Last night there was a huge Pillow Fight in downtown San Francisco. It was awesome. There was about 300 pillow fighters, another 100-200 spectators, tons of feathers and flashes going off, a few kids, a few people dressed up, but mostly peeps fresh outta work with a pillow and a smile.
I was having a slow day at work, so i busted out early to participate. I called my friend Juan, who had not heard of it, but he was down (heh). So i grabbed some $10 pillows from bed bath beyond and we headed over. Unsurprisingly, i ran into lots friends, including Jason and Monica in this awesome pic.
I love that i still have friends that prefer a pillow fight to rushing home for hallmark holidays like valentine’s day.
The cool thing was how it started – online and word of mouth just a couple weeks ago. San Francisco was not the first city, but this was the first time in SF. Wikipedia had info on it, but i think it was Rene’s Craiglist post that got the ball rolling here in SF, also appearing on Laughing Squid. The local news showed up as well, and a story appeared in the SF Chronicle
Halloween is prolly my favorite holiday – everybody dresses up, decorates their house, and eats candy. San Francisco loves halloween almost as much as burningman – if you’ve ever been to the castro for halloween you’d know what i mean – its like mardi gras in New Orleans but EVERYBODY is dressed up. 
Normally i don’t do much decorating, and i think i’ve only carved like 5 pumpkins in my life, but this year i made my best jack-o-latern ever. My friend steph had people over for dinner and pumpkin carving a week ago, and she bought these carving kits. At first i was like .. lame (i don’t need any help with MY carving! heh) .. but then i flipped thru the book that came with it and saw really cool designs, so i decided to make the wolf. It took me almost 2 hours, but i was going slow and chillin’ with my friends, but it was definitely worth it. You impressed? As a side note, the pumpkin only lasted about 4 days before the mold started going crazy. At least we got pictures. Thanks Steph!!
I love San Francisco, i really do, especially the haight where I live. But i do miss these things called “seasons” that the rest of the country gets to enjoy. A couple weeks ago i finally made it up to visit my friend suzi in seattle, washington, where autumn is just beginning. We both wanted to go hiking/camping, and planned a trip to centail washington – Lake Chelan. It was awesome. 
It’s about 3-4 hours east of seattle on the dry, other half of washington state. Due to fear of rain, we stayed at a hotel in the town on the southern tip of Lake Chelan. The lake is 55 miles long, and about 2 miles wide – and to get to the northern tip you must take a ferry – no roads. We missed the ferry, and hiked a nice 7-8 mile roundtrip to Pot Peak (google maps). That was perfect. We also did some wine tasting (pretty good wine, and really friendly wine pourers) and had a nice dinner. On the drive back we stopped in this town called leavenworth, WA, which was made to look entirely like a bavarian village. You totally felt like you were in germany – even the starbucks had their sign in a special bavarian font. We only stayed a couple hours and then headed back to seattle, but right when we left we past the most beautiful spot on the side of the road (Hwy 2). Now thats the seasons i’m talking about.
I did get to see a bit of seattle – suzi’s neighborhood, including the Fremont Troll. The troll is basically a carving under the fremont bridge – check out the link for a dope picture. We drove around, she pointed out where dave mathews hangs out, saw her office, the seattle space needle, blah blah blah. But I especially love this lake by her house – green lake. She showed it to me in the evening right after it rained and we got to see the most amazingly beautiful rainbow. In fact, it sprung right out of my head. My mom always told me i was worth more than a pot of gold.
On my way to morocco, around August 10, I stopped in New York for a few days to visit the beautiful Shayna Cohen. She’s currently an intern at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, about 2-3 hours north of manhattan. She’s one of 4 6-month interns that are there primarily to work on their own art, but they also get to do lots of chores inside and outside this mini-campus farm-like school. The town is tiny, surrounded by lots of other tiny towns, with some old homes dating back to the 1600’s – way cool. But there are tons of outdoor nature adventures to be had.
We had 2 outdoor adventures – one was tubing down this river, the other was climbing mountains in mohonk preserve. The tubing was super fun – the water was cold at the start, mainly because we just got rained on, but then the sun came out and warmed us right up. Mostly the river was chill, but we had a few rapids that got my adrenaline pumpin’, one of which was too much for shayna and tossed her out. Luckily she survived. Mohonk was much more chill, hiking thru the woods, then climbing rocks to the summit, where we had an amazing view. I LOVE Mountains. Besides the outdoors, We also did lots of chillin’ … saw march of the penguins in rosendale’s only theater, eatin’ sushi in the nearby town, and general tom foolery. Pretty much the most relaxing and possibly the best vacation ever. I wanna go back.
On Aug 27, a few weeks ago, i was lucky enough to attend Paul and Anna’s wedding reception in Golden Gate park. Besides being an awesome couple, they did it right – a casual affair, just friends and family in the sunshine in the park to celebrate their wedding. Sadly, i didn’t get any great shots of the couple, but i did get this awesome bubble shot – when you look at the original size you can see me taking the picture as well as some other people in the background.
