If anyone needed proof that the folks at The WB have gone off the deep end, this should suffice. What horrors will we see? Hammer going off to work, gold-plated lunchbox in hand, to do commercials for the credit counseling firm he’s promoting these days? Corey Feldman introducing Emmanuel Lewis to the joys of heroin? Sheesh…
I’ll stick with my “Flintstones” marathons on Boomerang, thanks…
Does anyone really like canned tuna packed in oil? I’ve never met anyone who admitted to it, and I notice that — when both versions are on sale at Safeway — the tuna packed in water is invariably sold out while there are cases and cases of the slimy, nasty oil-packed variety…
All the same, someone must like the stuff, I guess, or they wouldn’t sell it anymore…
Please note that the above question is purely rhetorical and does not require any sort of email response, be it to defend oil-packed tuna or to tell me how my craving for canned tuna is killing dolphins left and right. Thanks…
A road trip was necessary. We both wanted to see snow and pretend we didn’t live in San Francisco. We succeeded. Friday night took us to Placerville, where we decided to rest up and explore before seeing the snow farther uphill on Saturday…
Dogs and special service along the way…
As it turned out, we didn’t stay in either of these motels…
Nor this one…
But we did eat at both these restaurants…
Our motel had the narrowest double beds in the free world, I think, but made it for it by also having full cable and free pastries in the morning…
I didn’t sleep well (even after staking out my own miniature bed), but we got out at a reasonable hour and had breakfast at the corner diner, marvelling at the light fixtures, the space-age sign, and the cheap food. Afterward, we speny way too much money on books and old road maps and other stuff downtown before driving up Highway 50 for a quick look at the snow. We ended up going all the way to Lake Tahoe, with Mark clutching the wheel to avoid black ice all the way back…
Saturday night’s dinner was pizza at this semi-redneck sports bar and pizza parlor, which was at least slightly more appealing than it sounds. After dinner, we explored Placerville some more, watched a little TV, and slipped into our respective miniature beds…
Historic spot, historic town…
He drove. I took pictures…
Fredo is buried somewhere in that lake…
Mmmm. Neon…
Daunting mountains…
The Placerville Penis. I think it was supposed to be more yule than tool, but I’m not sure…
Sunday morning brought more free pastries, a Mexican breakfast, and laundry with the locals (which is fast becoming a vacation tradition). We headed back to san Francisco early in the afternoon, stopping in Sacramento for a Wal-Mart run and in Isleton for a crawdad melt. Of course, we made it home in time for The Simpsons, even though we were too tired to care very much…
It was a good weekend…
Hmmm. An unexplained and unplanned 12-day absence. This is to confirm that I am in fact alive and relatively healthy. And that’s about it. Not, mind you, that anything’s wrong. I just haven’t had much to say lately. I’m once again thinking of my computer more as a workplace than an entertainment zone…
But, by way of quick updates:
Funniest read of the week (from The NYC Anti-Hipster Forum, via Chromewaves)…
Christmas was rough on a lot of retailers this year, and apparently my little Safeway in the Financial District is still wooing those ever-elusive holiday shoppers. I stopped by on the way home tonight just as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” kicked in on the Muzak…
It was rather sweet, in a creepy sort of way…
Unrelated (more or less): a letter-writer in the Chronicle today stated “I am amazed that Californians living near the Oregon border who shop in Oregon because there is no sales tax remain in California! If they don’t feel any responsibility for sharing the cost of California public services, why don’t they move?”…
Spare me. I was surprised to see that the writer was from Sonora, as he has a very San Franciscan viewpoint: specifically that one must repeatedly (and cheerfully) be gouged just for the “great privilege” of living here. Bullshit. If I could save 10% or more on all my purchases by making a short trip to a place which does a better job of managing its finances, I’d do it in an instant…
My sense of civic pride does not require a vow of poverty, thanks, and if I were forced to do all my shopping in San Francisco (or California) as a requirement of residence, I’d most definitely move…
Saw Troll at the Peacock Lounge last night. They’re an interesting band and I’d like to see them again someplace that doesn’t, well, suck. We also saw this very stupid-looking boy in a fur hat and goggles and a tough question was raised: are fashion victims among the protected classes who get to use the handicapped seats on buses?
