Tag: family

I’ll Never Know What Normal Families Do in the Morning

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Monsieur Mustache is the One on the Left

I am giving Nat a ride to school today, and Nat is bringing a sock puppet to school for an audition today.

It’s a mustachioed existentialist French sock puppet. (It’s probably also an absurdist playwright and a chain smoker, but I forgot to ask)

I wonder what a normal families morning is like, because having a chat with an irascible French existentialist sock puppet is probably at least 2 sigma from the mean.

I am not sure if this is a parenting success, or a parenting failure..

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Well, That Was Exciting

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I drove to Open Space Arts this evening to pick up Charlie from rehearsal.

On the way there, I pulled over 4 times to allow police cars with lights flashing to pass me.

When I got there, I saw a police car in the parking lot of the Royal Farms convenince store, right across the street from the community theater group, and Anna and Charlie were talking with police.

The RoFo had been robbed, and Charlie and Anna had seen the guy entering and leaving the store, so they filled out statements for the police.

No one was hurt, though I am sure that the store clerks were not happy with the turn of events.

Quote of the Day

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I Expect Nothing, and I am Still Disappointed.

—Charles E. Saroff

My son.  (Not exactly his quote, it’s from a meme, but he said it without a pause)

He’s a big Bernie supporter, and not a fan of Peter Buttigieg’s policy free Presidential bid, but when I told him that his campaign was literally selling access to big bundlers in an attempt to “maintain momentum”.  (Completely legal, but still sleazy)

Weird Echoes of My Dad in a Crust

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I was at an SCA event today, Crown Tournament. (One of the interchangeable royalty won)
At feast they served a cheese tart, and I had a slice, and liked it.
The thing is, it was basically a quiche, and I liked it.
One of the adolescent battles with my dad was over eggs in general and quiche in particular for breakfast.
He thought that I should have them for breakfast, and I wanted the additional sack time.
Over the years, I have come to appreciate eggs, but my stance had been unwavering ………. Until now.
I guess that my tastes have changed.

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I Wish I Could Talk to My Dad about This

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Before the Demolition

Developers in the Bay Area have a trick: They historically significant properties, and get permission to renovate them

They then demolish the buildings, and rebuild them as urban mansions, and then they resell the properties to overpaid Silicon Valley executives for millions of dollars in profits.

It is a plague on the Fog City, andthe City Planning Commission has just opened up a can of whup-ass on a developer who did this:

A property owner who illegally demolished a 1936 Twin Peaks house designed by a renowned modernist must rebuild an exact replica of the home rather than the much larger structure the property owner had proposed replacing it with, the City Planning Commission ruled this week.

………

In a unanimous 5-0 vote late Thursday night, the commission also ordered that the property owner — Ross Johnston, through his 49 Hopkins LLC — include a sidewalk plaque telling the story of the original house designed by architect Richard Neutra, the demolition and the replica.

The commission directive, unprecedented in San Francisco, comes more than a year after the home at 49 Hopkins Ave., known as the Largent House, was almost entirely knocked down. All that remained of the white, two-story redwood-and-concrete-block home was a garage door and frame.

Johnston had received planning permission only to remodel with a design that would have largely kept the first floor of the existing home intact.

………

The case attracted attention because Neutra is considered one of the most important modern architects and because it highlighted the trend of speculators illegally razing modest homes with the intention of replacing them with mega-homes. The new houses can fetch upward of $5 million, double or triple the price of an average house in already expensive San Francisco.

Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards said he hopes the commission’s action in the 49 Hopkins case will send a message to speculators accustomed to ignoring city planning and building laws with few or no repercussions. 

My dad spent his professional career as a city planner, and it was sh%$ like this that made him tremendously cynical about his chosen profession.

I think that he would have pleased and surprised, as well as a bit dubious about the final outcome, at this news, but I’ll never know.