Local Flavor -- Now with very expensive polyester glitter.*

I don't start my new job until Monday.

My stuff came on Friday, which kicked off a three-day unpacking-and-organizing one woman show -- I might have been a little intense during that time. I emerged, blinking and dust-covered on Monday morning thinking, "What now?"

I've been a little task oriented. I think that behavior is something about staving off anxiety (WTF HAVE I DONE?) and other such unpleasantness.

So, this week has been spent, much of the time, going on Adventures, studying my map and plotting public transportation routes with a vengeance.

Yesterday I took a walk down Market Street, which, as it turns out, is both a main byway that bisects the city and a teeming petri dish of crazy. I'm not exactly a stranger to crazy -- Chicago has crazy, they do, I just think, much like kudzu, it's tempered by the harsh winters. In San Francisco, the mild climate and rich fertilizer of liberal leanings and general Bay Area-ness leads to a hearty and varigated display of fully actualized crazy.

Crazy mills about quietly, crowds of crazies act as a general groundcover and a few bloom from the crowd like lovely strange blossoms.

Like this chick:



(Forgive the poor image quality -- it's best to photograph them from behind a cell phone, so you can perpatrate like you are texting)

So, here's what's happening there:

This lady is snappily dressed in leather pants, a fierce leather jacket, and a studded belt. She is wearing white cotton gloves. She is arranging and rearranging the mattresses that fill this dumpster and then yelling down at the milling crowd of groundcover crazies, who are summarily ignoring her. She is yelling: "NOW! PRETTY NOW, YES!" She's a little yoda-like in her grammatical construction, which is a nice touch.

This chick:



Note the bright hues -- the yellow hair, the fushia leggings. I caught this snap of her as she was striding indignantly away from a bank of pay phones(very rare!), where she had been yelling and gesturing wildly into a reciever.

These were the only two lucky shots I got -- later, I went to the Museum of Modern Art, where I actually heard a woman say, as she contemplated a painting, "Nice use of color."

Crazy.


*The local news is covering the upcoming Chinese New Year parade, and the floatmaster just told the intrepid reporter that they used nearly 600 pounds of glitter in the construction of the OVER TWELVE FLOATS -- including these lovely coins, hand-etched out of foam rubber, and covered in "very expensive polyester glitter. The best in the world." Only the best for you, people.