Extremely depressing hometown news. I’ve been going to this store since I was a kid, and it was ancient even then. The place lasted for 104 years but couldn’t quite survive the “revitalization” of South Elm Street. So where am I supposed to go for a hand-mixed Cherry Coke now?
Speaking of soda (or pop, or fizzies, or dranks), check this out…
I’d spent the preceding night in Winnemucca, Nevada; it was the final overnight stop in my first cross-country automobile journey. I caught up on sleep, had dinner at Subway, and watched TV stations from Idaho and Reno.
Upon waking up on Monday morning, I set out for my new home. After stops in Reno and Vallejo where I attempted to contact the friends with whom I’d be staying, I found myself crossing the Bay Bridge at rush hour. I drove immediately to the Safeway on Market Street where I knew I’d find a parking space and a phone. Within half an hour, I was moving my stuff into a very small apartment a block from City Hall and I had a new home.
My God, has it really been ten years? Have I really spent more than a quarter of my life in this insulated little burgh where reality and common sense rarely intrude? I was so excited to have arrived in a place full of sex and food and interesting streets I’d never walked down and stores selling bizarre merchandise you couldn’t find in North Carolina.
A decade later, I’ve walked down most of those streets and many of the things which initially attracted me to San Francisco now repel me and make me want to leave. I’m no longer a long-haired idealistic twenty-something and I realize that San Francisco is no better or worse than most other big cities, although a part of me will always think of it as home.
Strangely enough, it was in 1996, when I started a website about the city, that I started to analyze it and realize that it wasn’t everything it claimed to be. The more I wrote about it, the more I realized it wasn’t nevessarily Mecca, and that it might not even be the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
The city has changed, although not as much as I might like to believe. Some things I miss:
Some things I’ll always remember about my ten years in San Francisco:
I’ve changed a lot too. I’m no longer scared of computers and I got to watch the “Internet Revolution” firsthand, where it happened. I’ve become a weather wimp who complains when the temperatures goes above 70 or below 40.
Politically and morally, I’ve become less of a leftist reactionary after realizing that unchecked (and unquestioned) dogma is just as damaging when it’s spouted by the left as by the right. I’ve become more of an independent thinker, and I’m less likely to scream “discrimination” where none really exists. And I never use the term “homophobia” unless I’m making fun of it.
I don’t drink until 3AM (or later) anymore, and I don’t roam sex clubs until the wee hours. My other activities are no longer dictated by my nightlife needs; I’m more functional and productive (and at more normal hours) and I actually get the dishes washed on a semi-regular basis. I spend more of my disposable income on books and DVDs than on clothes and booze.
I’m in love and living with the boy of my dreams, which is something I couldn’t have envisioned ten (or even two or three) years ago. And he seems to understand my need to flee the city every weekend.
Living in San Francisco for ten years has been a good thing for me, no matter how much my arguments seem to suggest otherwise. I don’t regret coming here; it’s provided a lot of entertainment and memories and it’s sharpened my critical thinking skills. And I’ve made some friends I intend to keep around forever.
My life would be much different if I’d stayed in North Carolina. I might never have seen Winnemucca.
I state for the record that I am not one of those fanatical “English-only” nuts. I do believe that immigrants who come to the US need to learn and begin using English as quickly as possible, for the sake of their own advancement. I also believe that we Americans tend to be rather a sloppy bunch when it comes to learning other languages, to our continuing detriment…
That said, something about this editorial just annoys the shit out of me. The idea that state governments in what is — by custom, if not by law — an English-speaking nation should be required to accommodate the alphabets of other languages in government-issued documents bothers me. Just as I would not expect a speeding ticket issued in Barcelona to be worded in English, I wouldn’t expect a driver’s license issued in the US to use a non-English alphabet…
“Those little marks aren’t decorations. They’re part of the Spanish language,” he states. I agree. But we speak English here. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. If we start adding accent and stress marks, should we then start producing driver’s licenses which use Cyrillic or Hebrew characters? Maybe Japanese too? Software compatibility issues aside, it’s just plain ludicrous…
“But it’s her name,” he whines, as if one accent mark were the only measure of the poor child’s identity. Reminds me of kids in school who whine that a certain standard of dress “stifles their individuality”, to whom I respond that, if that’s all the individuality you can muster, you don’t have enough of it to be concerned with anyway…
People have been misspelling my Welsh surname all my life. PG&E misspells it every month on my power bill. And the government persists in calling me “James” even though I prefer to use my middle name. It’s been surprisingly easy learning to cope…
Three days late for the actual anniversary: my thoughts on ten years in San Francisco. It’s not everything I wanted it to be, but I decided just to go ahead and post the damned thing:
I’d spent the preceding night in Winnemucca, Nevada; it was the final overnight stop in my first cross-country automobile journey. I caught up on sleep, had dinner at Subway, and watched TV stations from Idaho and Reno.
