What’s Going On?

Ringing in his bell for the third consecutive year in a row, Leonard Oats took the throne as he came out on top over the six contestants. He was followed by Frank Ware who took second  and Howard Woo who came in at third.

This year’s contest was held at Union Square this Tuesday a little after noon. A crowd of about a couple hundred gathered around the cable car in hopes to see history in the making as six cable car grip-men competed against each other for the title of Cable Car Ringing Champion of the World.

The rules for the professional contest were that may have up to 30 seconds to practice prior to his performance. Contestants may not have any music accompaniment and/or dancers. He must do it alone. And the contestants must ring the bell while in a cable car.

In the amateur competition that preceded before the professional competition each contestant was allowed to ring the bell to accompanied music and by dancers. Coming out on top for his second year in a row Scotty B of KOIT took his second victory. His bell ringing display was accompanied by two break dancers and four green boa female backup dancers as his theme was that of a bar.  Following Scotty in second was Janelle Wang of ABC 7 / KGO-TV. She brought to the competition this year four 49ers Gold Rush cheerleaders to help her. Janelle went on to dance with the girls in a choreographed routine where she then left the dancers to start ringing the bell. Lastly, in third place was Aaron Jones of KBLX. Jones’ routine was that to a slow paced Latin ballroom dancing.

After the competition, awards were given to all the participants. Prizes for the contestants consisted of hotel stays, dinner certificates, other food certificates, trophies, posters, and the championship bell.

This weekend San Francisco was host to the annual Union Street Festival. This festival ran along six blocks of Union Street from from Gough St. to Steiner St. Two bandstands were along the festival route that had live jazz and Latin music. The festival was full of arts and crafts booths, four or more food booths at each intersection, a kiddie carnival on one end, and not to mention the retail stores and restaurants that are on Union Street itself. The festival was more or less a huge mecca for shopping and spending.

Highlight of the festival probably were the live jazz music and the crab fries. Live music has always been a great enjoyment of mine. I’ve always loved listening to music being played and watching the facial expressions and the gestures that the musicians make while playing and singing. What always gets me more hyped is when there’s an awesome beat and several people let loose and just dance in front of the stage. I sometimes feel that I want to boogie on down, but I’m to embarrassed.

When coming to festivals I tend not to eat too much from the food vendors because from festival to festival they all tend to have the same but slightly different foods. I’ve had my share of chicken skewers, corn on the cob, garlic fries, and other carnival like foods, but what caught my eye this year was crab garlic fries. I must tell you that the fries were just golden delicious and fried to perfection. There was some aioli dressing on top of the fries and on top of that was a nice helping of some crab. The crab wasn’t flavored, but that didn’t matter because the flavor of the fries and the aioli made it all tasty when eating them all together. If you see it you must try it. Almost reminded me of some fries that I had in Baltimore at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. There they had crab fries that were seasoned with a delicious crab seasoning, but no real crab meat.

Having been to many festivals, this festival is probably one of the least favorites of mine because to me I don’t see too much culture or any cultural aspect in it. On the other hand, if you want to count consumerism then yes it has the American culture written all over it. This festival was full of things to buy and eat or drink. I didn’t see any booths that dealt with creating arts, nor booths that had the history about Union Street. I’m in favor more of the Chinese New Year festivals in Chinatown, the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival, and Carnaval on top of any street fair.

Next week, will be the Haight Street Fair. Similar to the Union Street Festival, the Haight Street Fair will have pretty much similar vendors and music, but I think the 60s and 70s culture will be more apparent to festival goers. I’m actually looking forward to this fair because of the colorful neighborhood and the lively crowd that most likely will be there. Be prepared to be amongst the hippie generation of people that promote peace, not war. This is a much more different dynamic than the yuppieish Union Street Fair. Bring your dancing shoes.

Tonight, I had the privilege again to check out my friends comedy group called hoboFish improv and a group I haven’t seen before called Kamikaze Theory sketch comedy group.

