Locks of Love

It's been a few years, but it has finally come time to donate the hair...again.


For those disappointed that it is now so short: don't worry, it grows quickly.

For those disappointed that it isn't shaved: don't worry, that will still happen. Just not yet.

Photo credits:
Long hair in San Francisco yesterday: Andrew Rogers
The new look photo and style: Lynn Johnson

The Relay: Video Slideshow

Relay for Life

When our fearless captain, Marc Trotz, announced that we were going to call our merry band of lawless runners "We're Keepin' R's," I should have known we'd be in for trouble.

Better stated, I knew we'd BE trouble.

The Relay benefited Organs 'R' Us, and here we were announcing we planned to hold onto ours. Just think of our poor volunteers, shame-faced and blushing, feigning amnesia when asked by the event organizers what team they were supporting.

Of course, at some level not too far below the surface I knew all too well just how in-your-face, bold and boisterous we were bound to be, which is why I readily jumped in the van to head to Calistoga for a two-day running adventure of blood, sweat and tears.

I'll post a longer story of our adventure down the road, but for now, here's a teaser:

199 miles, give or take a few based on road blocks, detours and missteps. 12 runners, 3 legs each, almost 30 hours of continuous running from 1-2 May.

Numbers can't begin to quantify the magnificent challenge, nor can mere words on a page or monitor begin to speak of the transformation we lived as individuals and as team.

We're Keepin' R's, Touchstone-Berkeley rocked the house and lived to tell the story. Stay tuned...

photo credit of me running goes to teammate Aaron Steele. Check out more of his awesome shots on his picasa album. Not bad for a dude with a camera phone!

Nick Cave :: Soundsuits

Using found materials like twigs, buttons, old sequined clothes and broken screen doors, the artist Nick Cave (as opposed to the musician Nick Cave) constructs what he calls Soundsuits — wondrous costumes that confound even him. “Are they an African ceremonial thing? Tibetan? Asian?” questioned Mr. Cave, whose new show of Soundsuits is on view at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The answer is all of the above, with a little George Clinton, drag queen, medieval knight and Wall-E thrown in.

“It’s a new hybrid,” said Mr. Cave, who also is chairman of the fashion department at the Art Institute of Chicago. “A whole new identity formed from other people’s junk.” And if the strange and beautiful structures evoke a sense of fear — well, that’s the point. “It’s what makes them so powerful,” he said.

Fit to Run and Running for Fitness

Yup, that's me running the Presidio 10 in San Francisco, sporting my blue Touchstone Running Club jersey borrowed from Bubba.

The 10-mile race raised funds for the Guardsmen and, fitting for me, the Ashlyn Dyer Foundation (promoting research for neurological trauma and disease in the memory of those, like Ashlyn, who have suffered Traumatic Brain Injury). To learn why this is important to me, see my post on Dain Bramage.

While the charity fit, the shirt did not. So I gotta get a smaller one before the big relay we're all running on 2-3 May. Our team is generously sponsored by the Touchstone Climbing and Fitness crew.

Check out The Relay (199 miles, 12-member teams running for over 24 hours from Calistoga to Santa Cruz) here!

Windows on a World

Windows on a World is an audio slideshow of Sam Paino, a street-level window washer working in Queens, New York, that I started while a grad student at the International Center of Photography in 2006. I finished my last interview with Sam when I returned from Africa in November. You can view it now on my website.

Large sheets of glass trace the line of a skyscraper ever upwards, offering a heroic backdrop to the work of a big-city window washer.
Sam Paino remembers working that line, but has spent most of his past thirty years closer to the ground than to the sky. After serving in Korea he sold shoes before buying the window washing route he still works today. He’s earned enough to buy a pleasant home on Staten Island and to put his two daughters through college and graduate school.
The sole employee of Fieldstone Cleaning, Sam works an often invisible trade along the streets of Queens. Throughout his mornings, he stops for “coffee or bullshit” with long-time customers who have become his closest friends.
Cancer took twelve long years to drain the life out of his wife, Yolanda, who passed away in the middle of the year I photographed him. In her absence, Sam leaves home before 4AM to get on with life rather than linger in the silence left behind.

Chocolicious Fun in San Francisco

A sweet few hours were spent elbowing children, pregnant women, connoisseurs and other thousands wanting to get the most for their $25 tickets at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon today at Fort Mason. Met up with Dizzy D (Andrew Rogers) and we tag-teamed on interviewing and photographing some characters there.

We are hoping to publish a story, so I won't give it all away here. However, a few photos of the folks we met today I'll let you peak at below.

I was most impressed with two sisters, one the baker and the other the entrepreneur, who stand behind Socola (Vietnamese for chocolate).

Cookbook author Barbara Passino (Chocolate for Breakfast) opened our eyes to the politics of wine and chocolate pairings while hovering over the table for Omnivore Books on Food.

Jack Epstein, purveyor of decorated boxes and other people's chocolates ("they have a synergy," he told us more than once), runs a Noe Valley shop called Chocolates Covered.

Back in my 'hood, turns out there is a chocolatier (which is not a chocolate maker; go to wiki if you want to know the difference) artisan and teacher named Philippe Lewis who sells truffles in Berkeley at Edible Love.

There were even young things painted in chocolate - not selling themselves but their cacao body frosting made by Chocoholics Divine Desserts.
And, lest I forget, the very tasty shots of Vermeer dutch chocolate cream liqueur. A number of us were caught licking the sides of the tumblers to get every last drop as we walked away, forlorn. While others looked perplexed at the idea of chocolate makeup...