I'm sitting in Toronto Airport again, this time in between San Francisco and Copenhagen. I'm fatigued out of my mind, Eno's "Julie With..." on the iPod, and I am trying to process the last couple of weeks.
San Francisco was a trip- beautiful as always, with the same undercurrent of sketchy madness. There seem to be a lot fewer SUVs, and a lot more conspicuously insane homeless people in the city. The dot com bust accounted for the SUVs (thank fox), and I heard a rumor that the police in the rural American midwest are solving their own problems with crazy homeless people by buying them all bus tickets to San Francisco, where they then become somebody else's problem. I don't know if it's true but it sounds just like something the bastards would try. In any case, the city definitely hasn't cleaned up the way New York has. Market Street and Civic Center are pretty dodgy now- worse than they used to be.
It was great to be back though- great to see old friends again (Hi Marissa, Marcella, Jake, Michele and Sue), and great to just walk the streets again soaking up the city. I was happy to see that the people at Warakubune remembered me- I walked in the door and Fi and Tiffany were like "Hey, where have you been?!" I also got out to the Shipyard in Berkeley to see some industrial art. That is such an awesome place- kind of a Christiania-like Temporary Autonomous Zone. Thanks, Jennifer and Dragisa for turning me on to it! Next time I'm in town I'll try to spend some more time in Berkeley (and be less tired too).
San Francisco was kind of weird though, too, because while the city hasn't changed that much, it became obvious after a while that I really have. Seeing some of the old places, I was faced a whole lot of stuff that I'd chosen to forget or block out over the last four years. I was very naiive when I lived there.
I'll put pictures from Toronto and SF up when I get back to Copenhagen. I got some good shots.
Posted by case at July 24, 2004 11:53 PM