Art

Art, San Francisco

Goodbye SFMOMA: Closing Countdown Celebration

Last weekend the SF Museum of Modern Art had a multi-day blowout bash to celebrate the closing of its doors. The museum will be getting a massive facelift, but it’ll take 3 years. Admission was free during the celebration weekend, and on the last day the building stayed open all night long for drinking, celebrating, and art. YES. ALL NIGHT LONG.

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I dropped by around dusk (knowing full well I was not going to make it to 4am, or any am). I was startled by a car cruising down the sidewalk! Damn ZipCar drivers!

 

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One exhibit that I was very excited about was Christian Marclay’s The Clock, which I’d read about in NYMag ages ago. They were playing it from beginning to end during the last 24 hours before the museum closed. I wanted to see it badly, but not badly enough to wait several hours, or to come back at 4 in the morning. Oh well. It should be on YouTube somewhere, yes? Right? Right? :/

 

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Bands, poets and artists of all types popped up on the rooftop stage to perform in 20 minute intervals.

 

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There were food trucks outside- a must. I ended up getting some noodles from a Thai cart run by Argentinians. Those Argentinians know their pad thai! Who knew?

 

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Here’s the view from the third floor stairwell down to the first floor bar.

For the last year or so my go-to bar drink has been a Moscow Mule. So I was pretty excited when I realized that the signature drink for the event was a “MOMA Mule.” It’s the little things that make me happy.

 

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People hanging out on the rooftop while the band “Tits” plays inside.

According to the SFMOMA website, almost 50,000 people came out last weekend! Crazy. Now the museum’s exhibits are scattered across different partner museums and parks (including Crissy Field). It’s lovely, but I’ll miss being able to pop over on my lunch break whenever I’m feeling frazzled. Memories 🙂

Art, Food, Shopping

Drink Like Your Favorite Characters

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From Pop Chart Lab:

A catalog of 49 drinks culled from great works of film and literature, depicting everything from Philip Marlowe’s Gin Gimlet to Fredo Corleone’s Banana Daiquiri to the simple yet effective Buttermaker Boilermaker.

 

Finally, an infographic worth framing! Now I can finally make  The Flaming Moe from the Simpsons and the Gibson from North by Northwest. Which drinks are your favorite?

Art

Music for Your Twerk Out

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 I don’t talk about working out terribly often, but I’m a gym rat.

Lately my routine is heading to the gym during my lunch break, running about three miles, showering, and then getting my slobbery mess self back to the office where I chow down my lunch in front of the screen. It’s really really nice. My mood is ten times better, and I love getting my workout out of the way so that it doesn’t cut into my personal time after work.

I don’t like running all that much, but it really makes me exhausted, and when I’ve only got thirty minutes, it does the trick. One thing that has made running almost… *enjoyable* has been Major Lazer.  

And now there is a Major Lazer Workout Mix. YES! It’s on POTATOwillEATyou, Skrillex/Diplo/A-Trak’s YouTube channel. Thanks to my sister in cynicism Michelle for tossing it my way. It’s fantastic. Listening to this mix basically FEELS like you’re already running.

Favorites include:

19:30 Diplo and M83 – Express City (Benzi Short Redo)

22:23 Action (Richie Beretta 7th Grade Dance Remix)

24:25 Alesia and DJ Snake – Bird Machine

ENJOY!!!!

Art

Frances Ha @ SFIFF Happily Passes the Bechdel Test

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A new friend of mine invited me to check out a movie at the San Francisco International Film Fest. At first when I heard the name, I thought it was going to be a documentary about an Asian chick. OOPS. Nope, it’s a movie cowritten by Noah Baumbach + Greta Gerwig!  Even better. I liked Greta in Lola Versus (she seriously saved that terrible movie), so I was pretty excited about checking out the film.  They (and the film)  appeared in a story in The New Yorker last week, so I took it as a sign that it was going to be awesome.

As an extra bonus, Baumbach and Gerwig were both at the screening to answer questions. In the past Gerwig has played  clumsy yet lovable space cadets, and she’s pretty similar in real life. A bit unpolished but utterly charming. Also, whoa she’s really tall. How did I never notice that?

Here’s the official movie blurb:

Frances (Greta Gerwig) lives in New York, but she doesn’t really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but shes not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren’t really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness. Frances Ha is a modern comic fable that explores New York, friendship,class, ambition, failure, and redemption

Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie. It was pretty short, but all ninety five minutes of it felt intoxicatingly frothy and hopeful about life. It didn’t hurt that it was also beautifully shot on the fly in New York. The film captures pretty well the way that close friendships change over time, and also that unsettled feeling of being left behind as your friends move on to other jobs, cities, relationships.

Definitely a must watch!