Sunday, October 23, 2005: The Trolley to Larkspur, and Some Thing to Do at the Castro

We woke up later than we'd planned.  And *koff* a little hung over.  Hey, it happens.  First activity for the day: see Carrie's friend Alex, who's part of Project Bandaloop, perform in the San Francisco Trolley  Dances at 11am.  The idea is that dance performances take place at regular intervals along the Muni Market Street line.  Alex was in the first of four, performing on the wall of the mattress factory at Gough Street.  That's right, on the wall.  The group he's a part of "dances" in the air on the end of ropes.  It's pretty impressive, both technically and aesthetically.  And that's coming from someone who's - frankly - not usually a big dance fan.  Anyway, we met Cortt and friend at the location, grabbed a cup of coffee from the strategically placed Peet's outpost, and lined up in the alley.  Which apparently had been recently well-hosed down, in order to eliminate that special downtown aroma of stale urine and rotting flesh.  Still had a bit of a pong, but wasn't too bad...
Alex and dance partner lowered themselves to the level of the hanging mattress and assorted bedding elements.  And commenced the performance, in which the mimed sleeping, waking groggily, rolling about...
...having a pillow fight, tussling under the covers, then going back to sleep.  The performance was succinct, and - ahem - rather erotic, frankly.  In an innocent sort of way.  The second Bandaloop performance was also quite good, involving two pairs of "cantilevered" rope dancers.  They swung about quite a bit, propelling each other off the wall in tandem.
Unfortunately, we couldn't have the whole Trolley Dances experience, because Carrie and I had to catch a ferry to Larkspur to meet my mother and grandmother for an early dinner.  We said our farewell, and walked down to the ferry building.  It was a beautiful day, and a lovely walk.  Along the way, Carrie bought a pair of hammered copper earrings and a silver necklace at the craft fair in front of the ferry building.  After a quick snack and another cup of coffee, we caught the ferry.
It was a perfect October afternoon on the bay.  We passed through a fogbank, too, for a bonafide San Francisco experience.
My mother Vivian picked us up at the ferry terminal, Omu - my grandmother Gisela - in tow.  She took us to a nice Italian restaurant nearby, where we sat semi-outside, i.e. open roof, but walls and so on.  Here my mother is "helping" Omu decide what she wants.  Omu's getting a trifle addled with age, so helping pretty much translates into deciding.
Still, Omu seemed to like the bread with olive oil and her minestrone soup both pretty dang well.  As my  mother notes frequently, appetite is certainly not an issue.
Then my mother pulled out the birthday presents.  A honeybear filled with Sonoma County honey for Carrie, and a new raincoat for me.  A very practical present, and one I'm very pleased with.  It'll come in quite handy for the rapidly approaching rainy Olympia winter.  We missed the last ferry by a few minutes, so my mother drove us back to the city, and dropped us at the hotel.  Where we took a nap for bit.
Later that night, we went out.  Originally we were going to see Peter Kubelka at the San Francisco Cinematheque, where I used to volunteer.  But the program was sold out.  Good for the Cinematheque, bad for us.  So instead we went to the Castro Theater and saw John Carpenter's The Thing.  No big loss at all.  The Castro is one of my favorite movie theaters, an old movie palace (albeit, not actually an especially ornate one, by comparison to some now lost, or so I'm told) on the corner of Castro and Market streets.  We caught the organist playing, as he always does between the evening shows.  That's a real treat.  And the movie was as fantastic as ever.  I still remember being terrified by it as a small child.  And it was still scary.  Kurt Russell is the echt-70s hero, (and a libertarian, too!) and it's a gas to see the Quaker Oats man turn into a writhing mass of slimy tentacles.  Oops.  Spoiler.  Well, it's your own fault, if you haven't seen it yet.  The lobby was done up a bit for Halloween.  Including the bug-flecked mummy pictured here.  After the movie we walked to El Farolito for dinner.  And then rode the bus back down Mission Street to the hotel.