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Check out Extra Action on NBC news for Hornucopia! And check them out tonight as part of the festival at the Rickshaw Stop :)

More from Linden Alley, where Linden Labs got their name. Used to be home to at least one famous gay male sex club as well.

lo.redjupiter.com writes,

Born Tommy Dorsey in Santa Barbara, California in 1933, he was the oldest of ten children and was raised Catholic. Although he contemplated studying for the Catholic priesthood, he ended up joining the U.S. Navy, from which he was eventually expelled for homosexual conduct. In the 1950s he then began a long career as a performer in drag shows centered in San Francisco's North Beach;a district which served as the Castro Street of its era and which also hosted such fringy populations as the Beat poets, drug dealers, coffee-house anarchists, and jazz musicians. In his shows he was billed as "Tommy Dee, the boy who looks like the girl next door." In the 1960s Tommy deepened his use of alcohol and drugs while joining the hippie movement as founder of a large, still well-remembered commune. In his North Beach years, Tommy Dee shot heroin with Lenny Bruce, partied with the late Carmen McRae and claims to have "discovered" Johnny Mathis--although McRae used to argue with him about this, claiming, instead, that she was the one to discover the young singer.

During these years he had frequent injuries, overdoses, and run-ins with the police. He once said "Sometimes I'd wake up hung over in jail. The first thing I'd do was feel to see if I had my tits on. This would tell me whether they had locked me up on the men's side or with the hookers on the women's side." In the late 1960's he began to sit zazen with Suzuki-roshi and his life began to change. He was eventually ordained as a Buddhist priest by Richard Baker, Suzuki-roshi's successor, and given the name Issan. (...)

(...) Issan Dorsey, as Zen priest at Tassajara and City Center in the 1970s and early 1980s, did not see himself as any kind of Buddhist missionary to the gay community. In fact, he made fun of the macho, middle class, consumer values of gay San Francisco. Those were the years when jeans and lumberjack flannel shirts were the official uniform for gay men and when doing drag or using "Miss Names" were not politically correct activities. Years before the founding of Hartford Street Zendo, when the first meeting of a "Gay Buddhist Club" was announced, Issan scoffed at the idea. "Buddhism is Buddhism, practice is practice," might be a summary of his initial response. At that time, in those last, pre-AIDS years, his major preoccupation was with the idea of starting a soup kitchen in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. (...)

(...) Before there was even any clear name or understanding of the disease, Issan regularly visited a young gay man in San Francisco General Hospital who had what we now know was AIDS. Taking Issan aside after one of his visits, a stern and disapproving charge-nurse commented to him that this particular patient had probably had more than 400 sex partners. Miffed at the woman's moralistic tone, Issan terminated the conversation: "Only 400 partners!" he said loudly, as if on stage again, "Is that ALL?" (...more)

Fixie culture; are we sick enough of it yet already? Fixed gear bikes are the trucker hat, the white belt, the universal sign of non-ironic hipster culture -- and fixie peeps are rabid. But not as hardcore as the "Fix-Push" culture, who face discrimination and fashion facism every day of their dedicated fix push lives. Is it a fixed gear skateboard trend? NO. It's a lifestyle. It's also a clever spoof ("I'm not going to ride 20 miles if I can *push* 20 miles"), it's filmed all over the city and I love seeing the hand--push railslides (yes, even at 3-up 3-down, aka The Armory). The video(s) are well done, and even copy the font/logo design of the fixie culture documentaries they're ripping on. Here's a trailer for Fix-Push 2:

Thanks, Evil Signtist!

The San Francisco campaign's almost over, but I have many favorite tagged anti-meth ad memories -- the ads were annoying for a million ways. One, none of them featured women, and I remember getting off MUNI at Castro and having a butch dyke complain to me that there were *obviously* no trans or lesbians with meth problems. But I loved seeing people tag the ads: one proclaimed "I lost everything to meth" and underneath it someone had scrawled "but i really fucking learned how to clean my house." You get the idea.

SFist collected a bunch of good ones here. It's also horrible to think that someone could lose it all to math. But lest we not forget the little people lost to meth:

Image by notphilatall.

Image via Inhabitat.

The Broadway Tunnel leading into North Beach -- you know, the one where you can hit 60 late at night but you should really never ever do that -- is filthy. Or, it was. The tunnel sees about 20,000 vehicles of all sorts every day, which makes the tunnel walls super gross with black residue. In other words, a perfect canvas for The Reverse Graffiti Project, who seems to enjoy donning full-body armor and scraping away grime to make street art in reverse. According to Inhabitat -- who has lots of great photos -- artist Paul Curtis (aka Moose) said he,

(...) approached the project with dozens of stencils, a high-pressure stream of water, and eco-friendly cleaning solutions provided by GreenWorks (which is the new eco arm of everyone's favorite bleach company Clorox).

Working through the night with a team, Curtis created a beautiful work of public art that embraces the philosophy of clean: "... seeing how dirty a wall is by cleaning it in this way, it kind of gets people immediately.. it's just a cold realization that world is really, really dirty". The installation is accompanied by a great film by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Doug Pray. (...read more! also seen @ Barbary Coast Ranger + film @ Laughing Squid)