From the moment the early-morning garage sale vultures swooped in as I set out the first piece of furniture, I should have known today was going to be hell. Things I learned today:

1. The next time I go to China, I am totally going to employ the method of bargaining that 90 percent of our Chinese customers used today, which was simply insulting the hell out of any item they wanted to buy. "This high chair very dirty. Oh look, so dirty. We pay $5." No, I said, we are selling it for $20. "It very ugly. We pay $6," came the response.

2. Even if your moving sale is clearly taking place on the sidewalk, don't leave your garage door open with all the stuff you're planning to move inside unless you want to find a 100-year old Russian man picking through your boxed DVD collection after the sale is supposed to be over.

3. If a gutterpunk and his friend limp up to you, and one's got a fresh bloody four-inch gash down his shin and he tells you he'll give you $2.00 for some hydrogen peroxide, do it. After swabbing his wound with your paper towels (and asking to throw them in your garbage) and then washing his hands with your rubbing alcohol, he may light up a cigarette three feet from your baby and buy an Evil Dead 2 VHS tape for 50 cents.

4. Garage sale shoppers are fucking cheap, man. And that's a black pot talking.

5. Just when you think your misanthropy is going to overtake you and you're going to throw your TV at the next old Chinese lady who insists it's only worth 50 cents, some nice person who reads your blog will stop by to give a perfectly-sized goodbye gift and a hug to make everything better.

6. And if, after a day filled with arguments with Russian ladies and gay guys who are pissed because you already sold the Eames chair you advertised on craigslist and now all you have is IKEA crap, you are understandably exhausted, don't fall asleep on a pile of blankets and pillows in the corner of your living room (because there is no longer a couch there), or your wife will pose Evil Addie on your shoulder for pictures once you're passed out:

[graffiti at 3rd Avenue and Clement Street]

There's a sort of conventional wisdom that the first question someone asks when they meet you differs greatly depending on where you live. In cities like Washington D.C. and New York people ask, "What do you do?" In Boston they ask, "Where did you go to school?" (meaning college), and in cities like Pittsburgh (or anywhere that people tend to stick around) they ask, "Where did you go to school?" (meaning high school). In San Francisco, where so few people actually grew up and status is not determined by your job or education as much as it is by how cool you project yourself to be, the first question someone asks is usually, "What neighborhood do you live in?" If you're talking to a hipster and you don't live in the Mission or the Tenderloin, you really feel the need to apologize to them. If you are talking to someone who lives in Russian Hill, they might stare at you blankly when you say you live in the Inner Sunset, and then they say something smug like, "I never go west of Fillmore." While the neighborhood apartheid can be a bit aggravating when under a hipster's scrutiny (our neighborhood is not the coolest), the unique culture of each neighborhood is one of my favorite things about San Francisco. Spending weekend days with Wood and Juniper exploring a different neighborhood is one of the things that I will miss most about this city.

So with twenty weekends left, Wood, Juniper and I are going to spend some time saying goodbye to our favorite places. And making fun of them through photography. Every week we're going to post a flickr set of pictures from our weekend adventures.

This week our neighborhood: Clement Street, in the Inner Richmond. To visit the flickr set, click here.

[with format credit to byrne unit's briantologist, whose flickr expeditions are legendary]

Six years ago on Christmas Day I flew to Beijing to spend a few weeks with Wood. We hadn't seen each other in four months, and during those four months we'd hardly spoken. IM programs were just becoming popular, so we'd do that for a couple hours a day, but I went weeks without hearing her voice. When I arrived in Beijing, we knew the kind of joy that only people who've suffered through long-distance relationships know, that intense joy you get from visits that keeps you sustained through all of those hard days and nights apart. As it was the turn of the millennium, we thought we should celebrate it in style, so we headed down to Shanghai to do it properly. Wood's millionaire Uncle runs a mysterious company that ships cashmere from Mongolia to sweatshops in various parts of southeast Asia, and he told us we could stay at his penthouse in Shanghai, as he and his family were in America at the time. A couple of our friends were teaching in Japan and they agreed to meet us in Shanghai to celebrate the big New Year.

