San Francisco 2008

We've made yet another trip to San Francisco since the birth of this blog. That is crazy. My blog is two trips to SF old. I can't believe it. Anyway, this was a very nice trip indeed. I bought a lot of different types of paper--postcards, notepads, stickers, and vintage Hollywood tobacco cards. Stephan bought us some very awesome toys. I saw a lot of my family and heard some pretty great stories. But the best part was seeing two things we hadn't seen yet in our other trips: Muir Woods and the De Young Art Museum. Muir was absolutely beautiful. I saw a stump with a timeline it ala Vertigo, and I got to stand in a tree like Winnie the Pooh. It was also a gorgeous day, which had been few and far between in Chicago. And I fucking love big trees. I'm so glad we went.

And De Young may be my favorite art museum of the moment, despite the fact that its holdings aren't actually that strong--no Picasso or whatever makes a museum topnotch. I don't know, there probably was, but the parts I liked were: 1) an amazing Gilbert and George show. I formerly didn't like Gilbert and George because they got in a fight with my prof from London (who referred to me as 'that little Jewish girl') about whether it was cool to tour the East End or not. Now I love them because their colors are amazing, their scale is awesome, their politics are intriguing, and they were really really gay even in the 70s which must have been horrifying for a lot of people. Plus they got in a fight with my prof in London, which now seems endearing. 2) There was some indie rock rocking girl band playing while we looked at all the art. 3)They organized the art by genre. So there were landscapes from 1740 next to landscapes from 2006, which I think gives you a much different sense of change over time than a museum that organizes by chronology. Similarly, in the Africa section, there was a section of animal masks next to a section of woman masks, etc. Awesome. 4) In the gift shop, I met an IU alumni who knew my friend Max via my IU alumni credit card. We followed that up by a trip to an amazing Burmese restaurant. Ginger lemonade is great as is Burmese food in general and mango pudding. Well now we're back to reality which is a shame, because writing a dissertation is a silly thing to do. But at least it is a bit easier with the break.

The pics are my parents in Muir Woods, Stephan at the De Young observatory tower, some pipes painted as mushrooms, and me as Winnie the Pooh.