City Report: Prague

two weeks later, what is most remarkable, is that nothing stands out about prague. The architecture was amazing, admittedly, but it was drowned on the ground by billions of tourist, all of whom seemed to have brought their skanky russian mistress. the city is steeped in fascinating history, and each building tells a story, but in the end i found the city far too overwhelming given my short stay of less than 36 hours. plus, i was recovering from an aforementioned bavarian drinking escapade. goddamn turks!  

in old cities such as prague I am always turned off by the volume of tourism that comes through .I understand that the tourism helps sustain the quality of the buildings, but really, these structures were fine before the floodgates were opened and would live a natural life without the loads of incoming euros. so, in retrospect, i offer this to those who have 'developed' this city since its soviet release: a more subtle approach would have been appreciated. for example, in Wenceslas Square, i was hoping to somehow appreciate how a few thousand czech dissidents  gathered here 40 years ago and announced a prague spring. demands of the audience would include a soviet thaw -- a step away from the hardcore values of control and iron fists. a bohemian left emerged and stood tall against soviet tanks which rolled through and killed an unknown amount of dissidents. so you stand there at this square looking slightly uphill to the National Museum,  and you think to yourself: if you had to do it over again, would you stop at four McDonalds on this two mile strip? or would you super size and go for six? If you had your choice, and were rebuilding a country, and wanted to emphasize how distant you are from a soviet top-down economy, would you build threee casinos and four sex shops? or vice versa? 

i live in a neighbhorhood overrun by tourists. in the summer, they walk up and down my street, sometimes blocking my driveway with double decker busses. half a mile downstream you could not turn without seeing several strip clubs and sex shops. this sort of development does not bother me in general . I just wish they would have left prague alone -- for all i had heard about it, and for all its history, and its ancient jewish community, and its modern soviet stand, and its peaceful re-incarnation as a new republic -- it would have been to let this one lay low. 

But we all understand how this works. Prague is beautiful and old, tremendously romantic and built across rivers and centuries. The commodification of history , architecture and love could not be stopped by soviet tanks, much less you or me. It is simply a reality -- at once beautiful and gross, not unlike that skanky russian mistress. 

Country Update: Germany

Welcome to Germany! This is my third trip here and I must say, change gonna come. Where as before I had long seen these people as genocidal maniacs, something has changed with this visit. Perhaps it is the cleanliness of the taxis, or the audobahn, on which my business colleague topped out at 194 Km/hr while using a sonar powered navigation and steering system. I dont know what happened, but during my whole trip here, I never once felt like pissing on the floor or hate fucking some teutonic piece of ass for reparations. So, my prior trips to germany were a bit more exciting, but strangely, I am feeling very happy and comfortable to be here!  

My business requirements have me training our Germany partner for 2 days before I have to head to Prague and Finland next week. Work is proceeding swimmingly, but what has really captivated me is, of course, the reaction to our recent elections. First, let's be straight up about this -- Europe is FAR more racially non-subtle than Americans. In fact, every channel I watched showed brothers dancing up and down when obama won and then offset this with dejected McCain supporters all looking like strom thurmon's ballsack on a stick.  

I am not saying that these people are racist, but I was just suprised -- and then it occurred to me: somewhere along during the campaign I had forgotten that Barack Obama was black! Perhaps this was some jedi mind shit aspect of an amazing campaign, but seriously -- I realize he is our first black president and i realize that this is historic, but this notion was entirely overshadowed by a politics of inclusion and positivity. 

And for the first time in a LONG time, I was feeling great to be an American abroad. Folks seemed generally happy for me, and of course I had perma-grin on my face. It is incredible how much people in other countries despise (or maybe more aptly -- are confused by) Bush and the policies of the neocons. And what's even more impressive is that they know everything about the slightest details of our political spectrum. You can imagine my embarassment when I asked -- "Hey uh, so dont you have some lady running this place?" But then it became obvious -- the farther you get from watching a story closely, the broader the strokes. So the Germans see Obama as black above all, and I see some bloated lady with a bad haircut running all of Deutchland.

