Category: san francisco

Sketchfest & Stamptown

Posted on by Liz Henry

I went out last night to see Stamptown with Danny b/c he has become a huge fan of Zach Zucker. Aside from a few moments when he made me watch tiktok videos of Zucker and thinking “Oh yeah the guy with the sound effects, pretty funny” I was not super familiar with him. But wow the show blew me away! The videos don’t convey the physicality of what was going on!! I love art of any kind that is very dense and complicated where you can’t even see, notice, or absorb it all at once. That is what I usually go for in my poetry and it’s what I like most in books. Stamptown was LIKE THAT. Super dense, fast, layered, complicated. A whole scene of people riffing off each others’ styles.

Because of Danny having some history in comedy and performance I have had a sort of side course in at least British comedy from the sorts that monty python was reacting to and then the people reacting against or just differentiating from python style stuff and then Danny’s friends (Stewart Lee and that generation in general). So I was also extrapolating the “scene” I guess of whatever the Stamptown crew was doing and noticing how they were performing not just for the audience but for each other (which is always great b/c it means whatever is happening is complicated or sophisticated on some level – they are working to impress other comedians!) and trying to think of them in a bigger context of even more comedians who weren’t there and who I don’t know about who may be creating or riding some sort of stylistic wave.

I also loved that it was “clown” style comedy or physical comedy I guess. There was something about all the performers doing things that were purely joyous or sharing joy in absurdity or whatever it was they were doing – Rather than some comedy which is more about showing off you are supposedly clever, or, about being cruel, I think. Before the show, Danny talked a bit about clowns and I had no idea what he meant and felt somewhat repulsed or suspicious – like, to me, “clowns” were just like a somewhat annoying cliche, or a creepy horror thing. But during the show I realized some of what he meant and thought more about rodeo clowns (who are doing something functional to distract a bull’s attention from the thrown rider, but who are also amazing and exuberant in that way of sharing a kind of joyousness in the absurd — by the way I love rodeos a lot) The performers aren’t necessarily doing something complicated at first, but the complexity can build up quite a lot!

And it was also so fabulously queer <3 <3 <3 So from last night the show opened or "before" the show Zach Zucker (or his persona?) was dancing on stage and a tall skinny guy in purple velour stretch pants and a hippie headband was rollerskating around the theater aisles wearing a tshirt that said "DYLAN ®“. His roller skating got more and more chaotic and flamboyant – including throwing himself to the ground & shoulder-rolling onto the stage – A giant hoop came down from the ceiling and it became an aerial act – Two dudes in full (face-covering) body stockings (one with a DYLAN® shirt) came out to prance around – An umbrella full of confetti- Absolute fucking chaos – More & more absurd somehow – One of the body stocking guys “accidentally” shooting himself in the dick with a confetti gun – It’s very hard to describe how this unfolded but as the rest of the show went on all these characters would reappear — often the body stocking duo would be “shot” and fall over by one of Jack Tucker’s sound effects and the stage crew would have to drag them off – Dylan® would come on to mourn them or take photos or just roller skate around.

There was also sometimes an excitingly dangerous edge to Dylan® and his crew as they were so fast and furious & skating, running, or doing flips in the aisle or from/onto the stage, that it was like being in the middle of a martial arts battle.

aerialist on a hoop, in roller skates, high in the air

I liked his “earnest” punchlines about how he could finally be himself and free.

Am I going to list everything from the show! OMG?! I don’t think I can. Jack Tucker flailing the mic around and the mic stand (same dangerous excitement as above) and pulling an apple out of nowhere (to the tune of New York New York and whacking it with the mic like a baseball so that the stage was spattered with smashed bits of apple. Enter the metalhead guitarist in spangles – I can’t remember who ripped his outfit off but underneath he had on hot pants and a little harness – The Lumberjack viking looking guy who would come out to particular theme music (whenever someone would ask for a cleaning crew to clean the stage) Pull a hammer out of his shorts, hold up a beer can, whack it with the hammer and chug it (though most of the time it just ran down his beard onto the floor) I could analyze each of their acts! But my point is the chaos and the mess on stage kept increasing!

At some point about 10 minutes into this I got out my phone and bought myself two tickets to the Saturday Zach Zucker show even though Danny was going to miss it I realized I had to see it. He looked over at me in horror – was I hating the show so much I was scrolling on my phone? NO…. i loved it so much I bought tickets for more.

I also note that I enjoyed Jack Tucker’s outfit and the feeling I had from it that he might pull ANYTHING from his pockets or out of his pants like the Doctor in Doctor Who or a looney tunes character – and that he didn’t actually use all the things that WERE in there –

The performers were sort of training us “the audience” to react in certain ways with clicker training (literally) and musical cues (LITTLE CABLE CARRRRRRRRS…… playing each time something even hinted at mentioning San Francisco or the Bay Area) and sound effects –

I loved the aerialists Clown & Drummer – her teetering and slipping on her lucite heels – him in silver body suit & perpetual look of abject terror, wheeled out on a hand truck) – they were very funny in a complicated way!!, Camden Garcia, the Two Adults in a Trenchcoat who I think were Demi Adejuyigbe and another guy (guys?) (BriTANick?), stage manager Erin, and really everyone but I think I am now a die hard fan of Ike Ufomadu. Holy shit! He slayed me!!! He came out walking very slowly – a little exchange of significant head nods and points back and forth with Jack Tucker – but then they KEPT DOING IT – very “slowly I turned, step by step” feel to it – crossing the stage to the mic at a snail’s pace with a transcendent grin – a little bewildered – then another fucking instance of the “point”. The repetition was amazing – it went way too far and then kept going – Absolutely perfect. And they were clearly riffing or improvising. I mean who knows what they practice or have done in past shows but I thought they were egging each other on, daring each other to keep it going and making each other laugh.

