There are various Buddhas put on this earth who are about two steps ahead of everyone else in their understanding of the world, and who instinctively teach everyone else around them. Jack Fertig, who died of liver cancer at age 57 last Sunday, was one of them.
I know nothing about Fertig's youth or background, but he started his career as a young adult in San Francisco with a blaze of notoriety, as a radical gay lib prankster named Sister Boom Boom who was one of the founding members of the San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in the late 1970s. The face-painted, nun-garbed troupe were a collection of attention hogs, and Sister Boom Boom was the undisputed queen of media attention, particularly after he ran for the Board of Supervisors as "Nun of the Above" in 1982 and almost won. His campaign poster above that electrified the city is still the gold standard for hippie/punk subversiveness. It made fun of the straightlaced Mayor Dianne Feinstein while misspelling her name as Sister Boom Boom rode over City Hall's dome like the Wicked Witch of the West. Incidentally, he spent most of this period working a day job as a towel attendant at the gymnasium/pool of the old Jewish Community Center in Presidio Heights.
Fertig split from the Sisters early in the group's history, in an angry separation, but not before thoroughly enraging the entire Catholic establishment of San Francisco with public exorcisms of bigotry on the Lone Mountain campus of the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco.
He essentially disappeared from public life in in 1985 when he became a Living Sober adherent before that became fashionable, where he influenced the sobriety movement from the inside in innumerable ways. In the 1990s, when I ran into him again at the back of the Lone Star Saloon for the first time in a decade, he was a pierced, tattooed daddy bear (not pictured above, but you get the idea), before that whole scene became fashionable too. He had also become a professional, published astrologist.
The last time I ran into him was two years ago at a Proposition 8 protest in front of the California Supreme Court. He was wearing a kaffiyeh while holding a sign pointing out the hypocrisy of Christian fundamentalists, relating that he had become a practicing Muslim for the previous six years.
"What!?" We talked for a while and it was soon obvious that he hadn't lost his mind, but was as wise and visionary as he'd ever been, and I thought, "Of course. Way to stay two steps ahead of everyone, Jack."
On Tuesday afternoon, a truck filled with Boer goats arrived at the Presidio Golf Course for a two-week eating tour. They had been hired through a local company called Coastal Grazing, and Blayne Morris above was one of the goatherders helping to unload the animals.
According to their website:
"Goat grazing is a cost effective, ecologically sound way to clear land and promote growth of native grasses and beneficial plants, particularly for large acreages and difficult terrain. It has been proven to efficiently handle areas that are inaccessible or difficult to manage with mowers, areas where burns are inadvisable, and sensitive areas where the application of herbicides is not appropriate. Our goats restore plant species that better clean the air, reduce water pollution, prevent the spread of fires, eliminate mower emissions, and fertilize while they graze!"
Plus, they are cute as can be, and there are plans to keep a few near the clubhouse for a kiddie petting area while their compatriots chomp away.
According to a Presidio Trust handout, "The 250-300 Boer goats begin their culinary odyssey in an overgrown thicket behind the driving range. The hungry herd's two-week tour of duty will be spent chomping through weeds and transforming them into natural fertilizer, allowing native grasses to flourish. Once the unwanted vegetation has been eaten back, not only can errant golf balls be retrieved, but serpentine soil will be revealed. The goats' next stop will be a wetland area near the fourth hole now thick with thistle and hemlock."
On Tuesday, the goats looked overjoyed to be let out of their carriers and onto thick, green grass before their weed munching began in earnest.
The Presidio Trust also mentions that "the project is part of a broader effort to upgrade the course using sustainable means whenever possible. Improvements are planned for every hole and bunker on the course, including the creation of so-called 'fuzzy bunkers' using native plants and grasses. The result will be a course that is both more attractive and more challenging, with a less manicured and wilder look evocative of traditional Scottish links courses."
That is all wonderful news, except for bad golfers like myself. The course is challenging and difficult enough without having to hack out of "native plants and grasses" around the bunkers.
On their blog site, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum had promised free temporary tattoos depicting the giant red lotus in Civic Center plaza with the museum's upside down logo in the middle. They were supposed to arrive in time for the Gay Pride festivities in June but there were unspecified problems in shipment, so they have only belatedly just arrived.
According to a Yahoo Answers page, "In Hinduism, the lotus (Sanskrit: padma) primarily represents beauty and non-attachment. The lotus is rooted in the mud but floats on the water without becoming wet or muddy. This symbolizes how one should live in the world in order to gain release from rebirth: without attachment to one's surroundings."
As my friend Patrick Vaz often puts it, "Good luck with that."
There are San Francisco summer camps for kids galore, offering everything from windsurfing lessons to French language immersion. The one I would have wanted to attend, though, is the Creepshow Camp at the Hypnodrome in the South of Market neighborhood.
The two-week theatre camp has been led for the last six years by Thrillpeddlers director Russell Blackwood (above, with Flynn De Marco), and according to their website:
"Young devotees of Horror, Sci-Fi and Suspense have a summer camp to call their own! Creepshow Camps face “fright” with curiosity and creativity, revealing the secret techniques behind scary entertainments’ vitality and power."
The camp ends with a half-hour play featuring all the campers, and this Friday it was called Adventure Club Strikes Back! by Michael Phillis, where The Mystery Club above foolishly explore a haunted old schoolhouse and are turned into zombies by a malevolent grandmother.
They are eventually saved by their rivals, The Adventure Club and The Danger Club above, and through a turn of events not to be revealed, there is pizza at the end for all, including the audience. This is Lunch Theatre done right. If interested, call Russell Blackwood at (415) 377-4202 about last-minute enrollment in the fourth and final session that starts on Monday, August 6th.
