Three Ideas

I recently posted about wanting to start a business in order to exercise parts of me that have been sleeping in San Francisco. I realized I already have three ideas laying around.

Idea #1 - A queue system for libraries. Sure, you can reserve books now, but you can't stack 'em up and take one off when you return the previous one. This would also mean doing away with late fees and due dates. Eventually people could get suggestions on what to read next. A later version might even include a subscription sevice where books get mailed to your door - keep in mind people don't read nearly as fast as they can watch a movie.

Pros: This is the kind of idea that could make a lot of money. From money that users, advertisers, libraries could potentially pay, there's all kinds of revenue streams. It's also the kind of thing that could unify a divided national library system, and breathe new life into dead-tree books.

Cons: This is the kind of idea that costs a lot of money.There's also a high bar to get libraries to change the way they do business. I feel like the sales/implementation effort would be far greater than any technical effort. Also, the market is really saturated - there's tons of card-catalog vendors as well as many new services that are "netflix for books" that aren't connected to libraries. I'd also need to get into the world of Venture Capital, which I understand how it works, but I don't know where to start.

Idea #2 - Puppy Rental. I swear I posted about this idea months ago, but I can't find it now. Anyway, the basic idea is that girls find puppies cute enough that they'll stop and pet 'em. Dudes in the city may not have time and space for a dog, but that doesn't mean he couldn't benefit from an icebreaker, so he comes to me, rents a puppy for the afternoon and walks him in the park. The service encourages being honest when she asks if it belongs to him, or he can say "I'm walking it for a friend". But if he finds himself on the hook, or they fall in love and want the dog that brought them together, the pups would be for sale when they got beyond puppy size.

Pros: Cute girls, getting a fellow man a date, puppies, and fairly easy to start up. A great business for a crowded city.

Cons: Not really a cash cow. One person could make a living with 20 dogs, but that's a lot of dogs. Plus I feel like some animal rights people might take issue.It would also mean moving somewhere that I could have a lot of dogs, and be close to a park.

Idea #3 Fencing Club to end all fencing clubs. 3 stories, 8 strips per floor. Pro shop. Locker rooms with showers. Rent floor space to the college(s), local club(s), and high school(s). Always have the best floor, best equipment, be where the best want to go. maybe even toss in an on-site residence or some temp housing for visiting coaches.

Pros: I know fencing really well. Really well. I've run a smaller scale business like this before. I really like good fencing. I also feel like this would be a "if you build it, they will come" kind of thing.

Cons: Making money in fencing is hard. The building/land in Indiana would be $1mil at least. It isn't the most expensive idea on the list, but it probably has the longest recuperation time. Since this isn't really a "get rich quick" plan, it means I'd be looking at business and personal loans to get this idea off the ground.

This is where I live

From Naked Bike Ride 2009

I took this picture today after watching a bunch of naked people gear up (down?) for a cross-city bike ride. I live here! Where there's palm trees and blue sky, and art fairs all the time. It's kind of fantastic. Then I rode the cable car home.

St. Patrick's Day Is My Favorite Holiday Ever

And this one was no exception. I don't know where to start because I'm not yet sure where it'll end.  I guess I'll start at noon when I read an email from Magurany. He asked me if I was going to be wearing my blinking bow tie that day. My plans had been to just rock my "Kiss Me I'm Irish" t-shirt and leave the dress clothes for another year. Closer to five, Lara txts me with "Irish Bank" which I take to mean that she's at the bar called Irish Bank, and I'm to join her there. Six rolls around and I'm ready to go. I Google the Irish Bank as I walk out of the office, just a few blocks up Grant in some alley.

Back story: When I was a junior in high school, a Michelle came from Europe and took my favorite hat and gave me kisses. I got a new favorite hat just a week ago.

I meet and greet Lara, Geoff, Alan, (all from my Jobvite days) and some other folks I know. I get sent for beer and I make the mistake of going inside. What seems like two days later I emerge with a Guinness in each fist. At this point I'm armed to the teeth with green beads. They served me well in Chicago where I picked up a set on the street. So I gave Lara one string for a kiss on the cheek. Then some lady walked over get in a photo of her friends. She snapped one off, then she looked at me with that "would you take a picture for me so I can be in it" face. I obliged, and we talked long enough for me to give her some beads and get another cheek kiss. I turned my attention to the people I knew, but she stuck around to talk to some of them.

She was Irish, like flew in to visit the US kind of Irish. Was staying with a mutual friend and a couple of other people from Ireland. My friends disbanded since some had been drinking for five hours (it was only 7pm) and so I decided to jump ship to make a pit stop at home. I rebased my stomach with some quickly prepared ramen, and thought about Magurany, and how I really ought to break out my bow tie. After throwing on two undershirts, a long sleeved waffle weave shirt and finally the collared shirt, I pulled up my suspenders, clipped my bow tie, and turned on the lights.

