To beat the heat on the Peninsula this evening, I drove up to Mission Street in San Francisco and walked around for an hour.
The twenty-something couple raiding recycling bins was a sad note; the gleeful kids smashing a pinata the highlight. All to the tunes of the Chicago Underground Trio.
Then I came home, on the way avoiding various cars on steep streets in Bernal Heights.
To recap the weekend, we were in Half Moon Bay on Friday night when it was 50 degrees, it was 97 99 today in Menlo Park,then in the low 60s in San Francisco by the time I got there, and now it's back to 64 in Menlo Park at 10pm. The tug of war between ocean cold and valley heat (and the general notion of micro-climate) continue to fascinate.
And in a nice gesture towards truly contemporaneous music, Michael Kaulkin has just posted an MP3 of his City Walks, for string quartet. The work premiered last week in Berkeley.
From the composer's comments on the performance:
City Walks opens with a cello solo heard here played exquisitely by cellist Gianna Abondolo...The piece ends with this adrenaline-soaked Presto Capriccioso and tongue-in-cheek extended coda...The title “City Walks” came about because the form of the piece started to remind me of a linear walk through some city, where the environment changes as you move through various neighborhoods, yet you somehow know you’re still in the same place. The street signs are all brown, say, and there’s a lovely Craftsman typeface on all the public buildings, yet each neighborhood has its own distinct feel.
