mushinnoshin

so here we go;

sorry I haven’t written much here lately. I have no greater excuse than simply not having been in the right frame of mind.

Well. Don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’m here. And it’s Saturday night, after Christmas. It’s been a decent one. Thursday with the dad, brother, and brother’s family, at Granny’s house, which Dad has now inherited. I think I hit a home run with the Fart Machine I gave my nephew. And another, with a most politically incorrect documentary in which the esteemed civil libertarian boundary-pusher Larry C. Flynt chronicles the accomplishments and exploits of an Alaskan pin-up queen gone rogue. We’ll leave the rest to your imagination or google-fu.

Saturday, pizza, party, and presents with the sister and her husband, which rocked. Never doubt the badassedness of four fresh diced jalapeños and a smattering of mushrooms taking a Digiorno to the next level, especially when you wash it down with a steady flow of a brew-kit bitter and a back supply of the same brew-kit’s dark ale. We backed the food with the Mr. Hankey’s Chrismas Classics dvd, and the beer with Weird Al’s videos dvd, which culminated in the main event of Christmas at Ground Zero. Then to the living room for presents, with Koyaanisqatsi muted, just for the visual, and the TSO playing on on the PC/stereo. Good Times. As far as the gift, my & my sister and I have this long running calendar gag, and I won’t bore you with the details but I think I rocked it this year.

So then today I guess is xmas for me. Cleaned up from the party, then spent the day in lazy, beer-sipping play and exploration. I finally opened up the School of Rock dvd that’s been sitting on my coffee table for months. I can’t tell you how much I love the hell out of that movie. It’s stupid, it’s sappy, but goddamn it it rocks and I love it. Of course I’ve seen it too many hundred thousand times on TBS, so I didn’t need to watch it, but watched it with the commentary from Jack Black and the director, then went back and just watched the “one hell of a rock show” chapter. Man, for a stupid movie song, they nailed it. Just enough Yes, Kiss, Bowie, and Floyd all mixed up and dished out over a plate of AC/DC — fuck yeah. And yes, I fucking cry every time when Turkey Sub struts up to the mike and belts out loud and clear how happy she is to be who she is in a glorious declaration. And though I’ve got my issues with the keyboard kid — I would have liked to have seen a little less Rick Wakeman, a little more Ray Manerik with a helping of Jon Lord (that just would have been more rock and roll to me) — I understand better after the commentary that yeah, Wakeman was probably the perfect archetype given the actor/pianist’s true to life classical upbringing and utter unfamiliarity with rock. And even still I did always like the somewhat-Wakemanesque, but almost more Come Sail Away-era-Denis DeYoung sounding portamento-drenched monotimbral solo he does there. My kinda shit, actually.

Had an awesome dinner (yellow saffron rice, with red onions, fresh jalapeños, and mushrooms, well seasoned and sautéed with a Morningstar Veggie Italian Sausage, if you give a damn), then put on Naqoyqatsi, another dvd I’ve owned for a while but been waiting for the right time to watch. Except that I still haven’t watched it, I’ve just been listening as I typed this post. Well, it *is* Glass, it needs at least one listen by itself without the visual.

And it just ended. Guess I should grab another beer and watch it for real this time.

No spectacular new ideas or information here, but as a fan of San Francisco, and a fan of Henry George, I do enjoy Fred Folvary using the term San Francisco School as another name for Georgist economics.

That reminds me, I never did finish my travel diary from my trip. I can’t believe it’s been more than a year already. Well I will finish it up eventually. I think we were about to go see DJ Shadow at the Fillmore?

Last night I indulged in a much needed night-at-home-doing-squat, and popped in a DVD of the Birdman of Alcatraz. Good film, interesting story about a man finding his humanity in solitary confinement by raising birds, eventually becoming a renowned expert who cured a number of avian diseases. It’s based on the true story of a convict named Robert Stroud, though there seems to be some consensus that he never did become quite the kindly, sympathetic character that the movie portrays. Nevertheless I’m sure the work he did and the resulting help he gave to birds and bird lovers went a long way towards balancing his karma. And I suspect the film may have had some influence on Shawshank (note the similar speeches on “rehabilitation”), so there’s that.

Of course it does so happen that this makes a good lead-in to an overdue post getting us back into the diary of the California trip — we did leave off at Alcatraz. I took a lot of pictures again so I’ll just post a few of my favorites here and point you to the Flickr set for the rest.