I had never lived like that, in luxury, looking out from a seven-room beautifully-furnished apartment at the top of one wing of the Shanghai Center in the Pu Xi district, having a driver drive us around, thinking about where the money to pay for all this came from, realizing that people who live like this in China could never think about that and keep doing it. We spent our days wandering through hutongs and eating street food, shopping for trinkets our eyes wide at the skinned rottweiler-like dogs sold for meat in the narrow street markets. At night we'd walk through the brightly-lit streetscapes wondering what we could possibly do in such a place, past arcades where hundreds of Chinese businessman played pachinko bathed in gaudy green light. One day Wood and the girls from Japan went to a tailor on Nan Jing West road and had fancy old-school Chinese dresses made. They picked the dresses up on New Year's Eve, put them on and we clinked champagne glasses on the terrace looking out towards the Bund and the haze of Pudong. That night we didn't know where to go, so once sufficiently drunk we headed to Mao Ming Road, the bar district. What a sight we must have been: three American girls, one blond, one black-haired, and one redhead, all dressed up like Qing princesses, accompanied by a drunk guy wearing his girlfriend's Uncle's Armani suit. Rough-looking characters would try to get us to come into their bars, and eventually we went inside one that was reasonably well lit and almost empty, Wood ordering drinks in her best shanghaihua, negotiating a decent price so we wouldn't get screwed and have to make a scene when they brought the bill. The bar started crowding with rough Chinese men and rough-looking young women. We ordered more drinks, and the bartender created an impromptu dancefloor in one corner, blaring J-Pop music from the karaoke TV. One of the girls from Japan, a smokin' six-foot exhibitionist got up and started singing Japanese pop songs into the microphone, bringing a room of fascinated men to their knees with her karaoke skills honed after many months in the Tokyo bar scene. Wood and the girls danced, and they kept bringing us more drinks, telling us they were on the house. The dancing white girls in the Chinese dresses were a great source of amusement to the other patrons, who kept turning to each other and smiling. I sat there watching while some Chinese guy with a decent-sized knife in a holster fastened to his alligator-skinned belt and a cigarette between his lips danced with an extremely serious look on his face. I looked around the room, trying to figure out the dynamics of the situation. I finally realized there was some prostitution going on there. I was in a Chinese brothel with three girls who didn't know it was a brothel and we were all drunk. It wasn't Wood's first misadventure in a Chinese brothel; months earlier she and a friend had once gotten their hair cut by a pimp after the female "cosmotologists" at a Beijing "hair salon" turned out not to know anything about cutting hair.

We left not long after that, when the scene seemed to be getting out of control, and the proprietor pleaded with us to stay, offering us more free drinks, smiling and smiling and telling the girls they should dance more. When he saw we would not relent, he brought us V.I.P. cards and told Wood we could come back any time.

I don't know where exactly we ended up ringing in the new year. I do know we weren't watching the fireworks above the Oriental Pearl Tower in Pudong from the Bund. We were in some expat bar, and Kool & the Gang was playing when it happened, when the clock turned into a new millenium, and I remember wishing that Kool & the Gang hadn't been playing when that happened. Hours later, sobering up we walked back up Mao Ming Road, we passed that dubious place where we'd started our night. It was empty, with a few straggling men, a bored prostitute maybe. We grabbed a cab and I woke up the next morning back in the penthouse, sitting there with Wood in a full bed that was all ours, a luxury beyond any other I could have imagined then in those lean times. I remember thinking that the world was the same as it always was, no planes had fallen from the sky. Shanghai hadn't changed overnight. Shanghai was Shanghai underneath us, teeming with 15 million souls. I only had a few days left with Wood in China, so I held her close that morning, and we slept a little more and I can remember how it all felt so good.

