Last night, I did a bit of grocery shopping and went home. Grocery shopping involved picking up SmartFoods soy 'chicken', which may be the most obscenely good fake meat ever. It doesn't taste quite like meat: it doesn't make apologies for that. But it does have the texture of chicken.
Got home, walked out my door and over to someone else's house, reading cheesy late-80's fantasy (Tad Williams' The Dragonbone Chair). En route, I discovered that 1906 Golden Gate is for sale. Beat up little old Edwardian house...
...but it's 1906...
...Golden Gate...
Neat.
Got to the destination I was going to and met someone I hadn't ever really met before, despite several mutual friends- the lovely
nux_vomica. I then paid her for a book- Jean Lorrain's Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker. Trans. by Brian Stableford. Neat little small-press customjob binding. Jean Lorrain is the pseudonym of one Paul Duvaul, who was an ether addict who died of his addiction. More Decadent literature on my shelves! Yay! Picked up book, met a wee sprog which I assumed to be hers (though we weren't formally introduced), with whom I tried to play catch a while on the stairs. Okay, Decadent French literature, 1906 Golden Gate, and playing catch with a sweet little kid. Out door, down to Fulton, past the house Darren and Elizabeth used to live in with Khaki and other housemates I forget the names of. Looks much the same as ever, that house- though I strongly suspect that the owners are not, in fact, in residence (which was the reason given for their eviction).
Then to Cafe Abir (Fulton & Divisadero) where I ran into Serena Valentino, the author of the comic Gloomcookie (among other works). Hadn't seen her in a while. She lives about 5 doors away from 'smack-dab on my way to/from the cafe'. This reminded me that the other co-creator of Gloomcookie, one Ted Naifeh, lives a couple blocks further down the same street, and is the artist and co-creator of another book that gets tarted on Livejournal a fair amount,
howloathsome. Ted and I have known each other for (gulp) damned near 16 years; the co-creator of How Loathsome was over at my house for the 4th of July Japanfest last year.Small world? Kinda.
Then back to the apartment and a lovely dinner.
All of this happened in walking distance of my home. I got my fix of cute little kids, antique French literature, local history, health food, and fun people who are involved in graphic novel production within a roughly 6-block swath of San Francisco.
Why do I commute 40some miles one way?
Why the hell would I NOT???
