Picture break: 2025 in review
The year according to my camera roll.
Happy new year, welcome back, and special greetings to the many new readers who have discovered Fritinancy during the last week or so.
I’ll be back to my usual routine — words of the week, brand-name critiques, and so forth — in short order. Today, though, I bring you a photographic review of the year that just ended.
As I wrote last year, I prefer to take pictures of signs and billboards (and the occasional public art), because a) I like words and packaging and advertising and b) signage doesn’t fidget or blink or get annoyed about unflattering poses. I’ve posted a few of these images on my Instagram feed; others are newly public.
This post is probably too long for email. To see all twelve months of photos, click on the headline or find your way to the Substack app.
January 18:
These outdoor ads from OLLY, a nutritional supplements company headquartered in San Francisco, were omnipresent throughout the month, reminding us that “2025’s gonna take a lot of guts.” No lie there.
February 17:
At a Presidents’ Day “No Kings” protest in my Oakland neighborhood. It was one of many such protests around the U.S. that weekend.
March 11:
I live in Oakland’s most densely populated neighborhood (Adams Point). Over the year I saw many signs like this one asserting solidarity with immigrants. One popular slogan: “Nadie es ilegal en tierra robada” — “Nobody is illegal on stolen land.”
March 12:
Grocery Outlet is a perennial source of amusement and bemusement. And I’m always interested in new approaches to branding plant-based products.
April 4:
Look at me1, flying semi-private on JSX from Oakland to Burbank. 10/10, worth every penny. No lines, no TSA, friendly staff, cappuccino and deluxe snacks in the lounge and on board. For the return flight, I flew like a commoner on Southwest.
April 8:
While in L.A. I went with my brother Michael to the Skirball Cultural Center on Sepulveda. I’d been there several times in the past, but this was my first time in Noah’s Ark, a fantastic 8,000-square-foot installation filled with fanciful creatures crafted from recycled and reclaimed materials. No religious agenda!
May 6:
Clio’s, a subterranean bookstore named for the Greek Muse of history, is one of the top three things in my Oakland neighborhood. It has weird hours, funky furniture, a cocktail bar, stimulating events, and many, many books, new and used, organized not by subject or author but by chronology: Start at prehistory and work your way through the centuries. P.S. I’m a card-carrying Clio’s member, so consider this an endorsement and an invitation to join me there this year.
May 27:
Inspired by a guy called Adam on YouTube who undertakes wild public-transit-only adventures — San Francisco to Seattle by bus, BART, and ferry? Why not? — I tried a more modestly scaled trip of my own: Oakland to Santa Rosa via local bus, two ferries, and the SMART train. After lunch with a friend, I returned via Golden Gate Transit and AC Transit. Yes, it took all day. Yes, I loved it.
June 6:
I walked by San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens during one of the final weeks of “Colossal Creatures in Bloom,” a public installation of “big Mexican mythical figures,” as the San Francisco Examiner put it.
June 8:
At the members’ opening of “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California,” a spectacular exhibit at BAMPFA (Berkeley).
Fritinancy is free for now, but you can always . . .
July 5:
A bumper sticker I spotted in my neighborhood on a Toyota with Minnesota plates. I do love a Mean Girls reference coupled with a little light Marxism.
August 12:
Hmm, I wonder who “Sir” might be.
September 11:
I went to Toronto for the film festival and also to visit the Bata Shoe Museum, which I’d wanted to see for years. Loved the festival, loved the museum, loved the city.
September 23:
There are a gazillion AI ads in the Bay Area — see this August Picture Break — but there’s also some counter-programming.
For more September photos, see my travel posts: New York, Philadelphia.
October 4:
Back to L.A. — I drove this time — to volunteer at the Willis Wonderland Ba-De-Yard sale, which was a thrill and a blast. So many treasures. So many nice folks from all over the Southland and beyond. That’s Rusty Blazenhoff — organizer of the event and keeper of the flame — in the black-and-white checked shirt. For more about the late Grammy-award-winning Allee Willis and her fabled house, read the Substack and watch the documentary on Hulu or (where available) Kanopy, the free public-library app for video content.
October 29:
One of the many in-joke AI ads in and around San Francisco. Soham Parekh is a real engineer in Mumbai who was publicly shamed for working for multiple startups simultaneously. Ava, on the other hand, is a clanker.
November 3:
Went to Filoli2 in Woodside to see Danish artist Thomas Dambo’s “Trolls: Save the Humans” installation: whimsy on an epic scale.
December 13:
This ad for Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace, caught my eye not because it’s in Spanish but because of the multiple Es at the end of qué; the English equivalent would be “Health insurance without the whaaat?” (Or: “Health insurance without the whatttt?”) This sort of “expressive lengthening,” writes Gretchen McCulloch in Because Internet (2019), has been going on for a long time in English, and can take place either at the end of a word (dreammm) or at the end of a unit of sound (dreaaam). I hadn’t seen it in Spanish, though, until I spotted this ad. Thanks to Mike Pope and various Bluesky friends who confirmed that yes, it’s a thing in Spanish and also in Dutch, German, Italian, and Japanese!
December 20:
A misty day on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, where a giant golden frame turned the view into a work of art.
Here’s my 2024 year in pictures, Here’s 2023. And here’s 2022.
No, I’m not in the photo. I’m the one taking the photo.
Filoli is an acronym formed from the credo of the estate’s original owner, William Bourn: “Fight for a just cause; love your fellow man; live a good life.” The first syllable rhymes with try.
Off the point, but today's NYT has the word "fedsurrection" in a story about Jan. 6 rioters who believe they've been unfairly treated. Apparently this is a word they've been using for a while. Happy New Year!
Your stuff was a bright spot in the year.