it’s been a while.
see, i took a little vacation.
‘holiday’, for our non-american english speakers.
i went to big sur to see the place where aldous huxley and henry miller
and co. all decided to make their homes.
and it was nice.
it’s always interesting to go to a place that is bereft of delis and billboards, and also to realize
that huge swathes of the world don’t actually have anything to sell(except, wll, books about/by aldous huxley and henry miller…).
ok, there were some delis and also some billboards.
just not as many as my neighborhood in nyc.
and now i’m back in san francisco, looking at the trannie hookers and crack
dealers outside of my hotel window.
and, truth be told, i’m not sure that they’re crack dealers. they could be selling meth.
although crack probably has better margins.
i’ll just have to head downstairs and ask them.
‘excuse me, sir, i’m writing about my time here in san francisco, and in the interest
of verisimilitude i’d like to know which narcotic you’re selling?…oh, crack? ok, thanks!
and how’s the crack business these days? do you have a lot of hipsters buying
it for it’s retro 80’s credibility?’
san francisco, as i’ve written about before, is such an odd place. it’s beautiful
and progressive and affluent, but it also has more hookers and drug dealers
per sq km. than any city in the western world.
and i don’t know how anyone in san fran can stay sober, cos almost every corner
has a windowless dive bar with fantastic names that even the best los feliz copywriter
couldn’t come up with(‘the ha ra club’, ‘hole in the wall’, etc). maybe it speaks
poorly of my character, but i’m way more tempted by a windowless bar populated
by bukowski doppelgangers drinking away their disability checks at 3 in the afternoon than
by a glass of insouciant shiraz on a redwood deck overlooking sailboats on a becalmed
sun dappled bay.
ok, a random aside, why does it still say, in 30 foot tall letters, ‘south san francisco, the industrial city’, by the airport?
i can understand how this might’ve been an apt selling point in the 40’s, but it seems like
a misnomer and a turn-off in the silicone oughts, no?
living in an ‘industrial city’ just doesn’t seem like it has the same appeal as it might’ve had
50 years ago.
ok, time to go play chess with the crack dealers.
you’d be surprised, the best chess player i ever played(and lost) against was an alcoholic
who’d just been released from rikers for dealing and assault.
never judge a book, etc.
moby
