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The first weekend in October is always jam-packed with huge gatherings all over the city. Geographically and ideologically they are all quite different except for having fun outdoors in San Francisco.

• There’s Oktoberfest by the Bay that runs from Friday to Sunday. I’ll be bartending there on Saturday from 1:30 to 5:00. The crowd is usually fratastic and the event’s on the expensive side, hence why I volunteered to bartend for it.
• For all the freaky people, there’s Love Parade, Love Fest, LovEvolution, or whatever they hell they’re calling it this year. This is a mini-Burning Man right in front of City Hall. Lots of fur, ruffles, sparkles, spandex, neon and crazy floats blasting electronica. Saturday only.
• I’m not really one for huge music festivals, but Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is free. And they use the term “bluegrass” loosely because MC Hammer will be there. And Steve Martin, but apparently he plays banjo. I aim to make it on Sunday for Neko Case.
• Fleet Week usually falls on this weekend but I guess it’s the weekend after. Three events is still kinda big. If you plan well enough, you can make all three.

Melbourne-based, American ex-pat musician, Michael Beach, played his debut album, Blood Courses, in its entirety, to a crowd of friends and strangers at Grant and Green in San Francisco on Sunday night.

Michael Beach is the lead singer and guitarist of the Electric Jellyfish and this is his first solo effort. The Jellies are on their 2nd USA tour and I saw them at Hemlock in San Francisco and Luigi’s Pizza in Sacramento—both amazing shows. The band has really come into their own since their last tour.

Blood Courses is described as “a haunting exploration of life, death, beauty, and darkness that unfolds as much as the listener allows it.” The album cover is an unfinished painting by my friend Bridget O’Brien and the website was designed by yours truly.

The full album is available for listing at michaelbeach.org/listen or you can check out my favorite single below:

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I read a couple of Gawker Media blogs and frequently see the weirdest ads running on their network of sites—weird in that they don’t look like advertisements. They look strange and out of place and in turn, intriguing. Clicking on the image, I’m taken to a page with more of the same imagery but with some context. It appears that Gawker fills their unsold pageviews with art from drawing, film, sculpture, digial art, painting, photography and more. Click on the ad and you’ll see the particular artist featured in the pageview. You can also see all artists.

Gawker also lets interested publishers display the rotating gallery of artwork on their own sites. I think it’s an excellent way to display art and better than selling your remnant inventory to bottom-feeding advertisers that aren’t going to pay much anyways. If you let everyone advertise on your site, how can you command a high CPM and maintain your site’s integrity?

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Facebook has several apps that let you record and show the places you’ve been to around the world. The two most common, based on my observation, are Trip Advisors’, Citie’s I’ve Visited and Where I’ve Been.

If you’re looking for a travel map that you can put on any webpage, however, you can use Douwe Osinga’s Visited Countries tool. There’s a map for the globe and a separate one for all 50 United States or India.

As you can see, I’ve covered most of the United States on a road trip, but I haven’t been much outside the continent except for being born in Japan, and a 2 week visit to Europe.

Outside Lands is a big, 3-day music festival in Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco. I caved and bought a ticket for Friday night in spite of the following reasons. My reasons were only reaffirmed when I was there and I’m thankful I didn’t shell out the money for the full 3 days.

1. Long lines for food
2. Long lines to get an alcohol bracelet
3. Long lines to get alcohol
4. Long lines to pee
5. Burn out and exhaustion
6. $$$ Tickets
7. VIP Areas
8. Half-assed fans
9. Having to pick between 2 good bands
10. Corporate sponsorships

Don’t get me wrong; I liked the line-up and I liked all the performances. Radiohead put on a fantastic show even if I only could watch them on the screen. And #9 wasn’t a problem because no one else played at the same time as the headliner. But I still feel like I paid $100 to go to a crowded Radiohead show.

Last night I saw my friend’s band, Balmorhea, play at Cafe du Nord. I was surprised to find that they were the opening act because in Austin—their home town—they’ve played sold out shows at much larger venues. They had just as many, if not more, viewers than the acts that followed—or perhaps they just knew more people in San Francisco.

Their instruments consist of acoustic/electric guitar, stand-up bass, fiddle, (something that looks like a larger fiddle—not sure what instrument it is), keyboard, melodian, and drums, which my friend plays. The melodies are entrancing and the listener is never quite sure what to expect next. With no vocals or repeating chorus, the songs don’t have the predictable repetition that prevails in most pop songs. Each song feels like you’re on a ship at sea waiting to see what weather Neptune is going to send you next.

You can still catch them in the western states in the next few weeks. Check out below for a sample, “San Solomon”

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Artsy music and video sites Muxtape and Vimeo have their logos as ASCII Art in HTML comments at the top of all their pages; a nice surprise for anyone poking around there.

                               **
                              /**             ******
 **********  **   ** **   ** ******  ******  /**///**  *****
//**//**//**/**  /**//** ** ///**/  //////** /**  /** **///**
 /** /** /**/**  /** //***    /**    ******* /****** /*******
 /** /** /**/**  /**  **/**   /**   **////** /**///  /**////
 *** /** /**//****** ** //**  //** //********/**     //******
///  //  //  ////// //   //    //   //////// //       //////

 ___    ___   ___   __  __  ___    _____     ______
/   \\  /_  \\ /_  \\ /_ \\/_ \\/_  \\  / ___ \\   /  __  \\
|/\\  \\  /  /   | |   | / \\ / \\ | / /___\\ \\ /  /  \\  \\
   \\  \\/  /    | |   | | | | | | | ______/ |  |  |  |
    \\    /     | |   | | | | | | | \\    __ |  |  |  |
     \\  /      | |_  | | | | | |  \\ \\__/ / \\  \\__/  /
      \\/       \\__/  \\_\\ \\_\\ \\_\\   \\____/   \\______/

I noticed this “graffiti” mural by the Larkin Street entrance of the Broadway tunnel the other day.

The technique is known as “reverse grafitti,” which is created by selectively cleaning dirty surfaces. Since tunnels are usually filthy from exhaust, they are usual targets for this type of work. A year ago, artist Alexandre Orion used the technique on a tunnel in Sao Paulo.

After some researching online I found out the graffiti is actually a condoned advertisement for Clorox’s new environmentally friendly line of cleaning products, Green Works. It’s kind of lame that it’s an fake guerrilla marketing advertisement, but at least it’s for a green product. Still, how is this legal and other graffiti isn’t? I guess you can do anything if you pay someone enough.

This post is to call out an artist whose work I appreciate. Most of the subject matter in the artist’s sketches consists of nitty-gritty NYC debaucheries: cheap beer, pills, sex, cigarettes and rock n’ roll. This is why I had always assumed the artist was a male; but no, Hope Gangloff is female. (I first noticed her work featured in the header of myopenbar.com)

The medium, too, looks cheap: drawn with blue, red and black pens. But the—art and humanity within it—is rich.