Bits and pieces

From around the intertubes. I pulled this together last week but forgot to publish, so apologies if anything is out of date or has since been embarrassingly discredited, a la Beyonce's inauguration performance.

• The Bold Italic has a great story about the auto shop in the Tenderloin with the always-changing sign out front. 
• This poster is really, really spot on.

• This author's account of his book tour is totally hilarious. Oh, publishing, you are a ridiculous and occasionally depressing industry.
• Sandwich cakes are a thing. Happy birthday to me, not soon enough.

• A coworker was assaulted in the Mission recently, and her email to the office sharing her story was met with a less-than-stellar reaction from many clueless male coworkers. (Why were you walking home alone at night? etc). This post describes well the kind of rage I feel when I see that kind of shit. It also makes me feel better about how rude I am when a dude comes up to a group of my ladyfriends at a bar to peel off the one he wants to talk to. Oh, did we not seem like we were enjoying ourselves and having a good conversation? Please, by all means, barge in with your privilege and your bad pickup lines and whisk her away, she'll be much happier making small talk with you. 

The article also mentions a browser extension called Jailbreak the Patriarchy that, when activated, switches the gender pronouns on whatever site you're reading to highlight the differences in how men and women are written about. It's a novelty, yes, but it's made me more aware of something I already knew to be true. For example, the lead article on the New York Times website right now is about a female tennis player's death. The headline? "Her Skirt Shocked Wimbledon". 

"Moran’s daring tennis outfit worn in a bastion of English propriety won her more renown than her tennis playing, though she was ranked as high as No. 4 in the United States, won the United States women’s indoor championship in 1949 and reached the quarterfinals that year at Wimbledon."

How much coverage of women's tennis still focuses on outfits, and the players' looks? Way, way, way too much.

• Langan wrote a great peace-I'm-out letter from Hilary.
• How perfect is this nook from Apartment Therapy's profile of a house in Bernal Heights?

• My love for John McPhee continues unabated. Check out this Paris Review interview with him. It also made me a bit homesick for Princeton. I thought this description of his writing was particularly spot on:

In A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee describes Bradley playing basketball “according to the foundation pattern of the game.” Despite possessing an amazingly accurate shot, the athlete distinguished himself primarily through attention to footwork, passing, and strategy. In a sense, McPhee writes the same way. He rarely draws attention to himself, but his sense of structure, detail, and language is so refined that his presence is felt on every page. 

If you haven't read him at all, start with his readers - there are two collections of chapters from his many books, and they give a great overview of the many, many subjects he's covered, from oranges to Alaska to geology. He's the best.