dennis yang dot com

After celebrating Andy’s Birthday tonight (Happy Birthday, Andy!), we had a little 3.7 magnitude earthquake at 10:50pm, centered near Berkeley.. I definitely felt it — it started off slow, kind of like.. wubba-wubba-wubba-wobbly, and then.. BAM, a really hard jolt. It was the biggest quake that I’ve felt in recent memory, and Bailey’s first quake.. Supposedly dogs can feel quakes a lot earlier than we can, but she didn’t seem to notice it until the jolt at the end — I guess trusting her as an early detection device isn’t such a great idea..

Andy pointed out that exactly three years ago, on his birthday, there was a 6.5 magnitude quake… Hmm, I guess something about that day is quake-friendly. I was on my computer at the time, so, of course I immediately did a google search for “earthquake” (and also twittered it). Doug and I were chatting afterwards, and he says “i think google queries for “earthquake” are a pretty good sign of activity.” — which, in turn, made me wonder:

If you were able to get the number of queries for “earthquake” and plot it, with location, on top of a map of the Bay Area, would it look very similar to the shake map above? C’mon — someone at google send me the data*… I’ll make the pretty chart.

* Yah, I know there’s inaccuracies of getting someone’s location by IP and blah blah blah, but still.. I bet someone at google is working on solving that little problem — like they could correlate an IP address or cookie with the most commonly used address that someone puts into google maps when they ask for directions or something… Hmmm.. now we’re talkin’

It’s my favorite time of the year.. hooray for the holidays. “Dennis’ Xmas Mix 2006″ is done and ready to distribute (ask me if you want one), and I’m even almost all done with my holiday shopping..

This Saturday was Santarchy aka Santacon here in San Francisco.. Approximately 500 Santas descended upon Fisherman’s Wharf around noon, and then proceeded to wreak good cheer and mayhem upon the unsuspecting tourists and residents of San Francisco..

After starting off at Hooters, the group wandered up Hyde, and then to the top of Lombard, blocking traffic, of course, as we all meandered down the crooked street. After Lombard, we headed for Washington Square Park, where free beer and hot dogs were distributed (Santas are hungry and thirsty) and a wicked game of Twister was played.. But then.. when a wedding come out of the church on the park, we all mobbed like some sort of wicked swarm of red bees..

After leaving the wedding, we continued to North Beach, where we frequented several NoBe bars, ultimately ending up at good ol’ Larry Flynt’s place… Oh.. good times, good times. It was quite a scene.

Most of my pics are here. (Yah, ahem.. some aren’t posted.)

So.. the fantastic folks over at Shine have this neat-o photobooth in the back that takes your pic and automagically posts it onto flickr.. Yah, it’s kind of geeky.. but what would you expect from a place that is at 1337 Mission… (and if you get THAT reference, then you are truly geeky).

Anyway.. Brian made a kickass timelapse video of the photobooth.

I’m in there somewhere.

This weekend was the San Francisco Classic, which is a Vespa rally that has been going on for like forever… (formerly it was the King’s Classic)..

About 200 scooters showed up for the Sunday ride, which went all around San Francisco, ending up in Golden Gate park for a BBQ… Andy took some great photos of the event, including one of a nicely restored version of my scooter, Gail (a ’64 Vespa GL)..

Robin and Dan came over last night for dinner (and Robin made this super TASTY macaroni and cheese, mmmm.. thanks Robin!) Anyway, we played Katamari Damacy for a bit.. so fun!

Katamari Damacy is one of those ingenius videogames that could only come from the crazy folks over in Japan.. You’re basically a little dude that’s rolling a ball around the world, and anything that you run over that’s smaller than you sticks to you — which makes you bigger — which means you can then roll up bigger and bigger stuff. It’s a lot simpler than it sounds, but it’s insanely fun and addictive. Anyway, take that and add a little dose of San Francisco Bay To Breakers… and you get.. Katamari Bay To Breakers!! Haha.. if they actually get this thing together, it’d be pretty amusing to see a huge ball of junk rolling down the street.. Grr… I think this year I’ll need to be sitting on the sidelines watching, unless someone wants to roll me around..

[Found at Metroblogging SF although I now recall that Dan mentioned something about it last night]

The first day that I got here to San Francisco, I was strolling around downtown San Francisco when I stumbled on a huge gathering of bicyclists at Justin Hermann plaza.. Critical Mass.. Well, it’s been eight years now and I still have never ridden in one, until yesterday.. I met up with Max and his awesome bike that he just finished at Justin Hermann (along with a few hundred other cyclists).

On account of the San Francisco-y weather, kind of drizzly and cold (typical for late January, I’d say), the mass wasn’t nearly as large as I’ve seen in the summer, but there was still a good turnout.. The ride left around 6:30pm, and we went up Market street, past City Hall and up Van Ness. Yes, traffic was snarled for blocks all around, much to the dismay of many irate drivers. Pedestrians were allowed to pass through the mass, and throes of onlookers, most with smiles on their faces, cheered us on from the sidewalks.

