Well that was a little scary. I had just seen a movie (High Fidelity, it's great) and was riding home when I saw this giant plume of black smoke in the sky. I was trying to guess where it was (6th Street maybe?) when Barry called and told me that our architect had just called him and said "hey, I think your club is on fire!" Barry was a little incredulous at this: "I know it's April 1st, don't screw around with me like this!" "No, really!" So he called a friend down on 11th Street who said, "dude, the whole block is on fire."

But fortunately for us, he meant the next block over: the alley between between 11th and 12th streets, not 11th Street itself (where the club is.) So I biked home to get my camera, and headed toward the fire, like a good little monkey. By the time I got there, there was a huge crowd of people, and the smoke was pretty thick. Apparently I had missed the height of the fire, though: a little while before I got there, the whole sky had been black.

I asked the security guard at the construction site on the corner if I could climb up their scaffold to get better pictures, but he wouldn't go for it. So these were as close as I could get:

Apparently the fire started at the City Lights warehouse, but it looked to me like at least one apartment building was on fire as well.