Then at the mic Ike was just slowly – excruciatingly slow – exhibiting every possible mannerism that people do at a mic – adjusting it – fiddling – moving his glasses – touching his face – I dunno how to describe this. I had FLASHBACKS to every poetry / literary open mic ever and also to various professors and their mannerisms. He was doing sort of a ballet of amazing facial expressions too at a snail’s pace which made it FUNNIER. How to describe how a progression of things would happen with his face – that had me howling! It was like waacking or actually I think turfing, if you see people doing the turfing style of hip hop often they are doing some kind of ordinary like moving to get up from a chair but they do it in a slightly stylized, graceful, slow way with repetition built in.

Anyway, Ike Ufomadu was doing this with the micro expressions of his face and with all his gestures of being a person who was MAYBE ABOUT TO SAY SOMETHING INTO THE MIC and do some comedy. Before he even got there, he encountered the “Caution – wet floor” yellow sandwich board sign on the floor and had to point at the CAUTION bit of it slowly underlining it and looking around significantly at us all – then the WET FLOOR bit of the sign – building the whole thing up and gazing around the fucked up, beer-covered stage, or beer mixed with layers of confetti and smushed apple – Then FINALLY getting to the little symbol in the center of the sign of a guy slipping and falling on the CAUTION WET FLOOR and waggling his eyebrows with deep meaning – showing it slowly around to everyone in the audience!

Oh, my god, I will never see one of those Caution wet floor signs again in my life without laughing!

comedian leaning on a wet floor caution sign on stage with a sardonic expression

It was during this shtick that one of the cameramen who was right behind me actually screamed with laughter and lost his entire cool. He doubled over – he actually fell to his knees – I had to take a photo of him on the floor as he ended up nearly in fetal position.

a man on his knees laughing uncontrollably

I think entire planetary systems were born and died in the interval before Ike actually said something and all the while behind him just at the edge of backstage Jack Tucker was losing his shit laughing. (Then what he ended up doing was a full blown performance of the horrible cable cars song – ahahaha – which I REALLY didn’t think was planned. Like he must have had a whole act ready but he just did this instead ! )

You know when sometimes you are looking at someone and they are looking at you and it seems so odd that reality is real and you are looking at each other, that you burst out laughing?

What I got from this was how much what he (and Zach Zucker and many of the others) were working with the, uh sort of the meta commentary on what happens in a “performance” or any situation where there is someone “performing” and an “audience” and I have to put all that in quotes because the very idea of that is of course absurd! (Like “author” or any such concept where we don’t have to accept a hierarchical power relationship at all and yet people do!) So, getting to that level of existential commentary where you realize that the nature of what you are doing and of all human interaction and everything we are doing and basically, reality, is absurd!!!! It was also done so lovingly that it wasn’t like, oh everything is absurd and that sucks and let’s all be nihilists, it was celebratory. Anyway, that’s what was going on in my brain like a sort of explosion during this performance!

Then Danny and I went around the corner utterly dazed and high with our own ideas and got a sandwich at the gyro place, during our debriefing and analysis of which bits were planned and which were more improvised, And how much we love the feeling of artists who are able to work together in such a collective way to do something – we went, HEY …. What if we just go right back around the corner and see it again at the 2nd show tonight? It would be perfect and would fit our mood from the show of free wheeling existence and flow (Dylan®: “Everything is possible!”) We nabbed the two last tickets (FATE) which were conveniently the wheelchair accessible & companion ones on the other side from where we were in the first show.

close up of danny, greying hair and beard, chin in hand, looking happy and radiant

Going back into the theater felt like our own contribution to the themes of absurdity and repetition as the theater staff had to go through their hullabaloo all over again with the wheelchair lift, radioing each other that a wheelchair was incoming, trying to escort me to the seat, giving me funny mini lectures about how to be in a lift (I KNOW HOW BY NOW JFC) and trying to helpfully anticipate what I was going to do (wrongly) — and then doing it all in reverse for the 4th time for us to finally leave. I mean it is not like we can just show up unnoticed!!! So I may as well be amused by the entire thing. (navigating weird access situations is its own comedy scene that we are connoisseurs of)

The second show was different! Ike Ufomadu did a different thing this time with the book he was carrying – More on the kindly doddering but somewhat maddening professorial side (skipping the caution sign schtick) That was also amazing and made me have an entire asthma attack from laughing so hard –

I thought the 2nd crowd was a bit drunker and perhaps, well, dumber than for the first show – A different vibe – Somehow we got to a place where the entire crew had a moment of “sharing their truth” earnestly in the spotlight to sad music – then getting sloppily kissed and carried off by the beer lumberjack — till the first guy who did this (the lumberjack beer chugger) got up again and wistfully told us “when I spoke the first time I thought it was gonna be MY THING” – that one destroyed Danny utterly.

Oh, I forgot the comedy reviewer, and his crimes against comedy and against reviews! A crime I am now compounding! But, anyway, he was great.

I have not talked ENOUGH about Zach Zucker / Jack Tucker himself and what he was doing but I admired it and was super intrigued and enjoyed that seeing him do the same(ish) show a second time rewarded. I will be back tonight to see him do a whole different (??) show!

