The sunset chronicles… part 3… and look, you get a sunset and ME!!!

Posted on July 19, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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I know, it’s almost too good to be true, right?

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So anyway, there I was, in the hills above Berkeley, killing time until the sun went down… taking some pictures… waiting for the sunset…

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Wondering if the haze would clear, or the fog would roll in and ruin everything.

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Hey, look, that blob of land sticking out into the bay is where Big Johnny and I took Willie, my godson, the other day.

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Oooh… the sky is turning golden over beneath the sun… hey, they don’t call it the ‘golden gate’ for nothing.

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Still can’t tell if it will be a great sunset or not… well, of course, you already know, because I showed a photo in the very first post of this series, and ruined the surprise.

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But just play along here… I am building to a climax… uhhh… so to speak…

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And one more picture of the tip of the water shooting out of the fountain… because it goes with that last sentence. HA!

 

 

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The sunset chronicles… part 2… and, yes, I know that isn’t a sunset…

Posted on July 19, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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But, as I mentioned earlier, I had to hang around for three hours while the sun was setting and beyond that, so I took some pictures of a fountain… oooh… next time I am in the Bay Area, remind me to go up and take pictures of the fountain with the setting sun behind it… that would look awesome!

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Doo-de-doo… waiting for the sunset… taking some pictures of San Francisco… wondering if the haze a fog and clouds will make the sunset better or worse…

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Wondering how cool these pictures will look when I can see them in a proper size.

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Wondering if you can even see the Golden Gate Bridge through the fog, because on the little camera screen, I really couldn’t.

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Wondering how many of these pictures I would just delete… because the best thing about digital cameras is that you can take 500 photos and get rid of 499 to get the one perfect shot… I mean, I never do, but you can.

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Man, the sun moves slowly.

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Seriously, once the sky started turning orange, why did I not walk back to the fountain and take a back-lit photo?

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Yeah, I probably could have deleted some of these. I did delete a few, just so you know.

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Fine, I will skip ahead to one sunset photo, just to make this official.

 

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The sunset chronicles… part 1…

Posted on July 19, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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It’s no secret that I like sunsets. Long ago, on this very blog, I tried to do a thing where I took a photo of the sunset every night for a year, and posted them, once a week, as ‘sunset Sundays’ or something like that. I would have actually done it, if I lived where you could see the sunset past the houses and overhead wires… and if the crack squirrels in my head hadn’t gotten bored.

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So last night, I drove, once again, to my favorite spot in the hills above Berkeley, overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

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I brought the good camera, the telephoto lens, and the cheap tripod I bought at a rummage sale.

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Then, I just hung out for like three hours, taking pictures.

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It wasn’t great visibility… which doesn’t necessarily mean a bad sunset, as you can tell from the first photo in the post.

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It was hazy, and the fog was rolling in.

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So I wasn’t sure how the pictures would turn out… did you spot the iconic bridge lurking in the mist in that picture?

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I also played around with some photos of a fountain… hey, it can’t all be about the sunset, can it?

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I was trying to get a perfect shot of San Francisco behind the splashing water, but they aren’t quite as cool as I was hoping they would be.

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Still another adventure in the Bay Area… the final chapter… I mean, not really the final chapter, I am still in the Bay Area, and I might have another adventure or two, but this is the last post about the day before yesterday, where I hung out with my friend and my godson… and it has a cute dog in it!!!

Posted on July 18, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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So, as I waited for Big Johnny and William to finish up in the world’s most dangerous playground… (see earlier posts in this series)… I met a cool dog. Her name is Baby. And like most things in my life, there were some weird aspects to it.

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But before we get to that, I do have a couple other photos to get out of the way… One of Big Johnny and I…

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And one of Willie, taking a break from this place…

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The most dangerous playground in the world… okay, now, back to that dog.

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So, I wandered outside the playground of doom… remember, I was both sleep-deprived and a little hung over from the memorial service after-party the night before… and I saw this African-American lady with cool dreadlocks and an awesome dog. She was tying the dog to a post. I asked if I could pet the dog. I did.

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So, the lady… whom I suspected was a homeless person, pointed more or less towards the public restrooms, and said she ‘needed to go over there’. I said I would watch the dog. So she leaves… and never comes back… I mean, I sat there with the dog for about 40 minutes. I finally spotted the lady, who seemed to have gotten herself invited to a Mexican birthday party for some small kid. She was eating a cupcake beside a pinata.

