Master of None

Cities don't disappear all at once.

They change one storefront, one theater, one diner, one skate spot, one neighborhood at a time.

Standing in front of the old Broadway signs today, I found myself thinking less about what they're becoming and more about the people who made them meaningful. Actors leaving rehearsals. Musicians loading in. Night shift workers grabbing a meal. Friends meeting after shows. Communities forming around ordinary places.

Maybe that's what archives really are.

Not just boxes of documents or photographs.

They're the stories people carry after the signs come down.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about being a "scribe to a tribe."

Maybe that doesn't always mean preserving the extraordinary.

Maybe it means remembering the places where ordinary life quietly unfolded before someone asks,

"What used to be here?"

Because someday these signs will be photographs.

And someday these photographs will become memories.

The Weekend

This weekend reminded me that alignment doesn't always arrive with a big announcement.

Friday, I had the chance to attend an event at St. Frank Coffee on Ninth Avenue featuring the two most recent U.S. Barista Champions, Jak Michael Ryan and Jason Yeo. I went with my longtime friend Patrick, who I've known through the Bay Area food world—from Luke's Local to Cotogna, Californios, and now Juniper. Patrick knows Jason through the barista training program, and Juniper proudly serves St. Frank coffee.

I usually drink espresso straight. Milk isn't really my thing. But when two national champions are serving coffee, you try everything. It was fascinating tasting the same coffees as espresso and then with milk. The differences were subtle, but definitely there. Watching people who have dedicated years to refining their craft was inspiring in its own quiet way.

Then Saturday morning I worked the Children's Reference Desk during Summer Reading.

Parents encouraged their kids to walk up to the desk on their own, proudly handing over their reading logs, collecting raffle tickets, choosing another free book, and excitedly starting the next reading challenge. The interactions came one after another, and somewhere in that flow it clicked.

I graduated with my MLIS knowing I was a librarian.

Saturday was the first time I truly felt like one.

Not because of one memorable interaction, but because everything aligned—the environment, the families, the curiosity of the kids, and the simple joy of helping someone become excited about coming back to the library.

Sometimes the best weekends aren't about doing extraordinary things.

So that's where I stand.

I have a love-hate relationship with academia. I geek out on critical thinking, symbolic logic, and constructing logically sound arguments. I love the pursuit of knowledge and the process of learning for its own sake. I walked at every one of my graduations—high school, my A.A., B.A., and M.L.I.S.—and I'm grateful I did it for myself and for my family.

What I've never embraced is the status that society often attaches to degrees. Too often, credentials become symbols of prestige, reinforcing class divisions and creating unnecessary hierarchies between people. Education, to me, should be about curiosity, wisdom, humility, and self-knowledge—not about putting people on pedestals or measuring a person's worth by the letters after their name.

Despite my criticisms of the institution, I have deep gratitude for the teachers who genuinely changed my life. They didn't just teach me facts—they challenged me to think, to question, and to grow. Their influence reaches far beyond any diploma hanging on my wall.

Ironically, the spark for all of this came from this particular movie in 8th grade: With Honors. That film planted a seed in me. It reminded me that the greatest lessons don't always come from institutions or credentials—they come from people who inspire us to see the world, and ourselves, differently.

Bruh.

I finally figured out what pulled me out of The Odyssey for a moment... and it wasn't the monsters or the gods.

It was the cheese.

Seriously.

Homer tells us that Polyphemus isn't just a giant Cyclops—he's a shepherd. He milks his sheep. He makes cheese. That's part of who he is.

Then I watched the movie and saw this absolutely colossal Cyclops with hands the size of tree trunks, and my brain immediately went:

"Wait... how the hell does this guy make artisanal sheep's cheese?"

Everyone else was probably talking about the cinematography, the action, or Odysseus's cleverness.

Meanwhile, I was wondering:

How does he separate curds from whey with hands that could crush a wagon?

Does he have giant cheese molds?

Are his baskets the size of hot tubs?

Is every cheese wheel the size of a dining table?

Or did he accidentally invent the world's largest cottage cheese?

This isn't a criticism of the movie at all.

It's just one of those wonderfully ridiculous thoughts that my brain latched onto, and once it did, I couldn't stop imagining this terrifying one-eyed giant carefully inspecting a giant wheel of sheep's cheese like some mythological artisan.

"Needs another week of aging."

Somehow that's where my suspension of disbelief finally gave out.

Once you picture a Cyclops with hands the size of wagons trying to make neat rounds of pecorino-style sheep's cheese, it's hard not to chuckle.