His hand sniffs were such a great running gag. (GAGGGGG) I said before that the show was exuberant rather than trying-to-be-clever, or cruel, but actually – I will see more tonight and think about it- maybe he is a bit (actually) clever, and a bit cruel, but it is not a bad kind of cruel. (Not “punching down cruel” – but more wry and insightful? I am not sure how to describe it. in any case not cliched or stupid, so, good. ) Must discuss with Danny later when I have more data.

We took a waymo robot car home which is more expensive than either the bus or my free waymo wheelchair vans, but it felt like a luxurious and futuristic thing to do that suited our mood – I think they drive safely and it is kind of relaxing – though of course I also normally enjoy late night bus rides and the glory of all humanity upon display, I am just barely coming out of a big pain/mobility flare up so getting home from our late night quickly was important!

Danny is now off on his trip to FOSDEM and Davos! Time for my disco nap so I can physically endure the long evening ahead!!!!

BART Basel 2024

Posted on by Liz Henry

There were so many amazing scenes at BART Basel this year – Francois and the decaying golden banana, the woman with the woven toilet paper roll mobile sculpture, the trumpeter in Glen Park station – the piñatas – the guy with the fake butt – the fashionista with the beanie baby pug and bodyguards – Penelope, the girl with the spray bottle of water spraying her grandma’s raincoat – Too many to list!

At BART Basel, the crew sets up a pedestal with a glass cover, a red carpet, a backdrop, and a small but effective PA system and microphone. People come up to present their art; after 20 minutes or so the entire set-up and crowd gets onto the train to go to another station and hold another event!

a lady holding up a woven sculpture in a huge crowd in the train station

We started at Embarcadero, then moved to Civic Center, then to Glen Park, which is probably my favorite station architecture. The crowd was huge – and splendidly dressed!

I exhibited and read my short poem Take the 49, which is about the wrong transit system, so now I really need to write a poem about BART and read it on the bus.

liz holding up a tiny zine; another copy is in a glass case beside them

This year I made two tiny zines – Take the 49 and Copies, both under Burn This Press. They came out super cute!

two tiny colorful zines

a zine open to show a poem about the bus

The 49 poem does a lot in a small space. Late at night, that bus tends to go very fast down a major street that in the daytime is crowded and slow. I was going for the feeling of speed and joy, a little recklessness, the feeling of bumping over streets and pavements in bus but also in my wheelchair, being like those metal rolls in old music boxes, because often I’m coming home from a musical event at night on the bus, the music is still playing in my head, and i’m in a state where every sound of the city at night is like music & it all combines beautifully. One night a driver really did tell me a story about his old job painting the bridge and how at least the bus is warm – he was waxing a bit poetic about it all – and it was – as the kids say – “a mood”. While I don’t remember why we were chatting, we had a nice connection, but I don’t really remember what he looked like. I hope he sees the poem some day!

My outfit for BART Basel was in BART colors, silver/white and blue. I had a moment where I showed a group of people my belt buckle and handmade train-track belt, and there was an audible collective gasp. Very gratifying!

a brass belt buckle shaped like the front of a bart train, on a blue belt

You can admire more photos of BART Basel in my Flickr album or in this larger collection of BART Basel photos by many people!

And, if you love transit systems so much that you want to read a ridiculous, sweet story about BART and SFO as cozy roommates, here’s a link to Next Stop, San Francisco, which I wrote in response to the tweets from SFO and BART’s accounts during the protests against anti-immigrant/ anti-muslim ban policies in 2017.

The event was so much fun. I loved seeing everyone’s art, or (in)significant objects framed as art, and the joy of the crowd, who were in “eclectic dress” as described on the invitation.

Its organizer, Danielle Baskin, has done so many hilarious cool projects over the years. I appreciate her and the whole crew who made BART Basel a thing – not just a thing, but a tradition!

Legion of Honor 100th anniversary festival

Posted on by Liz Henry

There was so much cake! A marching band! Sketching in the galleries! Ballerinas and an organ player! Printmaking and free art stuff and activities in a sort of swirling all day chaos. I spent all day at the Legion of Honor and had a great time.

a ballerina in mid step in a marble hall art gallery with marble rodin statues

It was heartening to show off this gorgeous corner of San Francisco and a day of amazing culture to my parents, who have moved here from Texas! My sister and I hauled them around the museum  – we went through the Mary Cassatt special exhibit and both gift shops – and to the lawn where we had our sandwiches and cookies we brought from home & then attacked the aftermath of the Cake Picnic.

I hadn’t realized that to get into the Cake Picnic proper, you had to bring an entire cake! Per person! (or maybe a small group?) I have to share photos of the before and after. There were hundreds of different cakes. After the main crew of cake-bringers were done, they unleashed the rest of us onto the remains strewn across the labyrinth of long tables covered in white tablecloths. The mess of plundered cake plates looked almost as beautiful and colorful as the “before” tables. dozens of differentcakes on tables on a lawn

My favorite thing about this was watching people wander through the devastation and the emotions playing across their faces. First, being overwhelmed and confused  – then desire, even greed and lust, warring with a sense of the forbidden – and the moment of decision where people just said Oh fuck it and dove right into the smeary cake stands to get a glob of icing and crumbs. It was so beautiful.  That is how you know the cake picnic was art. It made people FEEL very intensely! The absurd abundance, the variety, the love and intent behind making something so delicious, unnecessary, and flamboyant – and the collectiveness of everyone bringing cakes!

a long table covered in the remains of many many different cakes. a man leans over and puts a finger into one in the distance

(There were forks over by the statue of El Cid, but by the time I realized that it was far too late for me, personally.)

