Last night’s storm did more than just jam up BART service. Indeed, it proved once and for all that Mother Nature is a true Mission dirtbag (god bless her). Intense winds knocked down a large tree on the western edge of Dolores Park — blocking the J-Church Line in the process.

Thankfully, the train operator was able to bring the vehicle to a stop before it collided with the felled tree. But still, we have to hand it to Nature for keeping things sketchy on the tracks even when the glass-breaking parkgoers are taking a rainy night off.

[Photo: Diego Ongaro]

Dolo's map

Does this ever happen to you: You're supposed to meet your friends at Dolores Park, but once you get there the place is so crowded you have to walk all over the place to find them?  Of course it does.  I mean, you are reading Uptown Almanac.

Now you could simply text your friend, or use one of the many “find my friends” apps that already exist.  You could even use Dolo, the web app that helps you locate your friends in Dolores Park. Yeah, you could go any of those routes.  But let's not be stupid — what you really need is an iPhone app that's not only new, but features adorable cat graphics.

Thanks to Y-Combinator funding iHateMondays.com, Garfield bought a luxury condo on Valencia.

Thankfully, as of today we have a solution: TechCrunch brings word of a new iOS app named Dolo.  Like the unrelated web app of the same name, Dolo lets you “check in” to an arbitrary location within Dolores Park, placing a marker at your location that your Facebook friends can see.  The app is brought to you for free by a team of locally-sourced software artisans who frequent Dolores Park.

Perhaps the existence of Dolo is yet another sign that Dolores Park has become a victim of its own success.  Although if you were at Dolores Park last weekend, you didn't need an app to tell you that.

My favorite day in Dolores Park, ever. Went down dressed as Zombie Cold Beer! Cold Water!. For those of you not from San Francisco, “Cold Beer! Cold Water!” is a man who walks around Dolores Park with a cooler bag selling, well, yeah…. cans of PBR (sometimes Simple Times) and water. Here are some photos of him. And while he’s not wearing this outfit in any of those shots, I promise this is pretty damn close to what he wore most days this summer.

I can do a pretty good impression of his call, and he kind of sounds like a zombie anyway, so I went with it. I had my zombie walk on, and set out hollering… over and over and over… “Cold beer! Cold Water!” Some people had no idea what was going on, but most people recognized who I was supposed to be. And THREE different people mistook me for the man himself, all saying something like, “Oh, my god! He dressed up for Halloween!” One man was convinced I stole CBCW’s shirt. Ganja Treats took my photo! I sold twelve beers and four waters (though I gave away like half of them). But where was the OG CBCW?

I got up to leave after a couple hours, carrying my cooler, continuing the zombie walk and yelling his call, when suddenly, I heard him. He was only fifty feet or so away from me. “Cold Beer!” he yelled. “Cold Water!” I responded. People were cracking up, and one woman came running after me demanding I go after him and take a photo. I was on my way out though and having never talked to dude in my life didn’t know if he’d really appreciate my costume and I chickened out. Still, I had a blast. 

Photos by Erin Steach.

If you were willing to brave the wind today, you would have been able to witness the best day of the year to go to Dolores Park: Jesus Day!  That’s right, a group of Jesus fanboys and fangirls took their “amplified music” to the park to “praise the lord” and hate on “east coasters” and debauchery.  Of course, their message was largely ignored by 20-somethings drinking and smoking nearby, but good for them.  I’m certain that at least one cool kid took their message to heart.

Anyways, I would have put more effort into this post, but I need to get to bed so on Sunday morning I can wake up at 6:30am so I can go to a keg party on Hayes.