Note to the fine folks at Hahn’s Hibachi on Haight Street: annoying circuit clone techno-dance music is not conducive to good digestion…
Time for breakfast. Mmmm. Manwich omelet…
Random tidbits for a Monday afternoon:
It’s apparently the hot new trend nationwide. Your team makes it to the Super Bowl. You celebrate by trashing the neighborhood. I don’t get it, but I’ve never really understood the appeal of football itself either. I used to do some stupid things when I was drunk, but setting fire to an auto-repair shop never seemed all that exciting, even when I was REALLY drunk…
It’s raining. I’m excited…
Pictures from the Sierra, should you find yourself interested…
So everyone’s buying houses lately. I want to buy a house. Of course, it will never happen in San Francisco for two big reasons, the first being that we’ll never be able to afford one here, and the second being that doing so would require much more of a commitment to San Francisco than I’m willing to make at this point…
But the apartment’s comfy, if small, and it’s time for an updated tour, I think:
This is the house where I live. It’s a different color now, but I don’t have a new picture handy. Inside is our mailbox…
This is the hall. It is long and narrow and has lots of Apple posters in it. It was rebuilt in 2001 to accommodate a new heating unit. Afterward, the hall has always been toasty warm, no matter how cold the rest of the apartment might be…
The front room is the office. This was where Otherstream and Murdering Mouth and all the other assorted websites live and breed…
We have a lot of books…
Next you come to the bedroom. It is very small, but quite adequate for purposes of sleeping, watching “Streets of San Francisco” re-runs in bed, and, ummm, other things…
There is also a bathroom. This is the room where we shower, release waste, and brush our teeth. It is also the room where Mark and I said that we loved each other for the very first time, but that’s a different story entirely (and it doesn’t involve watersports or scat, thanks)…
Now you’ve arrived in the living room. When the building was first built in 1912, this would have been the dining room. You can’t see the dish shelf, which is stocked with hundreds of videotapes. You can, however, see the porn, the DVDs, and the shelf of good juju…
We use the chairs for sitting, and the entertainment center for entertainment. And sometimes vice versa…
The back room (pardon the terminology) is the kitchen. It is the largest room in the place, and I like it. Probably because that’s where all the food is…
From the back door, you stepp onto the deck. This is where I smoke cigarettes and wish that the grill were being put to more use…
And that is my house. Thanks for visiting…
Sometimes it’s not enough that I married the cutest, geekiest boy I could find. Yes, sometimes I need to commune with large groups of obsessively geeky people in one room. Last night was one of those nights, and I found myself in the main library (being geeky, I live only four blocks away) watching a slideshow and presentation by the authors of this book…Yeah, it gave me a stiffy. They’ve painstakingly researched the geography of every Hitchcock film even vaguely related to the Bay Area, added maps and recent photos, and generally created by new favorite bathroom book. In short, they’ve done the same things I do when watching “Streets of San Francisco” reruns, all 120 of which I have on tape, and when researching supermarkets…It was exciting…
So yeah, being fully informed as to its location, we went and drove by Jimmy Stewart’s apartment from Vertigo last night after dinner…
Before dinner, of course, we’d relived our respective childhoods, me in the living room with a Banana Splits marathon on Boomerang, and Mark in the office with his new Robotech DVDs. I must admit I’d forgotten how good Jan-Michael Vincent’s ass looked when he was parading around Danger Island in those 1969 pants which gave him the perpetual wedgie. And how stupid those Arabian Nights cartoons were…
Dinner seemed a bit of an afterthought in the midst of all that, but it was pretty good too…
I was having a conversation with a friend and co-worker the other day and mentioned in context that I would never marry a pot-smoker. My friend was horrified and demanded an explanation. This has happened to me before, on several occasions. The funny thing is that if I’d announced that I’d never marry a cigarette-smoker (you know, a LEGAL vice), no one would have batted an eye and the chorus of “I understand completely” would have been near-unanimous…
Note that I didn’t say that I thought marijuana should be illegal (I don’t), but that I didn’t particularly care for the idea of a user sharing MY OWN HOME with me. But I guess that, as a San Franciscan, I should be more tolerant when choosing which vices I want to be surrounded by, rating them by way of some pre-approved social acceptability scale rather than by how personally offensive or annoying I find them…
Sorry. That conversation has been bugging me since Thursday and I had to get it off my chest…
Unofficial deadline for getting out of this steaming shithole of a city: the end of the year. Maybe I’ll expand later. So how was your weekend?
