drifting

I will start this post off by saying that I hate rice rockets. I love old muscle cars, and there are a few modern sports cars I find swoonworthy, but generally I hate souped-up Hondas, Toyotas and Acuras.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to participate in a company event at Infineon Raceway

But at the end the race car driver (instructor) did a demo and agreed to take one passenger and yours truly got to sit in the passenger with a pro drifter. Apparently he's been "drifting" professionally for the last seven years. What a treat! After donning the helmet and getting strapped in as if I were getting harnessed for a rollercoaster we were off on the course. He did about 10 laps and the drift skids were so controlled but at high speeds, it was amazing.

Additional photos to follow, but here is one taken from a video still. (previously Sears Point Raceways). We did an Auto-Cross, which I declined participating in, since I drive like a grandma and pretty much only in the suburbs (I have lived in Berkeley and San Francisco since 2000 pretty much without driving, a few trips here and there).

Winterfest 2007

The SF Bicycle Coalition and SF bag company Rickshaw Bagworks are putting on "the biggest and baddest bike party of the year": Winterfest 2007, SFBC's 12th Annual Auction, Art Show, Party & Fundraiser.

Up for bidding will be bags and bikes, restaurant gift certificates, 60 pieces of local art and dates with "local celebrities". Meanwhile, enjoy New Belgium Brewery beer, snacks and entertainment by the Extra Action Marching Band.

Proceeds from this fundraiser go directly toward improving biking conditions in SF (more bike lanes?). Looks like a smashing good time to me! Plus, if you're not an SFBC member yet, $25 gets you entrance to the event and an SFBC membership.

Where: SOMArts Gallery (Brannan @ 8th St)
When: Dec 2nd from 6-10:30pm
SFBC members: $10+ (Sliding scale)
Non-SFBC members: $25 (incl new SFBC membership)



Benefits of being an SFBC member:
• Discounts at more than 35 local bike shops & merchants
• 10% off at Rainbow Grocery when you ride your bike there
• Urban Bicyclists' Survival Kit: SF Cyclist/Pedestrian street grade map, transit guides, safety advice, reflectors, more
• Admission to SFBC's Cultural History Bike Tours and invites to SFBC parties

With 7,500 members, SFBC claims to be the largest bicycle advocacy organization in the country. Efforts in the past decade have doubled the number of bike lanes including those on Potrero, Market, Valencia, Polk, Alemany and Howard Streets.

Marnie - 'suspenseful sex mystery'

So I was overzealous and thought that the Chronicle Books grand opening party was happening yesterday, but it's not actually until December 1.


However, "Marnie" was playing as scheduled at MOMA, fortunately -- a 35mm print! This 1964 Alfred Hitchcock film stars Tippi Hedren (also leading lady of The Birds) and Sean Connery, and is decidedly different from the other Hitchcock films I've seen, which admittedly, is nowhere near the whole portfolio. The cinematography, colors and costumes are, of course, impeccable, though the film dragged in some parts - mainly some overly lengthy dialog scenes. Sir Connery sure was a swarthily handsome man in the 60s! Still handsome and virile, but so dark and delicious in the 60s.


"Marnie" was showing as part of MOMA's film series True and False: Jeff Wall on Cinematography in conjunction with the Jeff Wall exhibit.

Of this series I'd also like to attend:

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Persona
1966, 85 min.
Direction: Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography: Sven Nykvist
6:30 p.m.

The partnership between Bergman and Nykvist is perhaps the most famous one between a director and a cinematographer in the entire history of film. Persona centers on the relationship between two women spending days at a summer retreat on an island in Sweden: Elisabeth (Liv Ullmann) is an actress who has become unable to speak, and Alma (Bibi Andersson) is the nurse who cares for her and tells her stories. It's a scenario that yields deep, dark, and complex psychological meanings. Persona has become a landmark in the history of cinema, not least for the ways in which Bergman and Nykvist self-consciously foreground the very process of filmmaking.

Thursday, December 27, 2007
The Mother and the Whore
1973, 210 min.
Direction: Jean Eustache
Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme
6:30 p.m.

Eustache died young but left us one incomparable classic: The Mother and the Whore, an epic study of sexual politics in the aftermath of the failed French revolution of 1968. Jean-Pierre Léaud plays the troubled intellectual at the center of a love triangle. It is a dramatic, witty, erotic, and emotionally powerful film, and a late masterpiece of the French New Wave. In addition to working with Eustache, cinematographer Lhomme collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, Chris Marker, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, and many others. He received major awards for many films, including Cyrano de Bergerac and Camille Claudel.

