Weekend
Wow! What a weekend! Friday night I went to 1015 to see Beats Antique and Tipper. It was such an awesome show. This was break beat, so the music was really different from the usual house music. House music is fun and does what it is supposed to do, which is to get you energized and moving, but it also tends to be pretty simple. BA and Tipper play much more complex and interesting music, with this kind of weird, circus flavor to it. I love that kind of stuff. It was also interesting to note the contrast in the crowd. The regular Saturday night clubbers are pretty clean cut, and wear button shirts, jeans, and nice shoes. On Friday, all the freaks were out to see Tipper. Lots of dreds, tattoos, and big, big piercings. They had a bunch of girls in sexy, anachronistic costumes, with white corsets and white petticoats who were dancing up on the stage and being very flirty and sexy with each other. At one point late into the show, I turned around to realized that the crowd had pushed me back up against the central table, and that I was standing directly under the dancing girls, with my eyes at about the level of their knees, so I decided to just turn around and watch the show for a while. I was in heaven!
Also, the interact shows were really cool. For the first, they had a female contact juggler with a big glass ball dressed all in white standing against a white screen. A man was standing on the central table with a projector, and projecting images onto her body and the screen behind her while she did her contact juggling act. The images were the kind of psychedelic, melting patterns that you see in a lot of visualizers for winamp, iTunes, etc. He had some kind of a board that he was drawing on that was connected to the computer generating the visualizations, so that he could shape the patterns in real time, so that the patterns were actually dancing with the juggler. The second one was a female trapeze artist, who was also quite good. The whole show had this kind of circus-cabaret feel to it, which I really liked. I am reminded vaguely of the aesthetics of Mirrormask.
Saturday night was Jai Uttal at Laughing Lotus, the yoga studio that I go to daily. This was a really big, exciting event for the yoga studio, and I don't think they've ever had that many people there (I think there were 180). He started with Bolo Ram, and then did Radhe Govinda. After that, he encouraged people to stand up and dance, which was I huge relief for me because my legs were getting really cramped, since we were packed in like sardines, and they had run out of blankets to sit on. I find it hard to sit through an entire kirtan, and it is more fun when you get up and dance anyway. He did Om Namah Shivaya, which was really powerful. Everyone was dancing and clapping along and singing their hearts out. I felt completely lost in ecstasy. Jai had just come back from a trip to Brazil, where apparently they do Bosonova kirtans, so he ended the night with a cute Bosonova style Hare Krishna.
Yesterday, I was planning on going to see Watchmen, but it was sold out, and it was a gorgeous day anyway, I so biked out to Golden Gate park instead. I hung out at Hippie Hill for a while and listened to the drums, and then continued on all the way to the west end of the park. I checked out the Golden Gate visitor center, which is in the downstairs of the Beach Chalet Restaurant, and read about the history of the building and the park. I felt inspired by the fact that GG park itself was built at the end of the nineteenth century during a time of economic depression, and that the murals and woodcarvings in the visitor center are from the 30's during the great depression. I think it is so cool that in this time of depression, instead of saying that there was no money for unnecessary things like public art, they actually thought that putting artists to work was a worthwhile thing to do, as it would create jobs for artists and also create something that the public could enjoy for free. The artist, who was inspired by Diego Rivera's famous murals of everyday life in Mexico (Rivera also spent a good bit of time in San Francisco himself), painted frescoes (yes, real frescoes in the tradition technique of painting on wet plaster) of daily life along in SF, along the Embarcadero (the waterfront) and in the park, themes that could be easily identified and related to by the common man. When art becomes completely disconnected from anything that regular people can relate to, it is easy for opponents of public arts funding to paint them in a bad light. I certainly think that experimental art has its place, but it makes sense to me that public tax-payer money be used to fund arts for the common man. There is a lot that we have to do as a country, and Obama needs to spend his political capital wisely, but it would be really cool to see a revival of this kind of stuff. If they could do it in the 30's, in the worst depression in our country's history, then we can do it today.
After the visitor center, I explored the west end of the park, and found "Queen Wilhelmina's Windmill" and the "Dutch Tulip Garden," which are right next to the restaurant. I also found a very nice stone circle just into the park a short way, so I hung out there for a bit, until I got really cold, and headed back. They had a full relief map of the park in the visitor center, and I noticed that the east end of the park is much higher than the west end. This means that biking from Haight St. on the east end to Ocean beach on the west end is a piece of cake. Biking back is less easy, and I was really tired and freezing cold by the time I got to Haight St, so I stopped in at The Alembic bar and had a hot toddy with cognac. I'd been meaning to check this bar out for a while anyway, since it is famous for specializing in vintage cocktails and having a huge selection of fine liquors. They take mixocology very seriously there.
