Over the last couple of days, I have been so cold that I can see my breath when I’m outside. We’ve been having some serious east coast kind of winter temperatures, but without the benefit of fully insulated houses and reasonable heating prices. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Clearly, its put me in a cranky mood.
In any event, the coldness has made me just a little nostalgic for those few days of high sixties/low seventies forecasts and sunny skies. This is a drawing of just one of the many brothers I saw who, on those warm January days, were dressed like it was August. He was standing chatting with friends in from of a house on Bancroft, somewhere between Hegenberger and 98th.
I’ve seen this guy a couple of times at the Alameda Public Library. The drawing depicts him standing in the stacks, looking at one of the shelves of books, only I’ve done away with the stacks and I’ve replaced them with a seismic hazard zone map of Alameda in the background, instead.
Greetings and Happy New Year! My descriptions this week are going to be relatively brief, compared to certain other weeks. In my other life I’m a literature professor, and I have a big deadline coming up at the end of the month; so I’m going to keep the drawings coming, but I don’t have quite as much time as usual for describing the settings in which I have encountered the characters that you will encounter on this website.
Today’s drawing depicts a man I saw standing in front of a duplex in West Oakland. I you live in the Bay Area, you may remember that last weekend we had a couple of days of spring-like weather. This was accompanied by a frenzied rush on the part of a number of men to take off jackets and shirts and stroll, stand, or lounge shirtless. On front porches, on basketball courts, on street corners, and in front of convenience stores I spotted shirtless men sunning themselves and enjoying the closest we’d had to summer in a few weeks.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s drawing, which does not depict a shirtless man but does capture someone I encountered over the past weekend.
There’s something about a brother in well-cut suit. It’s stylish-but-serious, it can be personalized through color or accessories, and the cut of the suit can speak volumes about where in time you think you looked your best. For example, you see a brother in a mint green suit polyester with wide lapels and flare-leg pants, and you know that the 1970s in the decade in which he solidified his style as well as his sense of self.
The brother in this drawing was on California street, at the edge of San Francisco’s financial district, wearing a conservative-but-stylish suit in an environment in which suits are not uncommon. A suit in that context is an expression of belonging. It’s an expression that right there, among the analysts and traders rushing in and out of their high-rise office buildings, is exactly where you were meant to be.
The other day, I saw a man wearing a short trenchcoat. It was a dry day, and partly sunny, just like most of our days this winter. Maybe he was wearing it in the hopes that it might inspire the sky to give us a little of that much-needed rain. If I’m truly honest with myself, I have admit that I’ve made this drawing for the same reason that I imagine the man in this drawing is wearing this coat. I’ve placed a thunder cloud in the background, though there are few thunder storms in this region, even during the wettest of rainy seasons. Maybe a drawing about the rain, of a man who is wearing a raincoat, all accompanied by the following haiku by the 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho will bring the precipitation our gardens and mountains and reservoirs have been waiting for.
First winter rain–
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat
This drawing depicts this striking gentleman I saw while Christmas shopping last week. For the background of the drawing I doctored a vintage blazer pattern. I know nothing about the man in this picture, but I loved how he rocked the dress casual turtleneck and blazer look.
About two months ago, I saw this incredibly dapper group of African American men at Zocalo Cafe in San Leandro. They were all dressed in slacks, jackets and jaunty caps and fedoras. Their clothing had a distinctly retro-feel, like the men just stepped out of the 1940s. This drawing is a tribute to their impeccable style.