 

But let's face it, you dont need a sociological lesson. Shit, if thats what you wanted, you wouldn't have dropped out of high school to get your GED. I get it. You want to hear me tell you stories of me stumbling through munich after eating a 3 pound pig leg. Fine then. Heres a pic of the leg: 

And a couple accomplices: 

Must rewind! We left the hotel at 9pm. The dude driving the car was a wiry cat with a strange cackle and powerful unibrow (uni-brau?). His passenger/coworker was a Turk. Together we hammered into central munich, found impecable parking and began the evening. 

The details are sketchy. I recall several items: First -- Munich is beautiful, friendly, and goddamn fun. Here is a picture of city hall at night: 

Down below city hall, we squared up to the massive german portions as shown above. The rest of the evening involved lots of laughs and revelry. I hugged a German couple. Thirty people in a crowded bar started chanting 'Yes we can!'. I believe I drunk dialed my mom (not like THAT!). Finally, I retired in my hotel room at 3am, exhausted and anxious in anticipation of that 6am wake up call which would ready me for my travels to prague. 

The next morning was a battle of will. In the end, I successfully boarded my flight to Bonn which would eventually take me to Prague, but I will spare you the details of my struggles. Let's just say 5 liters of lager coupled with 3 white russians do funny things to my system. I should have taken a cue from our recent presidential contest and held off on the cream. That lactose will get you every time. 

Old News

Usually when I board an airplane, I have a vague anxiety that the world will be an utterly different place when i return. It's an anxiety borne of experience -- one time I got on a plane and while I was gone half of lower manhatten was exploded -- and it's one I feel every time i take off, passport in hand. More than the concern of being trapped far from home (as I was in 2001 - in Amsterdam of all places!) what grips me most is my fear that i would miss out on something momentous, and will be unable to share it with friends. When they told us to extinguish our electronic devices, I got a call from the Sky crew that everything looked good. Just then it was time to take off and --  like that! -- I was out of contact with the rest of you, Matt Gerloff's tipsy euphoria ringing sweetly in my ears... 

Somewhere over Utah, I stood up to use the bathroom. This is a habit I enjoy even more now after you-know-which shitty state funded the passing of California Prop 8. Anyway, upon my return the captain came aboard the radio and told us all -- CNN projected Barack Obama had won the presidency. A mild euphoria arose across the aisles, and I do believe I high-fived a business traveller or two. And when I sat down and turned to radio channel 9 -- there, somewhere high over the wasatch range -- i listened to Obama's address from Grant Park, Chicago. Grant Park, where my mom took me to see your 1991 world champion Chicago Bull's victory  parade. It all came together so quickly ... a beautiful trinity high over the Red plains below -- mother, city, country. And when it was all over, I poured myself a victory gin and tonic, and I raised it high to no one and everyone in particular. I took a sip and looked out the window. I could not help but notice how happy i looked in reflection, and how even in the most separate/removed/airborne conditions, I could feel so completely home. 

Discussions of Information Theory, Penguins and Recounts

When I was a graduate student at Berkeley I had a number of professors, none of whom I could understand. Whether they would talk about information theory, digital communications or natural language processing, all of these guys would butcher the english language violently. And still, a common message resonated: apparently, whether you are from India, Kazakhstan, or Russia, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The free lunch metaphor was used (and sometimes, to my horror, acronym-ized to TNSTAAFL) to describe the inevitable trade off that is so central to engineering. Want more performance out of something? You'll have to pay for it energy costs. Want a faster internet? Better learn some ridiculous math and pack shit into some orthogonal signal spaces. etc. The irony of all of this was that as graduate students all we DID was look for free lunches -- I'm pretty sure I attended a rally for the preservation of ante-Colombian art in central Belize for a slice of pizza. Free chips and salsa with a 12 oz beer ? There's dinner for ya.

And as I grow older I realize that the free lunch metaphor is more and more true. Sure some people are born rich, good looking and hung like a Nubian Clydesdale. The majority of us, however, live a life of quid pro quo -- a constant tit for tat that requires us to make sacrifices in order to make amazing things happen. And so, with the discussion of horses behind us, I present to you the following map, which describes a trip I am about to embark upon. A trip that happens to require a departure on election night:




Finland! Just the thought of the country evokes the image of friendly penguins dancing at the airport, beckoning me to join them in their country's insatiable pursuit of pickled fish. Finland, where ice castles filled with vodka are at every corner! Giant beautiful women chopping wood -- and free saunas for everyone! And let's not forget Munich and Prague, both jewels of central europe, both cities made entirely of beer!

