Spring Break in San Francisco
I’ve just returned from a quick trip to San Francisco, a week by the bay, where I was satisfyingly warmed by the California sun after months of (relative) freezing in Vancouver. Either I’m getting old and soft, or spending much of last winter in Costa Rica has removed my usual winter hardiness. Or both. Whatever. San Franciscans didn’t seem to feel quite as comfortable as I, however, as they all seemed to be running around in toques and scarves while I was running around in shorts and a t-shirt (or at times, considerably less).
I flew to San Francisco, and as is frequently mentioned in this blog – ad infinitum – I find modern air travel almost irritating enough to just stay home. It’s difficult to say whether my objections are explicity about air travel, or about capitalism generally, for the effects of capitalism are as ever-present in an airport as they are in any suburban strip mall. Or worse. Let’s take, for example, my stop at the Seatte’s Best Coffee outlet in Sea-Tac airport. I ordered a cup of tea and a toasted bagel with cream cheese, not having had an opportunity to enjoy a hearty breakfast before catching my bus at a distinctly unholy hour of the pre-sunrise morning.
Allow me a brief, irrelevant digression on the topic of ordering tea in America. Such a thing is often a challenge, as waiters usually respond to such a request by dropping their arms, and often their jaws (and once, her menu), and exclaiming loudly with wide-eyed incredulity, “Hot Tea?”. Say this to yourself aloud, but with extraordinary emphasis on the word “hot”, preferably with a slight uvular fricative and you’ll be on the right track.
Anyway, I had a choice of two bagel types: plain tasteless plastic, or sesame-coated tasteless plastic, with a tiny thimble of flavourless cheese. They don’t, of course, spread the cheese for you. Instead they give you a plastic container of cheese that has been refrigerated at a temperature of zero degrees Kelvin and is as firm as a TSA agent’s insistence that you remove your shoes at security, despite the fact that you bought the kind with the plastic last that won’t set off the metal detector.
As this is a post-9/11 airport, you are required to spread your cream cheese with a plastic knife, even though the cheese is hard enough to warrant spreading with a good, sturdy pair of box cutters. Not only is the knife plastic, but it is individually wrapped in a plastic sleeve in order to protect you from any bacteria that might have attached itself to the knife during it’s manufacture in the third world. What I want to know is, where was the plastic sleeve made? I have to touch the sleeve to remove it, thereby contaminating my hands, hands that will ultimately need to grip the presumably sterile knife firmly in order to spread the cheese. If the Al Qaida publicists want to foment panic in middle America, they need only announce that they’ve infiltrated the plastic sleeve manufacturing plant and convinced workers not to wash their hands before returning from the washroom.
I’d been invited down to California by my friend Paul, whom I met at a nudist gathering last year in Pennsylvania, in order to participate in the Hunky Jesus contest, a segment of the annual Easter gathering of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in Dolores Park. Although I was virtually beardless and had recently, mistakenly, had the rear portion of my flowing locks shorn in a failed experiment in follicular fashion management, it sounded like fun, and travelling, even just for a week, was just the pick-me-up I needed. Check out my Flickr page for event photos, if interested.
The contest was loaded with potential hunky Jesuses (or whatever the plural is of the One True God), competing for a prize of $100. Clearly, they go to this effort for the fun, not the money. Here’s a shot of me with Paul (left) and the winner, Kaleb, aka “Michaelangelo’s Jesus”:
I spent several evenings hanging out with Paul, of course, and also managed to get out to San Jose to visit Garry and Pedja, whom I have not seen in a startling number of years, since they decamped Canada for warmer climes and nursing school. As Garry was largely responsible for my first foray into deity impersonation, circa 1995, it was a timely reunion. They took me out for a drive on the coast highway north of Santa Cruz. Here are Garry and Pedja, at the Pigeon Point lighthouse:
While in SF, I also managed the usual visit to City Lights, hung out in various cafes, and visited the Gilbert & George exhibit at the De Young museum. Here’s an example of their work, titled Winter Tongue Fuck:
He’s got radioactive blood
Well, here I am in beautiful downtown San Jose.
Today, I went to the Mueso del Oro (Museum of Gold) and looked at their collection of gold artifacts that had been made by the original indigenous inhabitants, before Columbus and his countrymen enslaved them all and stole their gold (fairly traded them for valued coloured beads, surely!). What’s on display is mainly what the conquerors didn’t find and melt into pretty baubles for Queen Isabella.
Tonight, I had a faint desire to see a film. My hostel deskperson recommended the ‘Mall San Pedro’ cinemas, where there are twelve screens, and therefore something for every taste. I took a ta_i to the mall. (Where you see “ta_i”, imagine a four letter word that means “a vehicle for hire” – the 24th letter of the English alphabet does not work on this hostel keyboard). Ta_is in San Jose are a bit like an amusement ride in North America. You pay your money and they spin you around until you either scream with delight or vomit. When they get to stop signs, they usually slow down to about 70. And of course, the seat belts rarely work. It would probably be safer to walk the streets late at night with a wad of bills sticking from your back pocket than to take a ta_i, but the distance to the mall is a bit far.
Anyway, I got to the mall to find seemingly thousands of people milling about the ticket booth. Sure enough, there were twelve screens, but as it turned out, every one of the twelve screens was playing the same film: El Hombre Araña Tres. The multilingual among you will have already interpreted that as Spiderman Three.
Now, I saw Spiderman One on a flight to somewhere, and if I didn’t think I would have been shot and disabled by an air marshall I would have pried open an emergency e_it and plunged 30,000 feet to escape it. What I should have immediately done is taken a ta_i back downtown to spend the evening curled up on a squeaky bunk bed with Jane Austen. But that would have been too predictable (and would have made for yet another dull blog entry).
No, I stood in line with hundreds of Tico boys with their Tico girlfriends to get a ticket, thinking that I need to stop being so rigid and unadventurous. “How bad can it be?” I asked myself (too bad I never answer myself). And, it’s only $3.50. A bargain. I don’t have to buy the Spidey Popcorn, after all. Once I got my ticket, I went looking for my assigned theatre, “Sal 5″. I followed the signs to discover a line that stretched so far down the mall that the people on the far end looked like tiny dots on the hori_on. (Apparently the 26th letter doesn’t work either).
In for a penny, in for a Colon. I found my place at the end of the line behind three young couples making kissy noises, with two young couples who had apparently spent the last hour trying all the samples at the cologne counter soon bringing up the rear. In between, there I stood, long hair, startlingly graying beard, frayed cutoff pants and hiking boots, looking like an indigent panhandler in their midsts.
Conveniently, my place in line was immediately adjacent to the mall arcade, and I was able to pass the time listening to bells, whistles, gunshots, sirens and an incredibly annoying kiddie ride. The ride is a mechanical see-saw with a kid’s seat on one side and a large plastic “Rocki the Clown” on the other side. Rocki was continuously singing, in a comical tone, “Oh, Susanna”. It was painful. And the line wasn’t moving, at all.
Determined not to give up too easily (“When in Rome…”), I managed to endure this for a full 23 minutes before I finally bolted from the line and fled for the nearest e_it. Five more minutes and Rocki would have been going back to Alabama with that fucking banjo sticking prominently from his gaping yap.
Now I’m back in the hostel, filling you in on my adventures before my date with Jane, whom I should never have abandoned in the first place.
My upcoming mountain meditation looms tantalisingly on the hori_on.
