>>JELLY JOY A San Francisco Kickstarter campaign has raised over $91,000 when it only set out to raise $3,000. Uh, and it has 19 days left to go. What does that tell us? That people really love their jellyfish. Jellyfish Art was founded by a Duke University marine biologist who was disturbed by the way standard aquariums would suck his beloved jelly creatures into the filtration system. He began retrofitting tanks, and just launched his fundraising campaign to create a jellyfish-specific prototype that can sit on your beside table. The company also stocks jellies to go with the jars, from Japanese sea nettles to the anemone-like upside-down jelly.
>>SHRED WORTHY So what if Kreayshawn’s show tomorrow night at Slim’s is totally, undeniably sold-out? There are plenty of other live music events that deserve your attention this Thursday; namely the decidedly far less hyped affair at Fivepoints Arthouse in SOMA. The show‘s lineup includes awesomely noisy punk acts from New York (The Men and Nude Beach) along with Milk Music and Wild Moth, billed as angsty San Francisco pop. The Men, a band that shreds rather hard, also plays the Knockout tonight at 9 p.m. Which means, more time in the pit this week.
>>SHRED WORDING Even landlubbers will get something out of The Voodoo Wave: Inside a Season of Triumph and Tumult at Maverick’s (W.W. Norton and Company), Mark Kreidler’s forthcoming book (out Sept. 6) about the legendary big-wave spot that lurks a few miles south of San Francisco. Though it contains a fair amount of surfing-as-a-spiritual-experience woo woo (inevitable, really), it also offers a fascinating, insidery look at what happens when a commercial entity, Mavericks Surf Ventures, attempts to turn a monstrous surf break into a big-bucks brand. Trouble is, you can’t force mother nature to deliver contest-perfect conditions on cue — and the surfers themselves prove nearly as difficult to micro-manage. Read it now before Curtis Hanson’s Gerard Butler-starring, apostrophe-deleting movie Mavericks hits theaters next year.
>>LOCAL YORE Well this is the raddest website we’ve seen in a edutaining second: Old SF, a geo-coded database of SF Public Library images going back to the city’s early days (read: before Google Maps). Wanna see what the bystanders looked like when the water main broke at your intersection in 1956? It has that. How about shots of the baseball stadium that used to be at 15th Street and Valencia in the early 20th century? Go San Francisco Seals!
20th Street and Valencia then…
>>LOVE TO, LOVE TO LOVE TO LUG YA Random moment of joy: when an Eastern European tourist stopped to watch us take a photo of the luggage tag bomb on the chain link fence at 19th Street and Valencia. “Why did you do that?” he asked, boggling no doubt at the sheer randomness of Mission District street art. Of course, we didn’t do it. But whoever did solicit all the colorful tags — each with a much-loved subject written on it, from “old school reggae” and “puppy dreams” to “when the fog burns off” and “having enough to share” — made our morning.
… 20th Street and Valencia now.
>>STEVE JOBS RESIGNS Wouldn’t you know it, it’s actually a 6 Things day. Our Facebook exploded (people really care about Apple!) when it was announced that Steve Jobs resigned today as CEO of Apple. “Woah,” said the Internet. Don’t worry, Macophiles, your mock-turtlenecked god hasn’t abandoned you. Jobs has been named Chairman of the Board and Tim Cook, who’s long filled in for the medically plagued Jobs, will take over as CEO. Speculation is rampant about Jobs’ health condition; he’s battled pancreatic cancer ion the past, and of course his general appearance of late has made headlines. We wish him well. (And also maybe wish people cared as much about who’s actually making their iPhones and where all those rare earth chemicals are coming from.)