who?
ninth september | ten ante meridiem
Portland to San Francisco to...
September 6 | eleven pm
When you are on permanent vacation like me, the weekend is totally gay. I'm in Redding, CA, paying assilicious Saturday rates at a Motel 6 and surrounded by lollygagging broods of pipsqueaks and their sires. Part of the intention of doing this trip after labor day was that school would be back in session, but I forgot there are plenty of squealing snotsacks still too young to be passed off to school teachers 35 at a time. I'd planned to spend tonight betwixt some tall-ass redwoods, but Burning Man and an extra day in Portland with friends has made scooting on down to San Francisco via the interstate urgent and key. Today was the first time I'd ever spent 7 hours driving somewhere by myself. I made it ok, though with some extra tension in my shoulders and a sudden piercing loneliness while I negotiated among the immense shadows of the northern California mountain ranges in the moonlight. I think it's related to last week; there's still an open wound there, and picking at it is too pleasurably painful.
September 7 | five pm
Another four hours of monotonous valley driving and I'm in SF. Negotiating the streets here is notoriously difficult, but I found my way straight to jcruelty's apartment almost by chance: just stay in the middle lane of a major street, without any clue as to where you are, and drive until something looks familiar. Alternatively, just follow the car in front of you: they're bound to be going somewhere which more than likely isn't a dimly lit back alley full of paedophiles and murderers.
I'm waiting for a call from an old friend and roommate during my Seattle days more than five years ago. We had a bad falling out (as I did with most of the drug-addled people I hung out with then, though this was more active despising rather than sneering indifference), so I'm a bit nervous but also happy. One of the biggest regrets I have is losing track of so many friends, lovers and just generally interesting people I've known. Knowing that I am about to re-establish contact with one of them is encouraging.
September 8 | seven pm
Had a really good time last night. We bar hopped the Mission, starting with a pitcher of margaritas before moving on to the really hard stuff. Things were so bad just before we stopped speaking five years ago, and my separation from that scene was so total, that I'd forgotten how much fun we used to have. I also forget exactly how much fun we had last night, but my hammer of the gods headache this morning assures me it was a lot.
Spent today doing the flaneur thing, wandering, purposefully trying to get lost. Unfortunately, downtown San Francisco is almost impossible to get lost in. It's so small, there are signs everywhere, and the hills act as rivulets, forcing everyone into the same tourist trap avenues. I started on Mission street, then took BART to the Embarcadero, went up to North Beach, roamed around Chinatown, then sat along Fisherman's Wharf staring at Alcatraz while my poor, Burning Man-bludgeoned feet recovered, before climbing Telegraph Hill to Coit tower. San Francisco feels exactly like I expected it to, which makes me think I'm probably not imaginative enough. It's pretty and jumbled with three story Victorians, and has plenty of parks and cafes and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. With the hills and the bay it looks a lot like Seattle, and size- and culture-wise it feels a lot like Vancouver. This familiarity is a bit of a let down, though maybe that's just the hangover talking.
When I first arrived Amar asked what my model for this trip was; if it was a Kerouac thing, or Hunter S. Thompson Find The American Dream With A Suitcase Full Of Drugs, or what. I didn't know and I still don't. I do think I need to come up with one: today was nice but the lack of mental focus I think led me into the touristy areas as much as the hills. It's unfair to arrive in a city and expect it to give you entertainment and enlightenment in a day and a half, and if I don't have a canon for all this raw material I'm being given, I'm going to continue to be disappointed (though only slightly).
I also need a focus to make up for the fact that I'm unemployed. Even being Carefree Road Trip Man isn't enough on its own to compensate for the almost vertiginous amount of free time I have, and the lack of routine and consistent social contacts. Burning Man was an intense reminder of how absorbing and fascinating it is to feel like you're falling in love, and the fallout from this fall has been moments of sudden and intense loneliness during the last few days. This afternoon I found myself standing next to a cute girl at Fisherman's Wharf; she had a backpack and a Lonely Planet and was obviously travelling by herself. We made eye contact and I said a quiet "Hi" but then we both got shy and wandered off. Forcing myself to get outside of my usually very conservative social comfort level is definitely part of this trip; being able to have conversations with total strangers is a skill I still haven't developed, at least not in a useful way (i.e., crazy smelly people have no problem approaching me).
Eventually I sat in a sidewalk cafe on Stockton, taking pictures of interesting-looking people as they walked by. Now I'm sitting in Amar's apartment, watching the sun go down over whatever hill it is outside his window with the big spaceship-looking antenna on top. JWM just called. "Ready for round 2?" she asked. There's no way tonight is round 2, but I am excited to see her again. I don't want to overemphasize the loneliness thing. Before I left it occurred to me that there are at least four people, probably five or six, who I could call at any time day or night, and talk to about absolutely anything, confide anything. In general I'm a very indepedent person who needs to spend a fair amount of time alone or else I go something-something. It just feels like there's a new dimension of umm, I guess need, that's been opened up which wasn't there during the last few years.
Arrrgh, introspection (said the pirate).
September 9 | ten am
This is my last morning in San Francisco. I'm gonna go to Eggers' pirate store and then the Mission Dolores to photograph the graveyard from Vertigo, then I'm off. Last night JWM and I went to Dolores park at 2am to look at the city lights and homeless people sleeping under palm trees until we got chased off by the sprinklers. There is so much beauty here, which transitions so abruptly into intense poverty and ugliness. I brought up SF's similarity to other NW cities, and JWM agreed totally. I've spent so much time in these places that it almost doesn't feel like the Grand Tour has begun yet; like I'm just visiting for a weekend, as I've done in Vancouver or Seattle so many times. I think it'll take the lunar strangeness of the coast, and the blighted martian insanity of LA, to really give the feeling of drifting some momentum.
LA peeps I will be calling you anon: be prepared!