How To Enjoy Warm Weather in San Francisco

Summer in the cityNow that daylight savings is in effect and we’ve got more sunlight along with warmer weather coming in I thought I’d share some tips that I’ve developed over the years for how to enjoy the warm weather on the cheap. There are benefits to this that I’ll get into later, but expect to see some old school references to how to do this. There are few things you’ll need which can be adjusted to your needs.

1. Driveway
2. Lawn chairs/chaise lounges
3. Cooler [filled with beer]
4. Radio/music device

Those are the basics. Feel free to add to the list, but don’t subtract. Start by pulling the car out of the driveway and setting up two chaise lounges [old school] or lawn chairs. Place  cooler of beer [budweiser or if you’re a hipster PBR] between them and turn on the music. Don’t forget to invite a friend or neighbor for the other lounge/chair. Long 70’s mustaches not necessary unless you’re going for a retro vibe.

That’s how we used to do it. Sort of like in the picture only with a better fashion sense. While I’m not positive I do believe that it came about from Dad’s getting up in the mornings on the weekend and mowing the lawn and doing all the front of the house gardening and then after cleaning up it would be around noon and they’d pull out the chaise lounge to admire their work.

There wasn’t really much other times you would sit out in front of your house so that makes the most sense to me. If it was a particularly warm day you’d hose down the driveway and sit there in the steam that the breeze would cool down making it a rather enjoyable outing. The Western side of the city doesn’t get a lot of sunny days so you enjoy them more when you do get them and for people here anything above the mid 60’s temperature wise has them passing out with heat stroke so you have to do what you can to cool the place down aside from waiting until around 4pm in the afternoon when the wind kicks up.

If you don’t have a real driveway [a personal parklet?] you can still find a way to make it work. There are lots of areas with smaller half sized driveways or pretty much no driveway in front of the garage that you can find some way to squeeze in a couple of chairs, cooler and radio.

There’s another benefit to this in that you get to walk people walking down your street. Most of them are probably your neighbors. This was the way I met most of my neighbors and if they start talking to you and you offer them a beer you’ve just created a connection that both of you might have a use for in the future. You’ll suddenly find that your next door neighbor likes to tinker with cars and that maybe you can help them fix their plumbing problem. I got rid of my gophers thanks to a neighbor which I gave him some orchid bulbs from my yard in exchange [side note: anyone need some cymbidium orchid bulbs? I’ve got tons of them. Will trade for chocolate.]

Doing this lets you take life slowly for a little while and all it costs you is the beer. Maybe you’ll break out the little grill on a hot day and cook up some burgers with your neighbors [which is a good reason to have a freezer in your garage.] It lets you have company without having to clean the house. Gives you a chance to meet your neighbors and if you live on an East/West facing street you might get invited across the street when the sun goes away on your side or invited over before you get the sun in the afternoon. Think about it, we need more of this.

Why There Will Never Be A Straight Pride Day

The city of San Francisco had a fabulous weekend of marches and parades. There was the transexual march on Saturday along with the Dykes on Bikes drive from Dolores Park and of course the Gay Pride Parade. The city this weekend was FAB-U-LOUS! This brought a thought to my mind. Why is there no Straight Pride Parade?

Several years ago on a mailing list of people I went to high school with there a couple of somewhat homophobic people who protested that homosexuals shouldn’t have a day to celebrate. This was hit with a gay friend of mine saying that heteros get to celebrate every day. Hmmmm, not exactly was my first thought. about the only way heteros get to celebrate is by the guys going to a strip club and dropping money on girls who take their clothes off and simulate girl on girl activities, oh wait that’s straight guys watching mock lesbians. Wait, we see that at the gay pride events every year, it’s just that the guys aren’t paying.

Well, the  straight guys could all collect themselves on a float with their penii hanging out pointing at them and screaming, for women only! but you have to admit a bunch of guys standing together on a float with their penii hanging out looks a little, well, gay. Women could collect half naked on a float writhing around at which point the guys would be screaming once again for girl/girl action which of course would put them in the lesbian category.

The whole pride thing started out to celebrate the fact that there’s nothing wrong with being homosexual, then the bisexuals were added in, then the transgenders hopped aboard which some of them while being once male or female have switched sex might now be attracted to the opposite of their new sexual orientation making them technically straight, or if they are attracted to the same as their new sex would make them gay, but since they were once the opposite sex makes them kind of straight, so…did I loose anyone here?

Pride day, which has turned into pride month pretty much celebrates an act against normalcy. Normalcy is something you can’t celebrate because it’s, well, kind of boring. We don’t even have a good line we could chant in a parade. We’re here we’re straight we pay our bills, uhm, you know we’re normal doesn’t go over too well. Celebrations need a bit of antinomianism to them to be fun. You’ve got to do something a bit naughty to enjoy yourself. Normal people aren’t very naughty. Our former Governor cheats on his wife and has a love child BOR-ING. That is so 10 minutes ago it’s not even in the local papers anymore. The only way a politician can get more publicity is by soliciting a homosexual encounter in an airport bathroom or by sexting pictures of what might be his engorged penis to underaged girls [that’s straight, but wrong right?]

I did a search this morning for straight pride and was surprised by what it turned up. Most of the small group of people who celebrate straight pride do so by speaking out that homosexuality is an abomination of nature. OK, so if everyone was heterosexual you’d have nothing to speak up about. Well, that’s a definite party buzz kill. I couldn’t find anything that these groups could put a finger on to give them something to celebrate for being straight.

So with that being said, I wish all my non-breeder, non-Mormon, non-no sex having people my hopes that you had a wonderful weekend. Now I’m off to iTunes to gift I kissed a girl by Katy Perry to Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney. Be Fab-U-Lous everyone.

 

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