Jenna’s Model Life

The best thing about not going to Europe for shows is clearly getting to hang out in your favourite California city and chill with your boyfriend instead. Always a few days and a city behind on this blog, I’m currently in L.A. after tackling a direct booking in Miami. But San Francisco’s on my mind.

1. Taking glamour shots of the cat

Unlike his namesake, Truman can be a reluctant star.

2. Perfecting the world’s easiest bread recipe

It might not actually take five minutes a day — more like an hour from dough to first hot bite — but it is damn tasty. For some reason (altitude? the crappy oven in my decrepit models’ apartment?) down here I can only seem to get a really watery dough that spreads out to flatbread proportions and burns blackly on the bottom well prior to browning on top or getting done in the middle. I will persevere with fond memories of San Francisco-quality crumb.

3. Paxton Gate in the Mission

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Where else can you buy hand-forged scissors from India, dried sea urchins, and mystery drawers of raccoon penis bones. Oh! And taxidermied rats in costumes. This is their window display.

4. Wearing hats

A costume designer friend of mine foolishly set me loose in her wardrobe. This, plus an awesome skirt with peacocks on it, was among my retrievals. Now all I have to do is muster the courage to wear it outside the house. For now I wear it in my living room with a 1940s black crepe dress. I won’t lie; I also occasionally stroke its feathers and murmur sweet nothings in its direction.

5. El Santo de Israel church in the Mission

I used to walk by this place all the time when I interned at a literary journal on Valencia St. I always got a kick out of its Spanglish-and-Hebrew, blue-and-white storefront; what with the stars of David, the menorahs, and the Israeli flags, you’d take it for a temple. But the Jesus Christ is Lord sign in block letters, and the bibles in the window display point to Team Christianity. (The painting of Jacob on a cloud, wrestling with an angel is pure Team Awesome.) I figured the place was perhaps run by Spanish-speaking Messianic Jews, and I smirked in El Santo de Israel’s wacky direction every time I went by.

Turns out they are some kind of Pentecostal Millenarian fringe movement. They’re one of those churches that supports U.S. patronage of Israel specifically because they believe that the apocalypse and the rapture can only occur once the holy lands are in Jewish hands. Knowing this makes walking past the chapel kind of creepy.

6. The Scientist!

No, he’s not here full-time — yet. But he did surprise me by flying into town for 36 hours, during which time he interviewed for a grad programme, traipsed through the SFMOMA, and retorted, to a fellow prospective M.Sc. candidate, when she got on his case about keeping up with current events when the Scientist admitted the ugly-American sin of not watching the State of the Union address, “Bitch, I read The Economist!” Then he hopped a bus to meet me and Peter for some beer. The Scientist now dresses like an adorable French mime. Gays of Paris, date him, treasure him, love him!

7. Dinner at my friend Rachel’s

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Rachel and I met interning at the aforementioned journal. We graduated at the same time, both, having fallen in love with the city as interns, moved to San Francisco, and ended up living around the corner from one another while neither of us snared the employ of the mag in question. One of Rachel’s room-mates works for Alice Waters. Theirs is a hard-core foodie apartment: they have kilos of heritage tomatoes in their freezer, they have a live-worm compost in the corner of the dining room, they are talking about raising stew rabbits in the backyard. Walking in the door, you’re as likely to be surprised with an offer of a pickled pumpkin stick as you are a glass of water. I bone up on Splendid Table podcasts before I venture over, lest I be ambushed into conversation about the merits of x foodie thing versus y foodie thing.

My second-last night in town, I was treated to a Bolognese sauce that simmered for six hours. And, oh yeah, a fresh batch of home-made pasta. Let’s hear a shout-out for my bread.

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These are the smug bastards responsible for the ridiculous surfeit of kitchen acumen. Thanks again for the feed!

8. Housewarming parties with dogs

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Everyone has a dog in San Francisco. It’s very European.

For some reason, when taking pictures that night, I opted for a custom programme mode I hit upon by fat-fingered accident when trying to widen my aperture. I call it Party Mode and, now sober, I still think it rocks.

9. Peter!

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10. My kitchen

I realise it’s anticlimactic for me to brag about my cooking after admitting living in the vicinity of the kind of people whom you want around when the crossword clue is “Similar to mozzarella,” but I really love my kitchen. It has bench space, and a killer stove. During my fortnight in town, I baked cookies, made mushroom soup, and discovered that if you fry pork chops with a dollop of apricot jam, the jam reduces and caramelises until it looks like barbecue sauce and tastes thick and sweet and fruity — a perfect, piss-easy foil to the juicy pork. I stocked up on home-made stock and one day I ate an entire pound loaf of that no-knead bread. It’s a room I like.