We all laid on the lawn on my picnic blanket and my dad commented after a while that he hadn’t sat on grass for probably 20 years. “No fire ants here!”  Maybe he will warm to California!!!

I made prints from someone’s lovely art  – a poster of Alma Spreckels and another of a scene from the movie Vertigo – And got a free embroidered patch of the  statue of the Thinker – And then somehow a free magnet of the museum building which is now on my fridge.

a screen print of the legion of honor building with its many columns and an old fashioned car

The Mary Cassatt exhibit was great especially for seeing the parts showing her drypoint and aquatint process and experiments. I will be back to see that entire exhibit a few times!

Have a pic of my sister and I sticking our tongues out in excitement at our feelings of identifying with the lady reading a book:

liz and sister grinning, sticking out tongues cheerfully while liz points at famous Cassat painting of a lady with a book

It is always thrilling to see the real paintings of art that I have only seen in books or online before. You can get right up and see the brush strokes and the tiny lines of the canvas showing through which makes it seem so, almost holy, and real, and created, and I feel a shivery feeling of connection with people long dead!

(Though honestly when I think about it, which i often do, i also feel that way about every object i’m looking at, like, a random brick or whatever. Or – riding the bus past SF’s cute little houses – I look at the ornamental moldings or features of the houses, like the plaster shield things, and think about the decisions and aesthetic sense of the builders, carpenters, or house owners who might have wanted them.)

I had a good time trying to sketch in the upper gallery. It was set up so you could get a card to sketch on, printed with a border like a gold picture frame. You then could choose 5 pencils from their boxes sorted by color, and there were stools you could also borrow to sit on for sketching. Here is the painting I tried to copy,

rough sketch of lady in neck ruffle dressoil painting of a lady in a low cut dress with a huge neck ruffle

While I have never been able to really do faces and also never had any art classes I do love to draw and manage to do it expressively – there were some years where I drew comics and loved it but I was so slow at it that it was sometimes frustrating. Someday I’d like to take art classes and do a live drawing, contour drawing, all that kind of thing!   But words come more naturally to me and are my first love.

I tried to get one of the free wheelchair van Waymos, but none were around. My sister drove our parents back to the East Bay.  I ended up barrelling to Geary down the huge hill, which I love anyway — it is not like I go faster downhill in a powerchair, which limits my speed, but it feels extra joyous anyway on that particular hill and it’s a gorgeous landscape. I recall thinking, Huh a guy in a flat cap , looks a little like Horehound – but I raced past without even looking somehow and then we realized at the bus stop on Geary that we knew each other. It was nice riding the bus and chatting with Horehound (one of my favorite poets in the bay area – along with Steve Artnsen, Juba Kalamka, and Daphne Gottlieb, and Diamond Dave –  and some person named maybe “King” of indeterminate gender who read a brilliant poem about pouring milk into their cereal, while crouched on a stump in Holly Park earlier this year – and i’d like to meet more poets!!! I hope next year I will go to more open mics! )   A good end to a glorious day of connection with other people, strangers, my own family, and a fabulous poet acquaintance who I should go email right now so we can exchange information about various readings coming up.

Books and Stardrops

Posted on by Liz Henry

Well, I read Metal from Heaven and am about to start Can’t Spell Treason without Tea. And I’ve played the new Stardew Valley update on my Switch for the last two days, so much that I’m well into Summer Year 1.

Last night had dinner in Annalee and Jesse’s garden with a bunch of really lovely people. Loudly shrieked with people about Metal from Heaven (psychically damaged hallucinating fantasy motorcycle bandit lesbian train robber revolutionaries! unions! strikes! with a side of  decadent aristocrat prep school girl graduates!).  Other fun messing about with Meshtastic with Jesse and Emma H. and then Jesse told us about AREDN. I still need to go get my ham license!!   Megan told me about being a Master Birder and then Rick and I just kind of gloriously explained to each other all the facts we know about different kinds of rocks, which is like one of my favorite kinds of conversations, and then about family history things.

Today I had lunch with my parents and later had a video chat with yatima, who has covid and has to isolate – I will bring her soup tomorrow, having just made chicken posole after going to the newly opened (today!) El Chavo supermarket, which is great & I highly recommend it.  I went to Stamper and ordered new glasses, the cheapest possible progressives, because I sat on my wonderful glasses that I love. (I did find the same frames used and ordered them from Canada, fingers crossed that works.) Lunch was at the old St. Jorge cafe, which has re-opened with new owners as Tea Rex, and I can report they have a very good quinoa-beet-apple-balsamic salad and excellent coffee. That is it. I am giving myself some space and down time to feel a wide range of things.

Last weekend I had a great time with new friend Tiffany as we wandered around Valencia, had ice cream, dumplings, shopped around in Silver Sprocket, exchanged stickers, and showed each other our tattoos.  Danny is still reading me chapters out loud from book 2 of Dance to the Music of Time, from Bangkok, when our schedules overlap.

Everyone is just so shell shocked.

I try to keep my historical perspective and I do know that I am lucky to be alive in a time where I have any rights at all to anything, and I never expected even so to see queer/trans rights and all the legal changes there and the shift in acceptance that we have seen. We hoped that was a done deal – with a little backlash – But no. We then saw our rights to our bodies taken away and people die from pregnancies, miscarriages, infections, women driven into poverty or in the control of abusers.  The dynamic here I think is less backlash and more the economic precarity that goes with climate change and rampaging billionaires or whatever, that leads so many people into hate, fear, right down the path to fascism. We are not unique in the world, and other countries are struggling with the same stuff. What to do? I don’t know, probably same as ever but twice as hard and with more determination. I did not get to blow my ridiculous celebratory bugle that i blew in 2020 but I will blow it again soon enough.