I was just rifling through one of my old wallets looking for a frequent flyer card and I came across my V.I.P. card after all those years, the gold plastic card identifying membership No. 1412-168 for "Shanghai Annie's Recreation Centre, No. 170, Mao Ming Road."

This year we will be celebrating a quiet New Year in a cabin in the Sierras with a cast-iron stove and no television or internet or anything but a bottle of Dom Perignon we got as a wedding gift, just me and a sleeping baby and a wonderful woman I get to see and talk to and touch whenever I want to, to just reach out and find she is right there after all these years.

Wood's post below about the bus ride and the puking leaves out some crucial details, which is understandable as she was not privy to most of them.

Before we left Tommaso's, I did feel that we were safe from more banana vomit, because moments earlier I had held Juniper's head above the tiny sink in the tiny bathroom while GALLONS of banana vomit gushed out, desperately trying to clean her off as well as wipe off myself before the busboy outside jumping up and down like a two-year old bust down the door to get his pee on. How much more puke could there possibly be?

We left the restaurant a gaggle of Pennsylvanians and puke-covered locals, including a surprisingly pleasant Juniper. When we reached the corner of Kearny and Sacramento, I went against my better judgment and suggested we take the 1 California home. Three buses had come within minutes (you could see the previous two jerking to starts up Sacramento) so I figured the bus wouldn't get very busy and we would have a comfortable ride home on an empty bus.

I underestimated Chinatown. How does Chinatown have an infinite supply of surly octogenarians refilling the bus stops every two and a half minutes? The 1 California is my least favorite bus in the city: the lurching up Nob Hill, the bus's complete failure to even drive down its eponymous street until you get to Presidio. But the worst aspect is the high percentage of difficult riders:

• The above-described octogenarians, who (god-forbid you choose to sit with a baby rather than give your seat up to them) will bore holes in you with lights streaking from their eyes like characters from that kick-ass Kurt Russell kung-fu trucker movie. Most only ride for a few blocks from Grant to Stockton or Powell, but many of them are riding from Chinatown I to Chinatown II, the inner Richmond.
• Crazy middle-aged Chinese guys who sit there with like 6 or 7 red plastic bags filled with unidentifiable vegetables, laughing and talking to themselves while popping lychee nuts into their mouth and tossing the shells on the floor.
• Yuppies who have been working late in the Financial District for whom the 1 California is the fastest way to Pacific Heights. I don't know if it's their use of the iPod or their cell phones or perhaps years of developed indifference, but the Pacific Heights yuppies are completely immune from the dragon-breathed octogenarians who stare at them for sitting while they stand.

Unfortunately, I have not developed such an immunity. For all I know they marched with the Kuomintang halfway across China more than half a century ago. I'm not going to make them stand on a bus teetering up Nob Hill. The bus was almost full of yuppies when we got on, and Wood and the Pennsylvanians went to the very back of the bus to stand or find seats among the yuppies and lychee-spitters. I sat in the first seat with Juniper in the bjorn. A few stops later, I looked outside the bus and saw about seventeen octogenarians crowding around the bus door like it was a Beijing ticket counter. Shit! As they piled on, already tuning their laser-gaze to focus on my youthful, able body, I stood up and walked towards the back of the bus. The yuppies avoided eye contact, I resigned myself to standing. But suddenly this old Italian dude was like, "Kid, you can't stand. Not with a baby! You CANNOT stand!" and he proceeded to yank my coattail and try to offer me his seat. "No, it's okay," I said. "It's really okay." He kept yanking on my coat and I swear I almost smacked his arm to let go.

