Surf Daily

Reflections on Not Surfing and Being Californian

I was almost a Californian, you know.

I moved to the Bay Area in 2006, or, more accurately, stumbled off of an Amtrak and ended up staying.  Let's not front.  I didn't come here to ruin your party, I just sort of wound up here.  San Francisco tends to take people like me and either kill them or fix them, and it seems to have mostly fixed me, at least insofar as I've been here for 5 years and I'm not living on the streets or dead.  If you want more details, ask me.  There's parts of my life that I don't openly share online but you can probably fill in the blanks.

I'll never be from here.  I guess the only reason I mind is because I've never really been from anywhere.  I grew up outside of Chicago and my family moved downtown (at my behest) when I started high school.  From that point forward I was always a suburban kid wishing he'd grown up in the city.  Now, out in California, I "rep" my (312) area code, as if I'd actually grown up in Chicago, proper, hoping nobody uncovers my dirty secret.

I don't speak Northern Cities Shifted English, and not for lack of trying either.  There was a period where I tried to alter my speech to sound more like The Mayor, and ended up just sounding like a moron instead.  Sometimes I'm angry at my teachers for educating me in proper Midwestern Non-Regional Diction, because not only do I feel like I'm from nowhere, but I sound like it, too.

Back in 1985 my dad was offered a job as the head of Mergers and Acquisitions at a large health-care company on the west coast.  The package would have included relocation to Santa Monica.  I would have been 2 years old and grown up in Southern California.  As far as I can tell, the "native" cutoff is somewhere around 4 or 5.  If you've never had a day of schooling in another state, you can pass yourself off as from here.  My dad opted out of taking the job and the company ended up in very hot water later.  He made a good move, as his position would probably have been eliminated.

Sometimes I think wistfully, though, of what it would have been like if I'd actually been from "here".  Not "here" as in San Francisco, of course.  Even people from other parts of California can not be from here.  I have discovered, in fact, that San Francisco is possibly one of the most difficult places to be "from".  I'm not even going to try.  But I'd certainly like to be from California.

So, back to surfing.

Surfing is really difficult to learn when you didn't grow up doing it.  I notice now that when I picked it up in 2009, I fell into a pattern that a lot of other adult late-comers to surfing do: I went overboard with the identity aspect.  I started blogging about it, spent all my time hanging out on surf-related websites, changed my speech, my clothes, and my attitude.  None of this has made me a better surfer.  It's actually more of the same nonsense that's plagued me for years: I'm trying to pretend like I'm from somewhere and have grown up doing something.

These days I basically don't surf at all.  When I started, I could rely on the fact that my doting boyfriend was unemployed and could drive, which meant I could get out to the beach basically any morning and flop around for a few hours.  In fact, we were doing that so much that I pretty much lost my job due to neglect.  Life was good and I even figured out the basics.  Another thing that used to reliably get me out there is my Xtracycle, but it has been banished from our second-floor apartment.  It's too big and too heavy.  It lives in storage.

Lately, my thrust has been on getting a place to stay in the Sunset.  For a while, I had access to a friend's garage, but he moved the rest of his family in and my gear had to go.  An attempt at securing an apartment yesterday fell through.  I'm still looking and, even more horrifyingly, I'm going to start driving lessons at the ripe young age of 27.

I'm committed to the sport.  I really really want to be good at it.  It makes me very happy.  But I have to admit to feeling like a damn fool when I've spent a few years putting on airs and don't even get wet more than once a month.  The emperor has no clothes.  Perhaps it's time to shed the act.

I'll never be from here.  I'll always sound like a fool when I try to talk surf.  No, I don't know if it was good or bad out there.  No, I don't need to blog incessantly about whether I managed to half-assedly catch a wave.  That doesn't mean I'm shutting this one down, by the way.  It is important, as always, that I support the Peoples Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah and its Guardian of the Revolution, Muammar El-Ghadafi, by continuing to pay for this domain.  But don't be surprised if there's a lot less whiny surf content.

I'll see you out there, though.  Eventually.  Just another guy in a black (actually gray) suit trying to mind his own business and not look like an idiot.

You were right, Chris.

Searching for Accommodation in a Hostile World

Since its inception, I've loved Google Street View for two reasons.

• I can tour dangerous places I've always wanted to visit
• I can suss out bike parking in advance before I go somewhere

This works well in cities.  It does not work so well in the suburbs, where the place I'm going might be set back behind a sea of parking.  I do not expect the Google Street View Prius to go putter around every parking lot and garage to spy on my behalf.

This week I am attending Velocity, a conference which up to this point I have been too unimportant to attend.  Velocity is in the Valley which, as indicated by its name, is fucking bunk.  God has turned his back on the Valley.  Unfortunately, the Valley has also turned its back on God's own people, the humble bicyclists of San Francisco and environs.  For a place only two counties away, it sure feels more like I'm somewhere awful, like Phoenix, than wonderful, gushy, liberal coastal California.  This is the case, as well, for the Valley, and also the Valley.

