Kenny Landes | Graphic Design | Web Development | San Francisco

For the past 3 days, San Francisco has been baked by a record heat wave. What that means in real numbers around here is highs of 86° to 93°. As somebody who grew up in the Midwest, this isn’t too impressive. After all, there I endured months of temperatures at least that high, along with unbearable humidity—not to mention the winters. However, San Francisco is a different kind of place.

The real secret to weather in San Francisco is not the temperature, but the wind. Tucked just inside the Golden Gate along California’s Central Coast, San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water that rarely exceeds 60 degrees. This gives us mild temperatures year round. In the summer, though, the heat inland near Sacramento draws in the cool air from the ocean. All this cool air passes the coast through the Golden Gate resulting in very cold summer sea breezes that keep the City very cool, often just plain cold. We can always tell the tourists in San Francisco during the summer time as they huddle, freezing to death, at the cable car stops in shorts and flip-flops.

What we get in exchange for this cruel meteorological injustice are amazing springs and falls. Even in winter the weather here is often nicer than during the summer, unless it’s raining. (When it rains here, it often REALLY rains.) This week we got our hottest heat wave so far this year. Since our weather here is so mild there are not many air conditioners in San Francisco, so when it gets hot here, it FEELS really hot because there is virtually no where to escape the heat.

Yesterday, my partner and I went on a long walk to enjoy the heat. It turned out to be a bit much for me. I wore SPF48 sunblock, but still got sunburned. About 2/3 of the way through our trip, I had to give up and take the bus home. The sun had been too much for too long. My head was pounding, and I started feeling nauseous. I felt a little embarrassed, but then I realized that spending 6 hours out in 96° heat was likely to make most people suffer. We returned home to a baking hot apartment that offered no respite. The wind we curse most days of the year had let us down.

For what it’s worth, the record heat and lack of our usual sea breeze offered a rare opportunity to comfortably walk across the Golden Gate Bridge wearing shorts and t-shirt. Usually, this would be a miserably cold experience. The last time I went across the bridge on foot was August 3, 2008, running the San Francisco Marathon. It was 58°, foggy, windy and very cold. This time, it was so hot we had to stop to take shelter in the shade of the bridge tower. I suppose it will be a long time before that happens again, so it seemed worth documenting with a photo.

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Susan Boyle’s amazing debut on Britain’s Got Talent

Once in a while someone comes along who challenges everything we believe about each other. In doing so, they challenge what we believe about ourselves. This performance by Susan Boyle, a never-married, middle-aged woman who sings at church and lives alone with her cat in Scotland, cuts through all our mental clutter. Everyone I know who has seen this—and it seems EVERYBODY has by now—has been deeply touched by her performance.

Authenticity is in such short supply in our world today. This performance reminds us all of the simple truth that beauty always comes first from inside. In a media-saturated world, particularly the reality TV genre, we are used to seeing mediocre talent performing simply for the sake of becoming famous. Fame, as an end in-and-of-itself, is such a shallow pursuit. We’ve seen so many of our young, “beautiful” stars fall, tragically, unable to handle the spotlight when it revealed the inner weakness their outer beauty disguised.

Susan Boyle turns it all inside out by coming out on stage in the most unassuming way. We are prepared to laugh her off, kick her into the comic side-show category along with other has-beens who never should have made the show. Then, unexpectedly, she begins to sing, pitch-perfect, immediately evoking an emotional response from all who hear.

Anyway, my enthusiasm is sincere. Like so many millions of others, I was moved to tears hearing her angelic singing and watching her amazing performance. It’s rare to see a real talent that has been overlooked, likely pushed aside, take its place in front of us and touch our souls. Here’s to you, Susan Boyle! I wish you ever success in your new music career. Thank you for revealing to the world the unparalleled beauty of simple authenticity.

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It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well that I absolutely love San Francisco. There are so many amazing things to see and do here. For the most part, visitors tend to stay close to tourist attractions on the east side of town. I prefer the west side of town, especially Golden Gate Park with its museums, lakes, running paths and buffalo. Yes, I really did just say there are buffalo in San Francisco!

In 1989, the largest earthquake since the 1906 quake struck during rush hour. Fortunately, due to the World Series game taking place between the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park, traffic was lighter than expected resulting in far fewer deaths than would have occurred otherwise as freeways and bridges around the Bay Area crumbled.

Less famously, some of San Francisco’s world-class cultural institutions also suffered severe damage that ultimately required them to be replaced. In Golden Gate Park, the California Academy of Sciences and the DeYoung Museum were both severely damaged. In recent years, each has rebuilt and opened beautiful new facilities. I took this picture from the tower of the DeYoung, facing south toward the Academy. The campus of University of California at San Francisco is on the hill behind the Academy on the edge of Mount Davidson, the highest of San Francisco’s famous hills. On a lower hill behind Mount Davidson rises Sutro Tower. Originally built to support the war effort in the Pacific during World War II, Sutro Tower now beams radio, television and cell phone signals to the Bay Area, and satellite signals to the world beyond.

This picture was taken on August 2, 2008. San Francisco is famous for its cold, foggy summers. This August day was a beautiful exception to that rule; an example of why I love living here year round.

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I spent the past week visiting my parents in San Diego. My mother’s computer had a complete meltdown a few weeks ago. We decided to get her a Mac, since in my experience they have much fewer of these kinds of problems. So, of course, she needed her IT guy to come visit to get her data off her old computer and set up her new computer.

Anyway, as these things tend to go, as prepared as I thought I was when I arrived, I discovered I needed different tools in order to get her data. The things I’ve learned through the process of trial and error really have saved us a lot of money. They just take up so much time. As it turned out, her PC hard drive was fine. The logic board had to be replaced, along with the fan.

So now Mom is all up and running again on Facebook, where she spends even more hours each day than I do. She’s completely involved with her Facebook Farm App, which I completely do not understand. I think what she likes most about her new Mac is that she can go into the Apple Store near her home for help if or when she needs it. With her old PC, she spent hours on her cell phone talking to a call center on the other side of the world. It was more than a little frustrating, and, frankly, expensive in terms of using her cell phone minutes.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love my parents, and it’s always nice to visit.  As long as I don’t get the frantic IT calls, all will be well on my end. I was also able to take my dad out for a nice steak dinner to celebrate his birthday, so it wasn’t all work. Here’s a nice picture we took at the beach on my last day in town.

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