Builders of the Pacific Coast: Creative Carpentry/Wayne Ngan/Sun Ray Kelley

This is our first major book since HOME WORK and it's taking me longer to put it together than expected. Here are a couple of images from layouts done last week:

Potter Wayne Ngan's hobbit-like playhouse for his kids

Meditation temple in the California hills by Sun Ray Kelley

I'll try to remember to post pictures as I proceed with the layouts.

Mr. Natural/R.Crumb

The other day I did a Google image search for "Mr. Natural" and was vastly amused all over again. Crumb's work from the '60s and '70s still holds up. A lot of it is funnier than ever. He did a lot of panning of hippy dippiness.

(c) R. Crumb 2005

Click here for Mr. Natural images

Older but Wiser

I spotted this greeting card at a friend's house and it sure resonated. When I ride a skateboard I wear helmet, elbow pads, knee pads, and Cliff Coleman-inspired gloves with palm discs.

Older but wiser

Mark Mortford on Hippies/Sambada at Ashkenaz/Diamond Ortiz at 4th Street Tavern

The Hippies Were Right All Along

Mark Morford wrote a brilliant, timely column in the SF Chronicle on May Day, 2007. It was a retrospective look at some of what we were all talking about (and practicing) in the '60s. The world has finally caught up.
"…It was always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting tyrannical/corporate power and it was about opening your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other…"
The Hippies Were Right All Along

Sambada at Ashkenaz

My son Will plays in Sambadá, a Brazilian samba band from Santa Cruz. I took my friend Sherm in his wheelchair to see them play in Berkeley last week at the good-vibes nightclub Ashkenaz. The band was hot. So were the dancers and Sherm spent the whole night watching them.

Sambadá

Diamond Ortiz at the Fourth Street Tavern, San Rafael, Calif.

This is a great little unknown trio playing blues, rock, and funk at what has become my favorite music venue. They have a different band every night, most of them local. The young gunslinger guitar player took it out onto the dance floor:

Guitarist Gabriel of Diamond Ortiz

Running and Skating

I'm back to base-level running for the first time in over a year. I had a thrill of a skateboarding run a few days ago. I took off an a downhill run on the road out to the Pt. Arena lighthouse on my (39") longboard and started accelerating faster than I'd expected. No cars, so that part's OK. But pretty soon I was up to a speed where I wouldn't be able stay on my feet if I bailed, so I made long, slow carves and tried to stay alert. It was controlled out-of-control, and then I came around a corner and the hill flattened out. Whew! A rush.

Louie's Japanese Saw

This was hanging on a post in my friend Louie's shop. Louie, like builder Bruno Atkey, uses this saw exclusively. It seems better in all respects than American saws.

Japanese carpenter's saw