• Strawberry Music Festival
• Strawberry discussion forums
• Strawberry Music Festival announcements email list
• My own Strawberry / Camp Mather weather page
• Strawberry takes place at San Francisco’s Camp Mather, see Friends of Camp Mather
• San Francisco Recreation and Parks, the official Camp Mather page, where San Francisco residents can make reservations
• Map of the location

Strawberry Music Festival – Fall 2011 is a post from: Adequate Bird

340 Esplanade Patio Damage

In today’s San Mateo County Times article “Mother Nature threatens more Pacifica cliff apartment dwellers” by Julia Scott we learned that 340 Esplanade is the latest apartment building to experience substantial damage. According to the article, the area indicated by the yellow arrow in the first image,

The apartment building’s side walkway has caved in, taking a drainage grate and safety railing with it. Residents still have full use of their bluff-top patios…

According to the building’s owner Dennis Thomas, the damage was caused by surface water drainage problems on neighboring 330 Esplanade.

This thumbnail shows the current damage (see the SM Times article for the full size image):

These two images show the state of the same portion of the bluff (click for larger size):

August 15, 2010

February 26, 2011

330 Esplanade to be Abandoned

Farshid Samsami, owner of 330 Esplanade, said he now plans to walk away from the property because he can’t afford to fix the bluff. Samsami said,

Things could be solved in advance with the cooperation of (FEMA and) the other agencies, but they say they won’t do it. … We’re not asking for a handout or a whole repair, but at least help us. … It seems like their hands are tied as well.

Once the property is abandoned it will probably become the responsibility of cash-strapped Pacifica. Pacifica building official Doug Rider said that the city might try to get FEMA funding to protect the property.

320 Esplanade: Apparent Neglect

Meanwhile no work is taking place at Millard Tong’s 320 Esplanade building. Both 320 and 330 Esplanade are enmeshed up in lawsuits with a former contractor over unpaid bills and accusations of negligence.

For more information including an update on the sea wall below Lands End, and additional current photos see the June 23 2011 San Mateo County Times article “Mother Nature threatens more Pacifica cliff apartment dwellers” by Julia Scott.

The graphic of the 340 property line was courtesy of Redfin.com: 340 Esplanade Ave.

For a complete chronology and links to many more photos see Evacuation underway at 330 Esplanade:

http://adequatebird.com/2009/12/17/evacuation-underway-at-330-esplanade/

See all of my pictures of the Esplanade crisis:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisd2006/collections/72157622920945823/

June 2011 Esplanade Update: 340, 330, 320 is a post from: Adequate Bird

Paul Newman on the set of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, dir. George Roy Hill ) (photo by Jimmy Mitchell, via 20th Century Fox: Inside the Photo Archive)

via Paul Newman on the set of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Old Hollywood.

Paul Newman on the set of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a post from: Adequate Bird

Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station

On May 23 European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured this image of the shuttle Endeavour docked to the International Space Station from more than 600 feet away.

This was among the first pictures ever taken of a shuttle docked to the station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

It was taken on the last voyage of a shuttle, the Endeavor.

38 of the images can viewed and downloaded from http://go.nasa.gov/stationportrait (or http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depart.html)

Video of the departing Soyuz spacecraft:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=14555

Image as highlighted on the Picture of the Day Gallery
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1969.html

Thanks to: A Different Beauty For Space from The Technium on kk.org: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/06/a_different_bea.php

Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station

Portrait of Shuttle and International Space Station is a post from: Adequate Bird

Happy Now?

Thanks to icanhascheezburger.com.

For Geoff, before his Stats Final is a post from: Adequate Bird

Some inspirations I’ve found in Yale University’s newly released “Open Access” collective catalog.

Search the collection here: http://discover.odai.yale.edu/ydc/

Browse from here using an nice, simple interface.

Garry Winograd, Jerome Liebling, Man Ray, Paul Strand is a post from: Adequate Bird

Shadow of a Martian Robot

Explanation: What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn’t human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars.

For more, see APOD: 2011 May 8 – Shadow of a Martian Robot.

APOD: 2011 May 8 – Shadow of a Martian Robot is a post from: Adequate Bird

I’m not dancing or jubilating… we’re not children and this isn’t a fairy tale.

99¢ DREAMS

99¢ DREAMS is a post from: Adequate Bird

Those squares of reinforced steel cement represent portions of a sprayed cement “shotcrete” wall with soil nails. I can see how they’ll eventually link up. I guess they’ll have to go almost up to the 30′ surf line, but that’s a little harder to imagine.

For a complete chronology and links to many more photos see Evacuation underway at 330 Esplanade:

http://adequatebird.com/2009/12/17/evacuation-underway-at-330-esplanade/

See all of my pictures of the Esplanade crisis:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisd2006/collections/72157622920945823/

Seawall Armor Below Land’s End (Photos) is a post from: Adequate Bird

War, earthquake, winds, fire, famine, the plague. Year after year it’s been nothing but disasters.

The actions in Akira Kurosawa’s movie Rashomon played out as a series of stories – flashbacks and reminiscences – told to a naive, faithful Buddhist monk. Each of the four major stories related decidedly different versions of the same basic events. The contradictions between them revealed even more about the nature of character and personality than they did about supposedly black and white matters of truth or justice.

These four frames showed the young monk overwhelmed by the suffering in the tale of the least of the major characters, a humble woodcutter. Despite the bravado, vanity or pride of the other higher-born characters however, no one in this film has had it easy – - or necessarily made the best of their lot in life. Indeed the monk himself, representing the viewers as witnesses to the tales, is included among in the list of flawed and believable characters.

I’m not sure why “this isn’t happiness” picked these up today. Probably simply the surface appearance: taken out of context these represented an arresting commentary on the aftermath of the Japan earthquake and nuclear disaster for the blogger who posted them.

from Something Like an Autobiography, Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa:

“…three assistant directors … came to see me at the inn where I was staying. I wondered what the problem could be. It turned out that they found the script baffling and wanted me to explain it to them. … For their persistence I gave them this simple explanation:

Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings–the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave—even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it.

From Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/196-akira-kurosawa-on-rashomon

Movie page with trailer at Criterion Films: http://www.criterion.com/films/307-rashomon

via this isn’t happiness, Rashomon.

via Aphelis, Disasters in Japan: Rashomon, 1950.

Disasters in Japan: Rashomon, 1950 is a post from: Adequate Bird