#293: Fisherman's Blues

Monterey, CA

So I'm aware that blogging is dead (as is the novel, as is the Irish language, as is most everything I've devoted my livelihood to as of late, f**k the pundits), and yet..

I have this compulsion. This need for completion. The unfinished number line was bothering me. The lack of an obsessive public project, the want of an outlet to share a small piece of what makes me happy every day, was bothering me. So let's just say I'm going to keep this countdown going now that I've kicked it back to life and see if I can't make it back down to #1 after all.

On a blog that loves typography, there are days when the number is the star of the show. Then there are those days when you have to step back and let the wooden fisherman have his moment in the limelight. Here's to the fine yellow-jacketed seafaring gent I found one day while wandering around the piers in Monterey, California. He looks so pleased with himself and his catch that I couldn't resist.

#354: To the Left

San Francisco, CA

Sure it's a bit left of center, but I wouldn't expect anything less from San Francisco.

#106: Tile Style

San Francisco, CA

#141: Santa Cruzin'

Santa Cruz, CA

We never did make it to the famed Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, but we had plenty of mysterious things to keep us busy on our stopover in Santa Cruz. We camped on a hill near an old hippie bus, sang songs around the campfire, and had temporary visions of living on our own commune till our need for wi-fi and bar fights took over and we hi-tailed it out of there on our motorcycles. Just kidding. We'd never get that excited about wi-fi. Today's number was taken from our gracious host Nick's mailbox, which was painted up real purty.

#142: Letters to Santa Monica

Los Angeles, CA

The only Santa I grew up knowing in the Midwest was the guy in the red fatsuit. California swiftly took care of these gaps in my awareness. I'm a cold-weather gal with more east coast than west in me -- not to mention a complexion more ghost than most -- so imagine my shock when I went to L.A. on tour with Balthrop, Alabama and it turned out to be, like, totally cool.

We took some time out of our west coast tour two summers ago to hit the Santa Monica beach, and fortunately for posterity, Miss Georgiana Starlington was on hand with her omnipresent video camera to capture our impressions of L.A. in her famous "What's Your Favorite Thing About..." series. Well, famous in our van, anyway. The wind was blowing sand in our faces and into the camera microphone that day, but I think the overdubs were really tastefully done.

The title of today's post comes from an über-catchy song composed by our banjo player, Cotton Tyler Guin, also known as Andrew Vladeck. We recorded it in DUMBO's own Saltlands studio this summer and one of these days y'all will get to snap your fingers and sing along to it. Along with that cool new album we've been threatening about for awhile.

#206: Pawn Shop

Santa Monica, Los Angeles

#272: Slanted & Enchanted

San Francisco, California

#346: San Francisco Steps

San Francisco, CA

#343

#343, San Francisco, CA

#342

#342, San Francisco, CA

In my alternate life, where all notebooks are Moleskine and all shoes Made in Italy, where entrance hallways are not lined with peach bathroom tile and front doorways are unencumbered by seven layers of sticky black paint, this is what the entrance to my home looks like: angular, architectural, clean, and well-designed. Up those steps, a bright studio awaits me with slanted windows, a wall of exposed brick, and all the fixtures stone or brushed steel. I sit at my ergonomic desk sipping espresso, contemplating my orange Bigso Box of Sweden files that are, of course, impeccably organized. I open my Mac and sentences of elegance flow from my well-manicured fingers.

What really happens when I get home is I shove my weight against a heavy black door (after wrestling the obligatory ten seconds with the lock that always sticks), trudge up the crooked steps with three visible layers of manky linoleum in various states of decay. I pass the inexplicable mish-mash of nightmare knick-knacks my neighbor on the second floor has installed on a wicker shelving unit in the hallway: ceramic bullfrogs holding stone tablets that say I Love You, Easter bunnies grossly out of season bearing white taper candles, and I wonder as I shove open my front door what I'd ever do if I tried to find a right angle in my apartment. Die of shock, probably.