As I spent the $138 to replace my car window this morning, I thought about how lucky I was to be getting this education about those less fortunate than myself. Some might say that I was the victim. Far from it. The individual who smashed my window is clearly the victim here: the victim of a society which refuses to accept and embrace his alternative lifestyle.
I think it’s very important that — rather than placing blame on people who make a valid lifestyle choice and become thieves and substance abusers — we try to understand the reasons that they’ve chosen to live this way.
After all, it’s our fault that they made these choices, and our fault that we can’t accept them. By flaunting our jobs and the meager paychecks they bring, by our stubborn desire to live within the law and the rules of society, we make those who do not accept these rules uncomfortable, sometimes to the point where they just naturally lash out. Their self-esteem is at stake, dammit, and we need to understand what they’re feeling when they raid the broken-down cars and homes we’ve had the audacity to pay for through our labors.
Homelessness, poverty, and addiction are not crimes, after all. Therefore, can it really be considered a crime when some homeless, poor, or addicted individuals behave in a fashion which endangers the health, safety, and property of other people? Of course not. To suggest that such behavior is criminal would be to suggest that these individuals must take responsibility for their own actions. That wouldn’t be very tolerant, would it?
The fact that most poverty victims do not choose crime or violence as a lifestyle is immaterial. It is our responsibility as sensitive and caring San Franciscans (and as citizens of Mother Earth) to support all diverse lifestyle choices, even those which our misguided belief systems may suggest are incompatible with the rights of others. Who are we to make value judgments about those who feel the need to take what is ours?
Remember that tolerance is not just about accepting the rights of others to live as they see fit. It’s about supporting them in every aspect of their choice and making sure that there are no repercussions whatsoever for the individual making the choice. Any repercussions for adjacent individuals, of course, are irrelevant, as attention to these might stifle the freedom and creativity of those choosing alternative paths.
Think about it:
People make choices. The fact that you may have chosen to work for a living and make something of your life doesn’t make you superior to someone who’s chosen an alternative path. Just different. Understand this difference and help it thrive. There’s no right or wrong here. This is San Francisco.
I know I feel a lot better having spent my money learning another valuable lesson about the community of man. To think, I might have frittered away that $138 on food or clothing for myself.
Instead, I bought glass. In that glass, I found a miraculous reflection.
OK, does anyone REALLY believe that Dubya and his cowboy posse start quaking in their boots whenever San Francisco or San Jose or Berkeley passes a resolution condemning military action? Oh mercy. The folks in Berkeley don’t want a war. We’d better pack it in right now, because as Berkeley goes, so goes the nation, right?
Note that the preceding statement has nothing to do with my attitude on any military action, pending or otherwise, but merely with my unending amusement that some city councils believe the federal government has any interest whatsoever in their positions on foreign policy…
So here’s to you, Mr. Robinson: you might have a little more credibility if you weren’t too chickenshit to include a valid email address in your repeated messages. But screamers like you only like it if no one can answer back or call you on your bullshit, right? I imagine you’re a rather timid, ineffectual sort who can only string two words into a sentence when doing so anonymously. But if that’s your trip, more power to you. I understand how much easier it is to win an argument when you don’t let anyone else play. At least I get a chuckle every couple of weeks…
How could I not love a boy who would willingly spend a Saturday afternoon driving me around so I could take pictures of old supermarkets in Sacramento? It was a good weekend; we ransacked a dying Kmart, hit thrift stores, and ate well on Saturday and then spent Sunday together in the front room playing with our databases (with the shades open so the neighbors could see)…
The only down side was when I tried to introduce Mark to the joys of jerk pork Saturday afternoon. We strolled into a place on Broadway in Sacramento which turned out to be from hell. Anyone know a really kick-ass Jamaican place in San Francisco so I can try again?
Why do I love you?
Gone for the weekend, fleeing the bears, fireworks, and assorted chants and clichés in favor of cafeterias, Googie, and the heretofore unvisited Hollywood branch of Amoeba Records.
