My top 10 SFBG articles of '10

2010 was the year of the tiger and them kitties are supposed to keep away three things in Chinese lore: fires, thieves, and ghosts. I avoided all three! Almost. I did grill this sandwich on a fire:

Que stellar, no? And that's not all! I also logged some magical hours at the Republic of San Francisco Bay Guardian, who has given me a cubicle, grammar lessons, and an editorship (uh-oh, job as an editor? Oh wait, no copy chief here).

I can prove it too. Here's 10 of my most favorite articulates I wrote for SFBG, proof of epical and oftentimes ridiculish voyages about the City by the Bay, all.




1. How they're sitting (10/19)

To date, this story has 180 comments on it, which makes it one of the most bitched-about sfbg.com stories ever. All I know is, getting paid to write a cover story about kicking it with Haight Street kids for three days (with all the Four Loko, hash, and general fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ness that that implies) isn't half bad. Plus, I got in an altercation with the po-lice! This is why I write. Too bad sit-lie passed though, wtf is up with that SF?



2. Festie lovin' up in the High Sierra (7/6)

A slideshow (thanks Allen!) online piece-moment when life and work came into beautiful synergy. I'm pretty sure I didn't even plan on writing about the High Sierra Music Festival when we trucked up there for the weekend, but I guess something in the mountain air (or was it in the Millenium Faulkner RV?) compelled me to get it all on digital paper. Plus, I met some really cool people who got in touch with me after reading this. Hippies...



3. Test of the Tenderloin (9/28)

When I first started working in the Tenderloin (as a RESTAURANT HOST, don't get crazy on me now), it was a real change of scenery -- which in my reckoning is nearly always a good thing. It is a weird neighborhood tho, and during the four months I researched this story I realized that weird had a name: art-based gentrification. Bizarre. Anyways, this was my other cover article of twenty ten.



4. What I remember of my interview with Yard Dogs Road Show (11/22)

This isn't an actual photo from the article, but it is of Miguel and I the next time we saw each other. Note the satisfied looks of delinquency.

Writers write because they have something to say and stuff -- but they also write because sometimes by virtue of being a writer they get stuck in especially bizarre and wonderful situations. Sometimes (many times) these involve inebriation in the name of your art. Yard Dogs Road Show has always been kind of an aesthetically miraculous explosion of a band for me, but it wasn't until I met their song and dance man Miguel Strong at the Rite Spot Cafe on Folsom and 17th that I began to seriously consider running away with them gypsies. We decided to see what happens to an interview when you get too drunk to interview. Enjoy.



5. Free crystal grass! (4/21)

A white girl explores the city's Asian dessert cafes. Truly, my most incisive piece of food reporting to date.



6. Radical diplomacy: an interview with Guillermo Gomez Peña (11/17)

San Francisco is any million of things to me, but one of them is the path locus of every brilliant crazy in the known universe. Performance artist Gomez Pena was good enough to sit down in anticipation of Galeria de la Raza's 40th anniversary in his baroque bordello on Mission and Cesar Chavez and talk esoteric mumbo-jumbo about art and artist and activism. I love that shit, and his chihuahua Babalu made me believe in chihuahuas again.



7. 360-degrees muralismo (5/11)

This article was part of an ongoing series in which I try to figure out what the hell is going on with this street art-fine art monster mash and includes my favorite Jay-Z misquote of 2010. See also Chor Boogie and endless feedback loops of nostalgia.



8. Sunny Sunday smile (9/14)

Sometimes it's hard to think of relevant things to say about famous people. But sometimes that famous person is Michael Franti and that matters not as much because he just hugged you. Also, commentors on Franti posts are the most warm-inside feeling-makers ever, and for that I say heyyyy I love you. Another piece in this vein was my interview with Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, before he sold all his songs to car commercials.



9. Si se puede: El Tecolote turns 40 (8/11)

I've come to realize that not all of the pieces that I think are killer will get any attention at all by "other people." This is my heavily researched, culturally significant (I think) blog post on the history of El Tecolote, which is the vanguard bilingual community newspaper in the Mission. I think maybe nine people read it online -- we can double that number here!



10. Rapera rules everything around her: Ana Tijoux rising (3/15)

Ana Tijoux is a Chilean rapper, so that'd be enough to make me think she's awesome. But there's more! And she's playing the Elbo Room again on Tuesday, Jan. 18th, so read this and shall we?



That's all. Stayed tuned for my next post, which will be the ten hip-hop R&B videos I chain watch at work but minimize quickly if I think I'm in danger of anyone seeing me.



And I xoxoxoxoxo you,
Caitlin

My first cover story!

My article made the cover of the San Francisco Bay Guardian today!

Here's the link to the web version, although you should check out a copy of the print edition if possible, with photos by my man, Erik Anderson (here's an awesome one of Adelfo Antonio, a Swanton Berry farmworker I profiled, below):

Out of Reach: How the sustainable food movement neglects poor workers and eaters - 12/2/09, SFBG

I was so stoked to be able to report on this topic- I grew up with labor issues in my blood and I've often been frustrated on "sustainability activists" inattention to class issues. Much thanks goes out to my editors at SFBG for giving me the word space. I hope this brings attention to the poorer members of our food system (believe me, as an intern who shops at Rainbow Grocery, I'm definitely one of them!).

On a personal note; yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Love,

CD

Been busy gettin' published and all

Hey gang! Wanted to update you with some of the pieces I've been working on. Here's a couple of the pieces I've had published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian's print edition:

THA ARTICLES

Public Screening: Three decades of posting the revolution with Mission Grafica - 11/11/09
On the history of a community silkscreen studio in the Mission District. Grafica has thirty years of Latino activism and social protest under its belt- some amazing stories.

