San Francisco isn’t a particularly big city in terms of land mass, but it is quite dense. This density can result in some startling changes of scenery in short order. One minute, I was in the trendy and gentrified SoMa neighborhood and a block later I was in the hardscrabble Tenderloin. This density, combined with one of the more comprehensive public transportation systems in the U.S., allowed me to see a good deal of the city and surrounding area without ever stepping foot in a car.

We’re all familiar with some of the more iconic sights such as cable cars and the Transamerica Pyramid.

The Ferry Building hosts a bustling farmer’s market on Saturdays that is sure to give any foodie heart palpitations. The Bay Bridge provides a lovely backdrop to the scene.

I also made some new friends at the Folsom Street Fair (link very NSFW).

My brother first described it as a gay pride event, but it’s more accurate to describe it as one of the largest leather and fetish festivals in the world. To use a Minnesota analogy, it’s like Grand Old Days, but with a lot more people wearing chaps, dog collars, and nipple rings. It is decadent, outrageous, and the embodiment of every conservative’s paranoid vision of life on the Left Coast. I thought it was a blast, although I could probably have won the award for Most Boring Attire (Heterosexual Male).

Not shown in these photos are my wanderings through the ridiculously crowded streets of Chinatown, my visit to the famous but cramped City Lights bookstore, my afternoon in Golden Gate Park, my exploration of the wonderful Richard Avedon exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and my day trip to the Berkeley campus (where everyone is both smarter and better-looking than me).

Of course, I didn’t manage to see everything. But that’s what return trips are for.

Blogging will be on hiatus again until Tuesday. I’m leaving tomorrow to visit my brother in San Francisco for a few days. I don’t have a specific itinerary other than to wander the city, buy my brother a birthday dinner, and measure myself up against the Bay Area hipsters. I was last in San Francisco way back in 1997, but my only memories are of the runaways congregating in Haight-Ashbury and making the ill-advised purchase of a tie-dyed T-shirt.

Pictures will be posted upon return. And if you have recommendations of places to go or things to see and do, feel free to e-mail me. I expect that my iPhone will need a vacation after I put it through its paces on this trip.

My daily visit to BoingBoing caused me to do a double-take today when I saw a post entitled “American health care UI: snapshot” showing a screenshot from a computer system used at my workplace.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s a screenshot from MMIS, a system that the Minnesota Department of Human Services uses to process claims from thousands of Medicaid providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.). The post refers to it as a “‘throwback’ system that hasn’t really been overhauled for a few years.” Actually, MMIS has been around for almost 20 years and it certainly won’t win any awards for prettiest user interface. That said, this system enables Minnesota to process Medicaid claims much more quickly than a lot of other states. I’d be surprised if the claims processing systems for private insurers like Medica or Ucare look much different.

If you don’t do anything else today, read Tim Kreider’s funny and dazzling blog post in the Times about how we view the lives of friends and families through the prism of our own past choices. Since it’s impossible for us to go back in time and follow a different set of forks in the road, we quietly assess our peers’ stations and life and congratulate or berate ourselves for making similar or wildly different choices. Kreider refers to this sociological phenomenon as the Referendum and suggests that it can sometimes result in people gazing at each with incomprehension, jealousy, or smugness from across a yawning chasm of experience and circumstance. He writes:

I may be exceptionally conscious of the Referendum because my life is so different from most of my cohort’s; at 42 I’ve never been married and don’t want kids. I recently had dinner with some old friends, a couple with two small children, and when I told them about my typical Saturday in New York City — doing the Times crossword, stopping off at a local flea market, maybe biking across the Brooklyn Bridge — they looked at me like I was describing my battles with the fierce and elusive Squid-Men among the moons of Neptune. The obscene wealth of free time at my command must’ve seemed unimaginably exotic to them, since their next thousand Saturdays are already booked.

What they also can’t imagine is having too much time on your hands, being unable to fill the hours, having to just sit and stare at the emptiness at the center of your life. But I’m sure that to them this problem seems as pitiable as morbid obesity would to the victims of famine.

Kreider’s observations are similar to my own. Beginning in my early thirties, friends began making remarks to me like “You’re so lucky to live alone.” or “It must be fun to be a bachelor living in the city.” And I would listen to their stories about spouses and partners and imagine how nice it would be to come home and have someone to talk to. Our capacity for imagination is one of our greatest assets, but it can also be a huge pain in the ass. You don’t see dogs coming home from an afternoon in the dog park and yearning for a bigger yard or feeling thankful that their master isn’t a jerk.

We use each other as the inspiration for the stories we tell ourselves, inserting our own dreams and fears into the narratives of lives that followed a different path than our own. It might not seem like a noble impulse at first because–let’s be honest–there isn’t much that’s ennobling about envying someone’s fortune or pitying their burdens. But most great works of fiction are only a couple steps removed from this kind of late-night musing.

Okay, this is just too awesome not to post. Back in the 80s, before the Internet came along, there was this thing called video dating. Video dating was aimed primarily at middle-aged people who–how to say this politely–had trouble finding dates in more traditional venues. Video dating encouraged people to be themselves in a low-pressure environment where the camera was the only audience. The idea was to say a little about yourself and about what you’re looking for in a partner. But the fee didn’t always include much in the way of preparation or coaching. To see what I mean, you have to watch this montage of actual video dating clients. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

A few things struck me as I was watching this. First, did men really dress this badly in the 80s? The guy in the reindeer sweater makes me want to weep. Second, the guy holding the rose and waxing poetic about his ideal goddess almost had me singing the chorus of “Livin’ on a Prayer”. Third, “damsel-in-distress hotline”? Really? I mean, really? Finally, if there’s any justice at all in this world, Fred the Viking warrior found someone with whom to share his love of cosplay and custom-made weaponry.

And yes, I recognize the irony of me snarking on these poor dudes while I’m sitting here in front of my computer on a Friday night. Embrace the irony: that’s my motto.