Raging Fire in The Neighborhood

Fridays are insane and yesterday, which only became yesterday a few minutes ago, had me on the go from the moment my alarm went off at 6:30 AM until I finally got home for good around midnight.

I figure I made 12 separate outings in the car, all for the usual routine purposes, and several more on foot.

By far the most interesting of these was a walk I took around 5 PM. A huge fire billowing black smoke over the neighborhood had broken out at 20th & Capp Streets, just across from a ZipCar lot I once frequented.

Two houses burned; firefighters climbed their ladders to the roofs and broke through with axes to fire water hoses onto the flames. It was a dramatic scene on a windy afternoon.

In the crowd I spotted an old friend, a professional photographer I first worked with some 19 years ago when I was Bureau Chief for California Magazine.

Two blocks away, two young entrepreneurs I know were setting up their Vietnamese "pop-up" kitchen in the warehouse of an old iron works factory.

Rice Paper Scissors -- as they call themselves -- represents one of the innovative ways a generation of recent college graduates facing the worst job market since the Depression is coping. They are just going out and starting their own businesses, in this case "underground," without asking for any official approval.

The City looks the other way, which is the right thing to do, as hundreds of residents come out to try the cuisine these two young chefs prepare in authentic Vietnamese street cafe style.

My friend interrupted the women's preparations and did a quick photo shoot. Who knows, someday these shots could mean a lot to them. After all, he took some of the earliest photos of a couple guys in a garage -- Sergey and Larry -- as they were founding a tiny little venture called Google.

Bill and I were the first "customers" tonight as Valerie and Katie gave us a dish -- scrumptious!

Bill told me that the house on the corner, right next door to where the fire was raging had belonged to the legendary artist, David Ireland, who passed away in recent years. The house is apparently a sort of living museum inside, so hopefully its walls were not damaged.

Neither of us had our press passes with us; we were very much just observers at the fire, but watching the way Bill photographed Katie and Valerie; and thinking about the way I profiled them in print, I realized that you can take the journalists out of their jobs, but you can never take the journalism out of the journalists.

We just keep writing and shooting whatever we see, whether we're paid or not.

We know what the stories are when we see them. That's who we are.

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