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Santa Cruz & San Francisco This morning I set out for San Francisco. Originally, I’d set up a couple of recycling/composting plant tours so that I could add to my expertise in this area, since I’m trying, in earnest, to get my consulting biz off the ground. SF has always been one of those cities in the forefront – early adopters they call it. NYC is definitely not. It made sense to shift one so that both tours would be tomorrow, so I leisurely went up the PCH taking pictures of some of the same areas I’d done before, but this time with the better camera, wider lens, polarizer and changed landscapes. I stopped in Santa Cruz and munched on leftovers near the lighthouse there, photographing the surfers and walking to the grove of eucalyptus to see the butterflies there. This time there were a few monarchs, but fewer than 10 flying around. I’m told that when they winter over, there are so many they cover the trees. I shot the lighthouse further north again; the mustard colored flowers (rape seed?) were in slightly different locations from the last time I’d shot the scene, so the shot will be different from the one taken before as well.
Getting into SF I drove around without a map, kind of remembering the layout finally, taking shots of the hills and the bike lanes and signs. The plum / apple / cherry trees were coming out, as they were two years ago on the Feb. 05 tour. I made the usual pilgrimage to Ghirardelli’s, and though they took it off the menu, they made me a Foghorn sundae (chocolate ice cream, raspberry sauce and dark hot fudge sauce). I bought a bag of dark chocolate covered raspberry pieces to go. It’s become a tradition with me. I stayed for the sunset, which was very nice – Golden Gate and the hills as well.
Sacramento I stayed at a Days Inn in South SF to be relatively close to the next morning’s 9am Recycling plant tour. I got on the road by 8 so that I could start photographing some of the setouts in the neighborhood I was in. It was neat to see the three bin system in action. There was grey for garbage, blue for paper, metal, glass and plastic, and green for food and yard waste (organics). Taking a look inside the green ones was a bit disappointing though because I didn’t see any food. I found out later that I was not in SF proper, but still, I wondered where the food scraps would come from since there was a part of a plant this afternoon that I’d be seeing dedicated to processing them. The Norcal single-stream recycling (meaning that they mechanically and manually sort paper, cardboard, plastic, metals and glass) plant tour was a little of a disappointment since they forbade me to take photos except at the front and back and raced me through in about an hour. But that did allow more time for sightseeing in SF. After finding Alamo Square, where you take "the picture" of the Victorian houses with SF in the background, my car led me to Golden Gate park, though I’d thought to go to Haight-Ashbury, but walking through the Japanese Tea Gardens was pleasant, with a light lunch overlooking the Pacific was a good finish for my visit to SF. Turns out that the composting facility / landfill was most of the way out to Sacramento, and that’s why I changed the date of that one. It was impressive, the amount of stuff they get, how they grind it up, put it into huge long bags to bake in the sun, sift it some more, and when it looks good, sell it to wineries to enhance their soil. Since I’d been handed a couple of levels further down by the time I arrived, Junior did the tour and let me photograph whatever I wanted. Skeedadling into Sacramento at rush hour I was able to find the Best Western, link up with friends and get to the show.
Concert The outside of the venue didn’t look like many venues I’d been to. It was more like a college library. It’s called Memorial auditorium because it is dedicated to soldiers who have died. Getting up towards the top of the steps, I had a bad feeling about this place from the time I approached the front door. There was security everywhere. Got in with the cameras, but I know that wherever you have lots of security it sort of puts a damper on the fun people can have. They often are walking around telling people to sit down, go back to their seats when the norm is to cluster at the front, and of course, stop using cameras. People don’t get into the concert atmosphere – sort of spoils the fun. This night, they decided to go one step further and just take the camera without asking the person to stop taking photos. When the big guy did it to me, coming from behind, without even offering me a receipt or chit or anything, and I saw him go away with mine in one hand and another in the other hand, I got pretty nervous and it dampened the rest of the show for me, worrying if I’d get my camera, someone else’s camera, or no camera back. I’m glad I had taken the time to offload the pictures I’d taken earlier today at the two plant visits. I did get the right camera back, but the photos had been erased. But then as I began to think about this, I’ve been meaning to buy some photo recovery software for some time now, and have been trying to find time to research which one I should have, what with my new Pentax RAW and Adobe DNG RAW formats in addition to the jpgs that I shoot. All are downloadable online. On the trip so far I hadn’t had time to research it, but since Death Valley, I’ve had a 2 Gig card sitting in my left pocket with mistakenly erased photos from Vegas 3, so I just added this 1 Gig card to it. Once I get this software, I should be able to recover the photos that they and I erased. I didn’t really take that many tonight because of the intuitively bad feeling I had… Since there were so many security people, the audience pretty much stayed in their seats all the times they normally would get up during the concerts. Even Norda was encouraging people to get up. It took one of the online fans who was in the second row to move out and stand at the stage after Nights, then a local who couldn’t see past her getting up, then a few more of us online fans to start the ball rolling, better late than never. The ovation for nights was one of the longest ever. Justin’s taken to using gestures like cut it out and finally ignoring the audience and opening a bottle of water. I noticed that the light show is more and more to light up the audience. Sometimes it’s red, sometimes green, sometimes white, depends on the song. Maybe the band likes seeing who they are playing to. I’m sure I would in their position. Norda’s taken to goosing Graeme on the butt with her tambourine, but sometimes it’s at different times in H&H so he doesn’t know it’s coming. Norda and Julie had a race across the stage tonight in their spiky heels just before See-Saw. Justin put his hand on his throat at one point as he swallowed, so we know his ever-present throat problems are back. Maybe that’s why he hardly cracked a smile tonight. This was unusual, even for him. John had his wonderful black shirt with the copper, brass, red, and offwhite, flowery trim on after the break again. The only glitches tonight were Graeme’s where he started his Higher and Higher poetry about a line too soon. But the Jays and everybody salvaged it by coming in early on the chorus. Justin has also made accommodation for Graeme’s taking longer to get to and up the stairs to his drumkit (since Graeme has been coming in late steadily once he gets back up there). The single repeated note that he plays towards the end of his solo used to be the cue for Graeme to turn around and go up the steps. Now Justin does that while Graeme is going up the steps, and if it takes him a while to finish shaking his butt etc, Justin just noodles around on the guitar waiting.
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