I recommend reading (and subscribing to) Erin in the Morning – I found her post This was always going to be a generational fight for transgender people to be heartening today.

Bop Spotter

Posted on by Liz

I love this project, the Bop Spotter! This is my neighborhood and I love its musical landscape.

Sometimes I add to it myself from a bluetooth speaker on my wheelchair, but more often I’m surreptitiously shazaming the music around me from others’ speakers, from cars, from businesses I’m going by on the sidewalk.

This is a cool use of a old/low end phone – hooking it up to a little solar panel on a utility pole. The web page shows the community’s culture to the community. It’s community data collection that’s positive, approachable, and fun. We are also invited to listen along on Apple Music or Spotify!

You could expand this project out in different ways, like log all the music, make it searchable, count the times we hear particular songs or artists, make it possible to, in the future, reconstruct the public musical soundscape of this corner!

It’s beautiful just as it is of course, but I get kind of excited about the archival aspect of communicating with the future!

Whill battery hack night at General Lithium

Posted on by Liz

This week we held a little powerchair hack night with GOAT, Justin from General Lithium, CriptasticHacker and associates from Spokeland, Morgan from CIL, and more friends, to explore the battery technology of Whill Fi and Ci powerchairs. A Ci battery teardown is in progress along with an investigation into the Fi and its charger.

There was also knitting, and an adorable small support dog on a fluffy cushion. I had a cool moment realizing how many of us knew, or had worked with or learned from, John Benson (aka, Cripple A). I was thinking John, a fabulous human being, should get an award, and Morgan said, what he would really like is a parade. My mind took off with this great idea! What if we had a fabulous parade in his honor, with musical instruments and punk marching bands and a zillion wheelchair users zooming around?! We will also hopefully see him and some other repair and DIY wizards at our upcoming events!

a probably AI generated image of a futuristic looking glowing powerchair on a glowing disco platform

We didn’t do any formal talks or introductions, but CriptasticHacker kicked off by talking about one of his finished projects, the WBSW, Wheelchair Battery Spot Welder!

We have learned some things from cracking apart the Ci battery.
– It has hidden screws under the bottom corner pieces
– You still have to pry it open with a screwdriver and mallet
– The battery is encased in several layers of totally sealed plastic for waterproofing
– And under that it is podded, 5/6ths encased in rubbery gel stuff so you can’t really take it apart and hack it well.
– It has 1/4 kWh

For the Ci, our best option to soup it up (as it has fallen out of warranty and parts don’t seem to be readily available!) may be adding a new battery or batteries, which we could do for about $400 per kWh. We could easily fit 2 of those under my seat in the undercarriage basket. Then those could hook up to a new replacement (V)ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) which we then connect to the motor (managing the voltage etc. so it will be compatible).

For the Fi, we were able to access it a bitbetter and Zach, Henner, mjg, and others had a look with digital microscope, logic analyzer, etc. To figure out what is going on with the power management . Zach will describe all that on his hackaday.io page!

three people gathered around an electronics workbench

It was interesting to see the different approaches in play at the various workbenches. The laborious and intensive work needed for detailed understanding and reverse engineering is in some ways a philosophical stance, of learning, reuse, and conservation, but in other ways, a factor influenced by resource constraints. In other words, necessity is the mother of the meticulous teardown! The people with capital, on the other hand, had less patience with this approach and were ready to throw resources at a problem, and use new (or repurposed) stuff to do complete workarounds, or simply throw it all out and invent something new that would be more rapid to get working, even if unlikely to be elegant or refined in the first prototype.

There was a long discussion on how to make a kit to convert manual chairs to power with Justin and Morgan. To that I added some wild eyed ideas but also a pointer to these interesting, cheap, DIY open source wheelchair designs and to Whirlwind Wheelchair. We see people every day in the Bay Area who are struggling with clunky or broken chairs. It is a good topic for future exploration – what other conversion kits are out there? What were the problems and pitfalls? How feasible is it to to come up with a maintainable, cheap, design for such a thing?

I learned during the event that ESC (pronounce the letters in it) is an electronic speed controller (the thing I normally just call “motor controller” with a vague handwave.) VESC, frequently mentioned by our hardware hackers, is a particular technology – or we could call it a movement – that I think looks amazing – for “flexible, efficient, and reliable power systems for your platform”.

Another cool nexus of ideas that came up: Whill chairs come with Bluetooth and a phone app. You can control the chair from the app, configuring it with one of three pre-set acceleration curves. Could we write a new app to communicate with the chair and program it in different ways?

You can also steer the chair from a phone or tablet screen via Bluetooth. I have never actually used this feature. But we can see that airports are starting to explore using Whill chairs on auto-pilot, to take passengers to their gates. Using programmed routes but also LIDAR, like robot cars! That put a gleam in several people’s eyes. Actually, it put a whole range of different and hilarious facial expressions on everyone’s faces!

And as one more note for future investigation: The chairs also appear to log and send diagnostic information to the manufacturer. I’d certainly like to see that traffic! I wonder if it is encrypted and what the heck it is sending!

I’m really looking forward to Grassroots Open Assistive Tech hosting more electronics and hardware tinkering nights, as well as other DIY gatherings!

Overheard:
(just for fun – it was a lively event!)

“I’m so impressed with the fact that you bypassed the VMS…. Expert move”

“….. and then it would explode!”

