Just a few cool things I wanted to mention, all centered around the Bay Area…

1. Yesterday I wrote a review of two shows I saw in San Francisco last month (on my birthday, actually) for the Adorn blog: The Art of Gaman and Alexander Girard: Vibrant Modern. They’re both closing after tomorrow (Sunday, 2/25) so if you are in the Bay Area and have a couple of hours tomorrow — or right this second, I guess — I loved them both and I’d really recommend going!

By the way, The Art of Gaman is also a book — a really wonderful, beautifully illustrated book — that I will definitely write about again… so if you miss the show, the book is incredible.

birds from The Art of Gaman

2. If you make jewelry, be sure to check out Christina Loff‘s excellent bead-store column for SFist. She has lots of great suggestions, including my favorite, Beyond Beads. I bookmarked everything I didn’t already know about, thanks, Christina!

3. I meant to write about this last month after our trip to San Francisco, and never got a chance. We stayed at Hotel Boheme in North Beach, just on the edge of Chinatown, and left the car in a parking garage for two days so we could walk everywhere. And of course it wasn’t cheap ($26/day), but parking in North Beach seems like it’s kind of a nightmare no matter what. Well, randomly, we picked the North Beach Parking Garage (735 Vallejo Street, between Columbus and Stockton streets) and discovered that it’s a public art project by Portland artist (and friend of Andrew’s) Harrell Fletcher. So cool.

We drove in and saw that each space had a stenciled fortune, and I rejected the first open space as potentially negative (“Opportunity is Fleeting”). So we settled on this one, a bit further down:

When we left, we saw this plaque with all the information on the project:

I love public art like this: just making some normal city thing cooler and more interesting and bringing it to life. (One word of warning: the people at the garage will think you are crazy if you actually ask for the alternative-format info.)

update: Nicole sent me a link to her fortune-cookie parking space photos! I love the travel one especially.