Category: Life in San Francisco

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John Dobson: The Hippy That Made Astronomy Hip

The Dobsonian telescope named after it’s inventor, John Dobson brought the heavens to a great number of people. It was fairly cheap to make, but gave you the ability to see things in the sky that most store bought telescopes would never let you see. The first time I got to see Saturn for myself was through a Dobsonian telescope and Jupiter looked huge and I could even make out more than the four moons you normally can see.

I’m not sure why, but John popped into my head over the weekend. I haven’t seen him in years and figured he had probably died. I think I was 10 when I last saw him and my parents and I took a class from him to make our own Dobsonian telescope. We met him one night outside the California Academy of Sciences with the group the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. They had brought telescopes out and had them set up and were inviting people to have a look. They were really quite simple reflector type telescopes. They had a mirror at the end of a big long tube which focused the sky’s image on to what he referred to in the class as the spider which had a mirror that reflected what it saw into the viewing aperture.

My Dad had always been into astronomy and when he asked John were he bought the telescope [this one was called the Zebra and painted with psychedelic zebra stripes] John told my Dad that he made it and offered classes on how to do it and you’d end up with one when you finished. You had to do all the work yourself, but I think it only cost around $50 at the time and my Dad was sold. The first couple of classes were just discussion and then we were given two round portholes and grit and told to get to work.

The process of making the big mirror for the telescope consisted of mixing some grit with water and putting it between the two portholes and rotating them in small circles. I think most of our neighbors thought we were crazy as my Dad on weekends would take the portholes out in the driveway and he and I would sit there for hours grinding away at the glass. Since my Dad only had weekends to work on the mirror and John always focused on perfection in the grinding we never finished the mirror, but we did get it as far as the pitch lap which I’m still not sure what part that plays in the mirror, but I remember it was the last step before your porthole became a mirror for your telescope. That and the tube for our 12″ telescope sat in our house for years until my astronomical friend Patty took them off our hands a few years ago.

One of the interesting things about John was that he wasn’t a child of the 60’s although he totally fit the bill when you saw him. He was actually born in 1915 [turns out he’s a Virgo like me] in Bejing, China which made him the same age as my Dad. He had a ponytail and probably still does. I don’t know how old the picture I found of him is, but that’s how I remember him. He, unlike my Dad is still alive today and still talking about Astronomy at the ripe old age of 96. I bet he still gets on his knees and grinds portholes into mirrors to this day. The San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers [which John helped found] and their urban guerrilla astronomy are still thriving today. You can find them showing up around the city on clear nights holding star parties to entertain and teach the people passing by.

Because of John, I took up a big interest in science and still have a love for it today. I actually even worked at the Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences for a while as a teenager because I though the planetarium projector was just so cool and the fact that it was built out of spare parts during WWII gave it a kind of Dobsonian feel to it. John doesn’t have his own website, but he’s got a Wikipedia page and he’s mentioned frequently on the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers website. They have a calendar, but I didn’t see any upcoming star parties listed. You can also follow them on Twitter where you’ll probably here about their next star party. Check them out and you’ll be able to check out the stars for yourself one day.

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Today’s Post is Dedicated to my Mom


Two years ago today I had to unpleasant surprise to find my Mom had died. I can finally say after two years I have been able to move on. We had great times and bad times together. She didn’t like to have her picture taken very often so I had to go back to her High School graduation picture [1946], one of the few pictures i have of her that does her any justice. Yeah, I miss her, but there’s lots of things that I’d want to tell her today that she wouldn’t want to hear, like the price of gas or that two boys she knew from the neighborhood that I grew up with are now women.

Wherever you are, just know that I’m doing fine and I’ll continue to do so. Oh yeah, your grand-daughter says hi.

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Paybyphone.com For Parking Meters

When I’m out driving around I’ve found that I’ve started to take every quarter in change I have and put it in my jacket pocket, that way if I have to use a parking meter I know I’m covered. Sometimes though I might need to be there for a couple of hours and don’t have enough quarters on me. This happened to me today and I tried out paybyphone.com to pay for the parking.

I had to have an allergy test done which for some reason I’ve never had done in my life. The hospital I go to has parking garages, but that would have cost me around $12 for the 2 hours I was there. I found a meter and saw that you could pay by phone. I had no idea how long I would be there, but I guessed an hour and a half would be a good amount to start with. I called the number entered my credit card number and created a PIN number and then entered the code on the parking meter. I was all set. I did have to pay a 45¢ convenience fee which I didn’t like, but the company that runs this has to of course make some kind of money.