“That motorcycle [points to motorcycle in a giant pile of e-bikes] has a battery bigger and more powerful than a tesla powerwall. and it goes 160 miles an hour! [gleeful laughter]”

“You can control it via bluetooth? Woah!! That’s my kink!”

“There are no standards for bike wheels, so there are 4 different kinds of 26 3/4 wheels and none of them work with the others!”

(Justin): “I’m gonna take your 1/4 kWh battery and give you THREE kWh. We can just strap the batteries under your seat.”
(me:) “Oh, great! I’ve always wanted to be launched into fucking SPACE with my ass on fire!”

“Is this illegal?” “No surely not!” “Well, maybe? But we’re just taking things apart, and looking at how it works! How can that be illegal?”

(FYI: This can be a complex question! You may want to read this Coder’s Rights Guide from EFF as a starting point. )

More pics from the event:
Wheelchair battery hack night at General Lithium

Thanks to everyone who showed up, chatted, tinkered, and especially thanks to our congenial hosts, General Lithium – they are a battery tech company, but they also have a nonprofit wing that runs this maker/coworking space in the heart of San Francisco. Have a look at their events page and membership information!

San Francisco wheelchair repair program

Posted on by Liz

If you’re out on the street and your wheelchair breaks down, you need immediate help. (You can’t always rely on Love and Magic!)

And similarly, if you’re stuck in your house because of a flat tire, wobbly wheel, bad battery, blown fuse, or whatever mystery problem your wheelchair has, what happens? In the East Bay in the Bay Area we have the great non-profit Easy Does It, which will come pick you up and fix your chair for free. (Shout out to long time repair expert John Benson, who is an amazing person and who supported their program for many years with his Secret Wheelchair Parts Warehouse!)

Now, finally, in San Francisco we have the Independent Living Center SF Wheelchair Repair program that does something similar! I went last week to the ILRCSF launch of the program and hung out with Vince Lopez, who is an experienced repair tech and all around great guy. Lana Nieves who heads up the organization welcomed around 40 of us to the spacious conference room, Vince talked about his experience as a tech, we toured Marisol’s assistive tech lending library, and also heard from Michael from Pride Mobility who was there to offer whatever resources and connections he can provide.

a row of masked people in a conference room posing for a group pic

This new wheelchair repair center is funded by San Francisco Disability and Aging Services and is available to San Francisco residents, for emergencies and repair visits within the SF city boundaries. The repair program has limited hours (I think working daytime hours) and you can request either emergency help, or schedule an appointment, by calling their number at 415-609-2555 or emailing info@ilrcsf.org. Vince will come to you if that’s needed with a bag of tools. He can also provide rides to a safe location where you can transfer, in a wheelchair accessible van ride (provided free by Waymo) and even a loaner chair, powerchair, walker, or scooter if he has one available.

a man posing next to a row of loaner rollators, manual wheelchairs, and powerchairs

The program is also supported by many wheelchair manufacturers and by MK Battery. (You can get your batteries replaced! Free!!! At least for particular lead-acid scooter and wheelchair batteries they have stocked.)

shelves with new wheelchair batteries in stock

One last nifty service, you can get your wheelchair washed down completely in their portable washing station. I noted it looks like something that is not too hard to build, made from super-sturdy plastic tarp/map base, PVC pipe, shower curtains, a hose, and a pump to drain the water out. (This kind of setup can be used in a kitchen or even a yard for people to wash in if their own bathroom lacks access.)

people in a conference room looking at a wheelchair sized portable wash station

Murderbot’s spa day!!

After the event I got some help from Vince back in the shop. My Whill Ci front fenders break often, I’ve gotten them replaced several times, then lived with the brokenness and loud rattling for probably over a year now, sometimes temporarily fixing it with duct tape and Sugru.

Vince called Whill support, got them to email him the service manual (which I’ve asked for for YEARS and haven’t gotten!) and we got down on the floor to pop the wheels off and figure out what was wrong. While I was on the floor scooting around on my butt, I took the opportunity to wet-wipe the dust off the entire front of my chair.

a powerchair frame up on a jack with its wheel off

Some foam tape, new screws, blue loc-tite, and some cleaning, vastly improved my broken fender and wheel situation. More calls, a quick trip to the nearby hardware store, and a lot of fiddling around fixed my chair! (I got to try a loaner powerchair while all this happened!) And Vince is continuing to investigate if he can wrangle a replacement joystick controller out of the company — another thing I have asked them for but he is apparently the wheelchair support tech whisperer, because he got actual help incredibly fast!

(While I get told to buy a new Model C2; sure, like I just am going to drop 3500 bucks when I could fix my current chair?!) Fortunately now we have California’s new Right to Repair law to support our efforts to maintain our incredibly critical assistive tech! So when I do get a new powerchair eventually, the manufacturer will have to keep its parts available for at least 7 years.

My chair’s fenders no longer rattle, which is great, so I can perfect my technique of me + Murderbot sneaking up on people on the sidewalk!

Hip hop and a party

Posted on by Liz

I took the 49 and the 30 buses across town to the Palace of Fine Arts for the International Hip Hop DanceFest – its 25th year! If you can, grab tickets and go tomorrow, it was an incredible trip.

