Neighborhood Tour

Last Sunday was a beautiful day, so I decided to walk around my neighborhood (and apartment) and take some video.  My friend Rhianon took some video of her life in Bentonville, Arkansas, and I was inspired to do the same thing.

My apologies that the video is shaky at the beginning, but it gets better.  It's a simple video... not much but my walking around my neighborhood and narrating a bit.

Video 1: My apartment, Duboce park, and Market Street

Video 2: Haight street, and the first part of Alamo Square

Video 3: The rest of Alamo Square

All three videos combined are about 20 minutes.  Enjoy!

P.S. Realization of the day: I am addicted to the Downton Abbey TV series on PBS (much like I am addicted to Game of Thrones on HBO).

Disconnecting experiment, part 1

To put the principle of disconnecting (that I talked about in a previous blog post) into action, at 11am this morning I turned off my cell phone, packed some reading materials (Wall Street Journal, a book on education reform, and the Atlantic Monthly), and rode my bike through Golden Gate park to Ocean Beach.  I could have taken the N Judah light rail (called the "Muni" in San Francisco) straight to the same spot, but decided that a bike would give me extra mobility once down there.  A recent edition of Sunset Magazine (a magazine about things to do west of the Rockies) had a 2-page article on the coffee houses and restaurants in Ocean Beach, so I put the article in my pocket and headed down to the ocean.

(It was in the high 60's today, sunny, and with a fairly warm breeze.  This made it a given that I would spend a good portion of the day outside).

So, I read the WSJ for the first hour while sitting on a bench near the beach, then rode a few blocks over to the heart of Ocean Beach.  The neighborhood feels like a surf community - much quieter than places like Huntington Beach or Santa Monica, and probably more like Santa Cruz (these are my only points of comparison re: beach towns).  There were a few choice coffee shops/brunch places.  I walked into a shop called the General Store (I think) - a low-key, design-esque shop with some coffee table books, a few t-shirts, etc.  Anyway, the most well known restaurant had an hour-long wait, so I biked a few more blocks to a bakery and had a curried chicken salad sandwich, with a biscuit as the bread.  I continued reading there while getting some sun, went back to the beach for a few minutes, then took the 71 bus straight back to Lower Haight (didn't feel like riding and wanted to keep reading my book on the bus).  

I lasted about five hours without my iPhone, and it felt... good.  During my experiment, the thought that my cell phone was turned off popped into my mind every once in a while, but I brushed the temptation aside.  I'm glad I did.

Ocean Beach, looking north

Back yard of the "General Store"

This is what many of the houses in Ocean Beach/Outer Sunset look like

Where I ate lunch: the Devil's Teeth Baking Company

Sitting on a sand dune before heading home

Good Feelin'

I'm diggin' this song (although the video is kind of lame).  Thanks to Spotify for getting me hooked on all of these types of songs...

Disconnecting

I've noticed an increase in the frequency of articles in the WSJ or NYT about the consequences of our constantly being on phones, the Internet, etc. Here is the latest one:

http://nyti.ms/u7fIA5

I've always aspired to disconnect - to have quiet moments of reflection and recovery. Moments of uninterrupted purity. For me, this desire involves an appreciation for the outdoors (where appreciating and contemplating simple things is most likely to happen), a belief (from personal experience and from science) that slowing down and disconnecting gives space for creativity and deeper thinking, and the self-knowledge that I simply need time and space (sometimes from people, sometimes from technology) to feel whole.

I was about to write something like "given the nature of my job, it is very difficult to disconnect.". But to be honest, it's probably more of a discipline problem than an inherent problem with my chosen profession. I COULD not check email for chunks of time during the day (the article mentions Intel had experimented with mandating employees do this), I COULD leave my cell phone at home for periods of time (the fallout of my friends and family not being able to text me and receive and immediate response wouldn't be as disastrous as I fear). And so on.

So, part of disconnecting comes down to discipline and knowing what your values are - do you WANT to disconnect?