Originally this trip had me going to Israel too, which would have involved 3 weeks on the road. As much as I love the homeland, a trip of that length would have left me with a unkempt beard, undergarments that aromated strongly of fennel, and a sense of fear and loathing that always precedes the bad things. So the current itinerary is more that sufficient, and I am more than excited to see all of these places I've never been to. And though Helsinki will undoubtedly be shrouded in seasonal darkness, just you wait till I'm writing at 1am, a bottle of vodka and 3 giant pickled fishes deep.

But, as we know all know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. In order to make my Thursday meeting in Munich, I will have to travel on Election Night -- my favorite night ever. Instead of rooting all night with you for team blue, I will be left with a years worth of political blue balls. With any luck our pilot will share the results over the PA, though i doubt my supervisor race will be covered in this fashion.

So, in my absence, I have some voting day tips for you. Instead of a voting primer, which is boring and essentially useless at this point, I'd like to suggest a few guidelines for "Partying with DonnyB in mind." I will present several scenarios and provide appropriate partying steps by which you must abide to the letter, since I will not be able to share this (hopefully) glorious evening with you.


Scenario 1: Obama Victory

1. Fist pump and yell "Abracadabra Motherfucker!!!" (or something similarly momentous)
2. Do a shot
   
3. If an early win (PA/OH called before my 7pm PST flight) give me a call to share the joy (I will be making out with whoever is standing next to me at SFO)
4. Keep an eye on our friend Al Franken
   
5. Repeat step (2)
   
6. Party till your ass falls off
   
7. Call in sick
   
8. Repeat (2) until you pass out
   

Scenario 2: McCain Victory

1. Do a shot
2. Throw your TV out the window
3. When looting, please keep the 1991 LA riots in mind and pick me up the following items:
   

• Sony D-25 Discman
• Boyz II Men Tape (CooleyHighHarmony specifically, but I'll take the appropos "End of the Road" single)
• A canadian passport
• Any illicit substances you could get your hands on.
  

4. After exhausting yourself, consider joining me in Europe! I will be at the Radisson SAS Royal in Helsinki

Scenario 3: Recounts

1. Do a shot
2. Determine the state(s) in question
3. Book airfare to this state, and email me your itinerary
4. Avoid violence (you'll need all your strength when handling the riot police in Canton)
5. Avoid amphetimines, Republicans and the elderly.
   

So there you have it. I wish I could be there with you guys, but higher duty calls me to distant lands. Remember to follow these steps in detail, and if Scenario 1 comes true, give me a call on November 16th. I will renounce my higher education once and for all, and buy you a beer.

We are Back

it has been 12 years, 34 fortnights and 140 light-years since i have written last. I know the light-year is a unit of distance -- take it easy.

since i have started writing and sharing stories with my friends, i have focused primarily on my travels, where i am bombarded with new information that requires parsing and digestion. this newness, coupled with my solitude, moves me to share and to write to all of you. like i'm writing letters to you. imagining us in a warm bar on a wintry day, drink in hand, describing how people smoke cigarettes while taking a shit in israel, or how the brazilians are weary of penny-pinching transvestite homosexuals.

all of these stories are written out of need, and yes from a sense of responsibility. i must share this with my friends, they need to know! they are written from a compulsive place, fueled by the urgency and potency of the thought, the obsessive worry that if i do not capture this moment right now, in this space, it will be lost forever.

in my "real life" this urgency is lost. the moments melt into each other and while they still require parsing, and fuck yes, they require sharing, i seem to defer this process to actual face time with you , drink in hand, looking into your eyes and laughing it up. but something is lost in translation, and something is certainly lost in time. the word persists the memory, and while i have no illusions or delusions of immortality, i love my stories and want to see them again and again.

