People Who Work In Glass Buildings ...

... shouldn't take pictures. Or something like that. Well, call me a rulebreaker, but I really like this impromptu self-portrait from (of?) (through?) my office window.

Folsom Street Fair

Fun, Frolic, Fetish, and FreeThinker!

Leather is optional at the Folsom Street Fair. Anything is optional at the Folsom Street Fair, any type of clothing or even no clothing at all. This annual block party is a celebration of all fetishes, especially those revolving around leather and the attendant whips, chains, S&M, B&D, corsets, and other fun stuff.

Are you the prudish type? Better not continue with this post.

You're still reading? Please. Go ahead. Scroll down and look at the photos. I'll wait.

No, really. I'll be right here. Go.

You're back? Good.

In perfect Indian Summer balmy weather, hundreds of thousands enjoyed the sights and sounds and sensations on a four-block stretch of Folsom Street. A little extra sunblock was needed for areas that don’t usually see the sun.

There were several spanking booths, and no shortage of spankees who waited in line and ponied up cash (all proceeds to charity) to be spanked. Or flogged. Or whipped. Restraints optional.

Like most events in this mellow city, the vibe was courteous and peaceful. All the “aggression” was consensual role-playing. As always, the San Francisco Police Department were on patrol, walking in pairs along the street with the other fairgoers, blending right in with their own uniforms. It was difficult to tell the real cops from the police-uniform fetishists.

FreeThinker’s Folsom Fair Fotos below. Again, if you are on the prudish side, avert your eyes!

Green Day at SBC Park

East Bay slackers Green Day are certainly enjoying their salad days. Their latest album, American Idiot, is as catchy as it is topical. It's also a mulitiplatinum international smash, and after months of packing stadium shows worldwide, it's nice to have a "homecoming" show in a sold-out SBC Park. Especially with the triumphant glitz of laser lights, smoke machines, flash pots and fireworks.

Arizona's Jimmy Eat World was the opening act, and their hard-driving and hook-filled numbers complemented the upcoming punk grooves of Green Day.


Opening Act - Jimmy Eat World
It makes a big difference to be in the standing-only section instead of the "cheap seats." We were packed so tight, it was difficult to move my arms from my sides to the air and back again. Sometimes a "body wave" starts, and you have to go with the flow, like bobbing around in an ocean wave. I "drifted" in and out of proximity of my friends. Lending a helping hand to the occasional body surfers was fun.

Green Day leader and guitarist Billy Joe Armstrong was in his unabashed punk element, but he never stole the spotlight from bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool. Billy Joe had the adoring audience in his hands all night, and not just with the music. At one seemingly impromptu point, he announced he wanted to start a new band, right here, right now. He asked for three audience members who could play drums, bass, or guitar. Using his musician's intuition, he brought three volunteers on stage and got them jamming to a punk riff while he and Mike and Tre took a short break.

"I'm not a part of your redneck agenda ..." An overtly political band supporting an overtly political album, there were frequent lacerations of President Bush, who certainly was not at the show. (In fact, he has never set foot in San Francisco since taking office.)

This has been a long and intense month, made all the more poignant when Billy Joe dedicated a song to the hurricane victims: "Wake Me Up When September Ends."

Love Parade

We have a reunited Germany to thank for today’s Love Parade in San Francisco. After the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the Love Parade was started in Berlin by DJs who believed that music - techno music in particular - could meld the cultural landscape of a formerly divided country. The event was a huge success and it was repeated annually, peaking at 1.5 million participants in 2000. The original German Love Parade has finished its run, but the parade lives on in Santiago, Tel Aviv, Mexico City and San Francisco. This is the second annual Love Parade in San Francisco.

This is a "parade" in name only. The idea is to participate, not just watch from the sidelines. It has been called a dance party on wheels. Along with 24 floats decked with dancers and DJs (Crystal Method, Carl Cox, et. al.), tens of thousands of dance devotees sinuously shaking their groove thangs down Market Street to the Civic Center, which was transformed into a multi-stage open-air club where the beats thumped nonstop until the evening, when countless scattered afterparties continued the fun.

Coming from another part of The City, an anti-war rally wrapped up its own parade at the Civic Center. The merger of War! Huh! What Is It Good For! cross-fading into the pulsating techno thump-thump-thump … was unintentionally metaphorical. Peace and Love, together at last!

39 Masonic Avenue

Is this what they call ...

"Curb Appeal?"
Forget conformity, convention, and cookie-cutter blandness. This funky-cozy home (on the same block as Hukilau, home of Poke Fest) is just one example of the seemingly countless one-of-a-kind abodes here in San Francisco.

Makes you wonder how delightfully quirky the inside must be.

And how fun a dinner party with the residents must be!

Thai House Express

FreeThinker loves Thai food, but he finds it confusing to order, which only adds to its exotic appeal. So when fellow coworkers, led by Thai-food master Rico, assemble in a local Thai restaurant for a long lunch hour, with Rico ordering all the food for us, we are all in for a treat.

Whatever we had -- the menu item names already escape me -- was spicy and savory, whether it was the green curry, beef salad or tofu and chile stir-fry, or the more regional Thai food like kao soy (a curried noodle dish). This toothsome place hides behind the misleading name of "Thai House Express," which evokes a shopping mall food court joint. The restaurant name is the only pedestrian thing about this place. FreeThinker gives two Thai Thumbs up.

Under God?

I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag

of the United States of America,

and to the Republic for which it stands:

one Nation, Indivisible,

With Liberty and Justice for all.

This was the Pledge of Allegiance before it was altered in 1954 with two added words that have essentially negated its surrounding words -- "one nation" and "indivisible."

Today a federal court ruled that forcing public school children to recite the altered pledge -- with those two troublesome words, "Under God" -- is unconstitutional as it violates their right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God." This is good news, and this is the right decision. Let's focus on the real issue here: Children should not be coerced to pledge to any deity in state-funded schools. (Private schools and home schooling are appropriate avenues for blending religion with education.) It's really that simple. This is not about banning the Pledge of Allegiance, it's about restoring the Pledge to its original religion-free form. National paranoia over the "godless Communists" was all the rage in 1954, and at the time it seemed proper to affirm that America was somehow under a god's guidance. Not just some god or many gods, but God with a capital G -- the god of the monotheistic religion of Christianity. Not Allah, not Zeus, not Apollo, not Satan, not Mithra, not just some random god, not many gods. It's specifically the god named "God."

Is it fair to coerce public schoolchildren, who may be polytheists, atheists or even monotheists who worship another god to say they are "under" a particular god? No, and it is illegal under our Constitution, as today's ruling outlined. Church and state should be kept separate. This whole issue is an example of what problems are caused by slipping sectarian religion in public schools. It was a mistake to add "Under God" to the Pledge, and it was a bigger mistake to force children in state schools to recite it.

Do you still think "Under God" is appropriate in the Pledge? Try saying "Under no god." Or "Under Allah." Or "Under Jesus." These variations are just as inappropriate.

Remove religion from the Pledge, and let's return to One Nation and Indivisibility.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -- James Madison, 1803