The show was particularly great this year. I think my favorite peformance was the one led by Selasi Dogbatse from Brussels, “A Piece of Me” , which was incredibly emotional and dynamic – it seemed to go through a narrative of culture, family, artistic expression and a sort of artistic journey, but what often made it great was the relationships between the dancers as they really danced with each other in a communicative way that also felt like change happening between them. Ensemble work where everyone was individually going through artistic growth by their interactions in the actual performance! I don’t really know how to write about dance, but that was my impression!

colorful stage full of dancers

Wildly energetic and skilled dances from Flawless (London) who were acrobatic and stylish, House of Jit (Detroit), Wanted Posse (Paris) were total crowd pleasers, big ensembles. Wanted Posse acted out fantastic scenes from a 1920s speakeasy, House of Jit showed off Detroit style which I was not familiar with but which is FAST and complicated and looks super cool.

hiphop dancer on stage

There were two smaller acts, Snack Break Movement Arts from Philly, and Ben Donner who gave a heartfelt solo dedicated to his grandmother, as the opener to the show. Snack Break’s set was really beautiful as well and told a loose narrative of childhood friendships, games, rivalries and fun as the two friends compete and play – it had a nostalgic feel as they incorporated hopscotch and hand clapping in with their hip hop and swing moves.

Then there were the local ensembles, California representing! Str8jacket from San Mateo had a lot of young people and great choreographic talent. I thought of my son’s old group Community Street Jam and the choreo by Barb Miron and her crew who were often paying homage to Jabbawockeez, with fast and complex moves that never felt repetitive. I never know how they remember it all! Whew! They had great energy and I love the bay area waacking, popping, and whatever they were doing, I think I’d call it House. Then Versa-Style Dance Company from LA giving us a more matured west coast style infused with salsa that had the audience screaming and hooting! Along with a kind of similar feeling to Selasi Dogbatse’s group in that you could see different personalities and artistic journeys expressed and the joy and difficulty of creativity and collaboration. It feels wrong to pick favorites but they were also my favorite, they were just so perfect in every way and I could not even keep still in my chair! I had to go home and do some dancing around too!

The best thing about hip hop is the supportive culture that always shines through in Micaya’s shows, you can see the emotional strength of all the collaborations and of the (temporary) community around the show that she creates. Really a joy every year — I put it on my calendar for November just as soon as the “Save the Date” email arrives!

Micaya in a colorful dress with the mic in hand

I had a little interlude at Crissy Beach feeling the sand in my toes, admiring the pelicans, taking pics of the bridge and enjoying the late fall sun. Right near me a group of obviously queer parents of toddlers were dressed in spangles and sparkles for the birthday party of a little kid who has the same name as my son who I was thinking of all day long since we have always tried to go to this show together! It was funny to wish this tiny, silver sparkle loving Milo a happy birthday while I was thinking of my own grown up sparkle-loving Milo!

On the bus on the ride home I got lucky with entertaining bus driver action. It was rush hour crowded on the 49 but the driver kept us all amused in front of the bus with his friendly greetings and running commentary.

At one stop there was a lady with a giant cart with stuff strapped to it with bungies, a load higher than her head and probably about 2 and a half feet wide. Our driver pulled up and was like, “I am sympathetic to your situation but you got a lot goin’ on sister”. Very much standing room only at the front of the bus with me also wedged in there in my powerchair absolutely surrounded by close up butts and elbows. Cue an argument from Cart Lady. “But my dog needs these things and I have to protect my dog! When is the next bus!” (They come about every 5 minutes!) I assume there was a dog in the crate strapped at the bottom of the pile. No one likes to be passed up and I felt sympathetic but it was just impossible.

Then the kicker, she yelled, “BUT YOU LET WHEELCHAIRS ON THERE!! IT’S NOT FAIR” The entire front half of the bus groaned and rolled their eyes and me and the driver started laughing once he had pulled away.

“Look now, we’ve seen everything, if you have wheelchairs, you gotta also give equal rights to dogs!!”

“The thing is, I’m way more fun than a dog!”

Later on the ride the nice driver was telling stories of how he worked on all the Bay Area bridges in all weather and how cold it was but how beautiful.

I was also called “Sir” yesterday and “Buddy” “Pal” and “My man” today at random times so my nonbinary haircut must be doing its job.

Geek tour of the San Francisco Bay Area

Posted on by Liz

People come to San Francisco, still, in pursuit of the technoutopian dream, but also they like to pay homage to an idea of “Silicon Valley”. Now that the Mozilla monument has gone to storage, there aren’t a lot of public monuments out there to visit. We really need enormous, beautiful public monumental art to celebrate Internet and computer history!!

But we don’t have that. So, where to go on your nerd pilgrimage? I have a list of recommendations for the computer nerds with a romantic soul!

The Computer History Museum heads the geek tour list of course! It is in Mountainview and the public transit options aren’t ideal, but are doable. You can take Caltrain to Mountainview and look for a city bus or a shuttle bus, or just take a cab/rideshare for the last leg of your trip.

The MADE – The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment – is a hands-on video game history museum where the retro games are all playable, often on incredible and well maintained old hardware! It’s in downtown Oakland, a few easily walkable blocks from the 12th Street BART station.

The Exploratorium, while a broad tech and science museum, is gorgeously hands on and participatory. There are actual experiments you can do (not like so many science museums where interactivity means pushing a button or watching a video). And the techy things are elevated to really beautiful art in many cases (look for the creations of Ned Kahn, for example!)

Noisebridge hacker and maker space is open daily in the afternoons and evenings, and it’s basically a long running, large, donation supported and volunteer run, workshop. It is free, but cash or online donations are very much appreciated and needed! It’s a bit like going into a giant, messy, anarchic, collaborative garage. People are generally friendly, you can show up any time, and someone will give you a tour. If you feel like soldering something, or using the 3D printers, or learning a new skill, or just want a co-working space for an afternoon, this is a great spot to meet new people and hang out. Check the meetup page for classes and workshops!

