Chick Perkins’ cherry ’59 Chevy roars up the Great Highway. In the darkness, headlamps reveal only the moment of road before him, and if he didn’t know this stretch like his face in a mirror it might seem a mystery. But a road doesn’t change. Once you know it, you know it, and following it’ll [...]

Walk across Great Highway toward the water from Noriega Street in the misnamed, terminally overcast Sunset district, peek over the sand dunes and witness the only break that ever scared the bejeezus out of me. The frigid juice of Ocean Beach on a big winter day rumbles with the roar of a felled redwood. On [...]

I live in the Avenues’ precipitous cold gray stucco desert, but more provocative territories are only a bike ride away. Coasting down the Panhandle on a Sunday morning, I pass a family inflating birthday balloons as their little barbeque sends serene, familial smoke signals up among the craggy dignified branches. Tai chi adherents intently practice [...]

Helen
Some mornings there’s a wonderful quality to the light in the garden out back, especially after a rain. It’s not a large garden – none of the back yards out here are that big – but when I sit in the kitchen and look out the windows, I can imagine that it’s something tremendous that [...]