so yes, friends, we are back. we are using the royal 'we' now, because we feel strong and powerful, and because we have been reading the most recent salman rushdie book , which involves akhbar the great, onto whom rushdie casts a number of existential problems involving personal pronouns. i was reading this book today on the 30 stockton, on my way into work. the 30 stockton, for those of you who dont know, runs (surprise) down stockton st, through the heart of chinatown. when i sit down on this bus every morning, i am usually lucky enough to get a seat. by the time we get to chinatown, it's like we are all of a sudden in china. not in a metaphorical way, an underage olympian kind of way, or a mu shu pork kind of way (this wold be interesting) - in a literal, 30,000 chinese folks in this bus kind of way. today , im reading this book and i cough. a chinese woman to my right says something to her friend and starts waving her hand to shoo my cough away. so here i am, sitting on this bus, one of 30,000 people crushed in, feeling slighted, mainly because we have to look up from our rushdie, and now we're eye level with a 45 year old chinese dude's balls. bad idea. at stockton and jackson, i had no need to cough -- in fact, my earlier cough was more philip morris than TB -- but the personal sleight was too much so i coughed louder. the response from my right was as expected -- crazy starts waving fanatically in my direction, looking away and yelling at her friend. i just didnt get it -- what did she expect on the 30. why not wear one of those goddamn moon suits and be done with it? no wait, a mouth mask, a gas mask and a moon suit. that should do her. at stockton and clay i started losing my shit -- coughing like i just swallowed the whole plague, reaching down deep for some phlegm, scaring folks who weren't so interested earlier. coughing loudly, grabbing the seat for leverage, covering my mouth -- sort of -- but letting my target of misaffection know that she best watch the fuck out for me, because i'm strong and powerful, and my lungs will move you. someone gets the message , chatters something impossible to her friend, jumps up and melts into the 30,000 strong.

friends, we are back.

Montreal

hello friends! well my time for flagrant international travel is coming to an end. it's not that the past trips to israel, brazil, puerto rico, and columbus, Ohio were frivolous. they were just a strange and seemingly non-essential component of my soon-to-be old job. you heard right, I have taken a job with a small startup in san francisco! so, while my international travel will undoubtedly be curtailed, i may be surrounded by mohawked grown men in kilts, roller skating amongst cubicles. we can only hope.

i am not one to go down quietly! purely by accident but incredibly well timed, my penultimate work week was spent in montreal , quebec, where OSI has an office. this trip was planned well ahead of time by my co-worker laurent so we that we could meet important customers. my timing was fortuitous -- i was able to resign from a different country, which is an exotic thing to tell your friends, and I dont have to spend this week having awkward conversations with co-workers. a double win. plus, i got to see montreal.

i've had my eyes on montreal for a long time. when i was 5 years old my family went on a roadtrip there and i remember small things about the city -- hockey jerseys, military time, an unintelligible populace. since, i have heard all the stories of bars and strip clubs, museums and restaurants. so i was stoked to visit the city. only one problem -- the worst winter in montreal since 1971. oof! 5000 cms of snow per hour or something (i dont go metric). treacherous! take a look at these streets :



the whole weekend was blown out so i didnt get a chance to walk around carefree, dropping in cafes, and watching extremely well dressed girls go by. nope, everyone is bundled up and looking like the michelin man. terrible, but i still got a feel for the town and was able to go out with friends a couple nights. at first , what struck me was how european everything felt, and after a couple drinks , i texted my friends in the states that europe may indeed be superfluous given our fair neighbors to the north. i told my quebecois friends this and they laughed at me. 'these people are americans that speak french, there is nothing european about them.' 'i was in paris last week, my friend -- this is absolutely not europe.' and it got me thinking, is this actually europe, somehow mistakenly placed in north american by some strange geographical mix up? or were these folks truly north americans speaking french -- just like me and you, but with a funny accent.

there are several ways to figure this out. unfortunately, I didnt ask any of my friends if they love jerry lewis. instead, ive considered my previous travels , and compiled a list of distinct categories that separate north american and european culture. i will walk through this list, assigning a score between 0 and 10 (0 being american as apple pie, 10 being a place where they watch sprockets with dieter). at the end we'll do a little calculation and see just how new world these folks in montreal really are.

