Homeless on homeless

Standing on the street waiting to see an apartment, Eric and I watched the humanity show at Church and Market.

There was a homeless man collapsed on the street about 25 feet away. He was clutching a fifth of something that appeared to be empty. It was either the contents of the bottle or some other thin liquid that streamed away from the middle of his prone body and down the sidewalk. He was either doing pilates or struggling to sit up: he kept lifting his head and shoulders off the ground, hovering for a moment, and then collapsing back down.

All flavors of hipster, fresh young ingenue, steampunk, angry older Asian woman, and muscly gay man streamed past as we continued to wait to see the apartment.

A homeless looking fellow wearing a too large suit and untied sneakers walked by and as he walked past the prone homeless man he gave him a good swift kick.

Then, not more than two minutes later, an older homeless man doing a good job of staggering down the block, paused his bobbing and weaving to yell at his collapsed comrade.

"What is it about passed out homeless people that makes other homeless people so mad?" wondered Eric aloud.

I called the guy who was supposed to be showing us the apartment. He was flaking on us. We merged into the parade of humanity and went on our way.

Critical, motorized

Riding my bike to yoga this morning, I unintentionally timed my trip perfectly to coincide with the Pride parade, which routes a few blocks past where I live. I tried to navigate around it when, suddenly, I found myself in sea of motorcyclists.

And these weren't just any motorcyclists: they were Dykes on Bikes.

And there were many hundreds of them!

It turned out they were turning right in front of me, trapping me in the elbow of the turn. All I could do for over 10 minutes was stand there and watch, and cheer, and be delighted and just a little scandalized at what I saw, which ran the gammet from women in full leather to women in nothing but leather thongs* and boots, and covered a lot of ground in between: leather corsets and garter stockings, topless women in tutus and bright pink fishnets, and even a couple of women dressed as bumble bees.

It, also, was quite wonderful. And just as unexpected. The mood was spectacular and it was hard not to feel, well, proud.


*I said "thong."

Best weekend ever

It was a solidly fabulous weekend. Beekeeping class on Saturday, a wander around Santa Cruz, overnight camping at a state beach including a most improbable and unfortunate hula show, breakfast at the beach in Capitola and last but not least a kayaking adventure through Elkhorn Slough ("sloo") on Sunday.

I'm still not sure what a slough is, exactly, but from what I can tell it is place that includes a really really shallow tidal river that connects to the ocean on one end and who knows what on the other and is full of animals.

Here are some of my favorite animals that we saw, starting with...otters! These guys were hilarious. They would pop up nearby out of nowhere and then rub their bellies and pretend to wash their hair. Then they would do these crazy rolls, going around and around and around. If I had to choose a water animal to be, this seems like a good option. They certainly look like they are having a lot of fun.

These guys, who are either seals or sea lions I'm still not sure, also seem to have it pretty good except that boy do they stink!

And then later, this one was looking at me.

These are gull-lings. I don't usually find baby birds particularly cute but holy gray spotted fluff balls are these little dudes adorable!

And then there was the sort of wildlife that just makes you shake your head.