As I’m going through the allergy test which was carried out in a Pediatrician’s office [and I didn’t get a lollypop afterwards for not screaming and crying during the test!] I noticed that my time was running out so I opened up the web browser on my iPhone and found that the page was still available and had an extend button so judging from what the doctor said I figured adding another 30 minutes would work. I was then charged another 45¢ convenience fee on top of the last one. In the end I don’t have any allergies and it turned out I had to pay only $4.90 vs. the $12 it would have cost me in one of the lots. Not too shabby, but it would have only been $4 if I had the quarters on me.

When I got home I went to their website and saw that they have a mobile app for iPhones and Androids which is free. It’s much easier to use and doesn’t require a phone and is much more secure. Most meters around the city have the paybyphone.com stickers on them so if you’re going to be somewhere for a couple of hours it makes sense, or you can just keep $4 in quarters handy at all times. I did that once and frankly I didn’t like the jangling all those quarters made as I was walking around, so now I keep $2 in quarters as my maximum all of the time. Oh and if you really want to know, I don’t have any allergies.

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The San Francisco Unified School District

If you have a child in San Francisco that attends public school then you’re very aware of the lottery system for which school your child can get to attend. I’ve yet to hear about this happening in other cities, but it is a crazy system for San Francisco to have and we were lucky…WE BEAT THE SYSTEM!

I’m not sure why we did, but it could be because our daughter is autistic so there’s a smaller pool of kids to draw from. You can put down up to 16 different schools you want your child to attend and you’ll hopefully get one of them. Most parents put down 10 schools [note this is for elementary school, middle schools and high schools have less choicees]. From comments I’ve read there are many parents who put down 10 schools and didn’t get any of them and ended up having to in some cases drive their kids across town to attend school.

When I was a kid you went to the school in your neighborhood and we had class sizes of around 20-30 kids. We didn’t have any problems back then even though there was talk of over crowding. Then when I was getting ready for fourth grade bussing started which brought kids from bad neighborhoods to good neighborhoods and vice versa. Please note the bold/italics is the equivalent of doing the old finger quotation thing. At least they had bussing to get the kids to school back then. They only have that for kids who are in SDC classes now.

It was not a good time as I was supposed to be sent to Aptos Elementary [note it wasn’t a middle school or Junior High as we used to call them] and my Mother was down at the Board of Education kicking and screaming. In the end I ended up going to Lawton Elementary which was the closest to my house since they split out fourth-sixth grades [elementary schools before that were K-6].

What we have today is similar, but we have managed to fare through it very well. We only put down two schools that had SDC [Special Day Classes] that fit our daughter’s needs. We would have been happy with either. We knew the Kindergarten teacher at her current school and he’s a great guy. We got to meet the teacher at the school closer to us and knew that she mentored some of the people who were therapists for our daughter. Everyone had wonderful things to say all around.

Once we got accepted that’s not the end of things. You have to go to the school and fill out enrollment paperwork. We did that yesterday and after a few hiccups we got everything done. Note to parents of SDC kids, while the paper they send you says you don’t need to bring a birth certificate and proof of residence if you’re already enrolled in the SFUSD, ignore that. They sent us home to bring that back.

My Wife sent an email to the teacher that our daughter will have and she promptly sent back an email saying that she wants to visit our daughter at her school and talk with her current teacher as well as coming by our house to meet with us and see how she is outside of school. Some of you may think this sounds like a Child Protective Services thing, but it’s not. Autistic kids think different than other kids. My daughter can barely talk, but she can make music on her iPad in Garageband with very little help from me. The teacher wants to understand how your child’s mind works so she can incorporate the appropriate classwork into her daily life.

The Principal at the school even remembered us and had a long chat with us while the paperwork was being processes [it turns out she taught at my elementary school and knew many of my teachers. She even tried to flatter me by saying she might have been one of my teachers, but we only had old prune faced teachers close to their 70’s when I was in elementary school].

All in all I knew that it would work out for us. My Wife who worries more about these things is ecstatic at the moment so I’ll just shut my trap and let her enjoy it. Sometimes the world isn’t always out to get you and things work out in the end.

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How to BBQ in San Francisco

Someone once said you’re a real San Franciscan when you put on your winter coat to go out and BBQ in July. People who live here understand that because the weather throws a few monkey wrenches into being able to properly BBQ here depending on what part of the city you live in.