Presents of mind: Gifts that give back - 11/19/09
My contribution to the Guardian's 2009 Holiday Guide. I researched and profiled some of the most socially conscious gift ideas in the Bay Area that year. My favorite was the cat rescue shelter that was bottling its own "Meow Merlot." Heartwarming, I tells ya.

THA BLOGS

The bulk of my time's been straight up bloggin' it tho. Internet journalism... wild stuff. Consider the following my greatest hits on the blog roll (photo by yours truly)...

Not for beginners: Goodwill As-Is gets put on notice- 10/29/09
The truth will out on subpar bulk thrift stores

Negrodamus knows: Paul Mooney, ringmaster of black comedy, returns to the Bay- 11/2/09
My interview with the controversial legend behind The Richard Pryor Show, In Living Color and The Chappelle Show. He's a peach.

Keeping up with the Waters': Berkeley's way ahead of SF on the school garden game- 11/19/09
Profile of Alice Waters' famous sustainable garden for Berkeley public school kids.

High fructose corn syrup ragin'- 11/24/09
This is what happens when I get editorial power over my posts... what can say, I got beef with corporate sugar water!

Squeeze boxes and sparkly boobs: SF's Accordion Babes equal the truth - 12/1/09

Event review of a burlesque/accordion git down at the Uptown Night Club in Oakland. Where do I get those sequined pasties?

There you have it. Onward and upward, my lovelies!

CD

So there's this girl...

(please note my transition to Guardian-style non capitalized headlines, I'm a total SFBG groupie)

... named Tavi Gevinson and as far as I can tell she's done not too much besides find mystical access to an endless closet (Lion, Witch and Wardrobe?) of grandma chic and written an addicting little blog about it.  Not so crazy, right?  Sure, the Huffington Post has started reporting on when she goes to fashion shows and now she's being called "the true star" of New York's Fashion Week? Weell... way to be a bloglebrity? (still working on that one.) What's that you say?  Ah. Yes. She's 13.

What were you doing when you were 13? Hanging with Yojhi Yamamoto?

Yes, I know that is probably spelt wrong.

Look at this girl.  How to market yourself, 101. Ridiculous.

I could totally wear that...

thinking, thinking,

CD

And Now Back To Your Normally Scheduled Programming...

Ahhh my little 'Pura Caitlin'... as I sit here eating chunks out of a sweet potato, typing up my article on Latino political agitation silk screens, I reflect on the days I would roll around in your html coding and frustratingly slow image uploads, spouting ad nauseum about... my day. We shall meet again. Someday I will update my blog as much as Strange Maps. In the meantime, how sick is the EU kicking Iceland like a soccer ball? I want most of these maps screen printed by Latino revolutionaries and tacked to my wall.

I luv the Internets...

My Spot on the Strip

Acme Coffee

1431 SE 40th

Portland

The crazy thing about coming back to Portland is how much the place is evolving. Every time I touch down at my beloved PDX (best airport in the world, I'm sayin') and sniff the sweetness of the air up there, I get this crazy feeling that I have to see everything. Now. Otherwise I could lose the Portland pulse and not be hip to the game anymore, and that would cause me to freak out.

Take for instance, Hawthorne. SE Hawthorne has always been the street you take your out-of-towner friends to in order to show them what makes Portland different. Crunchy hemp gift stores, used clothing purveyors and of course, the Arabian Nights style Baghdad Theater.

I was tooling down the strip yesterday morning waiting for Biasi to shake the hangover and be ready to bake surprise birthday cakes with me when I ran into the newest cat to make the scene, Ken Sellens.

Ken just moved down from Bainbridge Island, which is a lovely, closeknit community a ferry ride from Seattle. We drank our morning joe and chatted for awhile about staying in the same crazy woman's guest house in Lagos, Portugal, the one where the door never worked and she woke you up at six am to ask whether you'd want the room for another night.

This summer, him and a buddy decided they wanted to open up "a coffee cart" to supplement their artist's incomes and the very next day found an ad on Craig's List for a cafe for rent.

Enter Acme Coffee, which they've set up in an old house just north of Hawthorne on SE 40th. It kinda reminds me of some of the outdoor cafes they have in Austin, Texas where there's big gardens with all kinds of mismatched seating and the general sense that beautiful, artistically genius work is getting accomplished at the tables all around you.

The place is full of functional antiques, like a massive iron fan that they've only turned on once because "it gets pretty intense out here" when it's on. They have blueberry pie.

"We have barbeques out here once a week," Ken tells me. "We close up the cafe, and this just turns into a house. As you know, there's a lot of musicians in this neighborhood, so people come up and play on the porch. This place turns into party central. Well, not really party central."

I want to go to one of these parties. Bad. But I'm doing the SF thing now, and I know that though I'm giving up my spot in P-Town, I'm leaving a vacancy that cool kids like Ken can fill, get their swing at the bikey-coffee-front porch-guitar strumming glory of it all.

I'll always be back to Portland. Even when I can't tell you where the cool bars are anymore. Even when snotty-nosed hipsters tell me and Lauren to move our place at Colonel Sommers Park because "we have a kickball game here. Every Monday. Did you just move here?" I'll still have the wearwithall to turn on my coolkid sneer and ask "where are you from? Ohio?" (nothing against Ohio)

Tear. Growing up. Oh my City of Roses, don't forget your girl!

And I love,

CD

Sigh. In Love.

Who is Ariel Dovas? How can I blog-prentice to her? In San Francisco's hippest neighborhood, she is the hippest of them all. check out her latest blog-sterpiece. If only I had this knack for expressing the zeitgeists of our time.