Max Pictures’ Blather

…i.e., two weekends ago.
Not too long ago, before fall descended on Northern California, Miss T and I took a jaunt out to San Francisco. It may very well have been the last, nice summer day in the Bay Area. Our stops included the Ferry Building Marketplace, Hayes Valley, and Japantown. As usual, you can see [...]

…in Sacramento. In Sacramento?
I don’t know Paris so I can’t attest to its authenticité, but Le Petit Paris in midtown Sac is a comfy neighborhood café that serves up good espresso, tea, pastries, and sandwiches. According to the menu on the wall there’s also beer and wine (which neither Miss T nor I tried) and [...]

…at the Davis Amtrak station.
I spotted this little feller baking away yesterday in the Central Valley late afternoon/early evening sun. I suspect it will be just as hot—if not hotter—today, and that the little dog will have rolled on.

…at a train station.
Yesterday, I rushed to the Davis Amtrak station and arrived just in time for the train doors to shut and pull away without me. Faced with a 45-minute wait until the next westbound train, I wandered about aimlessly, cataloging the various wonders immediately surrounding the station.
If you’d like to relive my experience, [...]

…on the Presidio.
Andy Goldsworthy’s Spire is about a hundred feet tall and made of cypress trees. Miss T and I drove onto the Presidio one afternoon to take a look at the sculpture.

It’s big!

…and other non-BART logos.
On the way into work a couple of weeks ago I boarded a particularly pungent BART car. It was still early morning, but the amount of air conditioning required to offset the aroma of one specific passenger was beyond the capability of that particular car. At that moment, it seemed I was [...]

…at 5. (Six people at FIVE Restaurant at 5 p.m.)
FIVE is the new restaurant and bar at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza in Berkeley. Six of us stopped by there yesterday evening to check it out. (It was originally supposed to be “Five at FIVE at 5,” but it seemed mean to leave someone out just [...]

…at San Francisco’s Japantown.
S.F.’s Nihonmachi (Japantown) had back-to-back weekend festivals this August: the Nihonmachi Street Fair and the J-POP SUMMIT Festival / NEW PEOPLE grand opening (their CAPS, not mine). Miss T and I trekked out to the Bay Area both weekends to see if a new niche-interest building can make a difference in a [...]

…wait, wasn’t this a month ago?
Miss T and I forwent the full con experience/ordeal this year and elected to spend only one day in the slightly overpacked San Diego Convention Center. While total attendance for the five-day event was upwards of 125,000, I’d wager there weren’t any more than a scant 60,000 people when we [...]

…The Getty. (Yeah, I know. Bad advertising copy.)
If you’ve not been to Getty Center in Los Angeles you should go. Miss T and I went for a day during our SoCal trip last month and had a great time. We arrived shortly before the museum opened at 10 a.m. and left a little after 4 [...]