Timbuk2 Artist Originals Event & Ride

Tomorrow, SF bag company Timbuk2 is hosting a bike ride followed by a Timbuk2 Originals Event - LA meets SF.

5:15pm: meet at Hotel Des Arts, 447 Bush St. @ Grant

Ride to TImbuk2 store: 506 Hayes St. @ Octavia.
I went to the Timbus2 store opening last April and did a piece on the lovely Hayes Valley shop.
This event is sure to feature some interesting one-of-a-kind bags, and a portion of the proceeds will go to a charity of the artists' choice.

25 hours in NYC

Phew. Returned today from a 25-hr whirlwind trip to NY for a tech blogger function. Monday evening hopped on a red-eye, landed at 7am Tuesday and hit the ground running. Culminated in the event that took place in the posh basement of plush Flat Iron Lounge on 19th. But the best part of the trip, I would have to say, was having dinner at 1am at the Blue Ribbon on Sullivan Street in SOHO. Within 15 minutes we stopped by four Blue Ribbon locations, each a slight variation on the last. Two locations sit across the street from each other on Bedford Street, and two are located on Sullivan Street within blocks of each other; one is a sushi joint.

We started with raw oysters, then onto steak tartare (I feel gross about eating raw beef, but it was kind of tasty), fried chicken, but the queen of the evening was the Chocolate Bruno, a flourless chocolate cake flanked in triangle formation by one scoop each of vanilla, peach and chocolate ice creams.

Along the way I ran into a sad bicycle with only one handlebar:

After that it was off to bed for an hour before wrenching myself up to catch a 7:55 am flight. Landed at noon and went straight to the office, didn't leave until 6. What a day. I can't believe it is only Wednesday.

There are a few things, however, that I am looking forward to this weekend:

Saturday - Chronicle Books (one of my absolute favorite publishers - and local!) grand opening party, as well as the showing of Marnie at SFMOMA:

"Marnie stars Tippi Hedren as a disturbed kleptomaniac terrified of the color red and Sean Connery as the businessman who becomes obsessed with her. It has a psycho-sexual intensity that is rare even for Hitchcock. Burks started out producing special effects for Warner Bros., specializing in forced perspective miniatures, before becoming a full director of photography in 1949. Marnie is the last of 12 films that he shot with “the master of suspense.” Burks's clean and sharp, deep-focus approach came to define the classic Hitchcockian visual style."

Sunday - Isis & Big Business at Slim's! I definitely prefer GAMH to Slim's, but am so excited to see Isis again. Big Business was great with The Melvins...

Katsushige Nakahashi - Kaiten

After the "There is Always a Machine Between Us" exhibit at SF Camerawork, a non-profit artists' photography organization, I added myself to the mailing list for opportunities like the one I just signed up for: a three-hour volunteer shift to help assemble a full-scale replica of a Kaiten, a one-man submarine exclusively designed for suicide missions by the Japanese in World War II. This replica will consist entirely of taped-together photographs; the artist, Katsushige Nakahashi, photographed the surface of a toy model taking on average 27 photographs for every square centimeter.

Volunteers will tape the photographs together to construct the full-scale replica. This project, named "Zero Project Kaiten" took place in Japan in 2006. Nakahashi's Zero Projects pertain to his father's experiences in the war.

Arts and Culture Free4All

Today saw the first-ever Arts and Culture Free4All: 12 cultural institutes located within the 3-block Yerba Buena Neighborhood opened their doors to the public for free. The rainy day made it a perfect day to spend in museums, but everyone had the same idea so the establishments were all mobbed. I went back to MOMA for the Olafur Eliasson exhibit again and also fell in love with the Joseph Cornell boxes and Jeff Wall's story-filled photographs. Below is one of my favorite photos from the Jeff Wall installation.



Afterwards I made my first visit of what should be many to the Cartoon Art Museum for Edward Gorey's Dracula exhibit: "August 11, 2007 - January 20, 2008 The Cartoon Art Museum is proud to present Edward Gorey's Dracula, an amazing exhibition of the master cartoonist's original set and costume designs, rare production photographs and memorabilia from the Tony Award-winning Broadway production. Museum visitors will have a unique behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, from Gorey's initial notes and sketches through his completed concept artwork." Having become a fan of Gorey's work from his opening animations for PBS' Mystery series, it was something else to see his detailed works up close. Also charming were works by Mary Blair who was a concept artist for Walt Disney Studios from 1940s onward. I picked up a rendition of Cinderella illustrated by Blair to gift to my sister, as Cinderella was always her favorite Disney princess film.