I have a few options for getting there.  Barring extreme masochism and disregard for personal safety (there really is no safe, continous north-south bicycle route down the Peninsula), I will get to take public transit for part of the route.  Caltrain will get me as far as Lawrence.  From there, The Google has instructed me that I can take a delightful trail to the Convention Center.  So far, so good.  Granted, I've had awful bicycling experiences down south, including angry drivers attempting to run me off of the road for presumably no reason other than my choice of conveyance (frustration at said conveyance probably an outgrowth of living in a Valley, plus micropenis).  However, I'm not expecting this to be too bad.  I even know some of the streets, from having taken them a few years ago for an interview at Yahoo.

My concern is what I will find when I get there.  In a place basically not designed for humans, what accommodations have been made for locking up a bicycle?  I was worried that I'd get down there, ask a couple of disinterested and unaware employees (whose experience of "cyclists" was probably of the "Mexican guy on the sidewalk" variety), and eventually be directed to something like this (source):

Don't laugh.  It's happened before.

The scenario continues with me self-righteously dragging my bicycle into the convention center, at which point a security guard tells me to "tie it up outside".  I then demolish him with the sheer power of my smugness, and haughtily drag my bicycle into each session until the conference is over.  In the comic-book fantasy world where I work out all of the angst brought about by my personal powerlessness over the entirety of existance this is an entirely plausible scenario.

Since I actually try to live in reality most of the time, and don't really need to be getting into a confrontation on my boss's dime, I did the much more reasonable act of emailing the general manager of the convention center on Thursday and asking her what was available in terms of bike parking.  I even had the audacity to ask for a picture of the racks.  I called her on Friday, and after a brief conversation she actually went ahead and took one.  Holy shit!

Here is what is waiting for me at the convention center:

The rack(s, there are actually two of them) are located outside and may fill up, depending on whether there are any other Systeembeheerders crazy enough to ride to Velocity.  However, they're of the right design (particularly given the paranoid way I like to lock my bike), and the manager even went so far as to photograph the bolt so I could ensure that they were securely anchored to the ground:

I have to admit, I really feel like someone went the extra mile to let me know my bicycle would be welcome.  Now, if they could follow up by putting a pittance of information on their website, which gushes effusively about how easy it is to drive and park there, it would really complete the picture.  Perhaps I should suggest it.  Anyhow, looks like I'll be biking to Velocity.  Perhaps I will see some of you there!

One Year of Surf - Looking Back

A little over a year ago (last Sunday was the actual anniversary), I had brunch at Universal Cafe and then went up to the beautiful little town of Bolinas (it doesn't exist; don't try to find it) on the invitation of my dear friend Josh, himself the subject of an exciting and titillating bromance that began on IRC way back when and has yet to be consummated with Ice, largely due to my abstinence from booze.  Alas.

Since then, I've managed to break a Softop (that happened in the first couple of weeks, actually), sprain an ankle, cut myself in a few places, get water in every sinus, get sand where sand does not belong and, as of some point a couple of weeks ago, actually start riding waves in earnest.  I'm a shitty surfer who still needs to learn what to do once he's standing up on a board ("turning" has been suggested), and is also still learning when to shut up in the lineup (as it turns out, not everybody wants to be my friend), but I'm totally hooked.

I don't really look like a surfer, and my participation in "surf culture" amounts to occasionally listening to Sublime.  Being an active member of Stoke Report doesn't count, since the Surf Gods in Orange County have yet to deign that GNU/Linux and Brunch are part of the scene.  However I'm definitely a surfer, which I can qualify by the fact that I went nearly 9 months without really a single stand-up ride and enjoyed every minute of it.  Few would submit to such punishment.  My home beach is OB.  'Nuff said.

I lost my job back in May, which has been great for surfing.  Some would argue that I lost my job because of surfing, though there were other factors involved.  Really.  I swear.  Every morning that I can, I strap a board (currently a 7'6" but looking to shorten up) to my Xtracycle (named "Momma") and pedal out to the beach, flail for two hours or so, and pedal home.  I'm looking for a job in earnest, but I suspect my next board will have one of these signs printed on the bottom:

I wanna thank everyone, particularly Josh and the Stoke Report family, who have helped foster this new pastime of mine.  My partner Jon really deserves the prize, since he's had to tolerate as well as clean up after my obsession, and I keep making promises to do stuff for him that I break because the waves are firing.  Or because it's morning.  Or just because.  I'll be back in four hours, I swear!

Surf has been great for my health, my self-image, my stamina, and my happiness.  It's also caused me to spend a lot more time outside than I used to.  Sorry, IRC friends!  I swear, I still find your lives fascinating.  However, the beach is calling, and I can always read the scrollback.  If I ever get around to it.