Still and all, in a chaotic apartment in Brooklyn, things fall into place. The rough draft in its many pieces hardens into something sharp and complete, the windows let in fresh air, and unfettered by perfection, I work. I plan. I craft. And it's good. Damn, it's good.

#335

#335, San Francisco


File this one in the "numbers that look like their cities seem to suggest" folder. It'll go well along with the fabulously glitter-spackled Chelsea hair salon at #328, the timber lodge Branson, Missouri fish at #218, and the rugged, distressed #85 at the chic hotel adjacent to Brooklyn's notorious House of D, the now-defunct juvie detention center. (Not to be confused with the David Duchovny film by the same name from earlier this year -- for the 0.002% of you who saw that blow past like so much tumbleweed.)

This unabashedly cheery mosaic decorates the Katherine Michiels School on Guerrero and 25th Street in San Francisco's hilly and highly respiratory Mission District. The school, a stately, symmetrical architectural charmer, is one of many San Fran style Victorian dollhouses that look almost too cute to inhabit. In fact, I don't think anyone actually lives in half of these houses, and if they do, I don't know what they do when they want to slam a door once in a while. While I don't routinely go in for decorative rainbows (those who've been following along know I belong more to the skull-and-crossbones set), there's no harm in trying to make going to school more inviting. &7 Seal of Approval is hereby duly given.

Now that I think about it, a school adorned with a cheery skull and crossbones mosaic might not be such a bad idea. I'll have to have my people draw up some sketches and get back to your people. Zaha Hadid it ain't, but in this recession, it'll have to do.

#293

#293, Monterey, California

Thanks, jolly fisherman. I haven't had an ambassador for my numbers that wasn't a skull (see here and here) in quite some time. Perhaps he'd like to meet his Midwestern counterpart Murf? He's a bit of a landlubber, that Murf, but dude can deliver your mail and fix your washing machine in fifteen minutes flat.

#285

#285, San Francisco

#273

#273, San Francisco

Oh, California. You've always got so much to say. Since this door leaves little to the imagination about the dweller's political preferences or what breed of animal lurks inside (the oval blue sticker below the 273 says "Wag more, bark less") , I thought it'd be fun to psychoanalyze it for other personality quirks.

Now I'm no expert, but I think you can learn a lot about a person by the design choices they make and choose to share with the world. Notice, for example, how the signs and stickers are lined up: centered and perfectly level, almost in descending order by size, showing a perfectionism not usually seen in the public stickering sphere. Clearly, this person is an obsessive freak, like me. The close juxtaposition of the "Welcome Friends" and "Beware of Dog" might indicate a split personality or indecisive nature. (Or maybe they meant to say "Welcome Dogs" and "Beware of Friends." This is the west coast, after all.)

Even the layout of the numbers points to that so-called rugged individualism San Franciscans are known for. The number plates and typeface are uniform, but here they're sloped to add a bit of visual interest, much like yesterday's slanting 272. I may not have a career in psychoanalysis for buildings, but I do have an armchair degree in speculative architectural nonsense. And trust me, if there's one place in this great country of ours where I could claim this with pride, it's California.

#272

#272, San Francisco

It was so cold that July afternoon in San Francisco, the numbers put themselves in italics. I found this one on a quiet street in the Mission district in between sound check at the Elbo Room on Valencia and a dinner that consisted of burritos the size of my head. Ever since I first heard American Music Club's album San Francisco, the city -- with its odd combination of cold and California -- has always had a certain degree of romance. An afternoon stroll through San Francisco's chilly, brightly colored streets and improbable doll house houses was just what I needed in the middle of a tour that mostly made up of Arizona desert, crowded vehicles, and hot stage lights. The slopes, the streets, the flower boxes, and the fog: I could get used to this, I thought to myself. Even if it is on that other coast.

