Year: 1997

Christmas in the City

Signs of Christmas in the City:

  • Embarcadero Center looks like four hugely disproportionate Christmas presents and the Transamerica Pyramid looks like an oversized tree.
  • Driving down Fifth Street near Market is something only the bravest among us will risk.
  • The absence of crowds due to Christmas parties and people leaving the city actually made the Hole in the Wall Saloon bearable last night.
  • Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley was closed off today so that all the people who scorn materialism and commercialism could make a quick buck selling T-shirts, crystals, and a plethora of strange-smelling items.
  • The ratio of Christmas songs to other types on Muzak and KABL has finally hit 99-1.

Note du jour: a recent look at a cheap Spanish-English dictionary finds “Hanukkah” defined as “Christmas for the Jews”. I’ll let this one stand on its own…umm…merits and close with it.

Home for the Holidays

So here I am, about to spend my second Christmas in a row at home in Greensboro.

Sitting in the waiting area with 90 minutes left before my flight. What a crazy 24 hours it’s been. I realized last night that I wouldn’t be receiving my ticket in time to make it home for Christmas. So one was sent to me on a plane from Charlotte at 11:00 this morning. I grabbed a $30 cab to the airport after doing ALL my Christmas shopping last night. I’m exhausted. And mildly hungover.

At least there’s cute boys to look at here. Most of them cuter even than the guy I chowed down on last night at My Place. He was cocky and shot all over my head and face. The onlookers were pleased.

It’d be nice to have a laptop on this trip, but I’m Ok using pen and paper for a week or so, although it’s a little strange getting used to writing prose in longhand again. I seem to be unsure which of my 7-8 different handwritings to use.

It must really suck traveling with children. I often wonder if I was as bad as rugrats today are. Actually, I think children were better behaved when I came along; parenting was more about teaching discipline and responsibility than “self-esteem” and “creativity”.

Scored First Class on the flight. It’s worth it!

Christmas

 

Christmas Day. Gifts this morning and long drives this afternoon. My dad’s side of the family came over tonight, then I headed out to the Palms to hang out with Jeff and several ex-mistakes from my past, all of whom I managed to avoid.

Highlight of the evening: watching “King of the Hill” with a distant relative who could easily have qualified as a cast member.

 

After the festivities, we made the traditional drive downtown and around the city to see the lights. For all its bleakness during the day, I have to say downtown Greensboro came across pretty well when “wrapped” for Christmas.

 

Boxing Day

Had lunch with the Bosnian refugee family my mom has “adopted”. They’re really nice people, although there was a pretty significant language barrier. Why is it that children who were raised by non-American parents seem so much better behaved than those born and raised (and coddled and spoiled rotten) here? I guess I may have answered my own question…

 

Tonight, we headed next door to my aunt’s house. No badly behaved brats to complain about here either. I was relieved.

Museum and Snow

Today brought a visit to the Greensboro Historical Museum in the light snow. Just call this the “Greensboro History Tour” I guess, as that has seemed to be the running theme. Spent the rest of the afternoon shooting pictures around town for a new section of the web site (coming soon).

  

Tonight, I met my friend Taylor at New York Pizza. We first met on the Baltimore leg of the US Tour last fall, and an evening with Taylor is an always entertaining thing, from stories of Tennessee Williams to recollections of my hometown to comparisons of strange southern eccentricities.

Back to history, though. I seem to feel this need to collect my memories of the old hometown while I can still write them down and while they remain relatively fresh in my memory. I’m not really sure why, but I have a feeling it will seem even more important to me in my later years. I’ve always had a fascination with the history of almost anyplace I’ve lived. And Greensboro, boring as it may be, has an interesting history to be sure.

Nightmare on South Elm Street

Uneventful day. Hit Babylon tonight. It was annoying. I disappeared quickly. Why do people in queer bars here not seem to have lives outside the bars? Is it the fact that the closets are so full here or is it the fact that the bars have such a death grip on all queer socializing?

Wait. More Snow.

 

Note the steady decline in the weather forecasts.

Suddenly it’s snowing like crazy outside. About four inches on the ground so far and no end in sight. This is just a little disturbing since it seems unlikely to go away for the next few days either. I haven’t seen snow like this is years (six, to be exact). It’s very pretty. And it’s making me a little crazy since it’s forcing me to lurk about the house as the whole damned city seems to have closed in deference to the weather.

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New Year’s Eve

Made a trip downtown and did some thrift store diving with no success whatsoever. Why is it I do so much shopping when I’m here? And why have I been so damned SLEEPY the whole time I’ve been home?

  

The bash, my mom 15 minutes later, and my first photo op of ’98.

Tonight’s New Year’s Eve celebration consisted of a coffee and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts toast at home with Mom and Dad, just like last year. Am I a party animal or what?