Bill Hicks - Summertime

Could you imagine that?  Livin' at the beach?

Google Maps "Bike Directions" - Definitely in Beta

To sum: A step in the right direction, but make sure to double-check things... and can Google really replace local knowledge?

Google's announcement of bike directions was all the buzz yesterday, so I decided to try it out for myself.

My friends know I'm particularly smug about my commute and have gone so far as to map it on Bikely, which yields a particularly enviable elevation profile:

It's no surprise that I not only enjoy my ride to work, but can usually make it in under 15 minutes (12 is my record, from a combination of really good luck with traffic lights and really pushing it).  There's also a less adrenaline-worthy 20-minute version that I do when I'm not in any particular hurry, that takes me down the "Wiggle" to 14th St. to Townsend instead.

The existence of something like the "Wiggle" represents the sort of quandary in which I'd imagine anyone trying to make automated bicycle maps would be faced.  The particular sequence of streets which allows for an easy traversal of the anticline which roughly divides the Western Addition from all points west is one of the first things any cyclist learns when he moves to San Francisco, but it isn't intuitive by any means.

San Francisco's street layout makes no qualms about its utter disrespect for the (rather dramatic) geography of the city (having been optimized instead for easy subdivision, sale, and development of property in a 19th-century boomtown), so cyclists take advantage of a bevy of local knowledge regarding how precisely to navigate the city's terrain without having a heart attack.  No map will really make this obvious, though the SF Bicycle Coalition has done their best job by producing a map which not only has the "Wiggle" on it, but also color-codes every street by grade.

Still, bicycling has a certain DIY ethic to it, and learning to ride successfully seems to require one or both of a lot of trial and error, and being inducted into a local fellowship of cyclists who can tell you all the little secrets no map will ever show you. You can cut through this parking lot here!  This street's a mess; take that alley.  Swim upstream for half a block here, you can avoid a 6-block detour.  Watch out for the drivers here. Etc. etc... Sometimes I think urban cycling requires its own form of "hobo signs":

So how good a job can a service like Google Maps do of giving acceptable bicycle directions?  I decided to have them map out my commute.  Here's what they spit out:

Link to Directions

These are some interesting directions.  Google's LatLong post about the bicycling feature makes note of how they've incorporated thousands of miles of trails and off-street paths into their maps.  In this case, they're being a bit overzealous.  Not only do they route me on a pedestrian path through Alamo Square, but it also terminates in a stairway.  Meanwhile, there is a perfectly acceptable bike lane on Fulton St. immediately next to it:

I decided to report this issue to Google, as best as I could describe it:

It seems like a little further on, they're doing the opposite, and relying too heavily on directions for automobiles.  San Francisco is currently engaged in a project to remake Market Street, which involves forced right turns for drivers at 6th St. and 8th10th St.  The purpose of these turns is to optimize the street for public transit... and cycling.  Google wants me to travel down 5th St., which is recently sharrowed as a result of the modification of the injunction against the Bike Plan (details at the SF Bike Coalition).  That's all fine and dandy, but they want me to make a right turn on 6th, and then an immediate left into an alley, just to get to 5th St.  As part of the Market St. plan, bicycles are allowed to continue on at each point where cars are forced to turn.  I'm worried that Google is probably only relying on the directions for cars at that intersection.  I've reported this to them as well:

All in all, these directions are a mixed bag.  I actually decided to take the turn at 6th St, Stevenson, and 5th St. just to see if it were doable.  It is, though I don't like having to merge across 6th St. to make a left turn (which I reported).  However, despite that routing quirk, it's at least not a fatal flaw.  Sending me down a stairway, however, is, even though I could probably negotiate it OK on the front-suspension MTB that I use as a daily commuter.

I'm sure Google will probably improve this service (it is, of course, in beta) to deal with some of the worse issues I've reported.  I wonder whether automated bicycling directions will ever really replace local knowledge, though.  I feel like I've passed some sort of trial by fire here in SF just by virtue of trying to get around a city whose geography and layout is designed to thwart you, and that some of that experience can't be transmitted or calculated or computed.  Will all that trial and error and passing of advice be replaced by an algorithm?  Time will tell.  I worry that something will be lost if it does, but if the end result is that more cyclists are on the street, I think it will have justified the means.  At some point, cycling in the US will have to shed its outlaw image... as much as I enjoy it, I also know that the true measure of safety is numbers.

If I weren't expecting this email, I'd think it was a 419

Hi Michael,


Thank you for e-mailing the Nokia Care Contact Center.

