now with more santa cruz

after the pier, we went for a little hike. nothing strenuous, more of a nice coda to the day. there was this beautiful little stream at the halfway point. and then i took an accidental selfie, which came out ok.

that time we went to santa cruz

We went down to visit some friends on a saturday, and then we ended up staying on their fold out couch. It was nice: Sophie got to play with cats, and I got to not drive 2 hours back to the city. I the morning, we went for brunch and a walk out on the pier. The brunch place was this totally hippie place called jupiter, good food though. All done up for Halloween, which was in the middle of a week this year if memory serves. Anyway, Santa Cruz has a lot going for it. nice little amusement park, beautiful little downtown (getting a little commercial, but so is SF), and hiking right in town. That's the next post, though.

something about scale

There's an essay that I've been working on and thinking about for the last several years. I think of it as my essay on scale, and the photos end up being drawn mostly from SF, but from other places as well. It's about that moment when you look up and see the world as it is, and for just a moment realize how big things really are. There may be a better set of words to describe what I'm talking about. An actual essay, in addition to a photo essay? Maybe, but I need to at least figure out what I'm talking about first. Maybe it's also about my personal discovery of just how big the world is, and how small I am in it. The truth is these are just glimpses of something much larger; to take in the whole thing would kill you, or at least drive you bonkers. Or maybe it's not something you can look at the whole and understand. More like you can see a corner of it and understand the whole better. Looking up at the stars is seeing forever, and it just looks flat. Looking at mountains many miles wide and tall is the same; it's scenery. Introduce some perspective somehow, and suddenly things pop into place.

jacob's birthday party

Getting out there was an adventure. We waited to get on the Bay Bridge for 2 hours. I have no idea why, but for some reason, everyone was trying to get to SF. So, by the time we got to Pacifica, it was fairly late and most of the festivities had died down. I was just a dozen or so folks, sitting around a fire pit, playing banjo or bongos or bells, singing, drinking still more homebrew. There was also (unpictured) a dessert made of apples, with cinnamon, sugar, then grilled, which was amazeballs. A really nice night.