Sunday, October 16, 2011

Listy listy listy: Firehouse lore; Bus Terminal name-games, and the Quirkle Shark

Let’s make this easy on ourselves.  It’s late, I’m stressed out, and the coming week will be rife with challenges.  But for some unknowable reason I feel that I ought to update this site, if only so I don’t sit around thinking about it when I ought to be doing other stressful challenging things.  So, without getting into anything too wordacious, here’s a couple of little lists of things.  They share their inherent listiness, but not much else.  Oh, wait, they’re all an excuse for a blog post.  Add that to the pile.

FIRST: A List About Firestations

On Saturday I took the kids to the firehouse - they were having an open house, which basically means cookies and a tour.  Firefolk don’t do much in the way of sophisticated marketing of these things - there was just a banner on the front of their building that I happened to see one evening while taking a stroll.  But when J. woke up from his nap talking about his new favorite book, Frank the Firefighter, I asked the boys if either of them would like to visit the firehouse with me, and lord help me they both said yes.  The firehouse is not quite exactly on the opposite side of our block from our bedroom windows but it’s pretty near to it, so we were there in two shakes of a rather slowly-shaking lamb’s tail, and the guys were all over the place (especially after having their cookies).  Our tourguide, Firefighter C.J. (no fooling), was very informative, and in fact informed me of the following FIVE INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT FIRESTATIONS:

1.  The person who in in charge of the radio at night actually sleeps in a murphy bed next to the radio.  It pulls down out of the wall so any calls can be answered immediately from the comfort of one’s own murph.  In the daytime it retracts back into the wall.  Or at least, it does during open houses.

2.  Firehouses do have brass poles - at least, multi-story ones do.  But they’re semi-high tech, which perhaps is middling-tech: they rest on padded circles of rubber on the floor to offer a softer landing, and they are built to “give” a little, wiggling back and forth with pressure - so a firefighter running full-tilt to jump onto one doesn’t smash any delicate body parts on a too-inflexible pole. 

3.  Fire engines and fire trucks are not the same thing.  Engines carry their own water; trucks are just full of tools but boast no internal pumping apparatus.  And you know what I’m talking about, ladies. 

4.  Fire stations used to have towers or at least some kind of equipment to allow firehoses to be hung out to dry after use.  But it turns out that they switched to nylon-jacketed hoses in the 70s, instead of cotton ones.  Now the hoses can be put away wet, and need not be hung out to dry.  And you know what I’m talking about, ladies.

5.  The SUVs that fire station commanders drive around instead of riding the big engines or trucks, are technically called “buggies.” And you need be no lady to know what I’m talking about here, but really it couldn’t hurt.

So that’s my five things learned about fire stations.  Now let’s talk about another building: Regular readers may recall my ridiculous fascination with the demolition of the old TransBay Terminal, the bus station near my office.  The place where it used to stand - three city blocks and associated apron-lands - is now under massive construction, of a nature I find totally inexplicable.  I watch it from my office and honestly I cannot tell what the hell they are doing out there.  But the point is, while they build the new terminal, there’s a “temporary transbay” across the street from my office.  It’s called “transbay” because it used to be mainly for travel - by train - to the east bay, on tracks that ran on the lower level of the bay bridge.  Those days are long-dead, though, and they’re not specifically naming the new structure “New TransBay” or anything like that.  If plans work out, they’ll be running high-speed trains to L.A., bus service throughout SF, to Marin, down the Peninsula, and to points east; CalTrain to San Jose might link in; there will be access to BART that travels through Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco, and upper San Mateo counties, and probably a matter transmuter for instantaneous apparations in distant lands.  All of which makes me think that the name “TransBay Terminal” needs to be retired.  And thankfully, I’ve thought of some wonderful names that might work better.  They all also have the advantage of having acronyms that are easy to remember and fun to say, which seems to me to be a key criterion of nomenclaturial arts.  So, I give you: BETTER NAMES THAN “TRANSBAY TERMINAL” FOR THE COMING BUS AND TRAIN TERMINAL IN DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO with associated mottos:

Bay Areas Transit Hub - Get Into the BATH
Bay InterCity Transit Consolidation Hub - Get On Up in this BITCH
Bay Area Bus-Yard: BABY’s Got Your New Pair of Shoes
Super-Nice InterCity Transit Terminal - Get into a SNITT
Bay Overland Grand Ubiquity Sallyport - It’s Completely BOGUS
Shiny New InterCity Terminal - It’s the SHIT
Big Old Omni-Bus Station - “Grab One Here”
Diurnal Alternate Navigation Garage - “Opening 2017”

Well, I enjoyed that, anyway.  A man’s blog is his castle, if by castle, one means “citadel of onanism.” And who doesn’t?  Which brings me to my final list: I’m not a big game player but I have grown to love the game of Quirkle.  It’s like dominos but more dynamic (okay, Dynamos, and now I’m mad they didn’t call it that), and it is truly fun for the whole family.  As for which, a few weeks ago our six-year-old was kicking Kelly and my butts at this game, despite our best efforts to the contrary, and with every power-move he laid on us he crowed some smack-talk.  What does a six-year-old’s Quirkle smacktalk sound like?  SMACKTALK FROM A SIX-YEAR-OLD QUIRKLE SHARK:

* Payback!
* It’s victory time!
* DY-NO-MITE!
* You’re going DOWN!
* Gold Winner!
* Still Not Busted Yet!
* Gonna NAIL It!
* Victory is Mine!
* Two Last Pieces of Doom!

For the record, the score for this game was Z: 211; K: 183; D: 175.  I guess I’ve got nothing more to say about any of this.  Next time: something coherent!