A. Amount of CNN international on TV

When traveling in Europe, it's almost impossible to escape the grasp of CNN, usually in its international form. Africa, China and even Australia are all heavily covered, making Europeans feel more worldly and less a part of the american cultural hegemony. just like plain CNN , the content is utter dogshit, but being able to hear the language usually draws me so close, i feel like im dating wolf blitzer. in quebec, not only do they have CNN regular, they also get ABC and NBC from upstate New York. Luckily for canadians , they still have the CBC which allows them to get legitimate worldwide news, without the CNN ridiculousness. Score : 1


B. Children speaking incomprehensible languages (and an aforementioned jealousy of mine)

Oh ho ho! My friend Laurent had the cutest kids and even at the tender age of 3 years old his little boy was speaking French. incredible -- and so cute! he tried talking to me but it wasnt going anywhere so we just made lots of noises at each other and high fived. this is pretty much the extent of my ability to communicate with these kids and it drives me crazy. i want to speak french! mainly just to be able to talk dirty but whatever, why not me? sure i got some russian under my belt but believe me, russian is not sexy, unless your name is olga and you carry bales of hay. Score : 8


C. Arrogance/Rudeness

Nothing says Europe like arrogant people who want nothing to do with my New World ass. actually, they dont care how old my worldy ass is, folks in europe have the repuatation for being rude, especially in france. When i was in high school we asked my history teacher, mr. garvey, why the french hated us. "how could you like someone that had to save your ass TWICE. " Mr Garvey was a brilliant man. I felt a bit weird in Montreal speaking english , but everyone was super friendly. I think part of this is climate -- when your nipples are falling off from the cold and you are balls deep in snow, you have to learn to take care of one another. i think this is also a reason canada is entirely crime free (look it up!). even my friend Laurent, who is french, cant stand french people, but finds the Quebecois warm and friendly. Score: 1

D. Worthless currency

Did you know that in post-war hungary, inflation rates were so high that in the time hungarians took to go from the bank to the store to buy bread, their bills had deflated in value by 10 times?? ok, so its not that bad out there for us, but it's still a sad day in the currency markets, my friends. that is, unless you're holding a shit-ton of Canuck Bucks. my god! last time I was in Canada, the exchange rate was 50% better. WOW! I love GWBush!!!! Canada seems like an economic power house compared to us right now, and thats no laughing matter. this is though: the capital city of saskatchewan is regina and it totally rhymes with vagina. Score: 4

E. smoking

I think Canada started the death warning cigarette pack, but they have taken it to a whole new level:


This is a tricky category because while cigarette labels are scary, which is positively un american, you cant smoke anywhere, which i guess is just becoming the rule everywhere (france included). This category is a wash.
Score : 5

F. cops on the street/socialism

People in the US are obsessed with fighting crime by putting more armed cops on the streets while canada fights it with crytpo-socialism . guess what? socialism wins! this isnt just me being a commie -- i saw 1 cop car during my 5 day stay in montreal and somehow, nothing happened to me. canadians spend all their money on taxes, which go to education and health/child care which allows people to live better, despite the fact that their dont take home as much as us. while surely this flies in the face of the free market capitalism on which the american economy and culture so heavily lean, you cant deny that its creates a government and social system of compassion. plus, with global warming, this place is gonna be balmy by the time i retire! so guess where i'm going? regina. Score: 8

G. facial moles/bad teeth

Everyewhere you go in europe, people's grills are all jacked up. either their teeth go in forteen directions or they have a horrendous mole, which in my head moves around when i'm not looking. I mentioned this when i was in Spain -- that either new world foreign policy or our diets, or something, has , blessedly, eradicated the mole from our gene pool. same as teeth -- people in the US have straighter chomphers and if they dont, they goddamn fix em. quebec was no exception. beautiful girls, no moles to fuck it all up. teeth straight and shiny. nice job montreal!! Score: 1

H. Breakfast meats

Heres the real decider -- breakfast in europe is a real to do. Hard boiled eggs, salads, cured meats, smoked meats, meaty meats. meat everywhere, let me tell you. In germany they would just wrap up the appetizer tray from the night before's dinner and re-serve that for breakfast the next day. smoked fishes, vegetables. it was proposterous - and delicious! the quebecois perfer a far simpler fare of crappy scrambled eggs, sausage/bacon , home fry potatoes and fruit. if you're lucky you can find a croissant and the special montreal bagel. but all in all, pretty standard fare. Score: 2

