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Ahh.. I do love living in San Francisco.. It’s been a fun filled few weeks.. Royksopp last week, Her Space Holiday and Stellastarr* this week (and all of those shows were during the week!).

Then, came the weekend.. Every year, the last weekend of September brings gorgeous summer-like weather and a fun-filled weekend of nonstop parties with the arrival of Love Parade and the Folsom Street Fair. It’s the second year of Love Parade in San Francisco, and this year’s route took the party right down Market street, ending up at the Civic Center (conveniently three blocks from my house). Hmm.. I find it a little odd that news.com covered it, but hey, that’s cool, I guess.

Anyway, it was awesome to be at a party in the middle of the day in the shadow of City Hall. Supperclub had a magnificent float decorated much like the Salle Neige, in all white, with two big beds on either end.. The Space Cowboys brought the Unimog as usual, and the good folks at Massive Selector put together a kickass float with Club Six. I spent most of the time with the Cowboys, who were playing sweet, funky breaks.. Crystal Method played on the supperclub float, which was incredible, so I was glad I got to see them..

Whoooo.. This week brings M83 at Mezzanine on Thursday and then Sigur Ros on Saturday in Oakland.. and then Z-Trip later that night at Mezzanine.. need.. more.. red bull… AND the new season of LOST has started.. so much to do!

All of my pics from loveparade are here.

Royksopp came into town last night, and played a show at Mezzanine.. Mezzanine was a fantastic venue for the show — I’ve only seen dj’s there, and the place sets up quite nicely for live acts.. The sound system was fantastic, so the rumbling bass that accompanies most Royksopp tracks was dutifully served — for most of the songs, I could feel my insides reverberating to the beat.. crazy. Annie opened for Royksopp — though she has a few great songs, the crowd didn’t really seem that into her, and for some reason, her sound was much more treble-y, and didn’t seem to work with the system there..

Mezannine has a few great shows lined up for the next few weeks — M83 on September 29th, then Z-TRIP is coming back to SF on October 1st.. .Z-TRIP’s last show was rockin, despite being at a crappy venue (the Regency).. I’m also seeing Sigur Ros on the 1st in Oakland, so that should be quite the busy night… The reviews of the Sigur Ros shows have been phenomenal, so I’m quite looking forward to that…

So much music.. so little time..

It was quite the busy busy labor day weekend.. This was my first labor day weekend in five years that I actually spent here in san francisco, since I usually am at burningman… This year, I held on to my ticket until the very last minute to keep alive the possibility that I might actually make it up there again, but it never happened. This year was the 20th anniversary of the event, and it sure did look like fun. Oh well.. Less than a year till the next burningman, I suppose..

The weekend was kicked off with a bang, with the wedding of my friends, Amy and Joe.. Their wedding was in Sausalito, and went off without a hitch. The ceremony was in this awesome little church atop a hill, followed by the wedding reception just across the street.. It’s been quite the wedding season this year already, this being my third, after Steve & Monnia’s and Jason & Bonnie’s… The reception was at the Alta Mira, which usually has a spectacular view of San Francisco (which was smothered in fog the whole day). Congrats Amy & Joe! (Oh yah, congrats to Steve & Monnia and Jason & Bonnie too.. albeit belated on the blog.. oops).

Sunday was marked by Paul M’s first evite’d event (welcome to the internets, Paul) — a bbq at the famed 629 Elizabeth house. We were graced by Korby’s return to SF for the weekend (it really seems like he didn’t move to NYC).. True to a San Francisco September day, the weather was actually quite warm, though a cold, foggy breeze rolled in midway through to remind us to not leave our jackets out of arm’s reach. As would be expected with any gathering of the jerks, there was an excessive amount of sausage present (both literally and figuratively), an ton of yelling, and copius quantities of beer consumed. Approximately 169 cans and bottles, to be exact. Paul had initially forecast beer consumption at around 80 beers, and clearly he underestimated the amount of beer consumed during several rounds of raucous asshole.

We groggily awoke Monday and headed for Tomales Bay, for oysters straight from the farm.. Ahh.. more bbq’ing and beer. We were quite weary from the previous night’s outing, so the beer drinking was actually kept to a minimum. The oyster eating was quite sweeeeet.. I highly recommend it — I mean, for like 8 bucks, you get a dozen oysters in a mesh bag that have just been freshly plucked right out of the bay in front of you.. delicious tasty goodness.

Yes, living in San Francisco is good.

Much like the memory maps that I annotated to illustrate what I remember from my childhood, the flickr desknote meme is composed of a bunch of people taking pictures of their desks and annotating the hell out of the resulting picture on flickr (so click over to look at what all these things are on my desk)…

I actually didn’t take this picture with the intent of adding to the desknotes group — I was chatting with Jason, a wedding photographer, and he mentioned that he’s started taking everything in RAW format as opposed to JPG… So, I tried it out.. RAW is impressively flexible and all, but for most pics I think I’ll still use JPG since it takes a lot more work to get the pictures viewable — and it takes a ton more space (about 2.5mb per picture as compared to 500kb).. and it’s slower.. but, you sure can make some neat pictures with it…

wow. that’s what happens when you dump 100,000 bouncy balls down filbert street with an air cannon. i guess it was for some commercial, and they supposedly picked them all back up.

