Pacificapocalypse

Ok this is just creepy. An East Bay High School holds a car wash to raise cash for the school water polo team… by having the team stand on the street corner wearing nothing but their regulation Speedo’s luring passersby. Who thought this was a good idea? Would the cheerleader squad in bikini’s washing cars be okay then? There’s so much wrong here.

From SFist:

The kids at Northgate High School in Walnut Creek had a money-making scheme this past weekend. One that, for better or for worse, involved the school’s water polo team wearing only regulation Speedos, standing on a street corner, and luring passersby.

Now that we have your attention, this car wash benefit, at right, has stirred much controversy. It seems before Saturday’s incident, area girls — underage women, mind you — have done the same thing, too, in high school-fundraising efforts.

Hm. Anyway.

The Mayor of Claycord, who writes one of the finest blogs on the other side of the Bay, posed a question: “High school kids standing on a busy street corner while wearing speedos, is it inappropriate, or just a harmless way to promote a high school water polo team’s fundraiser?”

What say you, readers? Are you OK with a business model that uses high schoolers’ budding sex parts as a way to raise funds? Is it OK for schools, just like Disney, to prostitute their underage students for cash?

Also, if you found the image to the right enticing, sign up here for more.

….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.

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

Click for full size.

Nice post about deconstructing the original cover photo for Grace Jones album Island Life – one of my favorite seminal New Wave album covers. Linky.