The police now have reason to believe that Billie Mcgee, the twelve-year-old girl who went missing Monday morning from the Bayview neighborhood in San Francisco, may have run away. They are concerned that she may be in the company of a man who had sent her inappropriate text messages.

Update, April 17: Bille Mcgee has been found safe. Apparently, she was with friends.

Twelve-year-old Billie Mcgee has been missing since Monday morning. She was last seen when she left her home in Bayview to take the bus to S.R. Martin College Preparatory School, where she is an honor roll student in the seventh grade. From the Chronicle: “Billie is 5-foot, 5-inches tall, African-American and weighs 140 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes and was last seen wearing her school uniform: a black and white jacket with a white collared shirt and black pants.” Her mother is certain that someone took her.

Anyone with information should call the San Francisco Police Department Missing Person Unit at 415-558-5508 or the department’s operations center at 415-553-1071.

Two novellas by Gary Amdahl, I Am Death. From Kirkus: “Two narratives of frustrated possibility, offering an awareness of the brutal indifference of modern life.” More about the book on Bookforum. Amdahl’s previous book is the story collection Visigoth, winner of the Milkweed Prize for Fiction.

And hitting the shelves in June, David Sedaris’s latest laugh-a-lot, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. See Sedaris read about accessories on David Letterman.

Robert Owen, a sea captain and photographer who embarked on a photo tour of the places that inspired The Year of Fog several months ago, recently made another swing through San Francisco and has added many new photos to his Year of Fog photo set on flickr. Among them, this shot of the fly fishing ponds in Golden Gate Park.

I’ve recently been enjoying a hefty, beautiful book about San Francisco, called, simply, Historic Photos of San Francisco, with text and captions by Rebecca Schall. Dozens of photographs culled from the collections of the San Francisco Public Library span two centuries of the city’s development, from its beginnings as “The Paris of the West” in the late 19th century to the turbulent sixties.

The book is arranged primarily in ten-to-twenty year segments–the reconstruction of 1900-1919, the underground excitement of the prohibition years , the struggles of the thirties, the population boom of the forties, the economic revival of the post-war years, and the friction of the sixties.

The photographs of the earthquake of 1906 continue to be arresting a century later. Read the rest of this entry »

Yay! Check out this article about Michael Disend and his San Francisco-centric Penman Chronicles. If you haven’t yet had a chance to hear Mickey read, you won’t want to miss him this Sunday at Edinburgh Castle.

Just out from Norton–Unmentionables, a new poetry collection by Beth Ann Fennelly, the author of Open House, Tender Hooks, and Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother. Poems with titles like “The Kudzu Chronicles” and “Bertha Morisot: Retrospective” live side-by-side here, giving testament to Fennelly’s range. The poems in this collection, which move seamlessly from the tongue-in-cheek to the erudite, are concerned in equal measure with the everyday and the lofty.

A taste, from Norton’s website. This excerpt is from the poem “First Warm Day in a College Town.”

Today is the day the first bare-chested
runners appear, coursing down College Hill
as I drive to campus to teach, hard
not to stare …

May 1, 2008, a very special literary event to bring clean water to the Samburu People of Northern Kenya.

The line-up: Dave Eggers, best-selling author of What is the What, on the Writing Life; reading by acclaimed author Maxine Hong Kingston; poetry readings by Roger Housden (author of the Ten Poems series) and poet-novelist Elizabeth Rosner (Blue Nude, The Speed of Light); live music; performance by Nina Wise. Hosted by Beth Lisick, author of Helping Me Help Myself.

The cause: All money raised goes toward building the second of a series of water catchment areas along the migration route of the Samburu people of Northern Kenya, near the border with Ethiopia. The water will save their children from the fatal diseases of polluted water sources, and will also help to sustain the Samburu’s fragile nomadic way of life.
The groundwork is administered by a global charity, Wherever The Need. David Crosweller, the founder, will be here from London to give a brief talk and slide show on the project.