The evening started off with dinner at Luna Park, which was pretty amazing. I had gone with a friend and the night was 50% off food night. I love discounts and when it’s on food even better. I had the red wine braised short ribs with braised greens on top of mashed potatoes all topped with scallions and the naturalau jus. My friend had the grilled salmon on top of a veggie medley along with a side of french fries. We both shared the ahi tuna poke on top of  wonton chips and the mac ‘n cheese with broccoli and ham. Every thing was delicious and filled my stomach for the show to come.

After dinner, We got to the Thick House where there was a small theater inside of this contemporary glass structure. Seating in the house was about 71 seats and the audience was packed. A friend of mine came late and did notpre purchase tickets so he ended up missing the show. I had a seat in the front row and probably just one of the best seats to have in the house. First up was hoboFish improv and as usual they were awesome. Word of the night pulled from the audience was “panda”. hoboFish had a few good liners with the panda jokes then throughout the bit it was mentioned sporadically to bring back the key word of the night. They had also some great jokes surrounding technological items and that pretty hilarious. I wish the show would go on forever, but all good things must come to an end. Bravo though.

The feature presentation group of the evening was the Kamikaze Theory sketch comedy group. They kicked things off with a creative, yet wacky song and dance. They introduced themselves that way and they even danced up the aisles of the theater with ribbons. Must say this group started things out right. It was laugh out loud. The laughter had just begun though. The theme of the night was about Unemployment and a couple of the sketches revolved around it. For example they had one about working in the office place and a honeymoon at home due to not being financially off. Some other sketches were based on someyouTube clips and they just had done parodies of them and it was pure genius. One sketch that was totally awesome was about being on Bart and that just brought me to tears, especially when a passenger was eating Doritos and had choked on it.hahaha oh man, the laughter just couldn’t stop. I highly recommend catching the Kamikaze Theory group if you haven’t seen them yet. Tonight’s show was just the first of I hope many to come in the future.

Congratulations goes out to the Randy “Big Unit” Johnson who reaches his 300th career victory over the Washington Nationals. The Walnut Creek, CA born player is the 24th pitcher in major league baseball to have achieved such a milestone. Some other achievements are that he is the tallest pitcher to reach the 300 mark standing tall at 6foot 10inches. He has 5 Cy Young Awards. He has 4845 strikeouts. He has pitched 2 no- hitters (one of them was a perfect game). He also even got to demolish a bird in spring training as he threw a fastball against the Giants in 2001. He has many many more achievements, but these are just some to mention.

Johnson gains his 300th career win as he helped lead the Giants to a 5-1 victory in Game 1 of the double header, where eventually he was taken out of the game due to landing on his left arm/shoulder as he barehanded a ball behind the mound and tossed it towards first base to get the out in the bottom of the 6th inning.

Giants went on to win Game 2 of the double header after a rain delay winning 4-1. Giants take the series from the Nationals.

These last four days have been a series of ups and downs of emotion for me. I haven’t felt this way in a long time and to have something so emotional just inspired me to do something about it. Lately, I’ve just decided to blog about things that have been eventful, things that have impact on society or me, and things I can look back on to remember. However, these past couple of days have included all the aspects I just described.

Friday, I had a great time going to a group of friend’s housewarming party. It was a blast. The theme of the night was “Friday Night Lights.” I had worn a pair of jeans and a shirt that my friend got me from UT at Austin. I also had made my own eye black out of  two strips of athletic tape that I had colored in black with a Sharpie. Eye black is used by athletes to help reduce glare from the sun. I, however, did not have any on hand so I just made my own for free. I must say it was very efficient and practical because there was really no mess or clean up. I just pealed them off and had a clean face in a matter of seconds. The party that night was great, friends came over and had a good time having food and drink and participated in several party games.

On Saturday, I was happy to find out that my two friends from college both got hitched. I met them both in college at San Jose State and at the time they were dating. Who would have guessed that several years later that they would go on to get married? I had no idea, but nonetheless was very happy to see a union of two people .

