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drscottUs suburban types are cut off from the great gay village to the north, aka "The City," by a time and energy barrier of about an hour. Rail always takes that long, and last night as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
excessor and I left the gym in Mountain View, traffic seemed fine until we reached San Mateo, where we bogged down in 30-mph congestion. 101 is the gritty industrial highway serving the businesses and most of the lower classes of the Peninsula, while the wealthy, buffered by land use restrictions and exclusive zoning, enjoy a much newer and better-engineered Interstate 280 through the San Andreas fault zone. Average houses near 280 sell for $1 million and up, while in the poorer parts of the same towns near 101 similar space can be had for half that.
While drivingexcessor's phone burbled several times with calls from mrdreamjeans, lowfatmuffin (who had just arrived by surprise in Oakland), excessor's electrical contractor, and others. He is soooo popular, or is it that I never carry my phone with me and so no one ever calls? Anyway, mrdreamjeans had remembered our meeting time wrongly and was waiting for us, and the clogged traffic made us half an hour late, so we didn't sit down to dinner at The Metro until after 8.
Much to our surprise, The Metro had converted to a tapas restaurant while we weren't looking, but we coped with this innovation and ordered six small plates of food. It was very tasty but a little pricey compared to the previous Chinese Metro. The cute chef came out and greeted us, seemingly available for more than just cooking -- he looked very snuggly.
mrdreamjeans is charming, and the remainder of his Texas accent (smoothed out by years of acting, I presume) is pleasant to listen to. He was bursting with stories and we let him run on entertainingly, our contribution being occasional witty asides to keep him going. I recognize the "I've been out in the boonies for so long and it's so great to be with you people!!!" syndrome, having experienced it myself.
We used Neil's camera to take some pictures before leaving, and a good-looking fellow who'd been watching us from a few tables away offered to take all of us together, which led to a conversation. The stranger and his friend were impressed by Neil's upcoming role in Evita, which the friend already had tickets for. We watched Neil do his best "greet the fans" routine, which was pretty good, and made our way out at 10:30. Asfuzzygruf might say if he lived in the South Bay, "I love my [neighbor] city!"
I picked up a B.A.R. on the way out, and read it while eating cereal before bed. It had a version of this article from the SF Chronicle about my old friend from MIT (one of the 12 freshpersons exiled to the same floor of our highrise dorm in 1974):
This is pretty funny. Jose has always been a bit more social and "grease"-y than the rest of us (who ended up as engineers, professors, doctors, etc.) but I would never have predicted he'd end up in politics. I guess this is one of the good functions of a political machine: they can attract and promote talented people who, on their own, would never be elected dogcatcher because they just aren't power-mad enough to do whatever's necessary to win. A picture of him from 1975
Some of the other quotes in articles like this one are pretty funny. One side present him as representing diversity -- gay and Latino! A double hit to make up for Newsom! -- but that's basically silly. Jose is more white-bread than I am and has almost zero cultural connection to his Mexican heritage. Not that that's bad, but it's the same failure of identity politics based on race that has boosted the careers of skin-pigmented upper class children of wealthy parents from the Caribbean and Latin America over native-born poor and disadvantaged white trash. Recent examinations of affirmative action-based admissions in the Ivies have shown that many of the assisted admits were in this supposedly-disadvantaged-but-not-really category.
excessor and I left the gym in Mountain View, traffic seemed fine until we reached San Mateo, where we bogged down in 30-mph congestion. 101 is the gritty industrial highway serving the businesses and most of the lower classes of the Peninsula, while the wealthy, buffered by land use restrictions and exclusive zoning, enjoy a much newer and better-engineered Interstate 280 through the San Andreas fault zone. Average houses near 280 sell for $1 million and up, while in the poorer parts of the same towns near 101 similar space can be had for half that.While driving
excessor's phone burbled several times with calls from mrdreamjeans, lowfatmuffin (who had just arrived by surprise in Oakland), excessor's electrical contractor, and others. He is soooo popular, or is it that I never carry my phone with me and so no one ever calls? Anyway, mrdreamjeans had remembered our meeting time wrongly and was waiting for us, and the clogged traffic made us half an hour late, so we didn't sit down to dinner at The Metro until after 8.Much to our surprise, The Metro had converted to a tapas restaurant while we weren't looking, but we coped with this innovation and ordered six small plates of food. It was very tasty but a little pricey compared to the previous Chinese Metro. The cute chef came out and greeted us, seemingly available for more than just cooking -- he looked very snuggly.
mrdreamjeans is charming, and the remainder of his Texas accent (smoothed out by years of acting, I presume) is pleasant to listen to. He was bursting with stories and we let him run on entertainingly, our contribution being occasional witty asides to keep him going. I recognize the "I've been out in the boonies for so long and it's so great to be with you people!!!" syndrome, having experienced it myself.We used Neil's camera to take some pictures before leaving, and a good-looking fellow who'd been watching us from a few tables away offered to take all of us together, which led to a conversation. The stranger and his friend were impressed by Neil's upcoming role in Evita, which the friend already had tickets for. We watched Neil do his best "greet the fans" routine, which was pretty good, and made our way out at 10:30. As
fuzzygruf might say if he lived in the South Bay, "I love my [neighbor] city!"I picked up a B.A.R. on the way out, and read it while eating cereal before bed. It had a version of this article from the SF Chronicle about my old friend from MIT (one of the 12 freshpersons exiled to the same floor of our highrise dorm in 1974):
The birth of a politician: San Francisco's new city treasurer, Jose Cisneros, moved from bureaucrat to politician when Newsom swore him into his new job Wednesday. The Michigan native arrived in San Francisco 11 years ago, and was introduced to City Hall by Supervisor Bevan Dufty, his workout buddy at the gym.
Cisneros served on the Parking and Traffic Commission and on Muni's board of directors during Willie Brown's mayoral administration. He has worked for IBM, the Bank of Boston and most recently as Muni's deputy general manager for capital planning.
Cisneros is filling out the remainder of Susan Leal's term; she left the treasurer's office to run the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Cisneros plans to run for a full term, and has 14 months to campaign. The election is in November 2005.
"I don't come from a politician's background. I'm not looking at this office as a stepping stone to a long-term political career,'' said Cisneros, 48. "I'm excited about the treasurer's job and looking forward to doing the best job I can.'' Now that's politic.
This is pretty funny. Jose has always been a bit more social and "grease"-y than the rest of us (who ended up as engineers, professors, doctors, etc.) but I would never have predicted he'd end up in politics. I guess this is one of the good functions of a political machine: they can attract and promote talented people who, on their own, would never be elected dogcatcher because they just aren't power-mad enough to do whatever's necessary to win. A picture of him from 1975
Some of the other quotes in articles like this one are pretty funny. One side present him as representing diversity -- gay and Latino! A double hit to make up for Newsom! -- but that's basically silly. Jose is more white-bread than I am and has almost zero cultural connection to his Mexican heritage. Not that that's bad, but it's the same failure of identity politics based on race that has boosted the careers of skin-pigmented upper class children of wealthy parents from the Caribbean and Latin America over native-born poor and disadvantaged white trash. Recent examinations of affirmative action-based admissions in the Ivies have shown that many of the assisted admits were in this supposedly-disadvantaged-but-not-really category.
