The 70′s band Journey is kind of a big deal out here. Apparently they are from the Bay area, and there is a San Francisco civic statute requiring all radio stations to play Journey songs every three hours. Or, so I gather.

While doing a deep textual analysis of the song Don’t Stop Believin’ (sic) this morning, I noticed the phrase “Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit.”

As a Michigan native and Flint Expat (good blog, btw) my librarian senses began tingling. South…Detroit?
South Detroit.
Huh.

Let’s just check the map.

Detroit…
Yep, there it is. Suspicion confirmed! South Detroit is Windsor. Also known to Geographers as Canada.

I guess that Midnight Train going Anywhere was the Via Rail, huh?

(cue guitar solo)

No related posts.

I’ve escaped my parental bonds for a moment, thanks to my husband, so I have a few minutes to tell you about my recent trip to the SF Public library. The big one downtown. The one I visited a long time ago and left, convinced that public librarianship in a large city belonged to the realm of the nostril-less.

San Francisco has a Big Beautiful Library, located in the Civic Center across the street from City Hall. The building is full of glass and marble and echo-y ceilings, in the grandest tradition of main library excess. As a young library tourist, I had visited this landmark eager to see Library Done Right, and learn what can be made when budget constraints are erased and the architects are released from their fetters. Unfortunately, I had failed to consult with a resident when planning the walk there, and found myself entangled in The Tenderloin, SF’s most unpleasant neighborhood. I dodged madmen in wheelchairs and puddles of vomit for a few blocks, and arrived safe but shaken. Which is not to say that the special Tenderloin atmosphere ended when I went inside.

Due to its location, the SF Library Main branch has struggled with strange bedfellows. City Hall, the Opera, the Symphony, and a few lesser monuments surround the building, but the clientele and the smell remind you that the Tenderloin ends only a block away. Nine years ago, this meant the entire bottom two floors were permeated with Eau Du Armpit, and the best reading chairs were occupied by scruffy men with newspapers over their heads. This may have influenced my decision, upon moving to the city, to avoid the downtown branch entirely.

However! When Adorable Daughter and I visited the library two weeks ago (after some discreet nursing in the car) we encountered a cleaned-up building, with a less lived-in look. We visited the small soulless cafe downstairs, wrestled with the wireless (mommy has an iphone MMORPG problem), and found a nice browsing collection staffed by two friendly and incredibly overqualified librarians. The homeless problem seems to have abated somewhat, and I noticed security guards everywhere.

One of the things that prompted me to give it another try was an excellent article in the Chronicle announcing “the country’s first full-time psychiatric social worker stationed in a public library”. A quick google search reveals this to be a much-press-released, and apparently effective tactic on the part of SFPL to combat the library’s struggle with homeless patrons.  It might have been a coincidence, I’m just a single data point, but there did seem to be an improvement since my last visit.

If you want a reason to be grateful for your current job (assuming you aren’t an SF Public librarian), you might enjoy reading the many Yelp reviewers who have shared their encounters with some of the library’s pants-eschewing patrons. If you want to save thirty bucks on a newly-released hardback, you might enjoy the Main Branch’s science fiction collection.

The San Francisco Library Main Branch: Four stars. Would visit again.

Related posts:

1. Library Tourism I visited my local Bernal Heights library branch this afternoon,...
2. Library Tourism, Ithaca The weekend was so good that it took me until...
3. Quick San Francisco update Interview Girl I’m in the Bay Area this week, interviewing...

A listing of grievances:

• Two stupid girls have a hair-tearing fight on the bus
• Liquid and curly fries fly everywhere
• The guy in front of me puts up his arm, so I do too
• The fighting high school girls roll out the door as it stops
• I continue listening to my podcast, because, meh, stupid girls
• People start coughing and opening windows
• PEPPER SPRAY! Hooray!

Interlude

• The guy in front of me has pepper spray in his eye
• I have some on my face
• The fighting girls are long long gone
• We all have to get off the bus
• We are coughing
• We are annoyed
• The 24 bus comes roughly every three years
• Why can’t they fight on a busier route?

Interlude

• My cheek hurts and I want to go home
• I get a cab
• I tell the driver what happened
• He immediately asks “What race were they?”
• I ask him what that has to do with anything
• He tells me he is interested in “Sociology”
• I say anyone who knows a damn thing about sociology knows better than to draw from a single data point
• I tell him that we aren’t going to talk any more
• He tells me he isn’t racist because he campaigned for Obama

Interlude

• I stiff him on the tip and go inside to take a shower
• Stupid girls
• Stupid pepper spray
• Stupid racist cab driver

Related posts:

1. Letter to the Deer that ate my Tulips Dear Deer, You may not remember me, but we met...

Greetings from an ethnic librarian working in the games industry!