Shots of the island & prison exterior:

Alcatraz is also yet another story about European Illegal Immigrants screwing over the natives. This probably deserves more attention, perhaps in another post sometime, for now I think the sign says a lot:

Famous inmates, including the Birdman:

Random shot inside a cell:

Not only did i get to see The Simpsons this weekend, I also saw Rear Window at the Belcourt, so I finally get the references in this:

I’m tempted to say “It’s all connected” but I’d hate that to be taken as a subliminal endorsement for Karl Dean. Not that it isn’t one. Eh. I don’t know. I’m leaning a bit towards Dean, but Briley, Dean, and Gentry all seem acceptable. My natural tendency to gravitate towards the outsiders actually has me somewhat sympathetic to Eaton. But I suspect he’s probably both a lunatic and a troglydyte. Nothing to base that on, just instinct. But given that I still can’t vote, I haven’t really dug into this race. Anybody but the tired political hack (Clement) or the raging homophobe* (Dozier) is fine with me.

Back to the movies, Netflix set me up with The Rock. I’m normally not into “action for the sake of action” movies (kung-fu excluded), and I’m really not into Bruckheimer tripe. But I was curious because of the Alcatraz setting, and it was cool to see a few glimpses of spots that I remembered. There wasn’t much of that though. But this all reminds me that I need to get my Alcatraz pictures up for the next post in the California trip recap. Soon, soon.

Maybe I’ll do that once I finish the living room/parlor work that I started at the beginning of the month. So far I’ve gotten two coats of one color in the parlor beneath the chair rail, two coats of another color above the chair rail, and two walls done in the living room. The living room is taking a while because the walls were in pretty rough shape so I’m doing some heavy sanding and spackling. Not to mention constant cleaning up from all that sanding and spackling. Anyway, next up is back to the parlor, where I’m going to try my hand at some rag-painting/glazing. Then back to the living room for the other two walls.

Finally, just – awesome:

* Seriously dude, you’re so homophobic you’ll vote against a person on unrelated issues just because you know they support equal rights??? Meaning you’re willing to subvert the basic mechanics of democracy just to satisfy your prejudices? And you think you have the character and integrity to lead this city?

In 2004, for instance, he voted against a nomination to the Metro Traffic and Parking Commission of a former Metro Council member who had co-sponsored a gay rights bill in the previous council term.

“There was a message that … we don’t want that to come back up this term, and she was the symbol of that,” Dozier, who didn’t serve in the previous term, said after the vote.

So I saw Vertigo tonight. The cool thing for me (well, apart from seeing on the big screen a renowned film from a legendary director with a fantastic cast) was that, being set in San Francisco, it was chock full of local references – the Embarcadero, Fort Point, the Presidio, Eddy Street — things that might as well have been fiction for me a few months ago became totally real. So that was neat.

Which seems a good segue into a short bridge post in the travel diary. OK, so Tuesday we had to get to work with the MySQL conference sessions, leaving little for me to report here. That night the conference held a reception with food & beer, which was followed by a vendor party with more beer, which we then followed with our one night in downtown San Jose, hitting a joint called the Mission Ale House. Nothing special really, just a regular, young working class hangout. Good place to knock back a few. Wouldn’t call it a Latin bar, but did seem to be a high Hispanic percentage there, which I guess is probably just a reflection of the local demographic.

This all led to the 3 AM realization that the hotel safe was there to protect The Ultimate Cheeseburger. I guess you had to be there. And be wasted.

Wednesday was MySQL work again, and by the time the night rolled up we were both pretty exhausted. So it was dinner at the hotel bar, a casual beer & pizza roundtable with the MySQL Cluster team, and an early bedtime. Thursday morning, work again. Finally the afternoon hit, the conference was over. Well, except for the “Ice Cream Social”, which, heartbroken though we were, we had to skip — we had a boat to catch.

OK, so back to the Californialog (or, for Cory, “Californialogue” : )

When we left off, it was Monday afternoon, and I’d just finished the Berkeley campus tour. I wish I’d had more time to explore the campus on my own, but I had a deadline — it was 3:00, and I had to be at the dock to Alcatraz at 5. Plenty of time I thought, even including the fact that I would have to drive 40 minutes back to Santa Clara to pick up Mike then 40 minutes back up to San Francisco, rather than just make a quick jaunt over the Bay Bridge. Well, it would have been plenty of time had afternoon traffic not pushed the 40 minutes each way to an hour-plus each way. Oops.

