For those of you who have never seen it, the space needle gets dressed up for the holidays – there’s a tree on top. And one of the radio towers on Queen Anne turns into a tree. And several of the buildings downtown get their lights – one of them is wearing a Santa hat and another has a package on top and a third looks like candy.
Yup, that’s a Yoda finger puppet. Looks like he’s sticking his tongue out! But at least they’re sharing a candy cane. Happy Holidays.
Actually, a few days before Christmas up to Christmas eve, but close enough. Happy Holidays everyone!
Pretty groovy sunset tonight – and check out those weird wispy clouds behind the towers. A sight that could melt even the Grinch's heart.
It’s a little hard to photograph because the ships have a tendency to, well, drift, but here’s some shots of the Christmas ships on Lake Union. The photos don’t do it justice – there’s dozens of ships all lit up and they do a parade around Lake Union and Lake Washington and then gather near Gasworks parks and pump some Christmas tunes, and I mean gospel renditions that you can hear a mile away. I think that gasworks park is the best place to see the gathering – but at 35 degrees I’m content to watch from my patio!
Happy Holidays everyone,
Margaret
(And yes it is freaking cold!)
Day one was on foot; day two was on a bike. Plenty of bicycle rental places around here, and I hopped on one to explore other parts of the city. I rode past the hippies on Haight and through Golden Gate Park, which is SFO’s answer to Central Park, but with more trees. There are a couple of interesting museums which I did not have a chance to visit (including the Academy of Sciences) and a number of bison. At the end of that you reach… the ocean. The tide was out, which is cool since there are these neat sculptures on the beach and some pretty awesome graffiti on the seawall (which for some unknown reason insists on uploading sideways).
I then went back through the park and up to the Presidio area, where you get a nice view of the city. From there you ride to the Golden Gate bridge. The guy at the rental place was telling me that the bridge can be nasty when it’s wet, and I believe it – the bike/pedestrian path is sidewalk material and that can get slick. But it was sunny out so no worries. No vertigo either – the railing does a good job of blocking the view down unless you walk right up to it, and when I was on the bike I was focused on the ground. I did stop a couple of times for the view and it is a great view.
At the other side I rode down into Sausalito. Fascinating town – whoever though it was a good idea to stick a town in to the side of a very steep hill was nuts, but it’s a neat little waterfront area. I didn’t have much time to linger since I needed to catch a ferry. The ride back was great and gave some great view of the bridge, Alcatraz, and the City.
I got back to the city just before 3pm and my flight out was at 5:55 so I pretty much rode over to the Ferry Building, had a slice of cake and headed back to return the bike. I got to the airport in time to order a sandwich to go and board the plane. The flight out was beautiful – crystal clear with a great view of the city at night. The folks next to me were playing a card game that made no sense, but didn’t seem to notice that I’d been riding a bike for five hours and hadn’t taken a shower. J
A great trip and Seattle is back to normal – 45 and raining beats 22 and sunny any day.
Yesterday didn’t count since it took place in airports and airplanes. Today O-Berry and I headed out on foot to explore the city. We walked up through China Town – which seems to consist of the same tourist junk of every other tourist trap, but in faux ivory with red ribbons – to bakery town, which is what appears to exist just past China town. We had lunch at a random bakery and continued to walk through the city and up some nice hills and over to Ghirardelli Square, where we were plenty ready for a sundae. We walked down to the water to see The Rock (Alcatraz), which is actually a nice-looking little island with some nice colors in the rocks and greenery mixed in. We then went over to Pier 39 to get a sweatshirt for mom (which is quite comfortable) and then walked along the water there to the Ferry Building for some Dim Sum and tea.
It was fairly Seattle-like out (or, what Seattle is supposed to be: 50 and rainy), but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and I don’t need to head for the airport until about 4 so we’re going to rent a bike and head over to Golden Gate Park, along the coast and then over the bridge. I’ll let you know the vertigo factor on this…
I’d never heard of him before, but I appear to be in his room. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra My hotel has all of the rooms named after famous (?) people, and I’m in his. For an anarchist, his décor ain’t so bad. There are Paleozoic-sized paisleys on the wall, and old-fashioned manual typewriter on the table (love it) and gaudy silver chairs. I actually quite like it – it beats the cloned IKEA wonders of other hotels. There’s a Cheech Marin room down the hall; one wonders if that is also non-smoking…
The flight over wasn’t hell, but it was definitely a level of purgatory. It left an hour late due to weather in SFO (no surprise there) but the fun part was coming in – we were put in a holding pattern not above the weather but in it. So for half an hour we flew around in circles in turbulence. Fun. The gal sitting next to me was going to a wedding – at 4pm. We landed at 3:55. I’m not sure she made it. She changed into her dress in the restroom on the plane – not sure how she managed to do that. She was supposed to come in on the flight leaving SEA at 9:30, but apparently the brakes on the that plane weren’t working so everyone got bumped to the next flight. She was drinking Jack and Ginger Ale on the way over.
The 5th was the Drawing Jam at Gage – 12 hours of live models and music – the most fun you will ever have drawing. I made it through 6 hours. Loads of fun and a few decent drawings.
We had a character from Teatro ZinZanni – she had this great sprayed-on leather outfit, complete with whip and tail – and platform shoes that I’m sure took a while to learn to walk in.
Another model was a beautiful black women in a white dress with a huge white feather wig – I decided to try out the white chalk on this one. Fun to draw the whites.
And of course the usual array of your typical life models. 20 minute poses for each of these:
And my personal favorite – a drag queen dressed as nurse chapel. It’s hard to draw a guy dressed as a girl – you think “she” and start drawing but then think “that’s too masculine” so you change it but then realize, no it is a guy. It’s a weird way to draw and it throws you, but she was great. She had the whole outfit including the go-go boots and did these action poses where she held out her phaser (actually a garage door remote, I think) with a great expression on her face! She called herself Sylvia Ostayformore and there was bossa nova music playing in the background. It was a great end to the day:
No, not screaming mobs of people. The weather was nice so I went for a walk and took my sketchbook. Fingers were a little cold but not too bad. These sketches are from the University Bridge, which offers some nice views mixed with occasional bouts of vertigo.
“Fall” is quickly becoming “fell” and it’s becoming harder to draw since my hands get cold!