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Big Johnny and Willie were finally ready to call it a day.

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I waved at the lady to tell her I was leaving. I don’t begrudge the time I spent with Baby, It was awesome. But it would have been nice if she had come back to tell me what she was up to.

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Still another adventure in the Bay Area… part 5… and I totally helped make that statue…

Posted on July 18, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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While Willie, my godson, and his dad, Big Johnny, were hanging out at the world’s most dangerous playground… (see last two posts)… I walked over to the Berkeley Marina. There happens to be a statue there that I helped to make, many years ago… but we will get to that…

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First, some random pictures of San Francisco.

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Because that is a city that photographs well.

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From any angle…

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Okay, so, the statue story. That thing is really tall, like over twenty feet. It is hollow. It is made of a frame consisting of bent steel rebar covered with chicken wire. Then, cement, mixed with some paint, was smeared over the whole thing. It weighs tons. There is also a drain in the back of the lions mouth… that leads to a pipe… that leads to the lion’s junk… so, when it rains, it looks like the lion is peeing. More on this… I mean, the statue, not the lion’s junk… in a moment…

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More random Bay Area photos.

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Almost done…

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One gratuitous shot of the Golden Gate in the hazy distance. I like the way the pier leads your eye out to it. And if you turn around from that very spot on the Berkeley marina… you see this…

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The statue… that I helped make. So, long story short: Had a girlfriend back in the late 70’s, early 80’s, and she met this artiest who traveled around Asia, taking photos of art, then coming back and recreating it… bigger. This is some good luck god from somewhere. An archer riding on what is supposed to be… supposedly… a lion. The three of us… I mean, the artist, my girlfriend, and I, not me, the luck god and the lion… made this thing on his driveway… but that isn’t the funny part… this is the Bay Area, for cryin’ out loud.

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The artist wanted to donate the statue to the city of Berkeley. They said it would take at least 7 years to decide if they wanted it and if so, where they would put it. So, the artist rented a flatbed truck and a big crane, dressed some friends up in reflective road-crew vests, and dropped it off one night at the marina. Then the city said they were going to sue him… but it would probably take 7 or more years to figure out how much to sue him for, and whether to arrest him as well.

But, while the city went through its ponderous process, the people of the city fell in love with the lion-riding, arrow-shooting, good-luck-giving god, and decided they wanted it right where it was… so the city gave up and now it just sits there, a weird part of my history, and the history of Berkeley… that almost nobody knows about… except us.

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Uh, a female Dr. Who… I posted this back in 2014… just sayin’…

Posted on July 17, 2017 by pouringmyartout

Yes, here, in its entirety, is a post I published way back in August of 2014, titled:

I like the new Doctor Who, but maybe next time, it would be cool if he regenerated as a fiesty old woman…

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I don’t only say this because it is obviously time to take the sexism out of this important role. I also think that it would add a whole new dimension to the show. Shake things up a little. Besides, it would be hilarious. She could find some boy-toy to lug around the universe with her.

I suppose it doesn’t have to be an older woman. A young girl with some attitude could be funny too…

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Still another adventure in the Bay Area… part 4…

Posted on July 17, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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So there’s my buddy, Big Johnny, with his son… my godson… William. Before we get to more of the adventure, admire that man right there. He broke a small bone in his shoulder, and he is still teaching Willie to hammer nails… at this crazy place…

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Yes, it’s the ‘Adventure Playground’… where your kid can take tools… and their own life… in their hands.

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Where the climbing structures may have been started by qualified adults, but they have since been added to by often unsupervised children. You might grab part of a ladder and find out it has one nail holding it up there. Only in Berkeley could you create a place like this.

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Now don’t get me wrong. This is an awesome idea. And kids need to learn that the world isn’t a safe place. Hell, when I was a kid, they didn’t have seat belts in most cars, and we used to go down steep hills on go-karts we made ourselves, with no helmets. But people didn’t used to sue other people so often. You even need to sign a waiver to get into this place. And, according to the sign, you can leave kids over the age of 7 there… alone… for three hours.

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One cool lesson the kids learn is that, to get a tool, or some paint, you need to find some stuff. You can use a big magnet on a string to find old nails… which points out the fact that the sand is full of old, rusty nails.

Oh, a ‘Mr. Dangerous’ is not a sandwich, it is a board with the sharp end of one or more nails sticking out. Yup.