Andy made me a brand new logo for dennisyang.com… Thanks Andy!

When I was a kid I had a little logo for myself that I used all over the place.. it was my initials, “DTY” but the “T” kind of extended up and over the D and the Y like a little umbrella or something.. I must have put that logo on like everything I owned, and lots of stuff I didn’t own. Man, I loved that logo, I’m not sure why I stopped using it.. Handwriting analysts would probably say that the mark didn’t really embody me since it put undue emphasis on my middle initial, which I hardly identify with.. I mean.. this is dennisyang.com not.. dennistyang.com nor dennistedyang.com

Yes, my middle name is Ted. Not Theodore. Just Ted. I used to tell people that my middle name was Tucker, after Preston Tucker, but I suppose I grew out of that too.

So, back a few months ago, I took this picture of a barn in Oklahoma.. I drove through the panhandle bit since I wanted to see what was up there to warrant such an odd drawing of state lines.. Nobody I talked to seemed to know why they decided to keep the panhandle bit, but I did find this barn…

My friend Ben had one of his photos picked as the KQED photo of the day, so I figured I’d submit my barn photo.. and voila.. I was chosen as the photo of the day for May 30th.. Yah, the KQED gallery is supposed to be “local focus”.. but they post pics from all over.. my plan is to submit some more photos from the bay area, but this is a good start..

w00t!

Last night was the Techdirt 25k party at the cigar bar.. in celebration of Techdirt’s 25,000th post.. Me and the many Mikes of Techdirt headed down and enjoyed a drink and a cigar down in downtown SF. Despite the nasty San Francisco drizzle/rain, and despite the premiere of episode III, we had a good turnout, and a good time seemed to be had by all..

Back in the heyday, there was some sort of happy hour or party like every night… since 2005 is the new 1999 and all, who’s gonna bring back the happy hours?

I’ve posted photos at flickr, tagged “techdirt25k“…

This weekend was Bay to Breakers… and what a glorious weekend it was.. Unlike past years, I chose not to start at the start. Since I live only a few blocks from the course, instead of waking up ass early at 7am and heading downtown, I chose to sleep in a bit and join up with the race at Hayes and Gough. So.. all in all, it took me about 6 hours to complete about 1/2 of the course.. that’s about.. um.. 3 miles in 6 hours.. not bad, yah?

Well.. I woke up before 8am anyway, and since I was up already, I decided that I’d try and get down to the course to see the “elite” runners run by.. I got to the course at about 8:10am, and by then, they were already long gone, having completed the entire 7.5 mile run in like 34 minutes or something. Oh well. I did get to see quite a few people run by… I never realized just how many people 70,000 are, but I guess in years past since you’re moving with the crowd, you don’t realize how many people that is..

As we passed one of the icky green ponds in the park, Jablow and Rob were convinced that they were going to take a little swim. Connie tackled Jablow while he was untying his shoe, which made him land headfirst into the pavement. Ow. His head made a nice thud, and Connie’s goal of getting Jablow to NOT swim was a success. Rob, on the other hand, snuck over to the other side of the lake, and dove right in, headfirst. Unfortunately, the pond was like 1 foot deep. OUCH.

So.. yah.. it was a good day despite the 2 head wounds (they’re ok).

It’s been an ongoing tradition to plan a trip whenever one of my friend’s turns 30, so this weekend was Korby’s birthday party in Vancouver… We all flew up to Seattle (since it was cheaper) and then drove up to Canada in a rented van. Kim made us all wear matching shirts.

Man, Vancouver is lovely. Clean city, cute girls, and cheap living — what more could you want? We saw a few places for sale in downtown Vancouver for like $250,000 CDN.. I think you can maybe buy a shoebox here in San Francisco for that. Crazy.

At the US-Canada border, Tom Kim chats with the border patrol:

“Hello.”
“Hello.”

“What was your purpose of your visit to Canada?”
“Uhhh… ummm.. Just looking around.”

“Hmm. So, what was your purpose?”
“Ummmm.. yah.. just looking around, you know.”

“Did you purchase anything in Canada?”
“Ummmm.. not really.”

“How do you know all of these people?”
“Ummm.. I don’t know.. I guess.. Ummm.. I used to work with him, I think.. and uhhh… I think they all went to college together”

“Please turn off your engine and open the door.”

Geez.. I mean, honestly… Tom Kim is the most suspicious innocent person I’ve ever met… “Not REALLY“?!?! Just looking around“?!?!? Haha.. man, maybe you “had to be there” but it was damn funny. Well, it was damn funny because we didn’t get cavity searched. That wouldn’t have been funny. Ok, maybe a little.

Anyway.. happy birthday Korby!