Sometimes I prefer to stand on the bus with her. It gives Juniper the opportunity to see out the windows, which prevents her from becoming unpleasant. Plus if she starts whining I can bounce up and down. The problem with remaining afoot after such a scene was the staring. I've been to some remote parts of China that don't get to see whiteys too often, so I'm not totally unfamiliar with the Chinese staring thing. But there's something about seeing a whitey male (or maybe any male) with a baby strapped to his chest that causes old Chinese ladies to stare at me in a way that makes me really uncomfortable. When it happens on the street, Wood is always like, "Cool down, dude. They're staring at the baby, it's not about you. It's okay to stare at a baby. Chill." And that always puts me in my place, even if we have walked twenty paces and the old lady is still back there, mouth agape, staring at me. But the other night, Wood was at the back of the bus and not there to remind me of this while dozens of old Chinese ladies sat there and STARED at me. And I have to say it, they don't smile. They look so angry. Why? Is it me or is it the badly painted-on eyebrows? Why don't they smile? Babies are cute, right? If they're staring at the baby, WHY DON'T THEY SMILE? I started making eye contact with each of them, my face and eyes saying "What? What? What?" Alas, I am nowhere near as powerful as them. They have staring down.

As the bus gradually emptied, I found my way to the back where Wood and her family had seats. The bus was about half full, and I was tense as hell. Then Papa Wood got out his camera. Papa Wood is the kind of guy who will spend twenty minutes positioning a camera on a rock or a ledge and hitting the timer-button and rushing up to get in the picture himself, five or six times, over and over and over while his subjects groan. He will do this in touristy places. In restaurants. In living rooms. On the street. On a boat. He started snapping pictures of all of us on the bus, and this gave a reason for all the octogenarians to crane their necks and start staring all over again. Even the lychee-eaters wanted to get in on the staring. Who wouldn't? Who takes flash photographs on MUNI?

Then Juniper started vomiting again, and I reached out to catch it in the palms of my hands, lest it mix in with the lychee shells and wet, wadded up newspapers littering the floor of the bus.

This gave them something to really stare at, and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Even the yuppies woke up from their post-work daze and joined in on the staring. Is this how it feels to be a celebrity? People STARING at you, papparazzi snapping shots of you in inappropriate places, having sordid details about your child vomiting plastered on the internet? Uggh. And people go to Hollywood wanting to be famous?

Two weeks ago I told myself it was over. I looked in the mirror and I pumped myself up: it's over man, the 12 months of sloth and unchecked gluttony are over. Wood, Juniper, and I walked down through the Presidio to the overwhelming sporting goods megastore they opened in the old military commissary, named the Sports Basement (despite there being nothing below ground level). In all the years I have lived in California I still haven't seen a basement, except for the one the Chinese guys live in behind our apartment, but that's really more of a windowless shack than a basement. I bought a $60 pair of running shoes, and $150 worth of running gear and apparel. I have always been a "run in the old vintage t-shirts that I became too cool to wear in non-athletic situations" kind of guy, but in the mirrors at The Sports Basement I looked like a professional runner dude who could handle all those hailstorms and 120 degree days you get in Golden Gate Park. I even bought a headband.

And understand: I am cheap. One of the secrets about why I really didn't want a doula is because those ladies are expensive! So as a part of my cheapness, when I drop a chunk of money like that on some gear, I tend to use it to make it worth the spending. I ran the San Francisco marathon four years ago, not because I wanted to get in shape or have the bragging rights, but because on a whim one day I dropped $65 on the registration fee and it would have killed me to let that go to waste by not running the race. So a few weeks ago I figured, I'll spend all kinds of money on gear, and that means I'll actually exercise now.

Wrong.

When Wood got pregnant, I took that as an excuse to eat whatever the fuck I wanted and not do a damn thing on my feet. She put on the pounds, I put on the pounds, it was all good. It wasn't sympathy weight, I'm just not a very sympathetic person. I am, however, lazy and always hungry. I started drinking beers, trying out all the Trader Joes brands with colorful labels. I tried German beers and Czech beers and beers from Oregon. Wood was falling asleep on the couch at like, 8:00 p.m., and I had nothing to do but drink. My relatively slim torso started bulking up. I started ignoring mirrors. "Things will get easier when the baby's born," I said. Ha! When we came home from the hospital a few days after Juniper was born, Wood rushed to her closet, and started trying on all her old pre-maternity clothes. They all fit. Meanwhile, I contemplated buying my shirts in "L" rather than "M." Would that hide what's happened to me? Why is that mirror there next to the shower? Jesus, who is that fat fuck? Where did I get all those chins? Even Juniper doesn't have that many chins! Why am I suddenly the fattest person in the house?

