Southern California, Days 13-17

Greetings from San Francisco!

I'm really enjoying a break from all the driving here in the mega-opolis that is San FranBerkLandJose. There's an inordinate and uncontrolled amount of sprawl here, and I'm not at all sure where one city begins and another ends.

My drive up the PCH was a LOT of fun. It was far less scary and sharp than Route 58, maybe because I was on the mountain side of the road. I had a lot of fun engine braking and exploding out of the tight curves.
Lord I love the manual shifter.

Big Sur is gorgeous of course, like that's a surprise. I made it up to Monterey in the afternoon, and had a great lunch at a little bistro called Tillie Gort's. I wandered around a bit, and headed down to Cannery Row to see if there was anything Steinbeck-esque remaining. There wasn't. Not even close. It's been completely overhauled and commercialized. Not even a statue or mention of Ole John other than an overhead walkway from one two story Starbucks to another one on othe other side of the street being named after the guy. It was kinda sickening, and I left Monterey in a huff.

At this point California drives get confusing. I briefly ventured into Santa Cruz (and found a Patagonia outlet store having a Labor Day sale) but since Brody wasn't getting in till Saturday morning, I decided to just high tail it to Berkeley and meet up with K2 there. Which I did.

K2 and a couple of his co-workers (one being his roommate) and I went to a great high-class pizza place called Zachary's. Apparently it's kind of a big deal. It's completely employee owned, and even though it's the size of Mad Mex, they have about 20 people working at once. It looked completely chaotic and I'm pretty sure one guy's job was to stand in one place and move pizza's from one counter to another one behind him. K2, Zhi, and I went to a brew pub called Triple Rock after leaving Zachary's for a couple beers that were quite good. This one girl seemed to be passed out on the bar, so I asked her if she was ok, and when she woke up to tell me she was, some guy came up to her, gave her a little paper parasol umbrella and mentioned something about sunburn. I didn't really get it; I think it was the worst line I've ever heard.

For most of the weekend I just kind of tagged along with K2, relaxing and loving not feeling like I had to get somewhere and do something. Satnite I went bar hopping and dancing with some of Jasper's people from his program, which was a lot of fun. Some guy passed me a really nice glossy business card which I assumed was the DJ's future shows or something. When I actually read it later, it said: "$MO MONEY$ Green Buds XTC Pills" I'll post a picture of it. (Which I'll do soon, I swear) Sunday we went out to Point Reyes for a picnic on the beach. Sounds warm, right? Not entirely; it's pretty chilly up here. I was under the impression that all of California is made of Tempurpedic, everyone is blond even if they weren't before they moved here, and it's always warm all the time. Not true.

On Labor Day K2 and I did a few more errands and then went over to San Francisco. K2 tripped and broke his sandal in the first five minutes so we bought him new sandals. ADVENTURE!! We went to a cool little Chinese place with delicious lunch specialsIt's the first time I've ever had yams in garlic sauce, but it's good! We were navigating by the sun and memories of maps, and trying to go to a city park that was on the other side of the city. ADVENTURE!! We walked for about 2 hours, freezing, to get to this little garden that closed when we got there. ADVENTURE!! We walked up hills, down hills, hither and thither, and then just asked someone who gave us a map. Looking at the map now, it's kind of ridiculous how far we walked. Adventure? We got on a bus just to warm up not caring where it went, and a guy who saw how utterly bewildered we were helped us out with directions on how to get back to Berkeley. It took us about 30 minutes to get back again. Adventure... right...

Yesterday, while K2 was at work I went to the San Francisco MOMA. They had Dalis and Picassos and O'Keefes, Matisses and Arps and Ernsts. It was great. They also had a large exhibition by a guy named Matthew Barney who works in film. I really liked his ideas of combining the artistic with the aesthetic, but I didn't really like his work all that much. There was one film where he's in a gallery and has put up climbing holds on a wall. He climbs up, on belay, to the ceiling, and pulls out a marker and starts to draw on his way climbing back down. Which is an awesome idea, right? Except that he's drawing ovaries and fallopian tubes. Which is ok, I guess, but just sort of weird.

At any rate, back in KC I saw a painting by a guy named Wayne Thiebaud that I really liked, and there were a couple more here that I also liked a lot. He's better known for painting food, but in the last ten years or so he's done some really interesting paintings of freeways and city streets.

On the way back to Berkeley I managed to get on the wrong train. It matched up with the one I wanted for a long time, but I figured out when it turned south and I wanted to go north. So I got on a train heading back north, one that I couldn't have possibly gotten on back across the bay where I had started. One stop away from where I wanted to get off, a girl I went to high school with, who had gotten off a stop too early and had picked up this train to make up for it, boarded the train right at the door I was standing at. It was entirely random and serendipitous, neither of us even live in this area. More than a little mindblowing. (although, I also saw this girl in Baltimore while working at Caitlin's market, so further weird) Turns out she had come up from her aunt's place elsewhere in the city to visit a few other people we went to high school with. I tagged along for dinner and played catch up with a group of people I hadn't seen or talked to in five years.

I'll be in San Francisco for a few more days, probably till Monday. I hope you're all doing well with your summer to fall transitions. Much love, and keep staying in touch!