So yeah, I summoned up every ounce of maniacal driving DNA I could muster from the automotively-obsessed end of my gene pool (seriously… I mean kudos to Mike for not pissing his pants, ‘cuz we really pushed the envelope…), but to no avail — we pulled up in front of the entrance just in time to watch the boat leave. Damnit. Luckily, they were kind enough to let us exchange our tickets for Thursday. Which kinda sucked because that meant I wouldn’t get to take yoga with Manouso, but c’est la vie. We were just glad they were willing to exchange, because the ticket purchase terms didn’t require it of them.

So with the evening ahead of us and the agenda suddenly cleared, after an interlude for dinner a few doors down at Pier 23, we figured it was a good night to do the requisite San Francisco tourist stops. Of course this meant spending a good bit of time around the Golden Gate Bridge — mostly in and around Fort Point, then driving across the bridge, and stopping for a few more shots from the north end. Then it was off to Coit Tower, making sure to take a spin down “crooked” Lombard Street along the way.

These areas of course demanded a huge number of pictures, so hit the Flickr set to see them all. But here are a couple of my favorites:

Unfortunately I don’t know jack about setting exposure times and whatnot so the night shots from Coit didn’t come out too well, but they’re in the Flickr set, some of the light patterns are interesting : )

Once we finished playing tourist, it was time to get our booze on. Stops for the evening included a nondescript tavern called the Red Jack Saloon (someone had recommended it, but it was nothing special), and I think we hit another Irish pub. Closed out the evening with another stop for late-night Thai — I [EDIT: sorry, no I just realized the second Irish Pub & the second Thai joint both wouldn't come until Thursday. However I (still)] think I’ve decided that a town can only rightfully call itself a real city if I can get a good red curry or basil stir fry after midnight. Sorry, Nashville.

After lunch, I headed in to the UC Berkeley campus. I took the tour they give for prospective students (hey, you never know, right? : )

It was a very good tour. Being that it was part sales-pitch, the guide of course made a point of telling us about some of the school’s accomplishments, mentioning factoids like how the school has two elements of the periodic table named after them (Berkelium and Californium), pointing out the “Reserved for Nobel Laureate” parking, and so forth. I was disappointed that she didn’t seem to know anything about BSD Unix or Berkeley’s other contributions to open source and computer science, but c’est la vie.

She took us inside a few buildings, like the Museum of Paleontology, where we got to meet their T-Rex :

Don’t worry, wingnuts — I’m sure he doesn’t believe in you either. He had a nickname that I can’t remember. I want to say “Steve”, but I don’t think that’s right. She also took us into the Doe Library:

That painting in the background is the original Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth, a companion piece to the more well known Washington Crossing the Delaware. I was hoping to have time after the tour to come back and see the Emma Goldman Papers, but it wasn’t to be. I was disappointed that the tour guide knew not of Emma, either. Sigh.

Of course she did tell us some about the school’s architecture, and pointed out the Sather Tower:

Apparently you can go inside and up to the top, another thing I wish I’d had time to do after the tour. We also discussed some of the beautiful and distinct landscaping; in particular these unusual trees, a favorite of the original architect, are a prominent feature:

Of course much was made about the school’s history as a center for protest and activisim. She showed us these doors from an administration building:

Apparently the story is that during one protest, the students locked the administration inside by chaining the doors shut; the door handles have since been removed on two sides of the building in remembrance.

Our guide also took us to Sproul Plaza, where many of the free-speech protests took place:

At the plaza we saw this marker, for which the space above has been legally declared outside the jurisdiction of any authority, to ever be a symbol of free speech:

And what college campus is complete without a Free Speech Movement Cafe?

I joked about being a prospective student, but I’m not sure it’s a joke. Absolutely if I could go back and do things over, I would try to get in to this school. And certainly, moving to California to be a thirty-five year old freshman wouldn’t be the most unusual thing I’ve done in my life…

OK, getting back to the trip –

So Monday I hopped in the car and trekked up 880 to spend some time in Berkeley. I spent the morning wandering through the city itself, down University Ave and some of the neighboring areas west of campus.