My fancy new shoes are sitting in their box. None of the clothes stink yet. They still smell fresh, like Indonesia or Pakistan or wherever they were made. Ah, the new clothes smell. I just can't bear to cover that up with the chicken soup stink of running sweat. I'm doing it for the clothes, damn it! I had grandiose plans of running the four miles home from work every day, but logistics got in the way. Logistics, and, well, Nob Hill. The truth is, I want to get back to my baby as fast as I can and when I'm with her I just want to hold her up in the air above my head while she laughs. Daylight savings time will soon be over. Those 4:30 p.m. Frisco sunsets are the best excuse in the world not to run. I'm too cheap and too scared of locker rooms to join a gym. My days to get back into shape are numbered.

But Wood, as always, will be my saving grace. Tired of the lumpy, heavy-breathing oaf that replaced her husband, she just bought a $300 jogging stroller. Man, she knows that it will KILL me to know that thing is just sitting in the garage, unused. We're going for a run tomorrow, damn it. Sat goodbye to fat daddy, baby. His days are numbered.

Yesterday, as the bug, Dutch and I were walking home from one of our long walks around town, we passed one of those stores that sell used kids' stuff that are usually called things like "Too Good to be Through" or "Twice as Nice." I think the name of this particular one is "Clothes-Go-Round." And of course they're pretty great -- like garage sales that are open Monday through Friday.

When we walked past the "Go-Round," it was long closed. But down on the sidewalk in front of the door was a single black and white plastic teething ring. I stopped, looked at Dutch, and we both looked down at the ring. We were both thinking the same thing: the bug would LOVE that ring.

At some point on the mile or so walk to our apartment from there, I rubbed the ring between my thumb and index finger and it occurred to me what could be on this ring. Clement street is one of our favorite streets in the city, but it's not known for its cleanliness (let's just say it's no presidio heights). Chinese fish shops throw still-wriggling chunks of bloody fish into icy sidewalk bins and after a long hot afternoon they just wash the sidewalk with a hose; Irish bars stay open well past the legal closing time and drunk expatriots puke all over the sidewalks until the wee hours o' the mornin'; cigarettes everywhere, fruit from Chinese markets rotting everywhere, and there is always a 37% chance you will end up with gum on the bottom of your shoe. so it's not the cleanest place in the world (nor is it the mission or the lower haight or that strip of golden gate park where all the pot-dealers hang out). With all this in mind, I washed the ring in hot water with antibacterial soap before handing it off to the bug. Who knows what would have happened if I had given it to her when Dutch wanted to, i.e. three seconds after picking it up off the ground.

The ring is black and white (which she loves, since she is a baby, and black and white to babies must be psychedelic or something). It has a pencil-like diameter, and is the perfect size for her little hands. And now it is her favorite toy. We had been looking for black and white teething toys everywhere, but I swear all these companies think parents will only buy colorful ones, and Dutch has just about had it with all of the damn colors this baby has brought into our apartment. Dutch spent two years buying sleek modern furniture for our apartment before I got pregnant, and he had at least two or three nervous breakdowns in the infant department of Target looking at multi-colored exersaucers and gingham winnie-the-pooh swings. So we love the black and white teething ring, and more imporantly, so does she. Of course some mothers wouldn't give their baby a little teething toy they found on the sidewalk near Clement street, but that's just not the kind of mother I am.