Upon waking up on Monday morning, I set out for my new home. After stops in Reno and Vallejo where I attempted to contact the friends with whom I’d be staying, I found myself crossing the Bay Bridge at rush hour. I drove immediately to the Safeway on Market Street where I knew I’d find a parking space and a phone. Within half an hour, I was moving my stuff into a very small apartment a block from City Hall and I had a new home.
My God, has it really been ten years? Have I really spent more than a quarter of my life in this insulated little burgh where reality and common sense rarely intrude? I was so excited to have arrived in a place full of sex and food and interesting streets I’d never walked down and stores selling bizarre merchandise you couldn’t find in North Carolina.
A decade later, I’ve walked down most of those streets and many of the things which initially attracted me to San Francisco now repel me and make me want to leave. I’m no longer a long-haired idealistic twenty-something and I realize that San Francisco is no better or worse than most other big cities, although a part of me will always think of it as home.
Strangely enough, it was in 1996, when I started a website about the city, that I started to analyze it and realize that it wasn’t everything it claimed to be. The more I wrote about it, the more I realized it wasn’t nevessarily Mecca, and that it might not even be the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
The city has changed, although not as much as I might like to believe. Some things I miss:
Some things I’ll always remember about my ten years in San Francisco:
I’ve changed a lot too. I’m no longer scared of computers and I got to watch the “Internet Revolution” firsthand, where it happened. I’ve become a weather wimp who complains when the temperatures goes above 70 or below 40.
Politically and morally, I’ve become less of a leftist reactionary after realizing that unchecked (and unquestioned) dogma is just as damaging when it’s spouted by the left as by the right. I’ve become more of an independent thinker, and I’m less likely to scream “discrimination” where none really exists. And I never use the term “homophobia” unless I’m making fun of it.
I don’t drink until 3AM (or later) anymore, and I don’t roam sex clubs until the wee hours. My other activities are no longer dictated by my nightlife needs; I’m more functional and productive (and at more normal hours) and I actually get the dishes washed on a semi-regular basis. I spend more of my disposable income on books and DVDs than on clothes and booze.
I’m in love and living with the boy of my dreams, which is something I couldn’t have envisioned ten (or even two or three) years ago. And he seems to understand my need to flee the city every weekend.
Living in San Francisco for ten years has been a good thing for me, no matter how much my arguments seem to suggest otherwise. I don’t regret coming here; it’s provided a lot of entertainment and memories and it’s sharpened my critical thinking skills. And I’ve made some friends I intend to keep around forever.
My life would be much different if I’d stayed in North Carolina. I might never have seen Winnemucca.
More problems with outgoing mail tonight, which are (I think) finally fixed once and for all. Yes, I’ve been sending email so infrequently of late that it sometimes takes me a day or two to realize there’s a problem. And no, I don’t promise it will get better soon…
Today’s baffling bit of email from a Planet SOMA visitor:
i am looking for a motel that has accomodations for a couple. i am requesting that the hotel room be furnished with a large round waterbed(preferably w/satin sheets)and mirored walls and everything that it entalis.
About the only response I could come up with was “How nice for you. Hope you have a lovely time”. Really, how am I supposed to answer something like this?
Hint du jour: if you ever need to go to the emergency room in San Francisco, try St. Francis Hospital on Hyde Street. I took my boss there today and, to my amazement, found that I was the ONLY person in the waiting room. I’ve never seen such an eerily calm hospital in my life…
Chafe du jour: why were there no coasters or stickers in the new Mac we got at work yesterday like their were in the one that showed up at Mark’s office?