San Francisco Railway Museum – this is a tiny but fabulous museum near the Ferry Building along the Embarcadero in SF. It tends to appeal to computer geeks!

Historic Ships at Hyde Street Pier – Now, this has nothing to do with computers but if you are the sort of nerd who like me, enjoys transit and infrastructure and history, you might like this very quiet park on the waterfront at Aquatic Park (avoid the Fisherman’s Wharf maelstrom). Seriously you will be the only person on some of these ships. Giant pulleys and block and tackle arrangements! Lie down in an actual ship’s bunk! You can walk onto the sailing ship Balaclutha and onto a huge paddlewheel steamship and a couple more interesting ships. Notably — the Balaclutha is wheelchair accessible, with a (very steep) ramp onto the ship, and a scary-fun lift down into the cargo hold!!!

The US Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model in Sausalito. Nerd heaven if you like this sort of thing. It’s a giant relief map of the entire Bay Area with its waterways, the size of two football fields, and you can walk around it to learn geography and history. Sadly there is no longer water flowing in it because it is now cheaper to run computer simulations of the water flow in the Bay. You can take the ferry there and walk (a fairly long walk but doable) to the Model!

Google! If you’re walking along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, the Hills Brothers Building plaza is a nice place to sit, and you can take a picture with the Google sign if that appeals to you. Coming up soon in October 2023, the Google Visitor Center will be opening up in Mountainview – maybe good to combine with a visit to the Computer History Museum!

Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino is an hour or so away from San Francisco by car. If you’re already down there or in San Jose and you’re a huge Apple fan then maybe it’s worth going to see. I’ve never been to it, but I see people asking about it often in the bay area subreddits.

The Intel museum in Santa Clara! If you want to read some corporate stuff about how chips are made, this is for you, but I am not sure if I actually recommend it since I’ve never been there and it seems to be mostly for school kids.

Hiller Museum of Aviation in San Carlos. If you love planes, or you kind of like them and you’re already on the Peninsula south of SF, this is a fun and cool little museum. Also great for little kids as they can run around very freely, and there’s entire sections of planes they can go into and climb around in.

More transit! Historic aircraft! Moffett Field (ie, the Bay’s own little part of NASA!) offers tours led by a docent and they have a small visitor center.

If the Mare Island shipyard museum ever opens up again, i highly recommend it because it is HUGE and super old fashioned and sort of clearly beloved by the people who used to work there and created a lot of the exhibits. They used to build nuclear submarines ! There’s a little periscope in the cockpit of an old nuclear submarine (or whatever you call the spot in a sub where there’s a periscope) that you can look up into Vallejo from!

There must be more. And there should be more! Add suggestions to the comments and I’ll add them to the post!

Historic bricks from San Francisco City Hall

Posted on by Liz

San Francisco’s original City Hall was built (on top of a cemetery!) starting in 1872 and finally opened in 1879, to be actually completed in 1899. (You can see some interesting photos and more history of the old City Hall on FoundSF.) Just a few years later, City Hall was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, collapsing in a huge pile of stone, iron, glass, wood, and brick.

ruins of SF city hall, 1906

My house was built in the late 1880s or early 1890s – though I have not pinned down the exact date, it was definitely here by 1892, built with a few other similar Italianate houses on land next to the original farmhouse on Mission Street. We’re doing some excavating under part of the house, and found some bricks marked with the letters C H in a fancy serif font:

brick marked with a C H

We looked this up hoping to find a magical database of historical brickmarker marks and YES. That exists! At least for California bricks.

Our C H brick was made in the 1870s for San Francisco’s original City Hall! It was probably in that pile of rubble in 1906 (cleaned up by 1909 according to some sources). These bricks were clearly part of a retaining wall which got covered over by some dirt, gravel, and a cobblestone patio (“Belgian brick”) at a later date.

Our bricks database lists them thusly:

Remillard Brick Company
San Rafael, Marin County, CA
1872-1878 for San Francisco City Hall

And there’s further cool info about the Remillard Brick Company from Oakland Localwiki and from Wikipedia!

We found other bricks, stamped CALIFORNIA and with round rivet-like raised dots in the corners, that were part of another layer of patio and wall that is now under the back of our house. The California Bricks database identifies them as California Brick Company and W. S. Dickey Clay Manufacturing Company, Niles and Decoto districts, Fremont and Union City, County, CA, 1913-1926.

Around that time, in 1920 or so, a future mayor of San Francisco, John F. Shelley, lived in our house with his parents and siblings. As a young man he drove a bakery delivery wagon, then went to law school, then became head of the bakery delivery wagon drivers’ union, then served in the California Senate and US House of Representatives, then became Mayor of SF.

Danny found us a quote about the C H bricks, which looks like it may be about SF City Hall. I will need to find the book to be sure of the context of the quote, but it’s from Bricks and Brickmaking: A Handbook for Historical Archaeology, by Karl Gurcke:

The initials ‘C. H.,’ impressed in the brick of which our new City Hall is built, put there to denote that they were intended for that edifice, may (should they prove to possess the lasting properties claimed for them) become to the antiquar[ians] of the remote future a source of much worriment as they labor to decipher their probable meaning.

Here we are, the antiquarians of the remote future!

Really it’s hard to express how much I love our 150 year old, C H bricks! I’ll figure out how to work them into our garden somehow after the construction project is done! For now, our back yard is turning into a sort of brick museum.