Critical mass isn’t really an organized event.. it’s an “unorganized coincidence” of bicyclists, so it was kind of cool to ride in the whole thing, not really knowing where it was going.. Since the group went right by my house, I just dropped out of it there, but from what I hear, riders went all the way up Russian hill amongst other places.

Anyway, it was a safe ride with no real hassles or arrests as far as I could tell.. although I hear the New York ride had some trouble.. eek.

Last night was La Dia de Los Muertos here in San Francisco… An estimated 15,000 people took part in the procession, which started at 7pm in the outer mission.. I joined up with Max, Nancy and Pang there. Pang’s friend Siouxsie is one of the organizers of the event, and one of the neat things is that a lot of it sounds relatively organic… I didn’t really see any promotional things about it, it just kind of gets known through word of mouth, including a lot of the bands and people that attend the events..

The procession was an assorted group of people, about half of which were dressed in some sort of skeleton-like or ghoulish costume.. This was very much the opposite of the festivities in the Castro a few nights before.. No hordes of stupid drunk people at all.. kind of nice. Lots of people were holding lit candles, giving the procession a kind of somber, yet celebratory feel to it. Nobody seemed to really know the route that we were supposed to take, but eventually we happened upon Garfield park in the outer mission, where Siouxsie and her crew had set up a bunch of altars..

But.. before going to see the altars, we took a little detour and walked through Balmy Ave, which was right there.. I’ve lived here for eight years now and I’ve heard about the murals in the Mission, but I’ve never seen them.. They’re sooo cool. I’m sure seeing them at night is a completely different experience, but being lit only by the streetlights (and the headlights of a passing SFPD car) was kind of cool too.. Jet (who I still have a box of beignet mix from NOLA for) has a mural on the avenue, so we got to see that..

Anyway.. after wandering on Balmy for a bit, we did make our way back to Garfield park.

It was a cool, but not cold evening in SF with clouds looming in the sky (the weatherman predicted rain, but was wrong, thankfully.. aj thinks that SF weathermen are slackers, but that’s a whole other story). There were numerous altars set up all over the park with all sorts of different themes. Wandering around in the dark looking for art amongst costumed folks listening to drums in the distance evoked comparisons to burningman-like feelings, so that was kind of nice.. There was an altar made entirely of rusted guns (obvious political statement), another where you could dress up in macabre costumes and lie in a coffin, and then this really cool one under a huge tree with suitcases full of paper cranes and other assorted things..

I took a whole bunch of pictures, so look at them here, but keep in mind that it’s really dark, and I don’t like using the flash.

This weekend, Supperclub San Francisco held its grand opening gala.. I’m just one of the investors, so I really don’t have *that* much to do with the actual place, so I can’t really take much credit for it. Anyway, it’s amazing. The place is gorgeous, with three rooms: a red bar “Le Bar Rouge”, a mirrored-colour changing lounge “La Salle Privée”, and the main balconied dining room “La Salle Neige” — all white, beds all around the sides.. Supperclub is already a legendary establishment in Amsterdam and Rome, and San Francisco is their first US venture.

The gala opening was spectacular. Themed “wild, silver and white”, I got decked out in an all white tuxedo for the event. Costumes ranged from hot silver dresses to tennis outfits (get it? white!) to one guy who pasted mirror tile all over himself (he would be been quite at home in the limo). The evening was punctuated a sampling of the various performances that will be happening throughout the course of a normal Supperclub meal — djs, drummers, opera singers, drag queens, and even a chocolate orgy.. So, if you’re around San Francisco, be sure to set aside an evening for a visit…

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.

Happy birthday to Pius, Jablow.. and (as we discovered today) Kai.. All three of these jerks were born on the same day (well, Jablow was born a year later, but at Pius and Kai were popped out on the same exact date). A bunch of us are headed to Las Vegas this weekend to continue the tradition of the 30th birthday party trip.. This year has been quite busy already with Jo’s Miami trip and Korby’s Vancouver trip… Tonight we all went down to Todai for some birthday all-you-can-eat goodness. Todai is a scary, scary place. Sushi quality is what you would expect from an all-you-can-eat place, but it’s actually pretty good.. Cost-wise, it’s not really any cheaper, since you end up paying about the same (or more, actually) than you would usually pay for a regular sushi dinner. If only we had stomachs that could hold enough food to last us for days — then the all-you-can-eat business model would really start to come into question…

Hmm.. that would be neat, actually, if you only had to eat like once a week? You could have one really HUGE meal that took like a few hours… That would change the whole restaurant business completely.. Would people only eat on certain days? If you asked a cute girl to dinner, and she was a “Tuesday” and you were a “Saturday” — how would that work? I guess you could starve yourself (or eat snacks) and then eat on a Tuesday, but then your whole schedule would be messed up.. just for that girl.. and stuff. Well, maybe it’s ok if she were really cute.