I. anti american sentiment

Perhaps its our dying currency, or because we're their #1 trade partner, but I felt very little anti-american sentiment from our canadian friends. sure they hate bush, but so do we and its almost like their feel sorry for us to have to put up with that craziness. and now that our dollar is equal to theirs, our ecomonic heroism is not something to really lionize. its just a bit sad really. its like canada was our little brother, and as big brothers we would do all kinds of cool shit , like drive big cars, make out with cheerleaders and invade panama. then, one day it turns out that big bro has a raging drug problem and starts going apeshit, causing his superhero status and economic wherewithall to decline to a fucking joke. except this joke isnt funny -- say hello to $12/gal gas! Score: 1


So after careful calculation, my scientific calculation gives Montreal an American rating of 3.9. Big points for communism and anti-smoking legislation, but at the end of the day, these folks were just too friendly to properly be considered French. Think of it : a nearby city with friendly people, good teeth and a tremendously powerful currency. Sounds like heaven to me ! Now, if they could only do something about that ridiculous snow situation.... gotta have goals!

the new hood.

i had a couple hours to kill, so i walked into into 1155 grant st, where i would kick back, have a couple drinks and be endlessly entertained by dive bar karoake. i look up to the projected screen tv -- sprawling landscapes are running and on top of them, the lyrics to My Way. I sit down, look up and see two loaded mexican girls telling me how they had a few regrets, but too few to mention, really. Meanwhile, the song ends and my bartender, candy , looks at me. "honey where you been you no come in here no more." and as if to make up for my time gone she pours me a 7&7 with a shot of 7 sidecar. the mexican girls have moved on to labamba and the cantonese barman/baritone starts belting with them. i don't know this guy's name yet, but i have a pretty good sense that he's gonna be a major form of entertainment for me over the next 12-18 months. this scene carries on and on. candy is pouring me drinks and lighting my cigarette. to my left four cantonese fellas are sitting around styrofoamed left overs , a bottle of glenlivet, and some dice. they and candy and the barman, lets call him wayne for now, are really pounding dice, yatzee style, and the BANG BANG BANG of the rolls are punctuating their shouts, their singing, their shots. im watching all of this as wayne steps up and sings some cantonese karoake song. the whole idea of being able to read the cantonese characters so quickly is fucking killing me , as well as the scrolling picturesque background. he's singing hong kong's top 40 to video of horses in the upper peninsula of michigan. i cant contain myself and look to the man sitting next to me and tell him this is my favorite fucking song. which seemed funny at the time. next thing i know, this guy, 40 something, of slight height but not lacking in inebriation, is standing 2 feet from me, his arm around me, working through some complicated karaoke situation with me. 'you sing la la la.' and i sang 'la la la' but you know I'm atonal and that shit didnt work right, so he tried a few more times and then decided to tell me about his life story instead. 'why are you here in america' . his grammar was fine but his accent was almost impossible to decipher, especially in the noisiness of chinatown. there is no quiet in chinatown and thats why people come here -- people are so numbed by their enclosed subrurban spaces, they need to feel the human contact . come in, see the chatter of the markets, overstimulate yourself, engorge yourself on dumplings, and get your ass back to pleasanton asap. anyway, i'm hearing this story while a czech couple next to me is watching this whole thing go down. their smirks tell me 'you are in the trap now funnyman. let's see you get out of this. Dominick Hasek forever!' this man's expression changes slightly and tells me that his parents made him come here from china but he cant go back now -- there is nothing in hong kong for him now. i attempt to empathize with my new friend about the difficulties of being an immigrant, the insistent sense of geography, the challenges of it all. understandably, the responses were unintelligible grunts and i only felt better about this when candy couldnt even understand his native cantonese. i can't tell if he's about to laugh or cry and the whole thing is making me plan for an exit. i like talking to strangers but when they start getting up in my grill and being super emotional i need to get the F out of dodge. so i pulled the broken phone out of the broken pocket, put it to my ear, and said to no one in particular: 'cool, i'll be right there.'