Where: Cowell Theatre, Fort Mason
Tickets: $30.00 (see link above)
Contact: 415 345 7575
Can’t make the event? You can go here to donate directly to Wherever the Need.

More on water: my sister’s boyfriend, David Wolking, will be leading a water filtration project in Zimbabwe this summer. I’ll post more on that project as information becomes available.

Today at Red Room, my friend Ben Fong-Torres blogs about what it’s like to appear as himself in works of fiction. Most recently, he has appeared in Steer Toward Rock, by Fae Myenne Ng (forthcoming), In the Key of Death, by Bob Levinson, and No One You Know, by yours truly (forthcoming). In the latter, he makes more than a cameo, and actually turns out to have a pretty major influence on the storyline. Read the post, A Real Character, here.

And of course, you don’t have to read a book to find Ben Fong-Torres personified. Just Netflix Almost Famous, in which he is portrayed by Terry Chen.

Last night, Kevin and I went to Epic Roasthouse, Pat Kuleto’s new venture on the Embarkadero. Having followed a bit of the controversy about the new building, we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

The View: Inside, a wall of glass looks up and out to stunning views of the Bay Bridge. To my delight, we were promptly seated at one of four two-tops by the window. If there are more than two of you, you won’t get to sit by the window, but all of the tables have a view.

Cocktails: On the recommendation of our server, Diana, I went with the Conversos–pear green tea infused gin, Lillet Blanc chartreuse, and lemon. Yummy!

The Little Things: The bread–rosemary, cornbread, and a popover–was just okay, really totally forgettable. But the salt–yes, the salt!–might have made up for the bread. We had three kinds: Hawaiian black salt, something I don’t remember, and a Himalayan salt. Regarding the latter, its powerful flavor really livened up my entree, which we’ll get to in a second.

Starters: My husband had the Bibb lettuce salad with tangerines–good–and I had the Oysters 2×2–2 Oysters Rockefeller and 2 Oysters Bienville. When Diana was explaining to me Bienville’s association with New Orleans, I nodded politely and didn’t let on that in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, we have our own Bienville Square. Just so happens that Mobile was “settled” in 1702 by one Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, and was the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana. But I digress. The oysters were very good, but I found myself wondering why Epic Roasthouse was serving oysters from the East Coast, Nova Scotia, and Washington, when we have delicious oysters just a stone’s throw away in Tomales Bay.

Entrees: I had the whole fish–spring bream–and Kevin had the New York strip with a side of truffled mashed potatoes. The potatoes were the stand-out, creamy and tart with a really scrumptious truffle kick. The steak was cooked just right and very good; Kevin, who rarely cleans his plate, didn’t leave a scrap. The fish, de-boned tableside, was tender, large, and well-prepared, but upon first taste seemed to be missing something. Then I added a dash of the Himalayan salt, which worked wonders, and devoured the whole thing, head and all. The mound of couscous beside the fish spicy but uninspired –I only had one bite.

Wine: Since Kevin doesn’t drink much (oh yes, you wonder, how did I end up married to a man of such admirable temperance?) I ordered by the glass. I had the Jeanne-Pierre Dirler Riesling–very nice.

Dessert: A little while later, out came the chocolate souffle, accompanied by caramel ice cream. This was delicious and completely decadent, and so rich that between the two of us we only ate half of it.

Ambiance: Easy to hear one another while talking in soft to normal tones. Tables spaced well apart. To me, this is a huge plus. Not exactly romantic, but not overly businesslike either.

Service: Excellent! Unpretentious, friendly, and knowledgeable.

Overall: I’d definitely recommend Epic Roasthouse for date night or a special dinner with friends. It’s pricey, but it’s a lovely experience with stunning views of the Bay Bridge. We got there in the early evening, so it was still light, and it was lovely to watch the lights of the bridge glowing by nightfall.