Memo to the Oakland Museum:
The Portland OR Art Museum has a popular special exhibit featuring modern bicycle designs. More than forty bikes are on display, ranging from the ultra-compact Sachs Tango, which folds up almost into a briefcase, to the Smith Long John, one of the first cargo-carrying bikes. There’s also the Taga, a bike with a forward child seat that converts into a stroller; the Capo Elite, which features studs on the rear wheel and a skate blade in front, for cycling on ice; the Buddy Bike, with two seats side by side, and a number of bikes designed for all-out speed, with world records to their credit. The collection isn’t totally comprehensive — bike designers are a wildly creative lot — but there’s enough novelty, diversity, and ingenuity here to engage anyone who’s ever formed a fondness for these human-powered vehicles.
The show is drawn from the collection of Vienna bike maniac Michael Embacher. The Portland Art Museum cites a quote from Bicycling magazine naming Portland as the “vanguard of
American bicycling.”
OK, maybe Portland has more cycles per capita than any other American city, but there’s plenty of bicycle enthusiasm in the S.F. Bay Area.
How about it, Oakland Museum, can you bring this show here sometime?
I love it when an old friend makes good. Back decades ago when Joe and I and other troublemakers were running from one demonstration to another, we’d never have dreamed that one day Joe would have a gala reception for his work in San Francisco’s City Hall. But it happened July 11. Joe was there with a handful of ironworkers and other bridge builders, and a good crowd of many dozens of supporters. The lower level of City Hall showed more than a hundred of his photos in the hallways, and the beautiful North Light Court on the ground floor showed a selection of big enlargements in a museum-like setting. Seeing these spectacular images of workers doing heroic stuff, I felt for a minute as if I were in Moscow fifty years ago. But this wasn’t Socialist Realist poster art. These are real pictures of real people at work, turning architects’ blueprints into the gigantic and elegant structure that we all hope to ride across before the end of this year. If we needed reminding that structures don’t construct themselves, people build them, this is the gallery to drive that lesson home. Joe took enormous personal risks getting up to dizzying heights with minimal support in every kind of weather, and stuck with the project for many months. His is a monumental photographic achievement. People will be looking at his photos and going ooh and aah for as long or longer than the new bridge stands. I’m happy I was at the reception to shake his hand and congratulate him, and to have made this short video to spread the word about his great work.
Living in the San Francicsco Bay Area means getting familiar with fog. Fog can be annoying and dangerous, but it can also be beautiful. Fog has graced many outstanding photographs. Local photographer Simon Christen has upped the ante on fog photography. Using time lapse techniques and positioning himself before dawn at strategic vantage points in the Marin Headlands, and investing two years in the project, he has documented the flow of fog as a river. This is a meteorological documentary, and it is at the same time high art. See if you don’t look at fog with new eyes after seeing Christen’s video, titled Adrift. Be sure to expand it to full screen and have audio turned on. 
As the parent of two kids (well, they used to be kids) who have student debt to pay off, I heartily endorse the effort behind this video.
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