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So, yeah, awesome and terrifying at the same time.

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Like I said in the last post… part playground, part junkyard.

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That sign makes a good point. It is fine to let little kids swing hammers at nails right next to other small kids, but you don’t want them dropping them from the high parts… it’s already dangerous enough up there.

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Maybe I am a nervous parent, but I don’t know if I would have brought my daughters to a place like this when they were four.

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If you look closely, you will see, in that photo above, a kid flying through the air… on a zip line… put together by… whoever… that drops the kid off in a big pile of sand… full of old, rusty nails.

I had to take a walk, and that is where the next part of the adventure comes in… in the next post.

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Still another adventure in the Bay Area… part 3…

Posted on July 17, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Yeah, it was hot in them thar hills, up above Berkeley. Despite it meaning that we would forgo the awesome views of the Bay Area spread out below us, we decided to trek down closer to the bay, where it would be cooler. If only we could find some place, right beside the bay, where an active 4-year-old could paint…

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Maybe whack some nails into some wood…

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Or even learn how to take nails back out of wood…

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Well, if we were going to find a place where a kid could do all that, and climb on crazy stuff, you know it would be in…

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Berkeley freekin’ California, USA, Earth.

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Seriously, a place with pianos sitting outside…

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… that the kids can actually play…

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A place full of crazy art and climbing structures that looked to have been made by children with almost no adult supervision…

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A place with a homemade rain forest…

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A place that looks like a cross between a junk yard and the best place ever in the world to play for any kid… of any age… where else would you find all that, but Berkeley?

More about this place in the next post.

 

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Still another adventure in the Bay Area… part 2…

Posted on July 17, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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As I mentioned in the previous post, our adventure day started with a walk around a lake.

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No, that isn’t a natural color for a lake. It wasn’t that color when I was a kid. There are signs about a dangerous algae… people still let their kids go swimming.

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And no, my godson, Willie, is not pointing a fake gun at me. It is called a fart-zooka… a clever combination of the words ‘fart’ and ‘bazooka’. It is a plastic tube with a plunger stick that you push, which forces air into the tube, and out through a rubber flange-thing… which is basically an artificial anus… or sphincter… I call it the fart stick. We had a lot of fun with that, all day long, although, I will admit that listening to a four-year-old making fart sounds in the back seat of a car… very close to your head… can get a little old after a while.

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So, the lake was a weird color, but it was still a beautiful walk.

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And there as a lot of poison oak, so you had to be careful not to touch anything… on either side of the trail. Seems like there is a life lesson in there somewhere.

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We saw ducks.

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Did I mention Big Johnny has his arm in a sling? I will get to that later.

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And, man, was it hot. Unusually hot for the Bay Area.

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That is why we decided to go down closer to the bay.

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Start whistling the theme song from the Andy Griffith show.

 

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Still another adventure in the Bay Area… part 1…

Posted on July 16, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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It is hard to believe that just yesterday, I got up at 2:00 in the morning, drove 500 miles, went to a memorial service for my friend’s mom, then went to his childhood home, right near my childhood home… where I am right now… and got a little too drunk, while telling stories about my friend from ‘back in the day’ to his nieces and nephews that will have them teasing him for many family reunions to come.

I got no sleep yesterday… at either end. But today is Sunday, and that is the day my friend, Big Johnny, and my godson Willie, were free to hang around… and they offered to drive across that bridge right there to come visit me on the East side of the bay.

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So, despite being a little hung over and still groggy from lack of sleep, this morning, I found myself in the hills above Berkeley. Yes, I know there is a big, red arrow in the photo. I put it there. It points to where we ended up at the end of this rather long day, down by the water.

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Well, we were going to take Willie to the little train, and go for a ride, but it’s summer, and it was crowded, so we decided to do something else.

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We walked around a lake.

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I visited a statue that I helped make, many years ago… whoa, kid, you do not want to stand there.

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I said hello to a very nice cow.

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I saw San Francisco from many angles.

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And the Golden Gate Bridge. I know, you can barely see it in that photo. It is hiding behind a long pier and a fog bank. It is a sneaky bridge!

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And I made friends with an awesome dog… in a weird way. I know, I always have dog stories and pictures when I come to the Bay Area, but I start missing Shiloh, our dog. So get ready. Tomorrow, I am doing nothing but reading, maybe some watercolor painting, and posting pictures about today.

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