Palm Trees Poodle Cut

The palm trees at our joint in Palm Springs needed an annual haircut because they were shedding fronds and seeds rather dramatically.



The tree trimmers were a couple of recent emigres from Oaxaca, Mexico.



They had never climbed a palm tree, in fact, until moving to the Coachella Valley.



They certainly learned quickly and have turned into serious daredevils, as you can see in the YouTube video clip of one of the guys rappeling down a rope from the tops of the trees (click here).



The trimming job was really extreme, which is supposedly good for the trees, but they ended up looking like poodles who had been shorn of everything but a few pouffes on their tail and ears.



This did allow for a sliver of moon to pass through the newly denuded palms.

A Short Summer Break

Please excuse the long break, faithful readers. I've been attending to family. However, yet another installment of Palm Springs Life should be posted soon for your entertainment.

Wicked Real Estate Developers: No on G

The Florida-based crime novelist John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) was one of my favorite writers in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly his 21 Travis McGee novels which all had the name of a color in the title. The latter followed a fairly simple formula, which was having the sexy and cynical houseboat stud Travis Magee being hired to help somebody out of a jam, finding a woman in the process, and then discovering that the problem was much bigger and more evil than anticipated. The woman was usually killed at some point in a sexually sadistic manner by the villains, McGee would entrap the villains and either put them behind bars or make sure they ended in a watery grave, and an air of evil would emanate from the book long after it was finished. Another recurring detail is that the villains were invariably real estate developers destroying Florida.



MacDonald's acknowledged successor, who trades more in whimsy than hardboiled crime, is native Floridian Carl Hiaasen, who has written a dozen bestsellers over the last decade where the villains are invariably real estate developers destroying Florida.



The Lennar Corporation is a huge Florida real estate development company that could be out of the pages of either MacDonald or Hiaasen's books, and one of their particular specialties has been to buy out politicians on a national level so they can redevelop all the military bases that were decomissioned during Clinton's tenure as President. (Remember when there was, briefly, a balanced federal budget? That's pretty much how they did it.)



In any case, Lennar has been handed the redevelopment rights to Mare Island, Treasure Island and now Bayview/Hunter's Point through their close ties to the deeply corrupt local Democratic party structure, which is Pelosi, Feinstein, Willie Brown, Jr., and Gavin Newsom who are all figureheads for those who actually own everything. They are spending millions of dollars on a small election to make a few changes in the San Francisco planning code so they can continue poisoning the mostly black residents of Bayview/Hunters Point while building rich people's condos along the waterfront. They are also handing out money to black ministers and community leaders to drum up support through Sam Singer's public relations company, which stinks to high heaven.

I urge you to vote No on G today.

The Black and White Ball

The San Francisco Symphony's huge fundraiser in the Civic Center neighborhood returned after three years in a somewhat condensed form.



Previous editions sprawled all over the Civic Center Plaza, City Hall, Bill Graham auditorium and the Performing Arts Center...



...but this year's version had bands, food and drink along Van Ness Avenue between McAllister and Grove...



...along with various dance bands in Davies Symphony Hall and different levels of the Opera House and the Veterans Building.



In the basement cafe of the Opera House, Marcus Shelby's Jazz Orchestra made an appearance with the singer Faye Carol (above)...



...whose reputation in the Bay Area is almost as legendary as her Ming the Merciless fingernails.



At midnight, everyone gathered outside on Van Ness Avenue and waited for the "Midnight Surprise" while the Extreme Action band paraded through the crowd to the stage waving big disco flags.



The surprise turned out to be a short, spectacular fireworks show that sounded as if a bomb had gone off.



It was fabulous enough that the organizers are going to be hard-pressed to top it in 2011 when the orchestra celebrates its 100th anniversary.