Walking through the residential areas, I was overwhelmed by the tremendous greenwalls and urban gardens that defined the corridors:

And of course the fantastic historic architecture:

Now, the above house is one of the oldest in the neighborhood, a historic landmark built in 1876 nicknamed the Morning Glory Cottage, but even the “newer” developments (which I would guess were mostly 30s, 40s, etc…?) all tended towards the same sort of highly stylized classic designs. Truly a lovely area just to stroll through.

As I did so I encountered several neighborhood residents out for walks, bike rides, etc, and was struck by the radiant friendliness of each and every one. I think life in Berkeley must be good for the soul : )

Actually I wonder if the omnipresent Hindu influence on the area has something to do with it; one of the folks I encountered was in fact Indian, and while the shops & restaurants in the area certainly represented a very diverse population, the Indian / Hindu presence seemed dominant — hence, the Krishna Copy Center:

(I can’t resist: “when you need your copies in a Hare”… : )

Lunch at a vegan cafe seemed an appropriate way to cap a beautiful morning roaming Berkeley the city, so I ventured in to the Cafe Gratitude:

Honestly the place was a tad gimmicky, but in a touching and charming sort of way. The waitress set me up with a pitcher of distilled water and silverware rolled in a natural, unbleached cloth napkin; I didn’t ask but wouldn’t be surprised if it was hemp or some such fiber. Here’s where it gets really cute: the menu names each item a self-affirmation — “I am Healthy”, “I am Caring”, “I am Beautiful”, etc. And when they bring you the food, they announce it as such: “Jon, you are Chipper and Plenty”, “Who is Cool, Heroic, and Celebrating?”, etc. I had a lovely Faux Pho miso soup and a lasagna, hence “I am Warm and Fabulous”.

All that said, I wasn’t wowed by the food. It was obvioulsy very well-prepared in a gourmet style, it was just a little bland for my tastes. But I do like my food very spicy, so perhaps I’d have done better to be Elated… I will say though, the waitress gave me a couple of free samples of their smoothies, and those were fantastic. I wish I remembered what flavors they were.

When all is said and done I would very much describe Berkeley as something like Belmont Blvd made into an entire town. I am inclined to think that much of Belmont Blvd’s flavor in fact probably does come through the influence of Berkeley as the image of the quintessential college experience as sometimes projected from Hollywood, representative of the “Californication” of America — I would say an example of how that’s not necessarily a bad thing : )

Falling behind on the California photos & posts — where does the time go? Well here’s a quick one –

As mentioned, I made a run up to San Francisco on the Sunday night before heading back to Santa Clara for the convention; meanwhile, Mike had arrived a few days earlier and was in ‘Frisco as well. So we met up at a bar on pier 23 called, coincidentally I’m sure, Pier 23. Let me preface by saying that the sensitive liberal feminist in me almost feels guilty for posting the following, but the testosterone filled juvenile in me wins. Besides, they gave us these postcards free and I don’t have any other pics of the place. Plus we sent one just like it to Cory :)

Anyway, it was a cool place, we got to look out over the bay from their outdoor patio, listen to some live jazz, and get acquainted with a tasty local brew called Anchor Steam. We would become very acquainted with those over the week — well, those and Sierra Nevada, which is already one of my usual favorites, but as it turns out it’s brewed about 200 miles away in Chico, and seems to be on tap everywhere you go out there.

We wound up coming back to Pier 23 for dinner Monday, though mostly because we just happened to be near by when the time came. But back to Sunday, later that night we found our way to Tiernan’s Irish Pub:

Tiernan’s was the first of at least two if not three (the memory gets a little fuzzy…) Irish pubs we would hit before the week was out, but it was by far the best. This one featured a live band churning out some raucous Celtic drinking music:

The band featured the one I called Zebra Girl, a short little fireball in an all-zebra-striped outfit who sang and wailed on the accordion with the frenetic energy of a punk rocker, often standing I think on a table or something. She was actually in this picture off to the left, but I had to crop her out because she got wiped out by the shadows.

