Sinister: lunch with stuart

[Ian Connelly]

last friday i found an all-caps plea in my inbox from a friend, asking me
to tell her what stuart murdoch looked like. i sent off the URLs of two of
rachel's photos from the LA show, and quickly got back an exclamation of
thanks from my friend. why did she want to know?

she was to meet him at the 24th st BART (san francisco's subway) station,
which is sort of like saying 'i'll meet you at the transamerica pyramid,'
as the station has two outlets above ground (on opposite sides of the
street) and is quite large.

why was she meeting him? what was he doing back in san francisco? she was
to take a few quick photos of him for a magazine she works for. i could
come along, she said, if i wanted. but i couldn't.

fast forward a few hours. a group of us indie-internet-nerds have a weekly
friday lunch gathering at a different restaurant each week. derived from a
naughty spoonerism, we call this group 'funch luckers.' my friend the
photog is a member, as are about 30 other people. and today's funch was at
zeitgeist, a spot popular with motorcyclists and bike messengers that's on
the warm fringes of the mission district. it's got a wonderfully
unreconstructed patio (dirt and rough-hewn picnic tables) and serves food
and beer (beer is perhaps the unifying factor of funch, and has led to
many an unproductive friday), and is quite comfortable.

somehow my friend convinced stuart to come along to funch. there were
about a dozen of us as usual, and i have no idea at all what he thought of
it. topics of conversation picked up quickly and changed direction across
the table:  barbecues, orgies, work, children, guitar solos,
friendster.com, radio shows, personal gossip, good natured teasing.  all
about us, of course. as this post is all about me.

stuart was charming and sweet. he was in SF taking a break for an extra
week or so, with no partcular plans as far as i could tell. tho i was
sitting next to him and fairly ecstatic (i have been on sinister since
early 98, i bleeve, got IYFS in 97), i tried not to monopolize him. no one
really was, i guess - everyone was sort of chattering with each other as
they usually would.

he talked about the kcrw show - how the group could barely hear anything
thru the headphones at first, how kcrw'd sent someone in at the last
second to tell them which words weren't allowed on-air (no idea if 'wank'
would be alright). he did quite a good nasal-y american accent.

(amusingly,) he brought up playing dvds on laptops and i had to confess to
having the fan's own dvd at my house (from the treasure hunt), & having
tried all my friends to see which would switch the region on their player
so we could watch it.  he talked about how his laptop was a good
bed-warmer after a dvd on a cold winter night. we gabbed a bit about the
aislers set, and about the berkeley show. he was looking for a soccer game
on sunday and my pal dan tried to help figure something out, but here i
was helpless. my knees, see. i'm glad to see the Other Ian ended up
sorting it all out (in a manner of speaking).

there's more, isn't there? but i can't really put it all down here. i was
a bit giddy, i guess. and i had to go back to work, believe it or not. and
the jobless amongst us (about half; sf's economy is tepid at best) stayed
to soak up the sun and have a laugh and a beer, happy.

it was great to meet stuart and have a bit of a chat with him. i wonder
what he thought of us, an odd and sarcastic bunch of nearly-30s-ish people
out on a sunny patio on a friday? not much, i'll wager!

ian








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