----

welcome to my new neighborhood! thanks to my newfound and exciting hyperawareness to the perils of bedbugs, I havent moved directly into chinatown. instead , i have traded dirty mission streets, packed with hatted hipsters for the vibrant north beach streets, teeming with tourists, europeans, and east bay revelers. some might think this swap is a push at best, but they would be sadly mistaken. i have lived within one block of valencia street for over four years and let's just say i've had enough! enough dirty streets, littered with crushed tallboys, used rubbers and drug paraphernalia.

enough hipsters! i'll say it twice cause its nice: enough hipsters! maybe i'm not artsy enough to understand, or maybe i've grown too old (seems unlikely -- hipster powers seem to peak at 32), but i can no longer tolerate this subculture of bicycles, fidel castro hats, dudes in tight jeans, and unemployment. i've never had a visceral response to a demographic before (this is a lie) but something about my immersion amongst these people has triggered an intolerance that i can feel in my bones. it's not cold enough for a scarf dipshit. and seriously -- bright pink pants and camo gloves?

it's not just the hipster, though they do exhaust me so. i had always had my eyes set on north beach. there is something quintessentially san franciscan about this part of town and i felt like i wanted to live in that for a while. the mission isnt that unique in the world -- there are divey, multicultural neighborhoods everywhere, and while it gives the neighborhood character, its no different than the character of my old neighborhood in chicago, ukranian village, or the east village in new york. if im living in sf i want something that feels sf and only SF and north beach has to be that place.

it's not cheap here, and i gave up a big ass space for a smaller apartment that costs about oh, twice as much. but i have discovered a new need in my life: a well lit living space. holy shit the new place is bathed in light and you never need lights during the day. the old place was long and narrow, on the first floor of a victorian, completely surrounding by houses left and right - basically a cave. towards the end of my stay at 75 liberty st, i had been spending a ton of time in my room which is all the way at the back of my house, down a 35 foot hallways. every day, i would wake up in the dark, dress in the dark, and extricate myself from that dark back room. at night i would come home and re-insert myself deeply into the house. in my head that hallway had become increasingly vaginal , and there i was birthing and unbirthing myself everyday. lets just stay that one when your hallway becomes associated with the birth canal, it may be time for a change. so i looked northward for some thing accessible, well lit and markedly unvaginal . i lucked out! plus my ride, Black Thunder, has a garage where he can kick it with his new homies.

back to geography. yes! i have swapped hipster for eurotrash. all around me are tourists, europeans flocking to cafes, and the trickle of chinese from the south. my roommate, my old friend gaz, is perhaps the most english person i have ever met, right down to the full ricky gervais catalog on DVD. just yesterday he forced me to try the national sauce of english, MP, which apparently was made just for the members of parliament. and, in a proud english manner, the sauce was strange tasting and tangy. not to worry though -- the local fare is incredible -- i fully expect to have a prosciutto sweater in my colon by august!

from my roof i can see alcatraz, a couple bridges, downtown, coit tower and that twisty shit coming down lombard (pictures soon!) . i walk onto my street and have to avoid the cable car. yesterday i saw an amphibious vehicle , full of midwesterners, chug up columbus street, PA system barking out sights full blast. i dont think these things are inherently bad, or people wouldnt live in manhatten. it's just an adjustment, and a fun opportunity to meet people from all over the world, especially indiana. more than that, there is something comforting about living in a place where people on the streets are definitely not from here. it is well known lore that not one tree in san francisco is indigenous to this place. instead, the settlers out here painfully irrigated and cultivated the endless sand dunes so that new trees could set roots. this has always been a strong metaphor for me regarding my own attempts to root here. it aint easy! but posting up in a part of town full of tourists, i feel the that us and them tension and it isnt bad -- it overemphasizes my residency here. they are here to visit MY city, and everytime i pull out my keys to unlock my front door amongst folks with digital cameras and goofy hats, i feel a jolt of proprietary and pride about my city. the empowerment of the key -- my apartment has allowed me to reattach to this town in a way i didnt fully expect.

so, i dont know cantonese and i dont know why my parents brought me to america. maybe somethings are best left unresolved. but i'm feeling fine in north beach, friends. and if any of you would like to crack a beer on my roof, drop on by, and i'll show you how we do in frisco.