I’m SO Ready to Leave

As if I needed a reminder about why I’m leaving San Francisco, I walked out last night to find that my car had been broken into for the third time in less than a year…

Keep in mind that my car is a piece of crap, which gives off no vibrations that anything valuable might be kept inside. Generally, it gets “accessed” on rainy nights and the seats are always in the “recline” position. Nothing is ever missing from the car or the trunk. All this makes me pretty sure I’m a target more because some street person needs a dry place to sleep (or do God knows what else) and he’s pretty certain my dumpy Corolla doesn’t have an alarm…

But an extra $130 every three or four months for window glass is a small price to pay to make sure some crackhead is warm and cozy for the evening, huh?

My neighborhood is really getting bad lately. There are a lot more homeless folks around and a lot more sketchy characters in general. And the lovely new piece of “mural art” across the alley seems to be beckoning every gangbanger and gangbanger wannabe in a fifty mile radius to come get stoned and look at it while listening to really obnoxious music at 11PM…

I used to think nothing of walking around this area alone at 2 or 3 in the morning, but I sure as hell wouldn’t do it now. My car has been broken into more times in the past two or three years than in the first TEN years I lived here. I never used to feel nervous South of Market, but it’s pretty common for me now…

I am SO happy to be leaving this place…

Video Geekery

My current big project (aside from moving) involves organizing and burning to DVD hundreds of music videos I’ve recorded over the years from old standbys like MTV and VH-1, and such gone but not forgotten sources as “Night Flight” on USA and “Night Tracks” on TBS, among others…

I’m also interspersing them where possible with nice, new clean copies recorded from VH-1 Classic. It was on that channel yesterday that I was reminded of my FIRST music video project back in 1982, when I got my first Beta format VCR. I managed to catch “It’s Raining Again” by Supertramp, which was the very first music video I taped on the old Beta VCR at age 17…

As I remember, I taped it the first time from HBO, along with “Our Lips Are Sealed” by the Go-Gos and “Allentown” by Billy Joel. HBO used to run music videos between movies. Those were the pre-MTV days on most cable systems, and you sort of grabbed these things where you could find them…

Stupid Oblivious Hippies

One thing I definitely won’t miss about San Francisco will be the stupid-ass hippie granola factor. Case in point: two of my neighbors were sitting out on the sidewalk playing a long, repetitive bongo drum duet for about a half hour late this afternoon. It was the same eight beats over and over again — enough to drive any sane person crazy — and I could hear it all the way in the back of the flat even with the windows closed. It was loud…

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went downstairs to see how long they were planning to continue. I asked the thirtysomething guy and his twentysomething female companion if they’d be playing much longer.

“Oh, probably not.”

“Good, because I can’t hear myself think anywhere in my apartment.”

They promptly and without incident stopped their little performance and went inside. It wasn’t like they were being defensive or confrontational or anything. In fact, they almost seemed hurt that someone didn’t appreciate their musical “gift” to the neighborhood. What really bugged me was that stupid fucking deadhead kind of obliviousness, as if they couldn’t wrap their brains around the fact that not everyone on the block really wanted to listen to an hour’s worth of the same drum loop over and over again all night long. It just hadn’t even occurred to them, apparently…

I guess they just assumed that everyone else within range was as stoned and stupid as they were…

What WILL I Miss?

I guess we’re really going…

A big part of the packing is done (more thanks to Mark than to me) and last night we started saying our official goodbyes by having dinner with Sarah and Brad. And I’ve hit that point where every time I visit a certain store or restaurant, I’m assuming it will probably be my final visit…

Strangely enough, I’m finding that — friends aside — most of the things I’ll miss aren’t actually IN San Francisco. That may be due to the fact that aside from work and home, I haven’t really spent that much time within the city limits for several years now. My leisure time is spent in Oakland and San Jose and even Sacramento and Fresno, and it’s these places that I think I’ll really miss. And I’ll hate not having LA nearby as well, since I’ve lately found it much more fascinating than San Francisco…

So very much of what I used to find so interesting about San Francisco either isn’t here anymore or isn’t exciting to me anymore. Most of the bars and clubs I liked are closed –or radically different than they used to be — and I don’t really care about that scene anymore anyway. Except for parts of the Richmond and the Sunset and the Outer Mission, the city has pretty much have become a boutique caricature of its former self, a theme park if you will. Of course, this was a trend which was well underway even in 1992, but it’s gotten completely out of hand now…

Some other casualties:

  • Live 105 before it turned into the land of Limp Dipshit and Korn.
  • The dogs, Jim Gabbert’s editorials, and even the KOFY call letters on channel 20.
  • That whole great neighborhood of warehouses and piers that used to be where SBC Park is now.
  • The Emporium.
  • Mike’s Night Gallery.
  • Army Street.
  • The little cafe that used to be in the building where I work and serve lasagna every Wednesday, even though they always ran out by 12:15 or so.