When I did my brief stint in the Mission we generally had good weather most of the year so BBQing wasn’t too difficult. When you live near the coast in the Sunset or Richmond districts things get a little more challenging. We get cold and wind here. I skipped the corned beef for St. Patrick’s day and decided to grill some steaks. It was a very windy day so I knew I had to start the grill early. We’ve got a propane grill so it needs some time to warm up. It took about a half hour before the grill got up to 400°. I figured I’d be going a little longer for the steaks and I opened the grill and dropped the steaks on it and the thermometer now said it was 300°. So much for the sear and grill lines.

In warmer weather like we get in our Indian summer later in the year I can usually get the grill up to over 500° in under 15 minutes. That’s when cooking outdoors is fun. Prior to the propane grill I remember that El Niño year late in the 90’s when I grilled on a hot New Year’s Eve when it hit 80°. My little Smokey Joe charcoal grill got so hot that I singed the hair on my arm. The steaks ended up cooking too hot and where blackened on the outside while raw on the inside.

These are things you need to understand when you grill in the outside lands. If it’s windy or cold your grill won’t get as hot and on a hot day it’s better to indirectly grill unless you have a propane grill that lets you control the heat. I’ve been grilling for years and have learned how to take the weather into effect even mildly enjoying grilling in a heavy fog where the water sizzles on the grill [which also cools the top area creating a circular effect which cools your grill.

So take these tips into account if you’re out in the windier areas. We unfortunately have a gorgeous view because we’re up on a hill, but that also puts us into a direct line of attack from the salt air off the beach so it can get very windy. I’ve even had my propane grill blown over with the wheels locked.

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Pesto alla Genovese

While I have a Germanic last name, I grew up in an Italian household. My family traces it’s roots back to Genoa in the Ligurian provence of Italy. As a kid what we ate was considered ethnic food. For most kids my age Italian food consisted of Spaghetti-O’s. For us it was pesto. It was something no one had heard of and you never saw it on the menu’s in Italian restaurants.

I learned how to make from my Mom who learned it from her Mom, etc, etc. When my Dad lost his job and we were low on cash we had pesto with tagliarini pasta at least once a week. Tagliarini is kind of like fettucini only thinner. When basil was in season she’d go to the farmer’s market down on Alemany and get a box sometimes two boxes and then the chaos would begin. I got the job of stripping the leaves off while my Mom and Grandmother would pull out their wooden bowls and mesaluna’s and start chopping the basil. It wasn’t the real way you’re supposed to make it as it was normally ground with a mortar and pestle, but these were more modern times pre-cuisinart. I loved it and ate it up by the piles. A couple of nights as a kid I had it before going to a Boy Scout meeting and apparently all the garlic that was in there became very apparent to everyone in the auditorium.

After I got done with the leaves it was time to grind the pignoli [pine nuts] and chop the garlic…lots of garlic. I think I had the easiest jobs of all. While pulling the leaves off the stems was tedious it wasn’t anything compared to chopping the leaves with the archaic double bladed knives that probably dated back to the 20’s. When the chopping was done my Grandmother would put the chopped leaves into a large bowl and slowly pour in olive oil [not the traditional Ligurian extra virgin olive oil, but good enough] and slowly stirred the chopped basil and oil until it got a creamy texture. Then I got to add the pignoli and garlic and finish up the stirring. My Mom would then start jarring up the extra and that would go into our downstairs freezer.

We always saved the last bit for dinner that night and my Dad who used to work down in the Marina would be told to drop by Lucca’s and get some fresh tagliarini for dinner. Typically you add some parmesan cheese to the mix, but my Mom and Grandmother always liked to let us decide how much cheese we wanted on it. This tradition carried on for years until a day in the 21st century my Mom wanted some pesto, but didn’t have it in her to go through the process. I suggested we try the food processor and of course she balked.

So I bought a bunch of basil picked the leaves and threw it into the food processor we had at my house. I tossed in about 5-6 cloves of garlic and a little olive oil and turned it on. Slowly adding a little bit more and more until it looked about right, but I left out the pignoli because I was lazy and they’re kind of expensive. We found some fresh tagliarini at a local upscale grocer who I won’t mention and brought it over to her house to make dinner one night.

Where’s the pine nuts? OK, I should have expected that. How’d you make it? You don’t have all the…wait! You made it in a food processor? Yes ma, that’s what I did, so do you like it? She liked it and started doing it that way herself.

