Fox Life

Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you: You're biking home from your local organic foods co-op after a mostly successful shopping trip and you can't shake the nagging feeling that you didn't get everything on your list. Bread? Check. Butter? Check. Crack cocaine ? No! You forgot to get the crack! It's terrible right? How else will you get your 1-2 servings a day of things that are low in carbs but high in crack? But wait! Two strangers walk past you right outside your house, and you know since one of them is wearing a flashlight for a shirt (bare-chested with an illuminated LED hanging from his neck) that these are crack fairies sent from Heaven to help you. Sure enough, as you pass, Flashlight-Shirt says, "Do you want some crack?" Saved. This just happened half an hour ago. More than anything else I was just surprised... for several reasons, actually. 1. Did they actually have crack, or were they looking for some common ground with me? "N...

I don't think ugly is really that proper of a word to describe people, so I'll try to pick another. How about "interesting?" The people in San Francisco are really interesting. They're textured. They're different. They're like hunks of drift-wood, or carrots that kind of have faces, or used furniture that "has a lot of character." The people in San Francisco have a whole lot of character. When I was in college back at Whitman , I was used to seeing hoards of young, attractive people every day. But if I can lob a criticism at my college friends and classmates, it's that they usually didn't have mohawk pony-tails, toothless mouths that collapsed on themselves, or unexplained bald spots and facial hair. In short, they were very nice, smart, attractive people, but they weren't ugly-- err, interesting-- so they weren't worth staring at. In San Francisco you can stare at people. The people cry out to be stared at. And listened ...

Everything is free in this country. If you want something and you don't care when you get it or what it looks like, odds are you can get it without paying. Everyone just has so much stuff they don't know what to do with it. Over the last week, Sarah and I have scavenged the following from next to dumpsters, the side of the curb, and people's lawns: A wooden table and four matching chairs An electric mixer and two metal beaters (separate places) A mostly working bike (only one flat tire!) A mostly non-working bike and a wheel that almost fits it (separate places) A sauce pan A lid for another pan A five speaker stereo system, a sub-woofer, and a stereo receiver (separate places... but then they all went to the side of my curb when I couldn't figure out how to connect them.) A double papasan chair ... I didn't actually know they made those, let alone gave them away to grad students. A desk (Sarah's- heavy, wooden, not that much fun to move) Another desk (mine-...