We would like to inform you that in order for us to process the refund for operator billing, kindly provide us the following information:

- Bank Name:

- Bank Address:

- Bank Account Number:

- IBAN:

- SWIFT Code:

- Bank Control Key:

- Bank Code:

- Bank ABA Routing Nr.:

This is to inform you that you can have the information above by calling your bank. Please don't send any of these information via email. Our Ovi Store support department will be calling you to get these information. Rest assured that all of the information will be kept confidential.

Clear the Roads, Here I Come?

I've been alive since I last posted (on new years) but "busy", by some stretch of the word.  One thing I haven't been able to do much is surf, and my lack of automobile (or license, or ability to drive) is really starting to grate on me.

It's been a point of personal pride (and no small amount of self-satisfaction) that I've never had a driver's license, but the fact of the matter is that surfing requires driving.  At least it does for me at this point.  I have an Xtracycle that's well capable of hauling a longboard, and has on a few occasions, but that does me no good if Ocean Beach is unsurfable.  Though I'm a fan of Trial by Fire in principle, I also value my life, and it would frankly be irresponsible for me to go out there the way it's been the last few weeks.

My last journey to Ocean Beach left me stranded in a rip current, until local legend "Angry Guy" paddled out and gave me some moral support.  Since then, it's either been bigger, pooier, or both.  I eagerly await the day that conditions there are manageable for a newcomer again, but it'll be a while.  In the meantime, I depend on the goodwill of friends to drive me places... friends who also have lives, busy schedules, and the works.  I've ended up feeling like a wet blanket with my plaintive SMSes and tweets to people begging them to take me out in the morning.

So, it's time to learn to drive then.  Perhaps part of becoming an adult for me (I hope 26 counts as adult) is abandoning my lifelong objection to operating an automobile.  Some of that objection has been rooted in politics, but I reckon that more of it is just plain fear; operating a motor vehicle frankly vexes the shit out of me.  I'm afraid I'll hurt somebody else or myself.  That same kind of fear, however, hasn't kept me from taking a surfboard out in the water, a board which could easily turn into a projectile; it's just given me some idea of my limits (for the most part) and how to behave within them.  Can I take the same attitude towards learning to drive?

I have these affectations of learning to drive on a stick-shift, despite its increasing irrelevance as a common transmission.  Half of my friends are trying to talk me out of this idea; the other half think it's fantastic, and concur with me that learning on a stick in SF will enable me to drive just about anywhere.  I already have a fairly nuanced understanding of traffic, being a daily urban cyclist, though I'll have to start ignoring the impulse to run any red when there's no cross traffic (this even bites me as a passenger in a car!).  This "operating a car" stuff, however, is quite foreign to me.  During my brief abortive attempt at learning to drive when I was a teenager, I kept finding myself turning onto sidewalks and whatnot.  Would throwing a manual transmission in the mix be better or worse for me?  My fantasy is that it will finally click for me what's going on "under the hood" (which it has not in the past), and I'll grok driving at last.  My worry is I'll end up so preoccupied with not stalling out that I'll drive over a 3-year-old.

In any case, don't be surprised if you spot me behind the wheels of a car some time this year.  I've made it a 2010 resolution.  But stay out of the road if you know what's good for you :)

Ocean Beach Surf Report - No Surfing

Forecast said "small" so I loaded up the Xtracycle and went in search of surf. I found plenty of it, in the "sectiony", "crumbly" range with overtones of sarsparilla and a leathery mouthfeel. I placed a Shakti Stone on my rig and shortly thereafter the surf improved noticeably; the midrange gained added authority and depth, and highs gained spectactular tactility, ease and pace. Don't even get me started about the bass.

via stokereport.com

I need something to protest about. Seems like it's the season.

All Baehr Families Have Drama

So I'm a Baehr.

There is a Facebook group where people with my last name kvetch about having to spell it out over and over and over again when talking to call centers: Baehr'ly There

My last name is also fun in that about a good half of the people who are so privileged as to share it with me are Jews (like myself), which means drama.

Some such drama finally arrived in my inbox.  I've been a GMail user since early beta, so I grabbed first initial+last name when I had a chance.  I am occasionally the (victim?  beneficiary?) of mistaken identity, and get mails to/from other Baehrs whom I don't know (as it turns out, I only know a small fraction of the world's Baehrs).  I can tell it's quality Jewish drama by virtue of the email addresses, which I will not share.  The names have also been blurred out.

It tells a story.

First, at 8:15 PM:

 

This reminds me of a short snippet from one of my favorite troll calls ever: who you are

Some digging around must reveal things he probably doesn't want her to hear.  Lock your screens, people!  She comes back an hour later from his machine:

Oh snap:

Aaaaannd the money shot:

It ain't easy being a Baehr.

Listening to "Progressive House"

Listening to "Progressive House", originally uploaded by tehdely.

This shit is the Smooth Jazz of Electronic Music. It's a Silence-Alternative which inspires no thought and enables work. Jesus, what pablum. I'd put on some actual House but then I'd get nothing done.