Preamble: There's a new champion parking car in town, the tiny Smart Car.
Time was you couldn't beat the Mini for fitting into some of our notoriously snug parking places in this city, but the Smart Car found a way.
I noticed these two nestled together the other day in the Mission. Cute.
Part One: Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I got to "teach" part of a journalism class, this time out at San Francisco State University. The 600 or so journalism majors there have to be one of the largest groups studying in one place in the world.
I know a few of the faculty members, of course, and in fact have taught out there myself three or four times for a semester at a time. The students in the class I visited (television writing) had lots of questions for me, mainly about the future of the profession they are training to enter.
I told them what I believe -- that this is the most exciting time imaginable to be a journalist, though naturally it may not be the safest.
But these are revolutionary times for journalists, as the old order collapses, and a new one has yet to emerge. What better time to join those of us unafraid of these transitions.
I came of age as a writer at a somewhat similar moment in history: The '60s. Old media were not dying at the time, but they had erected high walls against those in my generation who were all about challenging the status quo.
Shut out, as it were, partly by personal choice, we had no options but to start our own media. So that is what we did. My wife and I drove our old Chevy van, with Ft. Myers, Fla. stenciled on its side, all the way across the country, stuffed both with our few belongings and some of the critical production equipment for the soon-to-be launched SunDance magazine.
Part Two: Our office was at 1913 Fillmore Street in a storefront that exists in exactly the form it did then today. But it has long since transmogrified into a boutique. No magazines are produced in that part of town any longer.
Gone too are almost all of the bars and clubs, including Minnie's Can-Do, my all-time favorite, which through the magic of the web you can still "visit," 38 years later.
Cities are always changing, of course. In years past, in its earlier iterations, The New Yorker captured Manhattan's evolution in its upfront section called The Talk of the Town.
It still does, occasionally, but these days that space is reserved for brilliant essays about politics, the economy and other pressing topics by writers I enjoy like Hendrik Hertzberg and James Surowiecki.
Part Three: Around 4 a.m. tomorrow, my youngest son becomes a teenager. Of my six children, that leaves only one still in the child stage, as opposed to the young person stage.
She's declared herself a vegetarian, but tonight she offered to resume helping us create meatballs -- long one of her fun activities here at Dad's House. Her 12 and 364/365ths year old brother is unusual and special in a lot of ways. One is he still happily puts his arm around her as they walk down the street, scarcely aware and utterly uncaring whether his peers would consider that "cool" or not.
Trust me: he's cool. Way cool!
Happy Birthday-Eve, Dylan...
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