Sunday was a great day. I visited San Francisco Bible Church, a church that I frequented when I was in my youth. It’s been a few months since I’ve been back to my home church, but nonetheless it was great to see their faces again and to be warmly welcomed. (Currently, I frequent Great Exchange Covenant Church in SF that meets at night which offers convenience for people that cannot wake up early on Sunday mornings). Several of my friends after service went out to eat for a great Chinese meal at a local restaurant that I used to frequent because of their really cheap eats. However, I guess over the last couple of years the restaurant remodeled and raised their prices. The dining crowd was non-existent, but the food was still good. I think that the owners should bring the prices back down to increase consumer traffic. Later that night my friend had a birthday party. I just couldn’t believe how much fun I was having. It was like college all over again. We had boxes of pizza, chips, and soda. Played some Scattegories, American Idol Encoure (karaoke) on the PS3, some game I can’t recall, and watched hippos attack each other on the Discovery Channel. After all that, friends decided to go bowl at Sea Bowl in Pacifica. I must say that bowling alley has come a long way from it’s earlier days. Remodeled to have a cool retro look the bowling alley brings in more bowlers.

After having a great weekend thus far, today was probably one of the saddest days that I’ve had in a long while. One of my friends that I’ve met through a small group from church passed away. Patrick was his name and he was loved by many. I attended his funeral and burial earlier today. Patrick lived a good life where he touched many people’s lives. He particularly touched my life in ways I can never forget. He was a good friend that truly understood me, he knew when I was in a funk and tried to talk things out. He also knew when I wanted to go out and have fun. He was a guy that had a weird sense of making people laugh, he had a way of making a lot of quirky faces. He was a guy that believed in my passion of photography, he liked my work so much that it inspires me to keep doing what I love doing. It is people like Patrick that make me want to capture people’s lives on camera. Making people happy is all I ever want to do in my life and for Pat he lived it out. He helped others placing their needs before his own personal needs. Truly he is an inspiration.  Honestly, I regret not spending a lot of time and getting to know him as much as I have wanted, but I know that he will have a long lasting impression on my life.

During the memorial service many friends and family came up to the front of the room to share about Patrick’s inspirations on their lives and about the life that he lived. In addition to the service, the burial ceremony was great. At the site a friend and Patrick’s father shared. His father illustrated what kind of guy Patrick was at heart. He said although Patrick seemed tough on the outside, at heart he was really a softy. He recalled a moment when Pat broke his collar bone and Pat asked his father to hold his hand while on a gurney headed towards the operating room. He illustrated this point because most Asian boys wouldn’t ask their father for their love, but Patrick did. On this day of mourning, his father held Patrick’s hands throughout the service at mortuary, it was only fair for him to hold Pat’s hands as Pat once asked him.

Following the services, I had a chance to eat at the reception with Pat’s father along with my two other friends. At the table, we went around explaining what our relation to Pat was. One expressed concern that his father expressed was that about the guest book because it only had the information of people’s names and address, but no information on the relation that Pat had with these people. I think by having this small, but very important detail would bring more closure to family and close friends of the type of people that one reaches out to throughout their lives. Although, today was a very sad one, it was also a great day to remember the life that Patrick lived. Why wait till someone passes before we can say so many good things about someone? Make every day count. Patrick will always be that inspiration and that person that I’d like to be. He will be missed.

On another happier note, today I bumped into two friends whom I haven’t seen in over 8 years that flew up from LA who was also at the cemetery paying respects to their loved ones. Today was also great because I found out that my two other friends are going to be having a baby boy in about 6-7 months. I told one of them that they should name their child Michael because I think that name is so cool.

Overall, this weekend had it’s extremes of ups and downs and of life and death. This weekend will be one that I hope to reflect on in future years. Life is temporary. May the life that you live be one that can impact and change the lives of others.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF PATRICK ANDREW KONG (1981-2009)