More to come. And all sentimental notions are, of course, subject to change…

Watching the Pod

It’s 9:30 on a Friday night. I probably won’t be sleeping for at least twelve hours, because our pod is out on the street with a large part of our stuff in it, and there’s no way I’m leaving it out on the streets of Purgatory San Francisco all night without watching it…

Not only is it excruciatingly difficult to live here, it’s even difficult to leave…

Full Pod

 

6:40 AM. At sunrise, we loaded the last of the stuff. All in all, we took almost no furniture, and we still have quite a bit to ship. But at least the overnight pod nightmare is almost over, assuming that the damned thing isn’t overweight and also assuming they can get the misaligned door shut properly…

Either way, we should be able to go to bed in, oh, four or five hours. But wait. We don’t really have a bed anymore…

Psycho Neighbor

Just to make those last few days a little more fun, we had a little run-in with the asshole neighbor downstairs last night. A bit after 11, Mark accidentally knocked over a lamp and broke a light bulb. Not wanting to step in glass all night (and risk a cut which wouldn’t mix well with the blood thinners I take due to my heart-thyroid combo) I made the fatal mistake of turning on the vacuum cleaner for about 45 seconds to pick up the pieces…

It was less than a minute; it wasn’t like I was vacuuming the house from front to back for a long period of time, but shortly after I finished came the loud banging on the door. I didn’t even bother to answer it lest I lay into the son of a bitch, who unfortunately also happens to be a friend of the landlord. Before bed, though, I did leave notes on the doors of my downstairs and next door neighbors, explaining the situation and apologizing if it had caused any problems…

Mike downstairs is just your basic garden variety prick and busybody whose life is so miserable that he feels the need to spread it around and make everyone else miserable too. In earlier days, I’d tried to be pleasant and neighborly to him. One year, I even had him up for my Christmas gathering, at which point he got drunk (as is his custom) and embarrassed himself and everyone else there…

The past few years, though, he just became impossible to cope with. So I stopped even trying, speaking to him only when absolutely necessary. Like the time when the 90-year-old plumbing in our kitchen sink finally gave way. Unbeknown to us, water was running down the back of the building. He came up, banging on the door, yelling “What the fuck are you guys doing?” as if we were shooting a hose out the window merely to torment him, rather than innocently washing the dishes…

Yes, Mike hasn’t been much of a neighbor. I think Mark’s moving in really pissed him off, whether due to the “extra noise” or just because it meant someone else actually to be happy. Any other neighbor would have congratulated us or at least feigned pleasantness. Not him…

What I might have told him last night is that I was tired of ten years of trying to be a good neighbor to him. I’d have mentioned the outstanding lengths I’ve gone to over the years to avoid making him deal with excessive noise. I’d have added that I’d put up with his perpetual hammer-banging and “renovation” for years without a complaint, not to mention smelling his nasty second-had cigar smoke and putting up with his nosiness and his snide comments about what he’d heard from my bedroom the night before…

Some people miss their neighbors when they move. Right now, I don’t particularly care if this one lives or dies. And if he says a word to me, including “hello”, before we leave, I’ll probably advise him that it would be really easy for us not have to speak to each other again at all for the next five days…

Just to make those last few days a little more fun, we had a little run-in with the asshole neighbor downstairs last night. A bit after 11, Mark accidentally knocked over a lamp and broke a light bulb. Not wanting to step in glass all night (and risk a cut which wouldn’t mix well with the blood thinners I take due to my heart-thyroid combo) I made the fatal mistake of turning on the vacuum cleaner for about 45 seconds to pick up the pieces…

It was less than a minute; it wasn’t like I was vacuuming the house from front to back for a long period of time, but shortly after I finished came the loud banging on the door. I didn’t even bother to answer it lest I lay into the son of a bitch, who unfortunately also happens to be a friend of the landlord. Before bed, though, I did leave notes on the doors of my downstairs and next door neighbors, explaining the situation and apologizing if it had caused any problems…

Mike downstairs is just your basic garden variety prick and busybody whose life is so miserable that he feels the need to spread it around and make everyone else miserable too. In earlier days, I’d tried to be pleasant and neighborly to him. One year, I even had him up for my Christmas gathering, at which point he got drunk (as is his custom) and embarrassed himself and everyone else there…

The past few years, though, he just became impossible to cope with. So I stopped even trying, speaking to him only when absolutely necessary. Like the time when the 90-year-old plumbing in our kitchen sink finally gave way. Unbeknown to us, water was running down the back of the building. He came up, banging on the door, yelling “What the fuck are you guys doing?” as if we were shooting a hose out the window merely to torment him, rather than innocently washing the dishes…

Yes, Mike hasn’t been much of a neighbor. I think Mark’s moving in really pissed him off, whether due to the “extra noise” or just because it meant someone else actually to be happy. Any other neighbor would have congratulated us or at least feigned pleasantness. Not him…

What I might have told him last night is that I was tired of ten years of trying to be a good neighbor to him. I’d have mentioned the outstanding lengths I’ve gone to over the years to avoid making him deal with excessive noise. I’d have added that I’d put up with his perpetual hammer-banging and “renovation” for years without a complaint, not to mention smelling his nasty second-had cigar smoke and putting up with his nosiness and his snide comments about what he’d heard from my bedroom the night before…

Some people miss their neighbors when they move. Right now, I don’t particularly care if this one lives or dies. And if he says a word to me, including “hello”, before we leave, I’ll probably advise him that it would be really easy for us not have to speak to each other again at all for the next five days…

The Last Supper

Of course, before last night’s unpleasantness, there was the last supper with Dan, Jamie, and Eugene at Rocco’s on Folsom Street. Various combinations of the five of us have been having dinner together on Friday nights for many years, and last night was the last time, even though it was rescheduled for Saturday since we had the pod to load on Friday. I will miss these people very much…

 

I also said my final goodbyes to Irma and the kids last night. Jamie has taken custody and promises to send me updates. We even considered registering irmacam.com and throwing up a webcam, but I don’t think that’s really going to happen…