I’m posting this review of my experience last year at GDC (the Game Developers Conference) held every year here in San Francisco. It was originally part of a letter to my team here at Linden Lab, but I thought you librarians might be interested/amused, considering the gender ratio at most library conferences.

-Erica

Hi guys -
I went to the Game Developers Conference last year and found it to be of dubious value.

The best part of the conference for me was the Expo room, which proved to be a valuable source of alternative employment opportunities. I learned that if I want to move to Las Vegas and design slot machine interfaces, I can more than double my salary, which I’m keeping in mind for when I have a stroke and develop an unquenchable desire for polyester and/or chicken wings. I enjoyed scanning the various game interfaces set up to demo motion graphics products, and filed away a few ideas from the Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG.

Photo by ruminatrix

For me, however, the most memorable moment was riding the escalator of the Moscone center and gazing across a sea of black-clad gamed devs among whom I was the only woman.

As a Person of Estrogen and part of a numeric majority in this world, I’m used to being one of many women developers, operations experts, release managers at work. This isn’t the 1970s. Nerdy women exist and thrive. San Francisco is a welcoming place. Linden Lab is a welcoming place. GDC. Was. Not.

I get the feeling that all is not well with an operation that returns such a limited array.

This scene, riding the escalator, about five years too old but still worried about being mistaken for a boothbabe, has become my personal benchmark for outsider discomfort.

In summary: meh to the GDC.

Borrow someone’s pass and check out the Expo. Cruise the demo games. If you really care about a session, read the person’s book or website instead. And if you really care about making better games, spend the three days watching user observation videos.

Related posts:

1. Yahoo! Games picks up video game based on Macauly Library sounds NYC game developers Large Animal Games have created a downloadable...
2. SXSW Interactive 2009 – Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research Happy news! I was invited to be a panelist at...
3. Me, bouncing around onstage at an O’Reilly Conference Last week I spoke at OSCON Ignite, the evening entertainment...

San Francisco, my adopted home, offers a municipal compost service. They give you a big green wheeled garbage bin, and you can toss in everything from coffee grounds to wooden crates. It’s not gross, like home-composting, in that you don’t have a huge bag of festering goop in your house.

It’s just like taking out the trash, except you split the stuff into two bins – one for dead food stuff, and one for everything else. In our case, since we have a recycle bin too, “everything else” is mostly cellophane packaging, and it’s amazing how little garbage you actually generate when you pull out the food waste.

All the compost gets turned into soil for farms, vineyards, landscaping, and highway erosion projects, instead of piling up in landfills.

Plus our trash smells better, because all the icky stuff goes outside in the big green bin.

Related posts:

1. Valentine’s day in the Mission, San Francisco Tonight I walked home from the 24th and Mission BART...

Tonight I walked home from the 24th and Mission BART stop. It was Valentine’s day, and the neighborhood celebrated by being outside.

Stores stayed open late. Perfumed Latino guys pushed and egged each other on, nervously buying flowers for sweethearts and would-be sweethearts. The bodas civiles joints lubricated their trade with sidewalk tables of cheap teddy bears wrapped in red cellophane.

I walked home in my pink dress. Women holding little girls walked by, clutching roses, boxes of chocolates. Women completed errands, hauled children, and bought food with the same grim determination, red cellophane emerging from their purses.

I saw a beautifully happy couple. Their little daughter ran up the sidewalk in front of them. I caught the man’s eye as I passed and saw satisfaction on his face.

More people were on the street than usual. More police were around. I saw two huge officers, giants. One had his hand on the back of a tiny fast-talking man. There was no sense of potential violence, just a solid hand on the back and a posture that clearly communicated that whatever jig there may have been was now thoroughly up.

There was music and the smell of onions cooking. The jazz club was setting up a show. As I walked home, buses drove back and forth full of people like me, heading home, and out, and home again.

Related posts:

1. Quick San Francisco update Interview Girl I’m in the Bay Area this week, interviewing...
2. Municipal compost San Francisco, my adopted home, offers a municipal compost service....
3. Library Tourism: The San Francisco Main Branch I’ve escaped my parental bonds for a moment, thanks to...

2 AM awake
Awake, asleep, and awake
Foghorn on the Bay

There’s no sky today in San Francisco, just fog. Outside, buses and dogs and flowers are memory-distant.

I’ve never heard the Bay foghorn from my bed. I happened to wake at the right time.

My dad was raised on Lake Michigan, in a town of car-ferries and shipping. He is a connoisseur of foghorns, from the old BE-OH to the new less macho (but further-carrying) OOOOP. I woke up happy. His sounds of home have become my sounds of home.

Related posts:

1. Haiku for frustrated cat must! catch! leaves! leaves! must! not! escape! open! window! now!...
2. Valentine’s day in the Mission, San Francisco Tonight I walked home from the 24th and Mission BART...