I decided to go back to Irish Bank. Maybe my friends would return, maybe I'd meet someone else I knew, or maybe I'd go talk to that Irish girl if she was still there. She was still there, so talk I did.There was more bead commerce between us, but the kiss was much better this time. Afterward, she wasn't too shy about grabbing my hat when she went to buy us shots, and I wasn't ready to put up a fight since she'd given me the best snogging of my evening. If i had known her name was Michelle at this point in the evening, I might have been more protective.

I'm slowing down because my stomach is telling me to reduce my rate of intake and considering going home when her friends invite me to follow them to Page, an Irish bar on Divisadero and Haight. It's a good three uphill miles  from my place and I'm fresh out of cash to get home, so unless I leave before midnight, I'm walking home.

It's twelve oh five now. I'm walking. Might as well enjoy it.

After spending my last seven dollars on a pint that I really only looked at for the next hour, the snogging resumes. Things are going... "well" for me and Michelle at this point in the evening, and I decide to hit the head one last time. Already most of her mates (that's Irish speak for friends) have parted, so it's just Michelle and one other girl. The line at the men's room is long for some unknown reason, and when I'm done in there she's gone. I look thr0ugh the whole bar, no Michelle, no mate, no hat. I didn't get a number or anything. I'm sure at some point I shrugged to no one, and then headed home.

It was one in the morning, I knew I had at least an hour of walking to do. It wasn't cold outside, but I wouldn't say it was warm either. I pulled down my sleeves and began my trek. I passed some other people in green, mine was all but gone at this point. My shirt was untucked, covering my suspenders that now hung at my sides. My bow tie was in my pocket, the beads had been "confiscated" because when they were on my belt loops, they apparently were "too gay", and I was hatless.

I was on Divisadero approaching Fulton wondering if somehow I'd bump into Michelle on my way home, or if I'd ever see my hat again, like if I went to Ireland some day. In my semi-intoxicated and distracted state I noticed a skateboarder ahead. He didn't seem to know where he was going, so I took a step toward the curb. I noticed he was with a girl, now directly in front of me, with a tree between us. I figured I'd have to walk in the street to get around them and get on my way home. But with perfect timing and grace she stopped walking, moved to the side, and apologized for the skate boarder. I had plenty of time and space when I said "Thank you". I made no further changes to my course, and continued the remaining uneventful adventure.

By that time I had concocted a plan to post on Craigslist's "Missed Connections" to see if Michelle might want to meet up, let me say good bye, or at least return my hat. Consequently, I've been checking like a crazy person, hoping not to miss my last shot to see her. Tonight, I ran across this posting by some girl: Walking on Fulton Weds. Evening:

Hey, okay so this is pretty lame but worth a try, I was just walking home with my friend, I was walking my bike and my friend had a skateboard. We were on Fulton, I think between Brodrick and Baker.

We stopped and you walked between us because there was not enough room for all of us on the sidewalk in that particular spot, and you very politely said thank you.

You have to excuse us, my friend was a little drunk, and we were acting very childish at the moment, and giggling super loud about stupid things. Just one of those days I guess.

Anyway, I was kind of in awe, you had an amazing smile, and I wasn't really expecting to run into any extremely good looking people at the moment, so I really had nothing good to say.

Well, I hope you have a good night, and maybe I will run into you on the sidewalk again and not act like a little kid.

She's talking about me. Off by a block, but me none the less. So I wrote her back with a picture and some details. I'm hoping we'll do coffee or something soon. Like I said before,  I don't know how this story ends yet. I've got five days to see my hat, and maybe this girl with her bike, who knows!?!?!

Maybe my life really is "an adventure".

Spent an Afternoon in Prision

This past Sunday I was holed up in a cell in the nation's most notorious prision: ALCATRAZ. Did you know it was a national park? Did you know it started off as a Civil War fort? Since they were set up to hold prisioners, it eventually lost the cannons and just became a holding place. Did you know that the warden and his family and many of the guards lived on the island? Did you know you can take a sweet audio tour of the cell house? Did you know that it arguably has one of the best views of San Francisco? I know all of these things now.

The Dickersons were in town and Matt had it on his list to go. I'm not sure i would have made the trip if it was just me, but I'm glad I went. They also talked about a wide variety of birds that lived on the island, but I could only spot the sea gulls. One of the things that got my brain juices flowing was that Alcatraz was added to the national prison system as a result of the Great Depression/Prohibition and it gave me pause about our current economic times. It seems like it might be easy to make a choice that resulted in a new kind of crime, like deciding that alcohol should be outlawed.

Here's a link to the ALBUM of my photos from the island:

From Alcatraz