I love Los Angeles. This is not a sentiment which I’ve ever been embarrassed to admit, despite the fact that residents of San Francisco are not supposed to speak such heresy. But for a series of coincidences in 1991, I might be living there rather than here now anyway, and sometimes I still feel the slightest twinge of regret at my decision.
Yes, I realize that the perpetual sunshine and the relative lack of fog or rain would most likely make me suicidal. I understand that the lack of a real pedestrian focus (although there’s more of one than some people realize) might be annoying.
But LA is a city of magic and of dreams, and it holds a fascination for me like nowhere else, except perhaps Chicago and Detroit. It’s a place where I don’t particularly want to live, but where I could spend untold months exploring without getting bored.
Oddly enough, I’d never before had ample opportunity to do this exploring. My first trip was a quick affair, a drive-by on the way to San Diego in 1991. Later trips were always connected with work, either mine or that of a significant other, and never seemed to allow me any time to do what I wanted to do, see what I wanted to see, etc.
Against our better judgment, we left on the Friday afternoon which began President’s Day weekend. It was also Valentine’s Day. Our original goal was to stop by Fresno and see Mark’s sister, but we learned on the way down that she was out of town, so we headed straight for Bakersfield, with a stop in Coalinga and another for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at an Arby’s in a truck stop.
This trip would be different. There was no real agenda…
After a Saturday morning breakfast at my favorite Bakersfield diner (discovered six years ago on a trip to Las Vegas), we explored downtown for a little while, looking at interesting buildings and wandering through the remains of a classic Woolworth’s store which now houses an antique mall.
We stopped at Long’s for previsions and cash, and made our way toward the Grapevine, hoping that the mudslide from a couple of days before had been cleared. Fortunately, it had.
We had one of those mileage milestones near the summit, which was the most eventful part of the Grapevine leg. Finally, we arrived in Greater Los Angeles, which is to say that we were within 40 or 50 miles of the center of town. We passed Magic Mountain and all the assorted beige suburbs, and finally the freeways started getting bigger and more intense.
We arrived at the lovely Motel 6 - LAX in time to realize that we’d be sharing it with about a hundred youth soccer teams. This wouldn’t have been to much of a problem except that this particular Motel 6 was a former Howard Johnson’s hotel, about 10 stories tall with only elevator access to the rooms. Unsupervised kids and elevators are not a good combination. But there was a king-size bed and a balcony overlooking an off-ramp. It was good…
Saturday night dinner was at Clifton’s Cafeteria, which was a high spot on the agenda which we didn’t really have. I’d been here once before and it’s a most amazing place, the surviving link in a chain of cafterias from the 1930s. Clifton’s is a wonderful joint, with most of those cafeteria classics I miss from the south (except for the collard greens and fried okra), and I don’t come to LA without visiting if possible.
After dinner, we roamed around downtown LA for a while. Lots of people tend to forget that there actually IS a downtown LA, but it’s there in its faded glory. The department stores and most of the theatres are closed, but it’s still a lively place, with shops catering to a largely Latino clientele and at least one really cool rock-goth-skate shop where I was pretty excited to see that Vision Street Wear is back.
We headed back to the Motel 6 to, ummm, eliminate the heavy dinner, and then wandered back out toward Hollywood and the LA branch of Amoeba Music. The San Francisco and Berkeley branches will never be quite the same for me; this place is a huge mecca for music AND video, and we spent most of the vacation budget here. It was truly amazing…
Further driving ensued (Hollywood Boulevard on a Saturday night is a nightmare, by the way) and somehow we ended up going all the way to Burbank and Toluca Lake, where we had late-night food at the perfectly-preseved Bob’s Big Boy I’d visited once before with Duncan.
Then it was back to the Motel 6. The soccer kids were, alas, not asleep yet…
Sunday morning. Breakfast required. Not an easy task, it seems. We tried Pann’s in Inglewood, which had an hour-plus wait. We tried Johnie’s at Wilshire and Fairfax (across from the old May Co. where Jan Brady bought the silver platter), but it was closed for good. We finally landed at a thoroughly generic IHOP in Hollywood.
Now fed, we tooled through Hollywood again, stopping by Amoeba so Mark could return something and I could take more pictures.
