friday downtown

fridays are usually a pretty chill day for me. i teach monday through thursday, and fridays are a day for meetings, faculty development, or not much at all. during track season, i'm often traveling on fridays. today, no meetings and the track season is done (except nationals) and so i had/have free time on my hands.

i decided to spend my early afternoon downtown. i remembered that being friday it was the brown bag lunch day @ the met. so, i showered, grabbed my $5 and hopped on the motorcycle. i do love how the restored fresno bee building looks. i know it has the met in a huge financial hole right now, but the renovations are very nice.



i actually didn't bring a lunch with me, but wanted to spend some time out of the house, and wanted to see the current exhibit on the cheap. so, this $5 brown bag lunch option is a good way to do that. the met has these cool clips that you wear on your collar to show who paid, and i suppose who didn't. i'm not sure if you're supposed to give them back, but i forgot and left with mine still attached to the collar (free souvenir!).



today's show was dogs of war, an old, silent little rascals/our gang film. there were also some animated shorts. you know, adding sound to films really helped. talkies, as there were called, are waaaaaaayy better than silent films. now, i do want to question their film selection here. why are you showing movies from the 1920's? who are you trying to draw in with these films? or are you trying to draw in people? or, are you just picking films for the people that are showing up? i'm not exactly sure who is coming to these movies in general, and i know they've only done a few, but the majority of the patrons were older women. and by older, i mean i think there were three people under 55 in the room (me, the guy in charge, and another younger lady). so maybe picking films for senior citizens is the right move if they are the ones that are going to come. but, if you want to draw in younger people, or really attract professionals on their lunch hour, i think you need something different. but, i'm not exactly sure what you can show that's going to be under an hour.



i thought about picking up something on the way, but i lagged so i figured i'd eat something downtown after the show. i thought about coney island, but decided i'd hit up milano for a slice of pizza and a soda. when i came in, kendall had a combo pizza up that had salami, olives and artichoke hearts. this was really tasty. i had a nice conversation with kendall and a lady whose name i didn't catch but she had something to do with downtown about many things. we talked about other museums doing similar things, about the megazone and how yes, someone had eaten it in 8 minutes, and what brings people downtown. and, i set up an art show @ milano in july (july 2nd art hop). setting up a show is always the spark i need to work, so i'm glad i had this conversation. kendall also hooked me up with a free soda if i promised to go down to the new downtown farmers' market. i'm not sure on all the details of this farmers' market, but i guess that some or all of the products are organic.



i took a nice stroll down the mall, which btw is not scary at all and anyone that thinks so should be immediately told they are wrong, and found the farmers market. they had smartly set it up in the shade. i perused the offerings, and settled on a half pound of snap peas ($1) and a half pound of green beans ($1).



finally, i strolled down van ness to return to where i parked the vegas, and then drove on home. all in all, a nice two hour trip. now i need to get my butt to work on some paintings.