SFMOMA has started releasing "artcasts" for your listening pleasure. You no longer need to rent a tape machine with a headset from 1982 to listen to an "educational" lecture about the art you are viewing. The "artcasts" are released in monthly installments with additional podcasts for the main exhibits.
(I'm going to test this out when I go back to check out the Kiki Smith exhibit again this week.)
The much talked about Rogue Wave album, Descended Like Vultures, was one of the few discs on music blog end of the year lists that I had yet to purchase. 10:01 (download from Sub Pop) is a great track I've listened to on repeat but I hadn't been motivated to purchase the album until yesterday. An excess of credit at Amoeba led to multiple purchases. Besides Rogue Wave, I picked up the Birdmonster EP and four 7" (The Kills, Matson Jones, Mountain Goats, and Mclusky). Of course, I ended up spending more than my credit covered but I expected as much. After a few listens to each, I'm not disappointed with my purchases. Birdmonster is a San Francisco band I should be able to see live in the future and their EP has been pimped in more a few music blogs recently.
Taking the 33 from the Mission to Haight is always an experience. (Will the bus make that knife's edge turn onto Clayton or scrape against the cement wall?) Yesterday, a women across the aisle from me, who had been talking to numerous people I could not see, choose to pull out her crack pipe and smoke a bit in response to the mechanical voice declaring that "smoking is prohibited on all MUNI buses." Lovely. I got off at the next stop, not that it mattered, since I bounded down Haight where I inhaled second-hand weed smoke for several blocks.
If you are looking for a good falafel on Valencia, please try Ali Baba's Cave on 19th. Cheap and good. Other places try to charge you extra for hummus and potatoes but not Ali Baba's. Yummy.