#213

#213, Los Angeles, CA

#188

#188, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California


You might remember Carmel-by-the-Sea, the beautiful coastal town in California with the odd affliction of no house numbers. Me taking a vacation there was a bit like a teetotaler going on a pub crawl, but I made do. Bereft of my usual places to look for numbers, I had to look elsewhere. Down, in this instance. This 188 comes from a plaque in front of the Tor House, the residence of Robinson Jeffers. In 1914 Jeffers moved to Carmel and built his house out of stones, bit by bit, where he lived for the rest of his life, writing poetry in the mornings and building stuff in the afternoons.

Many years ago, when I was living something of a lonely life in Dublin, a friend of mine who was an excellent letter writer also sent me the Jeffers poem Divinely Superfluous Beauty. It's a poem I still come back to.

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,
Over and under the ocean ...
Divinely superfluous beauty
Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes trees grow
And hills tower, waves fall.
The incredible beauty of joy
Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our loves too
Be joined, there is not a maiden
Burns and thirsts for love
More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals while the wings
Weave like a web in the air
Divinely superfluous beauty.

#162

#162, Los Angeles

I had to cheat in Los Angeles. In that vast land of highways and endless roads, it seemed every number I found was a four-digit number, and this just wasn't flying with my particular Julian calendar. So I did a little creative cropping. (My game, my rules.) I was wondering if anyone would notice. But of course you would. You're smart like that.

I was totally confused by the lack of sidewalks and the where's-the-downtown downtown, but I felt a real affinity for the type on buildings in L.A. Great numbers, there were few, but the artistry and color in the hand-painted signs was great eye candy. Plus, a canary yellow building looks good in a place where the sky is always blue.

#150

#150, Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

Not to make light of it, but all of my L.A. photos are basically drive-bys, sniper photography, just-point-the-lens-out-the-window-and-shoot variety. There is no strolling around Los Angeles, there is only driving. The freeway's rock crushes the sidewalk's scissors, so to speak, and if you're lucky enough to see a number under 3000 on a building, then you'd better catch it quick before it's spirited away behind a curtain of palm trees and some suntanned jerk's souped-up convertible. In fact, there was a fourth number off to the left of this one which was conveniently obscured by some blurry obstacle. It stands well on its three good legs and I like that till now, no one else ever looked at this wall and thought, with satisfaction, "150."

Midwestern by birth and East Coast by disposition, I find the whole West Coast lifestyle fascinating. I look at California the way a kid regards a big, beautiful bug trapped in a jar, unsure whether I should let it go free, stare at it all day long, or just tear its wings off trying to dissect it. Not to hurt it on purpose, only because I'm just trying to figure out what makes it tick. I'm Margaret Mead among the Samoans out there in sunny, laid back California and I've got the pale complexion to prove it.

And take the architecture. (No, really, take it.) All that minimalist glass and steel colliding with mission revival houses, that skyline that could be Baltimore, no, Pittsburgh, no, what do you mean this is downtown? zips past so fast there's no time to process it all. There is no center. "Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city," is how Dorothy Parker, ever the East Coaster, christened the City of Angels. As for my part, I shouldn't be too quick to judge, but what fun is that. And I've seen, what: three? Four? Ten of those suburbs? See, I can't even tell.

Anyway, Wilshire Boulevard was just hotel after hotel, palm tree after palm tree, and a handful of signs that told me I was in Beverly Hills. But I'm sure I'd have seen much more to this sprawling, cryptic metropolis, if only I'd had the time to look at anything beside the rearview mirror.

#117

#117, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Carmel-by-the-Sea is the only decent-sized town in America - to my knowledge - to have the peculiar affliction of no house numbers. Mail arrives to its inhabitants on last names and cross streets alone, on a wing and a prayer as they say, and hopefully in the hands of a competent postal service employee. So what's a number aficionado to do, let loose on these mean, anarchic, un-numbered streets? Why, look harder at everything else, of course.

The postal bugle is one of those long-standing images that has a comforting universality. I've spotted the symbol elsewhere in my wanderings (in Dublin - though minus the crown, naturally) and love the simplicity of the image. And the bright red's a nice touch as well.