| I wrote a book! |
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My boyfriend's 30th birthday is today, and I wanted to make him something special. He loves ghost hunting (despite not believing in ghosts; go figure), and he's got tons of books on the subject. But for some reason, although he's lived in the Bay Area for years, he didn't have one about San Francisco. He said there just weren't any good ones. So I wrote it. Unfortunately, because I am a procrastinator, I had to write the whole thing in a week. I did a little preliminary research on self-publishing and found blurb.com, which promised an easy template wizard and a quick turnaround time. So I got cracking. I decided to write about 30 "haunted" locations in the city (it being his 30th birthday and all), so I started off with a ton of research--books, newspaper articles, personal interviews, ghost tours, etc. There's a two-page bibliography at the end of the book, in fact. So once I had my locations narrowed down, I searched Flickr for appropriate photos that were available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. By strange coincidence, I ended up using photos from two people I actually knew in real life: Dave Schumaker and Dan Gies (hi, guys!). So then it was time for layout. As someone who considers herself an artist, it pained me to only have a few hours to pull together the design of the book. I feel like I could have made something a little cleaner and more interesting if I'd had more time, but that's what I get for starting late. Finally, after countless hours, I submitted my 64-page masterpiece at 3am last Wednesday, then waited for the FedEx truck with bated breath. The final result is just as professional and well-made as I hoped, and I totally recommend the service if you're looking to do a similar project. You can even sell your book online if you want, but since some of the photos I used weren't licensed for commercial use, I had to pass. If you're dying to read it for some reason, the whole book is available to read online for free, right there. Enjoy! |
Hopefully you made it out to last weekend's top-secret Lost Horizon Night Market, because it was a blast. What is this event with the not-very-descriptive name, you ask? Good question. Frankly, I'm not really sure I know, either.
When I showed up on Saturday, all I had was a general idea: lots of people would show up with box trucks, each with a different theme, and hopefully through word-of-mouth we'd get a crowd of people around 9pm. My own truck was based on a school photo day, so I came armed with a bunch of fake order forms (with a link to a Flickr gallery) and my old high school uniform. I got there early, so while I waited for my friends, I watched as truck after truck drove silently down this quiet road in an industrial part of town. If you didn't already know what was happening, it looked totally innocuous. In fact, the street dead-ended into the Bay, which meant you had to approach from the west. All the trucks were parked facing out, so that from the entrance to the street (or the perspective of any curious neighbors or cops), it was just a bunch of parked trucks. But from the back...
The back of each of the trucks was opened to reveal whatever madness was going on inside. One very long truck had a full bowling alley on the inside. Another had a restaurant where passersby could make reservations and help themselves to free mac and cheese. Everyone's favorite truck, the upside-down ball pit, had a room full of helium balloons and some furniture bolted the ceiling.
Our photo day truck was pretty great, too. We had spare clothes for students who "forgot" it was photo day, plastic combs for last-minute touch-ups, my order forms, and a dozen or so really committed actors. I have to say, though, the award for most convincing character has to go to our photographer for the night, who could not have been creepier if he tried. (Here's me, in character as the photographer's student assistant.)
But really, all the photos were amazing. Click here to see the Flickr gallery order page where you and you mom can preview your class photos. And check out the photos of the Night Market in general (via Boing Boing!).
Are you in San Francisco? Do you need something to do tonight around, oh, 9pm? Huh, ok. Interesting.
Apropos of nothing, maybe you'd like to subscribe to this Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/LostHorizonSF
That's all.
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