I was so tired and hungry by the time that I got home, that I devoured an entire container of hummus and crackers, and then right to bed even though it was only 9 o'clock. My legs were so tired this morning. I can't believe how much I used my body this weekend, between dancing all night on Friday, more dancing at the kirtan on Saturday, a very intense yoga class on Sunday morning, and then biking all the way to ocean beach on Sunday afternoon. It's nice to feel myself getting in better shape and having more energy.
Also, the interact shows were really cool. For the first, they had a female contact juggler with a big glass ball dressed all in white standing against a white screen. A man was standing on the central table with a projector, and projecting images onto her body and the screen behind her while she did her contact juggling act. The images were the kind of psychedelic, melting patterns that you see in a lot of visualizers for winamp, iTunes, etc. He had some kind of a board that he was drawing on that was connected to the computer generating the visualizations, so that he could shape the patterns in real time, so that the patterns were actually dancing with the juggler. The second one was a female trapeze artist, who was also quite good. The whole show had this kind of circus-cabaret feel to it, which I really liked. I am reminded vaguely of the aesthetics of Mirrormask.
Saturday night was Jai Uttal at Laughing Lotus, the yoga studio that I go to daily. This was a really big, exciting event for the yoga studio, and I don't think they've ever had that many people there (I think there were 180). He started with Bolo Ram, and then did Radhe Govinda. After that, he encouraged people to stand up and dance, which was I huge relief for me because my legs were getting really cramped, since we were packed in like sardines, and they had run out of blankets to sit on. I find it hard to sit through an entire kirtan, and it is more fun when you get up and dance anyway. He did Om Namah Shivaya, which was really powerful. Everyone was dancing and clapping along and singing their hearts out. I felt completely lost in ecstasy. Jai had just come back from a trip to Brazil, where apparently they do Bosonova kirtans, so he ended the night with a cute Bosonova style Hare Krishna.
Yesterday, I was planning on going to see Watchmen, but it was sold out, and it was a gorgeous day anyway, I so biked out to Golden Gate park instead. I hung out at Hippie Hill for a while and listened to the drums, and then continued on all the way to the west end of the park. I checked out the Golden Gate visitor center, which is in the downstairs of the Beach Chalet Restaurant, and read about the history of the building and the park. I felt inspired by the fact that GG park itself was built at the end of the nineteenth century during a time of economic depression, and that the murals and woodcarvings in the visitor center are from the 30's during the great depression. I think it is so cool that in this time of depression, instead of saying that there was no money for unnecessary things like public art, they actually thought that putting artists to work was a worthwhile thing to do, as it would create jobs for artists and also create something that the public could enjoy for free. The artist, who was inspired by Diego Rivera's famous murals of everyday life in Mexico (Rivera also spent a good bit of time in San Francisco himself), painted frescoes (yes, real frescoes in the tradition technique of painting on wet plaster) of daily life along in SF, along the Embarcadero (the waterfront) and in the park, themes that could be easily identified and related to by the common man. When art becomes completely disconnected from anything that regular people can relate to, it is easy for opponents of public arts funding to paint them in a bad light. I certainly think that experimental art has its place, but it makes sense to me that public tax-payer money be used to fund arts for the common man. There is a lot that we have to do as a country, and Obama needs to spend his political capital wisely, but it would be really cool to see a revival of this kind of stuff. If they could do it in the 30's, in the worst depression in our country's history, then we can do it today.
After the visitor center, I explored the west end of the park, and found "Queen Wilhelmina's Windmill" and the "Dutch Tulip Garden," which are right next to the restaurant. I also found a very nice stone circle just into the park a short way, so I hung out there for a bit, until I got really cold, and headed back. They had a full relief map of the park in the visitor center, and I noticed that the east end of the park is much higher than the west end. This means that biking from Haight St. on the east end to Ocean beach on the west end is a piece of cake. Biking back is less easy, and I was really tired and freezing cold by the time I got to Haight St, so I stopped in at The Alembic bar and had a hot toddy with cognac. I'd been meaning to check this bar out for a while anyway, since it is famous for specializing in vintage cocktails and having a huge selection of fine liquors. They take mixocology very seriously there.
I was so tired and hungry by the time that I got home, that I devoured an entire container of hummus and crackers, and then right to bed even though it was only 9 o'clock. My legs were so tired this morning. I can't believe how much I used my body this weekend, between dancing all night on Friday, more dancing at the kirtan on Saturday, a very intense yoga class on Sunday morning, and then biking all the way to ocean beach on Sunday afternoon. It's nice to feel myself getting in better shape and having more energy.