I spent the past few days with my family in Mentone, Alabama, which is in the hilly Cumberland Plateau at the corner of Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. I turned off my cell phone for a couple days. To be honest, from the moment that I turned off my cellphone, I felt more at peace. Without the temptation of compulsively checking my email, I dove into reading the Steve Jobs biography (ironically, it was an iPhone that I shut down). Three days later I emerged having made a significant dent in the book, but more importantly having been able to focus intensely on one thing for a few days. The satisfaction that this focus and calm gave me was immense, and it felt... just right.

side note: Steve Jobs himself is a bit of a paradoxical figure because of his fanaticism for Zen, simplicity, and self-awareness contrasts with his role as a consumer products guru. Some people might be able to reconcile these two belief systems, but I think they clash. However, given the world we live in, Apple products are a hell of a lot more helpful than many other tech solutions when it comes to helping us simplify (but not disconnect). But I digress...

Anyway, post business school, I've had the chance to take more time for disconnecting, and am excited to continue down the path if finding the right balance.

My grandfather had a sign right above his desk at home that simply said "Slow Down." (not too hard to do in rural Tennessee where he lived). I like this reminder. Simplicity, disconnecting, quiet, slow, space. All of these ideas are a bit different, but are related in the sense that they offer a respite that I (and I suspect many others) need today in order to be at peace.

My Favorite Commercials

These are two of them from DC institution Eastern Motors.

Colin, are these ads still on in the DC area?  LaVar, Clinton Portis, Sean Taylor (with cameos by Carmelo and Brendan Haywood) - certainly a special time in DC sports history.

Please help me get comments for my FSG blog post

To everyone who reads this blog (I honestly have no idea who read this thing, but Google analytics tells me that people do)...

I just wrote my first blog post for FSG (the firm I work for) in their Education & Youth content area.  The topic is "Why Education Reformers Need Empathy."  The concept is simple: as more outsiders (i.e. those who haven't spent their entire lives teaching) adopt the label of "education reformer," we should ask ourselves if these people (myself included) have enough empathy to truly understand what goes on in a classroom, and in the education system as a whole.  It's a question that matters, and I'd love to hear your opinion.

So, if you have a moment, please read the blog post by clicking here and make a comment after your done reading.  Comments can be small or big - doesn't matter.

Thanks in advance.

My Bike Ride Today

Today I went on a solo ride from my apartment, through the Presidio, across the Golden Gate Bridge, then westward up toward the Marin headlands.  The next ride I'll go further into the Headlands.  This is why I live in San Francisco.

View of Chrissy Field from the edge of the Presidio:

This is what I wrote up (and then down).  I've always wanted to do this ride just to get to coast all the way down.  The ride up actually wasn't that bad... just went into a really low gear and pedaled steadily up the hill.

Old School... Parties, Summertime, and Chillin

I haven't posted to my blog in a while.  So there's this...

"It's long overdue, but now Philly's slammin'.  Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD.  The East Coast family..."
(a remastered version is available on Spotify, by the way)



And this...

"It's Friday night and I feel alright.  The party's here on the West Side.  So I reach for my 40 and I turn it up, designated driver take the keys to my truck..."


And because I can't help myself...

"Guys out huntin and girls doin' likewise, honkin' at the honey in front of you with light eyes..."



And why not... perhaps my favorite song of all time

"Just wakin' up in the morning gotta thank God, I don't know but today seems kinda odd.  No barkin' from the dogs, no smog.  And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog."

When San Francisco is Wrong

I woke up this morning, read a book in bed, made breakfast, and ate while listening to some bluegrass (I usually listen to "back porch music" on Sunday evenings - tradition that I've created for myself in the past few years).  Sounds like a pretty good Sunday morning, right?  Well, it's been nice, but it's not the same.

Sunday mornings outside of the South just don't seem right.  I want to listen to bluegrass in the region where bluegrass is authentic.  I want to sit down with the Birmingham News and read about all our corrupt politicians.  I want to sit at the kitchen table and just... be there and stare out the window at the bird feeder and our cat lurking nearby.  I don't really want to go to church, but I want the option.  I want to go to a diner and be surrounded by old people.  On Sunday mornings I also want space - parks, roads, and back yards that the South provides in abundance.

Of course, I could recreate most of these things in California.  However, the memories of these things are too tightly linked to the feeling of being home - whether in Birmingham, Memphis, Newbern, or Durham.  The closest Cracker Barrel is in Arizona.  Ahem - this aint right.

Seattle music

Sent from my iPhoneGotta love this. Walking around Seattle and I see a poster for two classic Seattle bands.