The fog is back, all is well with the world, and there’s a distinct possibility I’ll be at the Big Fresno Fair this weekend. If I could just manage dinner at the K&W tonight, I’d be quite content right now, thanks…
I finally got around to downloading and installing Mozilla 1.1, and I have to admit that it really doesn’t suck. After the nightmare which ensued when I tried installing Netscape 6 a long while back, I was a little scared of anything vaguely related, but Mozilla actually has some nice features, best of which is the pop-up blocker (which has apparently been disabled in the Netscape 7 version), and it (unlike Netscape 6) didn’t completely destroy all my preferences upon installation. I’m not sure if I’d ever use it as an everyday browser, but it’ll be nice to have around…
My suggestion to those 27 or 28 of you who are still (for whatever masochistic reasons) using Netscape 4.x, is that you finally let it die. I find it baffling that a browser so bad has lasted so long on so many people’s hard drives…
Enough of this. It’s off to the Tonga Room for Jamie’s birthday tonight and to Fresno for the fair tomorrow…
Great time this weekend in Fresno at the fair, but don’t expect to hear about it for a few more days. It’s suddenly become a very busy week at work. Visualize me playing with REALLY large Excel spreadsheets and pretending I know how to do budgeting and forecasting. It’s kind of amuzing, actually, and it does sort of stimulate my inner geek…
One of the things I hate about cohabitation: seeing a tantalizing package from Amazon at the front door and realizing it’s not for me and I really shouldn’t open it…
I may have to buy myself something tonight. It’s been that kind of week…
Happy birthday to Mom…
Thirteen years ago tonight, I’d just been to dinner with my parents and we came home and watched San Francisco shake and bake on the news from the safety of Greensboro. I’d prefer not to have a more intimate earthquake view this evening, thanks…
I shudder to think what might happen if another major quake were to hit SF today. The live/work lofts in my neighborhood would all be reduced to little piles of corrugated cardboard and glue (which might not be such a bad thing), but we’d never be able to rebuild any lost freeways because there’d be too many arguments over which method we’d use to make them more appealing to homeless people (who might want to wander across them at random or live under them) than to evil, disgusting motorists (who’d just be driving on them, after all)…
While the Bay Bridge — sill unrepaired after the 1989 quake — would be history, the Transamerica Pyramid would, alas, still be standing…
Ah San Francisco, where the newspaper has taken to predicting “areas of morning fog, then mostly sunny” on Thursday and Saturday, and “mostly sunny, after areas of morning fog” on Friday and Sunday. For the sake of variety, I assume…
Greensboro has a apparently been deemed “sprawl city” once again. Now keep in mind that “sprawl” is one of those things which is defined in much the same way that Supreme Court justice many years ago defined pornography: no one can tell you exactly what it is, but by God, planners know it when they see it…
By “they”, in this case, I mean the “smart growth” and “new urbanism” Nazis, who define it as pretty much anything other than cute little overplanned neighborhood units which look nice in magazine articles and newspaper features, but where no one really wants to live. The idea, of course, is to transform suburbia into a cartoon-like version of a central city, whether it’s appropriate to the economics of the area and the lifestyles of its inhabitants or not. They’re like the historic preservation crowd but even worse…
To a one, these developments usually focus on the facts that the houses are closer together and that a few token small retail spaces are placed in some sort of pointless village common in the middle of it all. It would just be too unwieldy to add things like supermarkets and the like, and it wouldn’t be at all picturesque. Granted, the yards are easier to maintain, and it takes about five fewer seconds to walk to your next door neighbor’s house, but the greeting card shops and cute little juice joints are doomed to failure, both from lack of patronage and from lack of exposure (assuming anyone ever leases the space to begin with)…
I rather like this: “Both High Point and Greensboro are changing policies to require more sidewalks to be built and have written new laws permitting the construction of more-compact developments.”. That’s great, really, but what good are the sidewalks when there’s nothing to walk TO? In this case, “compact developments” still means little more than smaller yards in a neighborhood surrounded by a buffer zone of shrubbery and connected to some arterial which will take them to the closest shopping center a few miles away…
The problem, of course, is the stifling zoning in suburbia, which keeps the stores and businesses people would actually USE completely isolated from residences. Planners repeatedly claim they want “pedestrian environments”, but they don’t want shopping centers anywhere near anyone’s homes, although a few small shops which sell nothing that anyone needs or wants would be just dandy, thanks. Evidently, they’d just prefer that residents just walk in circles around the neighborhood, waving at all the people who will, of course, be sitting on their porches with pitchers of lemonade…
A few clues: people, especially people in the suburbs, like to shop in big, cheap stores with parking. The days of the corner greengrocer and butcher shop are over, and no amount of nagging and prodding by planners will change this fact. If people want to live in areas which have “pedestrian environments”, they will generally tend to move to larger cities, where these environments already exist and have developed over time. It is not possible to plan them into existence overnight, especially in areas where no one really wants them except the planners…
Most Americans live in wide open suburbs because they like it. Outside the few dense urban areas like New York and San Francisco, Americans have no intention of taking public transit anyplace, so living in an area clustered around a light rail station is not a priority. You and I may disagree, but our urban snobbery is lost on individuals who are quite happy with the way they live, and who — by and large — are willing to put up with a little extra driving to have the way of life they choose. And frankly, what business is it of ours to tell them they’re wrong?
