Friday Morning Fish Fry

Every once in a while, S.F. Chronicle columnist Herb Cain would put together a column of bits and pieces, so-called 3-dot journalism,  and he would call it “Friday Morning Fish Fry.” I’m still unscrambling things from my month on the road, so here’s an interim bunch of disconnected facts:

It’s an iPhone world I live in a small-town. Most days I only see a few people. Spending weeks in the cities among 1000s of people, it struck me how everyone is connected via smartphones. I’m not into that level of communication, so the extent of phone calling, texting, googling, is um, awesome. It’s the way the world is out there — yow!

AirBnB I guess I really don’t get out much in the world. What I didn’t realize re AirBnB is that many of these are rooms in homes where it’s like you have a roommate. Shared bathroom, kitchen, living room. My 2 AirBnB experiences were very good, but I think I lucked out. A lot of those rooms on the website look pretty grim.

Dylan fans The Bootleg Series, Volume 12, a 6-CD set is a whole new level. Shows how the ’65-’66 songs were constructed. They’d do 14 takes. Listening to disc 6 today lifted me out of my weeks-old funk. Oh mama, can this really be the end…

Skateboarding Yesterday I thought: realistically, at age 82, I can’t afford any more accidents. This shoulder operation wasn’t due to skating, but the other shoulder and the broken arm were. Plus they’re have been a lot of close calls. I’m thinking of hanging it up, or at least drastically cutting down the frequency. Is that mature or what?

My book on the ’60s I’m fiddling with it, to see if it seems a go. Scanning some of my photos from the ’60s is like stepping back in time. I’ve never seen (i.e. printed) many of these.

At left, The Lovin’ Spoonful, John Sebastian on right, at Cafe Wha’ in NYC, Fall, 1965, shot during my month-long hitchhiking trip across the country

I’ve got a different take on what went on then, as opposed to the frenzy of “Summer of Love” TV shows, articles, museum exhibits.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

3 Responses to Friday Morning Fish Fry

  1. Lloyd, I want you to quit skateboarding because I'm selfish as hell, I want to read your 60's book! Seriously, as a middle-aged person, I do what I can to avoid injury these days. It's just not worth it.

  2. Well…..I was selfishly awaiting your take on a wonderous birth of a different consciousness in a book-length form but once you said Shelter Publications is running on empty, I became, alternatively, a bit afraid there will not ever be time for your book and then afraid for the company. You and your company are a bit of sanity in whatever this is today. I appreciate so very much that it's about people doing for themselves, from keeping fit to building their own spaces and in all of it, building their own resilience….which leads to people's bodies and their resilience….you done good, fine sir, and life is for living but, the limits apply in the most mundane things, so a little care of one's carriage is a good thing.
    Write your book!

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