All Intensive Purposes

Blue Bottle Coffee's iced coffee, from Tacubaya in Berkeley.

The singing noise the cable-car cables make in their grooves in the street.

Green Apple Books.

Point Reyes, and Limantour Beach in particular.

The oyster po' boy at the Hayes Street Grill booth at the farmers' market at the Ferry Building, with a side of bacon and a side of tomato.

Burning Man preparation on Potrero Hill in July.

Three-bridge views.

Fava beans.

That turned out to be a lie, huh? We are on hiatus here at AIP, a hiatus that will continue at least through the middle of November, more or less. The AIP staff conveys its apologies, and hopes you will come back after the intermission.

A blogger there is posting here. It sounds uglier than I had realized from my quick glances at CNN.com:

It is a zoo out there though, make no mistake. It's the wild kingdom. It's Lord of the Flies. That doesn't mean there's murder on every street corner. But what it does mean is that the rule of law has collapsed, that there is no order, and that property rights cannot and are not being enforced. Anyone who is on the streets is in immediate danger of being robbed and killed. It's that bad.

Wow.

I had been planning to post about the widespread reports about looting, and about a possible parallel with the San Francisco earthquake and fires in 1906, but it increasingly appears that what I was going to say -- initial concerns about looting are likely overblow -- is flat-out wrong.

More soon.