Bowing to the demands of my own powerful curiosity, I have agreed to a give an exclusive interview to myself. My publicist disagrees with my decision, but I believe I have a strong connection with myself and I think I can be trusted to report my answers fairly.

Q: Hello Erica. I’m glad you agreed to this interview. You have been pretty reticent with the press lately. What’s been going on?

A: There have been major changes in my life this year. I haven’t felt it was appropriate or respectful to write about them here.

Things have settled down a bit recently. I’m no longer engaged, and I’m living in rural Ithaca near some friendly horses and sheep.

Q: Wow. Do you want to talk about what happened?

A: No. Thank you.

Q: I hear you are moving to the Bay Area in the next few months?

A: I’ve been looking at the Bay Area and NYC as possible places to relocate. After visiting last week, I decided to move to San Francisco.

San Francisco is one of the geekiest, friendliest places I’ve ever been. The city is beautiful, I’ve got good friends, there are interesting projects, and I’ll be among my fellow dorks.

I’m really looking forward to learning the city, starting a new job, volunteering at 826 Valencia, and being immersed in the calm, weird, sunny West Coast atmosphere. Come visit. Bring chocolate babka.

Q: Where are you going to work?

A: An excellent question. I’ve interviewed at a few places where I would like to work. I will know more by next week. Stay tuned.

Q: Don’t you like Ithaca?

A: I love Ithaca and I adore my job at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is why I’ve been here for four years.

However, that translates to about 40 years in Internet Time. It’s time for me to start a new project. I might return to Ithaca someday, once I’ve made my fortune. I’d like to live on a big farm with dogs, books, a wood stove, and all my friends.

Q: Ok. That covers the big topics. What else is going on?

A: I’m having the best year of my life. This weekend I swam in a waterfall, watched a turtle lay eggs, drove a sports car really fast, petted dogs, helped a friend find tractor parts, drank local beer, picked flowers, was charged by a deer, and met one of the first US African refugee coordinators who was working in Botswana in 1965.

Q: Well, thanks again for letting me interview you, Erica.

A: I’m welcome. Thank me.

Related posts:

1. Library Tourism, Ithaca The weekend was so good that it took me until...
2. Interview with Kevin Smokler Part Two (Son of Interview with Kevin Smokler) Erica: Welcome back to day two of “Librarians Grill Kevin...
3. Mailbag, Ithaca trivia Look everybody! I got my very first bit of blog-related...

Interview Girl

I’m in the Bay Area this week, interviewing and exploring the city for possible relocation potential.

I rented a convertible yesterday and had a great drive down to Silicon Valley. I haven’t had a chance in a long time to be the blonde-in-the-convertible, and I gotta say, it felt good.

I’ve got sand under my fingernails, the beginnings of a distinctly non-librarian looking tan, and I’ve burned off at least a few sad winters’ worth of Midwestern Ennui in the past two days. In other words, I’m having a good time. Wish you were here.

Dogblog is really good today, by the way.

Related posts:

1. Valentine’s day in the Mission, San Francisco Tonight I walked home from the 24th and Mission BART...
2. Spain update Hi all – a quick update. I don´t want to...
3. Library Tourism: The San Francisco Main Branch I’ve escaped my parental bonds for a moment, thanks to...

1. Queen Bees are expensive
2. It’s damned difficult to find a cat-sitter in Ithaca
3. Johnathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love me Yet is, so far, an absolutely perfect book
4. Tom Phillips is an artist who did a really great book painting featuring fictional books with titles stolen from Shakespeare
5. Roccapulco is a salsa club in San Francisco. I’m going next week with my friend Jake
6. The Lunch Meeting is the gold standard for interviews at eBay

Oldschool Metadata

7. You can randomly teleport somewhere in Second Life and end up getting juggled by a large pink elephant
8. Hotels in San Francisco are way cheaper than hotels in NYC. Jobs in San Francisco pay way better than jobs in NYC.
9. All it took for me to get my finances in shape was to get some software with a decent interface
10. The only cure for pregnancy-induced hypertension is childbirth (hi clay!)
11. My friend Josh has taken over things digital at the NYPL
12. Adobe CS3 will steal your soul with its compelling beauty
13. Google Analytics has a new interface that will steal whatever bit of your soul is leftover after Adobe gets done with you
14. Half of you people are still using Internet Explorer. I’m saddened. Please, for the love of all things holy: Use

Related posts:

1. Top Five Things I Have Learned About Babies My daughter, Elizabeth West Firment, was born in early November....
2. Three things I learned from migrating a WordPress site over to GoDaddy Erica! Where ya been? Glad you asked. I’ve been off...
3. Real things that actually happened My work name is Erica Linden. Everyone who works for...