Sidebar: some random dude bought us both a beer. At another pub the bartender hooked us both up with a free shot. I think I like hanging with the Irish :)

So for the first leg of the trip, while we were in Santa Clara for the MySQL convention, we stayed at the convention hotel which was a Hyatt. Pretty conventional Hyatt — very nice, no complaints, boringly upscale. Of course there was this, but that wasn’t really a shock so much as just a funny example of typical. They provided our lunches as part of the convention, which was your ordinary mediocre upscale hotel buffet food — uber fancy dishes that completely whitewashed any ethnic influence (ergo, flavor) from the recipes the meals were supposed to represent. Yawn, but it was food. We did also eat at the hotel bar there once for dinner, which I regret — $15+ for a perfectly ordinary cheeseburger and fries, when there was a plethora of Korean restaurants just down the street on El Camino Real? Oh well. Wasted opportunity, but we really were exhausted that night and I suppose convenience won out.

Accommodations for the San Francisco leg of the visit presented a more interesting opportunity. I had three nights to book, and wanted to find something old & charming, a place that would feel like part of a proper San Francisco bohemian experience, and not just a stay in a corporate chain room that could be the same corporate chain room in any city in the country. Well, I found what looked like the perfect place, a joint called The Metro Hotel:

I went by to look at the place when I got there and snapped that photo, and I really got the vibe that the place was perfect — a funky little rehab smack in between the Haight/Castro area and downtown proper. Supposedly the rooms were tiny (not much bigger than the bed), but waddaya want for <$70 in such a perfect location? Unfortunately, I made my reservation through an agent, and the hotel called me later that day to tell me they couldn’t accept it because someone else booked up the whole place earlier that day. Fuckers.

So, I had booked a second choice reservation at a place called the Hotel Layne. Of course I also ran by that place the first day (this was before heading to Santa Clara for the conference, so still days before the actual reservation date), and, well, as I alluded to in the “notes” post — yikes. The hotel itself looked reasonably nice, but as it turns out, it was on just about the seediest block in the seediest part of town.

It’s a part of town known as The Tenderloin. There seem to be several stories as to how the area got it’s name, every one of which points to it being a pretty nasty part of town. Now that said — my liberal guilt and street-punk background have sort of joined forces to convince myself that I actually didn’t mind the area as a whole. It was certainly no worse than the Ft Lauderdale neighborhood where I once lived — but there’s a big difference between a bad neighborhood where you’re a regular, and one where you’re a tourist dragging around a suitcase. In any case I certainly loved Little Saigon, and the Geary & Mason area where we went for late night eats, and even the area around the O’Farrell weren’t too bad, all of which were technically part of the Tenderloin. In fact, after Chinatown, it just might have been my favorite area — I mean this is where the real seeds of the underculture lie, where the rent is cheap and the artists can survive — this is today’s Height-Ashbury. But as for the block that held the Hotel Layne? Well, here, how ’bout we let the San Francisco Chronicle clue us in:

As the outreach workers climbed back into their van, May ducked under her blanket, fiddled with a syringe and lit her crack pipe. Smith ambled a few paces over to the wall of the Hotel Layne — a tourist enclave on this strip of Jones Street, one of the Tenderloin’s seamier stretches — unzipped and urinated against the golden stucco.

Lovely, eh?

Needless to say I had new reservations elsewhere soon thereafter. I wound up in a pleasant place called the Cathedral Hill. It was an older place, not without some charm but ultimately a pretty generic hotel, something between one of the nicer Days Inns and and older Hyatt. Right on Van Ness between Geary and O’Farrell, one might argue it too was still part of the same neighborhood, but it was on a main artery on the westernmost fringe of the district. A pretty good location actually, sort of in between the Civic Center and the parts of Tenderloin that I liked. My only real complaint was the tiny bathroom with the shower head oddly placed at a height of about 5′, which made showers logistically interesting.

If I get to go back, there were several places further east along Geary into the Tenderloin that I would consider that did seem to have the old-school charm and low-grade inner city grit that I wanted. Basically I would have felt OK from there up into the heart of Little Saigon, just not much farther east of that. Mike spent a night at The Monarch, a perfect example and actually one of the hotels that I’d had as a maybe in my research. Lessons learned I suppose.

Oh, and I mentioned The O’Farrell (the strip club owned by the Mitchell Brothers and formerly managed by one Hunter S. Thompson*)? Well as it turns out I did feel OK whipping out the camera during daylight hours:

* The wikipedia article says this is incorrect. Thompson’s own writings (see Kingdom of Fear) say otherwise. As near as I can tell the truth seems to be that he actually was hired to be the night manager, but the position was invented for him and entailed little or no actual work.