signs: Pearl of Siam

Last night as we were leaving the Oakland Heritage Alliance awards ceremony, I noticed that this sign isn't there any more. I didn't catch the name of the Thai restaurant that's there now, but a mention on Yelp says Pearl of Siam closed June 30, 2013, after 25 years in business. Not a bad run!

photo of the week: life is like...

Sure, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get." That's true, but life isn't that simple.

But life is like a box of chocolates in a lot of ways:

• if you have more money, you can afford a bigger, nicer box of chocolates
• if you have very little money, you wish could afford a chocolate
• if prices go up, you may not be able to afford the box of chocolates you used to
• all the chocolates look a little different, different colors, some more perfectly shaped, some with nuts or fruits, but they're all chocolates
• people will form preconceptions about a chocolate based on what it looks like on the outside, regardless of what's inside
• if the box of chocolates drops, odds are that if you're in a nice box of chocolates you'll get picked up first

There's another aspect of life to be learned from the life of Forrest Gump. There's no accounting for dumb luck. Photography instructors and others will tell you "good photographers make their own luck", which is shorthand for saying "put yourself in the right places at the right times, and you'll have better luck", but in the bigger picture (no pun intended), that doesn't account for people who can't put themselves in the right places at the right times for a variety of reasons.

All of which are thoughts that passed through my head when I spotted this scene as I cycled home from the grocery store. Having my camera with me was "making my own luck", and I had to adjust things for the exposure, but this was 95% "dumb luck".

food: Dim Sum at Happy Valley Restaurant

Sunday I met up with a bunch of people I know from Twitter for dim sum. It's a mostly monthly event with a rotating cast of characters, led by @sonnylebythebay . We had to wait a bit for a table since we were a large group (11 and then 3 more!), but the beautiful weather made that no great hardship. Unlike most dim sum restaurants where they push the food around on carts and you point at what you want, Happy Valley has menus where you can order as desired. We mostly left the ordering to the doyenne of dim sum, @itsWanda, but some people added things as the order sheet went around. We ended up with a lot of food. I mean a lot. We made a good showing, but couldn't finish it all, so everyone left with a container.

The food was very good, and very reasonably priced for dim sum. Despite the mountain of food, it worked out to $20 per person with tax and tip. And the waitstaff was very patient with our large group. I'll definitely go again.

More pictures:

photo of the week: waiting

Spotted along Piedmont Avenue the other day. I wonder what's going to become J's Mexican American Food, aka the Key Route Plaza building that has a great mural on the back.

art: Latham Memorial Fountain Unveiled

There's a public art installation that you may not have noticed, even if you were walking past. It's not a sculpture, and there's not lots of bright colors or unusual shapes to catch your eye. The Latham Memorial Fountain Unveiled is near the Latham Fountain between Broadway and Telegraph, on some windows on the Rotunda Building.

The work was created by artist Kari Marboe, and the name references one of her primary sources for the text-based installation. The April 12, 1913 headline in the Oakland Tribune for the unveiling was Latham Memorial Fountain Unveiled, and Marboe uses parts of that text in the design of the art. The article itself is quite long by today's standards, and full of rich language.

The fountain was erected in 1913 as a memorial for James H. Latham and Henrietta Marshall Latham by their children and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

Read more about the art exhibit on the Block Gallery website.

And next time you're downtown, slow down and check out the art.

More pictures of the installation. the fountain, and the Latham grave in Mountain View Cemetery::