escort of your affectional preference subset to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance close naked, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

I’ve said it many times, and so I’ll say it again:
I have a perfect Burning Man attendance record: zero.

Shamelessly stolen from Boing Boing.

Carla and I had a nice time at the 2009 San Francisco Zine Fest on Sunday. This week and next, I’m sharing some of the photos I took of the zinesters who came to sell their comics and zines. I’ll post a new photo each day.

This is Doctor Popular, a professional yo-yoist and cartoonist. I bought a couple of “24-hour” comic books from him, which are 24-page comic books that were created in 24 consecutive hours. My favorite is Robots Don’t Know Anything about Twitter. Doc Pop made the comic by tweeting “Robots don’t know anything about…” and used the answers that his friends tweeted back as the panels for the comic. Fun!

I don’t know if he sold out of the print version of Robots Don’t Know Anything about Twitter, as it had a print run of 100 copies (each cover was hand colored!), but he is giving it away as a free PDF. What a swell guy that Doc is.

Handsome mother fucker.

Via Boing Boing

Random street art in Cole Valley.

Click for full size.

Well fuck a doodle doo. They’re actually laying people off in the business and advertising section of the once mighty San Francisco Chronicle, right this moment. They’re literally tapping people on the shoulder, telling them and then escorting them from the building.  Is this the way you let people go? So friggin’ archaic. They might as well have a Bugs Bunny cartoon executioner bare-chested in the full face mask with a head lopping axe at the ready. Holy crap. Hey I just had a thought; if they can’t tap you on the shoulder, can they still let you go? I mean if you just dodge them all day, are you cool? Que the Scooby-Doo chase scenes and the Benny Hill music.
Guess who knew first? Not me thank god; the couple that run the little in-house cafe knew it – they were here at 0 dark 30 when the extra security guards showed up.
Extra security?
Well… yeah I suppose that’s just CYA.
More later.

photo credit: ooOJasonOoo

Swings on BART!
Full Flickr set here.

photo credit: neiltron

Random anti Prop 8 street poster on Linden Avenue, San Francisco.

Click for full size.

I saw the saddest thing leaving work yesterday afternoon; stacked up behind the front desk in the lobby were about a half dozen moving boxes marked ‘Hold for xxxxxxx’. All filled with the cleaned out remains of peoples desks. The shoulder taps have started in earnest. On the plus side, the two other people in my department have left… so I am my department. I guess that’s job security of some sort.

photo credit: Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Ok kids; here’s the final score.
The Guild has voted and ratified an agreement on contract changes, to take effect immediately. So what does that mean? First off, Hearst Corp. says 150 people will be let go, most likely starting April 1st. That’s when they file their WARN Act notice. We were informed today that most of the cuts will come from Editorial and Production, but we will be hit also. Management has been instructed to start filling out evaluation forms for all employees starting immediately.

So there you go. We get a little breather until the axe comes down.
Jeez it’s been like living in Warsaw in ‘38; you know it’s coming and you know it’ll be bad. But you really don’t know how bad… maybe they can get Adrian Brody to play me in the movie. I’d be okay with that.

I hate this shit.
Pins and friggin’ needles.
No news is good news? Not in this particular case. We’ve received a couple of updates from the Guild and it’s not looking good. But then again, no matter what happens, the situation is grim. If Hearst Corp. get their demands, the workforce is cut dramatically as well as benefits for the remaining employees, which equals a suck fest.
If the Guild and Hearst can’t reach an agreement, then Hearst puts the paper up for sale and if they don’t get a buyer, they close it all down. 144 years of publication history, just swept away. Which equals an even harder suck fest.
Update from this morning:

Chronicle Unit negotiators met Friday with management representatives
to raise certain issues concerning the company’s latest cost-cutting
proposals. It appeared we made some headway in terms of narrowing our
differences, but the meeting adjourned without an overall tentative
agreement.

The parties plan to resume the discussions on Monday.

Hearst Corp., owner of the Chronicle, announced it would have to sell
or close the 144-year-old newspaper if the Guild and other unions
refused to accept concessions.  At least 150 jobs are expected to be
eliminated from the Guild’s jurisdiction, including news,
advertising, circulation and other departments. Buyouts may reduce
the number of involuntary layoffs.

No deadlines have been set. Management has made it clear that
agreement needs to be reached soon.

I can’t even say ‘hopefully I’ll have more news later today’ ’cause any news is going to be bad at this point.
The consensus in my department, and probably building wide, is that it’s definitely time to have a Plan B ready to go. Because, boys and girls, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ anymore, only ‘when’.