On The Road: San Francisco, CA

I arrive Thursday night after the long haul from Vegas. I'm not gonna glass-half-full it here, that drive is awful. The first eight hours are a hard fight versus gale force winds, dust clouds, eighteen wheelers and boredom. The only reprieve from the maddening highway comes when stopping in one-horse towns like Barstow, Bakersfield and Modesto for petrol at $4.29/gallon. It's a sad stretch of America, I recommend flying.

But about 20 miles East of Modesto, everything changes. That's when the sky goes ocean blue. That's when things when things get lush. That's when you know...

I suddently realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air-- air you can kiss. -Kerouac

We're in California! All is New! No rules! The Future! - Eggers

Green hills, palm trees, Range Rovers... I must be close. Past Pleasanton, Walnut Creek, Berkeley, traffic is flying. I'm listening to Everclear, the Sparkle and Fade album. Bumper to bumber to bumper, but everyone's doing 90, around sharp bends, down steep hills. I climb onto the Bay Bridge, and there's San Fran, beyond it, the Golden Gate, beyond it, the Pacific. I've made it. 48 days. 9,300 miles. Coast to coast to coast.

Over the bridge and onto Embarcadero. I scale Nob Hill via California Street, weave through the Presido, pass the Haight, wiggle down Lombard, then cruise Columbus past City Lights Books and Kerouac Alley. No question, San Francisco is beautiful. But it's also completely insane. Dave Eggers describes it pretty well:

Of course, there is no logic to San Francisco... A city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons. Why not pink, purple, rainbow, gold? What color for a biker bar on 16th, near the highway? Plum. Plum. The light that is so strong and right that corners are clear, crisp, all glass is blinding. Stilts and buttresses and turrets--the remains of various highways--rainbow windsocks--a sexual sort of lushness to the foliage. Only intermittently does it seem like an actual place of residence and commerce, with functional roads and sensible buildings. All other times, it's just whimsy and faith. Even driving to and from the Castro is epic, this hill and that hill, this vista and that, always the hills, the curves, the maybe our brakes will fail, maybe someone else's brakes will fail--it's always kind of an adventure in faded technicolor, starring a vast cast of brightly dressed losers: homeless people wearing bathing suits and doing headstands on the sidewalk, activists throwing bagels at police in riot gear...

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Thought that was apt. Anyway. I'm writing this on a Saturday. I've done nothing particularly interesting for the last couple days. I've had a few solid naps. Hung out in Marina coffee shops. Bought a $42 t-shirt that I didn't need terribly. I've met up with a few friends, we've had some casual beverages, some stimulating talk. The weather is not particularly good. Umbrella weather. Tomato soup weather.

The thing is, I'm really enjoying myself. I am in San Francisco, in the Marina, no less, and therefore, I am "with it", I am "in the know"... These cheap shoes, this old-ass jacket? On purpose, both. It's called fashion. This computer, yeah, I chose it over the MacBook Air. It's really a question of capacity. And yes, I am blogging. I keep a blog. And I'm thinking of starting a startup, a social networking thing, I'm looking for a venture capitalist. This coffee is a bit blah, did you grind the beans today? Like, this afternoon? And may I have a heated ceramic cup? Ah, merci. Geez, Peet's is really falling off. Oh, you're from Manhattan? What streets? Actually, my friend is having a thing, just some friends and some new wine he just found out about, so I think I'm just gonna do that. Not really into the BarNone thing anymore. Yeah, I know a ton of people that went to Dartmouth.