Now pesto is everywhere. It’s in mayonnaise, on pizza’s someone will probably make a pesto chocolate bar soon. I see it all the time at the supermarket, but I’ve tried it a couple of times and I still go back to making it myself. It’s cheaper, fresher and just reminds me of good times in my past. Incidentally, if you substitute Italian parsley for the basil you get a great South American steak sauce called chimichurri that I’ve written about previously.

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Wonton Cookies

Way back when I was in the fifth grade i had a teacher named Ruth Omatsu. She was always one of my favorite teachers at Lawton Elementary school because she got us excited about learning. While we learned a lot about science and reading and math in her class it was the special side things she taught us that really stuck with me like wonton cookies.

Bringing a deep fryer around 10 year olds isn’t something you’d get away with doing today, but she decided to teach us to cook one week and she had come up with the novel idea of wonton cookies. They were really simple and delicious. You’d take a wonton skin and drop some coconut, brown sugar and chocolate chip on one half. Then you’d wet your finger and run it around the edge and fold it over into a triangle and deep fry it.

My Mom loved the idea and invited Ruth over one day to show her how to do it. My Mother took it a step further and chopped up banana and pineapple to add into the mix. Really anything sweet would probably work in one of these. If you’re adding in a harder fruit like apples you’ll definitely need some brown sugar to help loosen them up.

While I haven’t seen any Chinese restaurant offering them I think it would be a great idea for them to start. It’s a novelty that I haven’t seen anywhere else and could be a new San Francisco tradition. The only thing that comes close is a Philipino dish called Turon. I’ve seen it in stores, but I’ve yet to try it. From what I understand it’s banana, chocolate and star fruit made to look like a lumpia, but is sweet inside. Even though I dated a girl who was Philipino for six years I had never heard of this before, but it sounds like something I’m going to have to try. In the mean time I’ll stick with the wonton cookie version because it brings back memories of school. I’m sure some of my Asian persuasion friends will chime in on this one. Steve? You out there?

Hat’s off to you Ms. Omatsu!

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Blacks In Gaming

A good friend of mine helped host a night for the group Blacks In Gaming at the W Hotel in San Francisco. This ran hand in hand with the GDC [Game Developer’s Conference] and I have to say that the party was OFF THE HOOK!

Now I’ll apologize right off if any is offended by me using the term Blacks instead of African-American, but I would have to say that none of the Black folks there seemed to mine. Besides, having the acronym BiG sounds better than AAiG. The first sounds more like a dig me I’m here acronym while the second sounds like something you’d hear as person grabs their chest and falls to the floor. There were quite a few Black people in attendance, but myself being neither Black, nor a game designer still fit in nicely.

Now I’m sure some of you are asking why I would be invited to such an event since I am neither Black nor a game designer. It turns out that I help my old college friend get their website started and I wanted to see what would come out of it. She told me not to bother eating dinner that night and she was right. The food served up courtesy of sponsor Microsoft was incredible. They had trays of sushi, cheese and crackers and completely across Asia table of cuisine [note the deep fried pot stickers were outrageous]. As I was filling my plate I was tapped on the shoulder and offered a wagyu beef slider that was the hit of the evening for everyone. I also received a free drink ticket which got me a Maker’s Mark on the rocks to wash all the food down with.

While traveling around the room and talking with some of the game designers that had booths there was one in particular that stood out to me. That was Subversus Interactive showing of one of their games called Gyromaniac. It was by far the game that attracted the most attention. Why you ask? It’s a flight simulator that takes it a step further. You’re flying machine is traveling inside a human intestine, blood vessel or fallopian tube. It was pretty weird, but so unique in concept that it was attracting a lot of people to play the game. Note, you can also play it in 3-D which only enhances, umm the effect. Vishal Srivastava of Subversus Interactive who wrote the game did a great job of selling the game and caused a large amount of the people who were trying it out to break out laughing. If you have a fear of aliens and anal probes you might want to stay away from the game, but if you ever had the dreams of being a part of the movie Fantastic Voyage you’ll definitely fine this game fun. Check out the movie teaser at the end.

Overal it was a widely diverse crowd and I was surprised I didn’t bump into Willie Brown making a show there at least for a couple of minutes. I did happen to run into an old friend of mine Derrold Purifoy from elementary school and after 35 years we had lots of catching up to do. It seemed to me that most of the people when they weren’t talking about gaming were talking about the food at the W Hotel. It was a great night out and I managed to make it home before falling into a food coma.

