Ponytails Unmasked!

An old friend in the 1990s once pronounced, "I don't trust women with ponytails."

It is an absurd declaration but one that came to mind while walking through the Marina District last Saturday afternoon.

The majority of people ignoring public mask advisories in the Civic Center neighborhood tend to be male, but the Marina District offers a glimpse of scofflaws from both genders.

In the case of one anomalous couple, it was the guy wearing the mask while the woman was not.

Most maskless couples, however, were engaging in the new ritual of ignoring their other half while looking at their mobile.

What was amusing was the outsized percentage of female scofflaws sporting ponytails while they checked their texts...

...or ate at tightly packed outdoor cafes...

...or walked their dogs...

...or jogged through crowds on the Marina Green.

In a pandemic where the numbers are rising, this kind of behavior is not sustainable, and is possibly murderous when walking around older people like the masked woman above.

In San Francisco, at least, we may have to amplify the public shaming because there really is no good excuse not to slip a mask off and on when walking in public.

As for maskless men riding bicycles on public sidewalks, I have become that old man on the lawn, except what I shout is, "Get off the fucking sidewalk! And put on a mask!"

Tilden Park Stroll

Visiting a pair of old friends in the East Bay a couple of Sundays ago, I suggested a nature hike, "ideally with no dogs, bicyclists, or elevation change." (All photos by Austin Newsom and Jim Roach.)

They knew just the place, Tilden Park in the Berkeley Hills.

Like many other Shelter-in-Placers, sluggishness has become the new normal.

Navigating our new pandemic reality has conjured up all varieties of new etiquettes, and it was a joy to see most fellow hikers slipping on masks when they got too close to each other on a narrow pathway.

I had not been to Tilden Park since the 1980s when I occasionally golfed at their rough-and-ready municipal course in a gorgeous canyon, and had forgotten what a treasure the unmanicured park can be.

We are going to have to figure out how to be outdoors together in a safe way because we need nature and we need other people. Creating those new protocols is going to be fascinating, a mixture of science and creativity.

On the way home, we stumbled into the BLM protest on the Bay Bridge where 50 vehicles blocked westbound traffic, and inched across the span for three hours. Possibly because the near-solstice sunset kept us gloriously entertained, the stranded vehicular crowd stayed mellow during the inconvenience, and a few cars turned up the music and made it an excuse for a dance party.

Larkspur Landing Trail

Last weekend we drove to Larkspur Landing in Marin County to check out a beautiful, flat walking trail along Corte Madera creek.

My preferred route to the trailhead is via the Larkspur ferry from San Francisco, always a gorgeous, inspiring boat ride, but Golden Gate Ferry service has been terminated for weekend trips during the COVID shutdown. That is a shame because riding outdoors on a ferryboat seems reasonably safe, unlike Muni or Caltrain.

The trail starts at the Larkspur Landing Ferry Terminal and winds under a series of freeways, highways, and rail bridges.

It soon opens up to marshland, the trail winding through low-rise housing developments with Mount Tamalpais towering over them.

I discovered this trail accidentally a couple of decades ago with my late spouse, Tony Hurd, and hadn't returned in many years.

The trail was still charming, but with an unwelcome development in the form of too many bicyclists racing by at potentially lethal speeds.

Kids and family groups tooting along on bikes are fine, but the Tour de France wannabes can be terrifying as they whizz by you from behind.

So we turned back after a mile...

...and followed a socially distanced power walking trio who looked like Marin County Fitness personified.

Juneteenth 2020

San Francisco Black Lives Matter protests, marches, and rallies have been passing under my apartment at Franklin and McAllister for weeks.

Yesterday morning, Juneteenth was being celebrated, and a honking line of cars with signage on windshields and hoods drove by in a circling route through Civic Center.

In the afternoon, the sound of motorcycles filled the neighborhood.

Nine SFPD motorcycle cops were monitoring a student march up Franklin Street to the SF Unified School District building.

The huge DEFUND SFPD signage carried by marchers was pointedly provocative.

The SF Police Department has nobody to blame for the sentiment but themselves. The SFPOA (San Francisco Police Officers Association) is one of many police unions across the United States that vigorously defend murderous, racist, psychopathic members in their ranks while ensuring the brutal status quo remains the same.

There were loudspeakers on trucks that were part of the march and a teach-in happened on the street. If you would like to get educated yourself, click here for a good Juneteenth website charting the history of the celebration that began in Texas in the 19th century, sputtered out in the first half of the 20th century but revived in the second half.

After the consciousness raising session we have all been through over the last month, thanks to the videotaped murder of George Floyd and his brethren and the outrageously violent response by police to protests, it looks like Juneteenth could eventually become a national holiday. I only heard about it in the early 1990s while on a gay softball team coached by Phred, a black man from Texas who would host a fabulous BBQ party in his Haight-Ashbury backyard every year.

After about an hour, the loudspeakers played music and the event turned into an impromptu dance party. The superfluous, unloved motorcycle police shrugged their shoulders and drove off.