We ride MUNI with Juniper all the time, and the 1, the 33, the 38, the 49, the 5, the 21, are all tolerable, aside from the occasional stinky whinos who plop down next to her and the old Chinese ladies who either (1) give me unblinking, angry stares because they apparently don't think a man should be taking care of a baby; or (2) give me smiles but then reach out and touch and grab the bug the entire bus ride. Does anyone else get bugged out by strangers touching their kid? I would never touch a stranger's kid, and yet so many people feel a sense of entitlement about it, as though I am being rude when I turn or walk away with the baby. Juniper doesn't care. She smiles for everyone. She smiles at that tragic Man With No Face who rides the 31 Balboa and reads the paper even though I can't figure out where his eyes are. That's what makes babies so great.

But generally, people are way cooler on regular buses when you have a baby in a bjorn. I sometimes get to sit up front with the old ladies and the handicapped folks. People give me their seats in the back if the front is full of old folks. People smile and are generally pleasant.

The same cannot be said of the Judd-filled express buses. These are buses that go directly from the outer neighborhoods down to the financial district during rush hour skipping the tenderloin and the western addition. So these buses are filled with business-casual clad Judds and too many women with Louis Vuitton handbags. Earth to professional middle-aged women in the central Richmond: those bags, real or fake, do not make you look classy or elegant. They make you look LAME.

Express bus riders in Frisco are among most selfish and rude people I have ever encountered. Perhaps the relentless drudgery of their office work turns them into nasty, spiteful trolls who suck all enjoyment out of the summer air around them, or maybe they just haven't had their morning coffee. They pack these buses to the gills and the people who get seats completely ignore everyone who gets on. I rarely get a seat, and have watched with anger as women nine months pregnant are forced to stand for 30 minutes of jerky traffic while a cadre of Judds sat there too engrossed in their blackberries or just too lazy to give up their seat. When Wood was pregnant she rode this bus every day to get to BART and she was given a seat maybe 2 or 3 times. I don't want to get into the "is pregnancy a disability" debate, but seriously, fuck you, you motherfucking Judd asshole who finds it more important to read the first chapter of "The Life of Pi" or "Confederacy of Dunces" than to notice my wife's eight-month pregnant belly being jerked back and forth by the braking of the bus right in front of your face. I'm not a chivalrous person, I don't open doors for Wood, but I sure as shit give up my seat to a pregnant woman when I can.

A few days ago I got a seat and had that opportunity when a very pregnant woman got on the bus and no one in those front seats offered her a respite from her feet. I stood up and gave her the seat, and stood there smugly towering above the Judds and the Louis Vuitton handbags held on laps. Nobody gave a shit, but at least for twenty-five minutes I wasn't one of them. A few weeks ago I had the bug in the bjorn and I was down in the financial district and I got on a packed express bus to go home. There were no seats, so I stood. I stood there with a baby and no one even made eye contact with me. I seethed with anger, and I realized they were turning me into one of them: an angry troll broken down by the negativity of my environment. I slid a couple of the windows open and enjoyed the breeze and tried to make the best of it, bouncing the bug up and down and speaking softly into her ear, telling her how much I love her.

I've been told that people are the same on the BART and on the N-Judah and other streetcar lines, but that no one is like this in New York or other major cities. Is that the case? Why is it that professional San Franciscans can be such selfish jerks?

When I went to put Juniper in her car seat this morning, I realized it was soaking wet. I ran my finger across the surface of the material and brought it up to my nose (a gesture I don't even think twice about since becoming a father) , and gave it a big sniff. Piss. It was definitely piss. But the thing was, there was piss everywhere, not just in the part where she would have peed herself, and besides, she hadn't been in the car seat since 3:00 p.m. the previous day and she certainly wasn't wet when when we took her out of the car yesterday.

Then it hit me: that 87-year old Chinese bagpipe player that Wood was hanging out with into the wee hours of last night took a piss in my daughter's carseat! Why did he do that? I questioned Wood: Did you see him whip it out? Did you hear any trickling water in the back seat? Wood doubted that he actually took a piss in the car seat, and I said, girl, you've been to China. You know those motherfuckers will piss in almost anything. Meanwhile I'm holding Junebug up by her armpits, not willing to lay her in the wet pissstinking seat.