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You Say Peninsula and I Say Isthmus

My wife and I were driving down to the Dollar Tree store in Daly City today when a random thought popped into my head. I always hear people in San Francisco when they’re driving south say, I’m driving down to the peninsula and I realized that they’re incorrect. Allow me to elaborate.

As you enter Daly City their slogan is, Gateway to the Peninsula! That’s true if you’re driving north, but if you’re driving south once you leave San Francisco you’re actually on an isthmus [pronounced like isthmus be my lucky day.] A peninsula is an area of land with water on three sides connected to the main land by an isthmus. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas usually with waterforms on either side. So technically we should all be saying when leaving the city that we’re driving down to the isthmus.

I’m not sure this idea will ever catch on and I’m surprised none of my teacher in school when we got to geography never pointed this mistake out to us. I suppose they just considered the whole patch of land before you hit San Jose a peninsula would be true, but that would then make Daly City’s slogan false.

See what happens when I let my mind wander. Isthmus be one of the stranger stories I’ve ever written.

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Parkside Theater: San Francisco Grindhouse

I watched a movie the other day called American Grindhouse [if you’re into film making you should see this]. I’d learned more about the genre than I could from the Quentin Tarantino movie of the same name. This stirred up some memories in my mind of the old Parkside Theater which was a top notch theater in it’s day, but took a turn towards the Grindhouse genre when it was sold and became the Fox-Parkside as we all knew it.

Grindhouse films were always low budget films that focused on many seedier ideas such as T&A, gratuitous gore, racial exploitation or all of the above. For me, after seeing American Grindhouse I had to see some of these films that I wasn’t old enough to see as a kid because most were made in the early 70’s and I wouldn’t turn 18 until 1980. WOW! Now I know why people were talking about Pam Grier films. She was always having clothes come off in her movies. I couple of little know grindhouse girls who showed up frequently were Anitra Ford who was the first female model on the Price is Right. The other was Victoria Vetri who was the 1968 Playboy Playmate of the Year and born in San Francisco [and that was also the first issue of Playboy I ever got to see!]

The titles of these films pretty much told you what to expect in the films, The Big Bird Cage, Caged Heat, Invasion of the Bee Girls. You knew that there would be lots of nakedness in these films. I knew it, even though I never got to see one of them until recently. So how does the Parkside fit into this? Well when I was in 2 & 3 grade they were a first run theater or close to first run. They had a thing during the summer where your parents would buy you tickets for Tuesday or Wednesday matinees so your parents could get rid of you for a few hours. I still remember buying Mike and Ike’s, Good and Plenties or Red Vines at the food counter which were larger than a box you would buy today [the Red Vines are about the same size] and it would cost you 16¢. The extra penny was to cover tax. I may be dating myself here, but you could go to a movie with $5 get in see the movie with popcorn and a drink and come out with change.

It was a respectable theater for the most part. Not one of the bigger theaters like you’d find downtown or in higher class neighborhoods, but it was a good working class theater. Then something changed…

In the 70’s it was sold off [1976 according to my my friend Woody at the Western Neighborhoods Project]. Things changed. The seats were pulled out of the downstairs and during the day it was a daycare center for kids. At night it ran grindhouse pictures or when they could get them older movies like Dr. Zhvago [always a big one they’d show]. Blacula, SuperFly, the aforementioned movies where all weekday evening movies. On Friday’s and Saturdays it was a different kind of grind house. I think smokehouse would have been more appropriate. Friday’s the fun started at 6pm and on Saturday’s it would start at noon. They would run every rock music film from the 60’s or 70’s they could find and seating was moved to the balcony. I remember a few nights when you could barely see the screen for the amount of pot smoke floating around. You would hear the clanking of beer bottles and people would be making deals trading beer for joints or vice versa.

The bathrooms upstairs were a good place for people to exchange drugs and liquor and puke. Back then they were pretty in line people that wouldn’t throw up on the way to bathroom, but knew their limit enough to get to the bathroom first. I think because of that time I have films like Jimi Play’s Berkeley, Woodstock, Tommy, Song Remains the Same as god knows how many other movies burned into my brain. I can’t always remember their names, but I know there were a couple with Pink Floyd, Santana, Janis Joplin [not at Woodstock]. It was like I was living through the 60’s again only I was old enough to understand it now.

Note that all the movie links above are only to the Wikipedia references, but if you have NetFlix you can stream them and see how open the movie industry used to be. The only scary part about watching these films today is I remember how hot some of these women were back then only to discover that most of them are turning 70 or older this year. Yes, your Grandma had sex.