Afterward, we took a quick drive through the Hollywood Hills, visited the last Mayfair Market in existance on the planet, and headed for the sight (site?) I’d been craving all weekend. It was an unassuming little house on an unassuming little street in North Hollywood. It told the story of a lovely lady…
Yeah, you know the house…
We covered a lot of ground on this particular Sunday, most of it by freeway. Mark was itching to see “the stack”, and once we arrived, I knew why. It was quite amazing. It’s kind of nice to spend time in a city which is proud of its freeways rather than ashamed of them…
We also popped by LAX to see the Exposition Building, and to a Fry’s because, well, that’s what we do on the weekends, even in LA.
Being a freak for old shopping centers, I wanted to see the remains of the Braodway-Crenshaw center, an early example of an extremely well-designed center dating from about 1950. The two anchors were still standing, with the Broadway store having been turned into a Wal-Mart and the May Co. now a Robinsons-May. I was amazed to see it was still rather thriving, albeit in the midst of a suburb which was not exactly as middle-class as it had been fifty years ago.
Actually, the whole of Crenshaw Boulevard is an interesting cruise for those of us interested in old commercial architecture.
For the evening, we headed to Orange County, planning to eat in a restuarant at Knott’s Berry Farm which Mark remembered from his youth. Alas, it was not quite the same restaurant anymore, so we looked in vain for any interesting Googie architecture left in Anaheim, bought matching Snoopy mugs with our names on them, and went on our way.
We took a long surface route back home, stopping for dinner at a small Mexican place in La Habra, and looking for more neon. About half way home, I realized we were very close to the oldest operating McDonald’s in America, so we had to stop by there too. Afterward, it was back to the Motel 6 for our last night in the king-size bed.
President’s Day and home. We successfully had breakfast at Pann’s this time, covering my cravings for both Googie and grits. We also did a little cheap grocery shopping before returning to San Francisco, only partly so I could visit cool old Vons stores (most of which have been butchered inside since the Safeway takeover).
We made it through Ventura and beautiful downtown Oxnard, with its inexplicable “two-skyscrapers in the middle of a field” skyline. Soon, we were out of the city and its assorted field of influence and on the way to our planned dinner stop at McLintock’s in Pismo Beach. Interesting place, great food, and more Wranglers and cowboy boots than I’ve ever seen in one room in California. Note that I do NOT have a cowboy fetish, so this was merely a source of amusement.
The depressing sign suggested that our adventure in LA would soon be over…
All feelings about potential military action aside, you gotta love the simple truth of this letter in yesterday’s Chronicle:
I have to laugh every time I hear some peace demonstrator around here crow about how “courageous” it is to demonstrate against war. Courageous? It takes about as much courage to be anti-war in the Bay Area as it does to be anti-abortion in Vatican City.
And while I’m on the subject of newspapers, here’s one of the creepiest paragraphs I’ve read in quite a while, from Saturday’s LA Times. Note that the creepiness of what it says pales in comparison to the matter-of-fact manner in which it’s said:
The lack of a head and hands has stymied efforts to identify the woman, and police can only speculate as to why the knees were missing. Perhaps the knees carried identifying marks, Seyler said, or perhaps they simply didn’t fit inside whatever was use to transport the body parts.
Pictures from last weekend’s trip to LA (which will include no kneecap shots whatsoever, thanks) coming this weekend…
Random thoughts for a Monday afternoon:
It reminds me of the story of the guy who died after being hit by a car on a busy street. His tombstone read “He had the right of way.” These folks, alas, didn’t even have THAT going for them. Keep in mind that I’m a pedestrian much more frequently than I’m a motorist, and I too like to assert my rights. It is not, however, something I’m prepared to die over. I’m not sure what pisses me off more: the fact that these idiots were so quick to put their own lives (and that of the driver) in danger, or the fact that they managed to make me sympathize with some yuppie guy driving a Mercedes…
You know what I like? I like not having a headache like the really nasty, vaguely debilitating one I had last night. Not having a headache makes me happy…
Only one person today noticed that I snuck in a new cover photo yesterday featuring yer humble host standing smack dab in front of the real live Brady Bunch house. Maybe I didn’t include enough of it. Or maybe no one cared. Anyway, more photos from LA coming soon, I promise…