I’ve written before about how so many people using the web are completely deficient when it comes to the concept of context. You know: the sort of people who type the term “cheap Disneyland motel” into a search engine, find a page which happens to include all three words, no matter how randomly, and then — without bothering to read the page they’ve found, which happens to be, say, an architecture critique — click that “contact” button and email the author asking where they can find the best deals on a motel near Disneyland. In other words, clueless idiots…
But this one takes the cake. Several University of Texas students a few years back managed to click onto one of my journal pages when they were still at Planet SOMA and determine that my site was about some drug called “soma” and my experiences using it:
This web site is the journal of a man that explores the effects of “Soma” and other such drugs. His experiences and the mindless state of mind that is the result of the drugs that he is taking are documented as well as his thoughts on whether or not it is a good thing. Explanation: This is useful because in contrast to the previous web site, he totally thinks that Hedonism & drugs in general are a good thing.
Just what website were they reading? How could anyone read anything I’ve written at this site — particularly this page (the one they linked to) — and determine that I’m some drug-crazed hedonist itching to tell the world about it? I haven’t even smoked pot in about 17 years, and I avoid users like the plague. What gives?
Some might call it “libelous”. Which is what I did when I emailed several key persons at the University of Texas this morning. No response yet…
Got a response from the University of Texas. They pulled the page and sent me a semi-apologetic letter which mentions “free speech” and the fact that students sometimes state “strong opinions” on “controversial topics”…
What fucking opinion? What fucking topic? They flat-out lied and said that I use a drug called “soma” and that my site is all about my experiences while using it. That’s not a statement of opinion. It’s a blatant fabrication. And in many academic environments, it could get them expelled…
I’m always amazed at how many otherwise educated individuals haven’t the faintest notion what free speech means…
That said, I’ll mention again that there’s a (completely unrelated) new rant over at Planet SOMA today…
Random thoughts for a Monday afternoon:
Some days I love the internet: a reader has actually found — an offered to send me — an authentic “hogs are beautiful” poster. He sent me a picture, and it’s the genuine article, the very same print which used to grace every barbecue joint from one end of North Carolina to the other. And oddly enough, it was unearthed in Iowa of all places…
So did anyone else watch the hours-long “Richmond, Virgina gas station skycam” this morning (on every network) and wonder how long it would take Fox News to establish that the owner of the van was — in addition to being the one and only sniper — the same individual who masterminded the World Trade Center bombings, Jimmy Hoffa’s murder, and possibly the Crimean War?
Maybe more later, or maybe not. I’ve got a pound of ground beef, a can of Manwich, and a bag of buns. The evening is full of possibilities…
Anniversary weekend. A year ago today, I was off the Fresno for what turned out to be a rather fateful weekend. By a year ago tomorrow, I was already hooked. And you know what? I still am. I do love my boy, especially now that I get to wake up next to him every morning…
If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can read about that weekend here…
Tip of the hat to Chuck’s list of things he doesn’t care about this morning. I’ll follow with my list of things I’m very weary of:
Trying to “understand” and “be tolerant of” terrorists, ghetto kids who kill each other (and innocent bystanders), and homeless people who have “no choice” but to steal and to shit on the streets. Having a “hard life” or a “grievance” is no excuse for making other people miserable.
For what it matters, I have not completely formed my own opinion about any impending military action. I am not convinced that attacking Iraq is the most prudent course of action at present, both for economic and political reasons, but I’m also not convinced that it’s an inherently immoral thing…
I can say, though, that most of the arguments expressed in the local paper haven’t swayed me one way or the other. And I can also state with some assurance that trite, simplistic slogans like “no war for oil” are of little more persuasive value to anyone with an IQ above 65 than those “kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out” T-shirts you used to see during the Gulf War..
Unrelated: note the new navigation bar above, which will now take you to the Road Trips and Rants sections, both of which used to be housed at Planet SOMA. This is something I’ve been planning for a long time, and I’m now reducing Planet SOMA to a site largely concerned with San Francisco and the South of Market Area. There will be some new content over there too, but this is where the “action” will be, particularly after my liberation from the Bay Area…
Aside from the fact that it’s not particularly funny, the main reason I can’t watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” is that whenever I do, I can’t help but visualize the father as Frankenstein’s monster singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz”…
Yes, that would be my one and only concession to Halloween, aside from the Simpsons episode I’m watching right now and all the candy I ate at work today…
Unrelated: so Bill Simon had no control over this one either, huh? He can’t keep up with ads run in his name, and he doesn’t know which campaign questionaires he’s signed. Heck, he can’t even manage a campaign and he wants to run the whole state?
Quoth Molly Ivins:
…even in proud Texas we have to admit that this year’s palm for nose-holding voting must go to California. Not to overstate, two of the most titanically unattractive candidates in the history of time — Gray Davis and Bill Simon — are vying for the governorship. How we got from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to this — or what we ever did to deserve it — is unclear. The debate between Davis and Simon raised the always-timely question: Is God punishing us?
I wish I could vote for somebody (anybody) next week…