As I’ve mentioned, my wife, Helene, and I are house-sitting in San Francisco, a wonderful, quirky city but also home pond to Nancy Pelosi and other odd ducks. Following are a few random sightings and quotes that provide a small whiff of the atmosphere here, such as the fact that there are so many Priuses here with Obama bumper stickers that I now suspect that all the cars Toyota shipped to San Francisco last year came with the Obama stickers built into the bumpers at the factory.
When we first saw the following poster in a window we thought it must have been home-made, but subsequent sightings, and this site, reveal that it is in fact mass-produced, presumably with an audience of purchasers. [UPDATE: This link has been corrected. It should have pointed, as it does now, to a site with many Obey Obama posters.]
I think this poster speaks for itself, and it says volumes about the mentality of many of the most fervent Obamaphiles.
Riding on a MUNI bus one day (Helene likes to ride the buses so she can tune up her Spanish) we picked up a copy of the San Francisco Bay Guardian someone had left behind, perhaps the only paper in the land that can make the San Francisco Chronicle seem almost sane. On page 13 of the Sept. 2 – 8, 2009, issue there is a large announcement of High Holiday Services at the Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls featuring Rabbi Michael Lerner and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. (This announcement is not available in the Guardian online, but almost the same thing is online here.) I was struck by the caption under Alice Walker’s picture in the Guardian, which stated that she would speak “about how Oppressed People can Become Oppressors.” I didn’t realize, I thought at first to myself, that Alice Walker had become a critic of racial quotas, etc., but then, after reading the announcement, realized she was talking about the Jews. Silly me.
And, moving on, there’s this treat, which may be especially useful for those of you who’ve wondered why it is that Nancy Pelosi so often seems to be stumbling around in the dark:
Opaque – dining in the dark
A Journey for the Senses
689 McAllister St., San Francisco CA 94102
Tel.1.888.310.8321
Imagine a San Francisco dining experience like no other. In a pitch-black dining room, each flavor and texture greets enthusiastic senses hungry for an awareness once brought by sight. This is Opaque, San Francisco’s first dark dining restaurant.
A brilliant experimental dining concept that originated in Europe, dark dining allows food to stir the senses in the most unique way. Each burst of spice, each hint of sweetness, each touch of tang stands out, yielding an entirely new appreciation of fine cuisine. Under the expert guidance of Chef de Cuisine Mike Whang (of the popular Indigo Restaurant), the menu at Opaque in San Francisco cultivates a multi-sensory adventure with an array of options woven into a three-course prix fixe meal.
Dining in the Dark in San Francisco
Upon arrival at their allotted reservation time, guests will begin their journey into depravation by turning off all cell phones and checking any purses or bags with the hostess in the lounge, since they’ll not be needed in the dark dining room. Guests are welcomed to relax in the lighted lounge, order a round of specialty cocktails and select the three courses that will make up their prix fixe menu. Once they have ordered, they’ll be guided into the darkened dining room for a dining experience unlike any other. While not all patrons dine at the same time, great care is taken to make sure that the seating of other tables does not disrupt the experience for those who are already seated. Guests will be guided and served by visually impaired individuals that have been specially trained to serve in the dark and tend to the varying needs of each patron in a comfortable and reassuring way.
For San Francisco’s only dining journey, the seasonally changing menu maps out a unique course of both soft and potent flavors designed to complement each other while stimulating the taste buds. With flavor-melding options like Point Reyes blue cheese and Asian pears, hamachi tuna tartare with mango and ginger, seared sea bass with orange-shallot butter, and grilled filet mignon with roasted garlic mashed potatoes and a green peppercorn sauce, diners are the guides as they select from one of two appetizers, three entrees and two deserts to indulge their senses.
A highly sensual experience, dining at Opaque challenges the way patrons perceive their surroundings and cuisine. Feeling for a fork, running fingers along inviting tabletops, recognizing only the voices of companions, drawing in sweet and savory aromas, identifying each ingredient and spice as they eclipse the palate. Opaque is the venue to learn an entirely new way to interact with the world we live in and to appreciate the flavors that pervade culinary styles from around the globe.
Opaque is open for dinner Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Individual seating times are offered.
And finally, at least for now, is this article in the New York Times yesterday about young wunderkind chef, Nate Appleman, who just moved to New York from San Francisco.
“In San Francisco the audience is easy. You put tripe in a bowl and tell them it’s from a humanely raised cow and they’re going to eat it,” Mr. Appleman said. “New York is totally different. In fact, I’m not sure what you have to do in New York.”
Tripe in a bowl; The Obamessiah’s new clothes; whatever….
You mean that those unpleasant “OBEY” posters are not nationwide? As a long-time Bay Area-n, then please let me explain.
In the late nineties, there was a graffiti-ist in the Bay Area named Shepard Fairey who tagged with the name “Giant” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey ). I hate the use of the word “artist” for such people, but, here is some of his “work” : http://www.3580.com/transit/transit_gallery.php?thumb=large&artist=giant . I once met the man – a pretty housemate of a friend was apparently one of his stable of ladies he rotated his time with, and would do anything for him. Anyway, in meeting him, I and found him to be, indeed, gigantic in size, as well as in brusque arrogance.
Anyway, one of his memes was to post these little stickers all over the city : http://usfslisstudentorg.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/andre_the_gianthasaposse1.jpg . This, apparently inspired by the movie “They Live” ( http://aceamoeba.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/sexual-programming-101/ ), became the “Obey Giant” image ( http://aceamoeba.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/obey1.jpg?w=300&h=218 ).
It was Fairy who, in an at first unauthorized manner, created those annoying “Hope” and “Change” iconographic posters ( http://abrooklynlife.com/shepard-fairey-barack-obama-1.jpg ), that, once popular, became authorized and promoted by The Chosen One’s campaign.
So, I believe, the “Obey/Obama” posters are ironic combinations of two of the dude’s memes. At least, I *think* that they are meant to be ironic …
The OBEY poster with Andre the Giant was one of Shepard Fairey’s first public art (or graffiti) projects that got significant notice.
The Obama poster by Fairey (http://obeygiant.com/about) just follows from that original. I assume the new one is either Fairey’s alone or a knock off directly following that.
To some of us, the first Obama poster implicitly indicated “Obey.”
Interesting comments; thanks for posting. In looking for the Obey Obama poster online I found, to my surprise, that it is available from a number of different places, suggesting it’s a popular knock-off of Shepard Fairey’s work. The point, however, is not what Fairey intended, or that his “obey” line pre-dated Obama, or whether he was ironic or something, but what the people who display the poster in their windows mean to communicate.
I can’t find much background on the web about the Obama OBEY, as opposed to the Obama HOPE, and the Andre OBEY, which have been the iconic images of note. My guess is that the inclusion of OBEY into the HOPE poster is a sly, underground anti-Obama statement, and that the people in the window didn’t know it or were outliers in their community.
Odd that Fairey becomes mainstream such that his appropriations subsequently get appropriated to make the opposite point. I thought you had to be ‘left’ to be underground . . . :-)
Fenster – Your guess about the motives of the various Obey Obama poster makers (there are many of them) is as good as — no, make that probably better than — mine. Maybe they, or some of them, were being slyly anti-Obama. Here, for example, is one that is clearly anti-Obama.
But for what it’s worth (about what you’ve paid for it), my guess is that whoever made all these Obey Obama posters (the link I meant to include in my post, and will fix now) did not have anti-Obama motives at all, sly or otherwise, and my even stronger guess is that virtually none of their purchasers had anti-Obama motives.