Wait, Wood says, he did have something with all his weird boxes and instrument cases and bagpipes, he had something all wrapped up in a plastic bag, and he might have set that down in the carseat. I nodded, then swiped my finger through the wet fabric again and had another sniff. Maybe it wasn't piss. It did kind of smell like one of those Chinese herbal pharmacies you walk past on Stockton or Clement streets, the kind with the jars of dried abalones, mushrooms, deer antlers, pearls, dried lizards, dried sea horses, powdered dragon bones, shark fins, tigers' teeth etc. There is that smell you get when you walk past one of those places where you are like: CHINA, smells like CHINA. It also kind of smelled like that smell when you order Chinese food from the kind of restaurant that doesn't cater to a western crowd, the kind that always has 70 Chinese families eating at round tables and waiters in stained tuxedos, the smell when you have your take out boxes and they're sitting next to you in the car and you're kind of like, is that right? Or, it could have just smelled like spilled tea. The bottom line is I need to get my olfactory sensitivity to catch up to imagination.

That will probably happen when Juniper starts eating solid food. I hear there are smells down there that a human can barely imagine.

All in all, I was jealous that I didn't get to go to the bar last night and speak pidgin Chinese with the 87-year old bagpipe player who made everyone uncomfortable. I told Wood the next time she watches Juniper, I get to go to a bar where the devilettes have hired a Mormon lesbian riding a tapir to play the jew's harp all night long between sets, and I will get to drive her home and see what the tapir leaves in the car sear.

Everyone who's been in San Francisco for five minutes has seen Frank Chiu, the sloppily/professionally dressed Asian guy with the sign with all kinds of cool made-up words on it. Wood's uncle was a psychiatrist at S.F. General back in the day when Frank Chiu emerged onto the frisco lunatic scene, and heard his story before it was corrupted by Judd folklore. He believes he is a filmmaker from another planet or one of the moons of jupiter whose films are being prevented from being seen on earth by a cadre of semi-obscure politicians and authority figures. Frank's real mission in life seems to be to get on the news as much as possible, so wherever there is a news truck or a camera in downtown frisco you can trust Frank will sniff it out. He also likes crowds and you see him at war protests with his sign among all the freegans and anti-zionist zealots and their signs. They all agree that Tom Ridge is a major asshole. There is a bar south of 14th street that is named after one of the most common phrases on his placard ("12 galaxies"). I've never been there because I refuse to go south of 14th street. A few months before Juniper was born I decided to start designing onesies with pictures of things other than ducks and fuzzy bunnies and cuddly bears on them, and I decided to make her a Frank Chiu onesie with this image on it: Three months after Juniper was born, Wood ran bay-to-breakers (can you believe that? most women three months after giving birth are scarfing down paxil-flavored haagen-dazs and my wife runs seven miles?) Juniper and I went into golden gate park to see her race and lo and behold there was Frank Chiu among all the naked old men with goiters the size of small melons on their testicals and "urban tribes" all wearing the same costumes. I wore a costume, too. I was yuppie dad, motherfucker!!! Bay-to-breakers really depresses me. Not because it smells like beer and sweaty balls, but because you see all of these earnest Judds and Juddettes in costumes they clearly (1) spent a lot of time on; and (2) thought were really "witty" or "creative"; and then ten minutes later you see another group of equally-earnest Judds and Juddettes wearing the exact same conceptual costumes. It really makes me sad for humanity to see such banality on open, drunken display. But among the dozens and dozens of Frank Chiu imitators I spied the real thing, called up Wood to run back a mile and a half after she was done with the race so she could take a picture of Juniper with Frank Chiu.

San Francisco, the city where once or twice a year you can feel comfortable wearing your red bra and panties over a black leotard (pirate hat optional) to the park on a balmy Sunday.

So Wood ran that extra mile and a half back up through the park for these pictures, which we both agreed while walking the miles back to our apartment were totally worth it.