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...or, Chuck Rants

I should first explain that I'm writing this mainly for the sake of writing. The muse has not been with me as of late and I miss her. To jump-start the creative process, I decided to pull the level (no! not the lever!) and let forth a great stream of rants about where I live.
 

The San Francisco Bay Area is expensive because it is crowded by weird people. They like good food and sometimes invent neat things to do.
 

The weather is a lie. Or at least, the concept of "weather" is useless since it changes every hundred yards. Some call it microclimates, I call it a cruel joke on the frail human condition. Consider last Tuesday's forecast: "Bay Area highs: 61-90." For some silly reason, visitors expect "hot California summers next to the beach." No, baby, no. Tendrils of freezing fog lurk in dark alleys to mug unsuspecting tourists. Consider the list of items the experienced Bay Area summertime picnicker will pack:
 

• shorts
• swim suit
• towel
• t-shirt (thin)
• t-shirt (heavy)
• sweat shirt
• jeans
• windbreaker
• flannel shirt
• woolen overcoat
• gloves
• cooler of ice
• thermos of hot tea
• umbrella
• lightning rod
• portable tornado cellar

At least it never snows or gets sticky-humid. I can sleep at night. Though a weird thing about Bay Area houses is that they must have been designed by damnfool tourists because they don't have a shred of insulation. You'll freeze to death unless you're fortunate enough to be a warm-blooded male. Happily, I am a warm-blooded male and I love to sleep snuggled deep in a cocoon of comforter, so it's all good.
 

Every region develops its character, and I'm annoyed by the Bay Area's. People are so fucking pleasant all the time and in constant agreement about the need to connect and be real that they miss something. I can't quite pin down what exactly it is; for lack of a better diagnosis, I'm going to call it half-heartedness. Someone on the verge of caring but retreating from the 100% step. Mustering enthusiasm for well-packaged Events, uncomfortable with enthusiasm for enthusiasm's -- or any other -- sake. Always desperately needing a nap. Unduly uncomfortable around conflict. We are not "chill" people, we simply use the flaky new age language to construct a verbally barrier of chill energy vibes, man, so we can rush around with larger smiles and fewer conflicts like bumper cars with inflated rubber safety aprons.
 

The homeless are simultaneously the mirrors reflecting and hammers smashing this regional persona. There are a lot of homeless people in the Bay Area. I guess there are a lot of homeless people in any major city, but in the Bay Area they are both more visible and also more numerous. Pick any downtown block of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, spin in a circle, you you'll count at least five panhandling or shuffling or trying to sleep.
 

I squirm each time I see a homeless person. Even if he doesn't say anything, even if he doesn't panhandle, his existence establishes that there is a wholly other class. This fact runs contrary to how we're supposed to see America. And I've quickly learned that I'm incapable of being open and pleasant to homeless people because I just can't spare the emotional energy. Most homeless folks don't want my money, or at least they don't entirely care about money for the sake of money. Cash is also a surrogate for human contact. They want me to stop. To look them in the eye. To acknowledge their condition. (Of course, once you've stopped and engaged, you gotta give a buck or else you're worse than a rat turd capitalist stingy one-of-them bastard). Everyone I know who moves out here has a few of Those Moments, when you're nice to a homeless or borderline person and get trapped in an awkward and scary conversation that goes on and on forever. Like last night when I met a friend (a recent arrival) who was had been accosted by a half-Jamaican guy who was high as a kite and drunk on a bottle of Seagram's gin which he proudly displayed as he also demonstrated his sobriety by doing backflips all the while talking about how we couldn't understand him because he was a relaxed black Jamaican who was homeless but didn't want our money and here's the story of this chick who he spent a $160 to get serviced by in Santa Cruz or was it San Francisco and hey it was really a date and RELAX, man, don't go rushing off, pulls of shirt to show yin-yang tattoo as proof of some principle never actually explained, etc. It went on for a while. He finally ran to catch the 51 bus, ignoring the fact that it was clearly the 42. My point is this: you cannot live in a city and take the time to properly acknowledge the homeless people you see. Hell, it already drives me crazy that the only strangers I talk with in the course of a day are people doing their jobs; add to this the stress of knowing that when any stranger talks with you it's just because they really want something from you, why, that's just too much to bear. You start to flinch from all people and distrust any interaction, always asking, "where are they going with this?" The facts of city life, I guess. It's just depressing because I'd always had fanciful childhood dreams of carrying a roll of ones which I could peel off to anyone who asked, but now I find that there's just too much scary emotional weight there. And nowadays I rarely have singles in my wallet; damn the credit card economy.
 

Some homeless guys are good at marketing their existence because they understand their clients are for the most part, non-confrontational pleasant slightly flustered quiet liberals. Here's some strategies:

• Sit next to a cardboard sign which emphasizes:
  • Having been screwed by society (e.g. Vietnam vet, evicted tenant)
  • Hunger
  • Religion
• In some public place – bus stop, coffee shop, bus, busy intersection – scan for eye contact. If someone makes eye contact, just walk up to them and start talking. Doesn't matter what you say, if they stop they're yours for the conversation because they'll be too unwilling to break the conversation in a way that is rude.
  • Demand money for food. "I'm hungry, man, buy me a taco…"
  • Us-vs.-them. The homeless guy talks about the class of hypocrites who form mainstream society, and the outsiders including him and you, a guy who "gets it." Try getting away from that conversation, my friends.
  • The race card. "Because I'm a poor black man, and you're an uptight white guy, you don't get where I'm coming from…" I've had this happen a lot and it pisses me off because someone else is telling me how I don't, in fact, feel but in so doing they've cleverly preemptively cut off my half of the conversation so they can steer it for whatever rant or rehearsed spiel they want to deliver that day. White wimpy bay area types have no way of calling the race card when it's bullshit.
  • Comedy. This is rare, but there are a few homeless guys who walk around offering to sell jokes, or just try to be funny.

Lots of people justify ignoring homeless with the steamy load of multiplication horseshit – "well, if I gave everyone I saw $1, and if I see 5 people in a day, that $5 a day or (pulls out calculator) $1,200 a year (assuming 5 days/week and a 4 week vacation), therefore I can't give anything." Followed by the Worst Justification Ever: "and it's not like it's going to change anything." Well, yeah, sure, maybe everyone is a junkie and it's hopeless in the big picture, but money does buy minutes of respect and humane treatment in our society. Ultimately, I just have to accept that I pay attention when I can and don't when I can't, without any clear justification either way.
 

Just for the record, starvation is not a big concern (having a safe place to sleep is, though). On the three times when I've been asked point-blank "hey, buy me some food here," it's been for fast food meaty product. Having worked at soup kitchens, I'd guess that it's because you start to crave real meat after eating soup kitchen meats.
 

But I originally said that the homeless reflect and shatter Normal Society's assumptions about itself. They're proof that The System is fucked up, that we can't be chill and pleasant to one everyone, only to our particular class. The homeless use the Bay Area persona against itself to win pity, attention, and wage a bizarre grassroots homeless campaign against liberal hypocrisy. But the fucked up thing is this: the homeless make me regonize that in a lot of ways, I just use my cash as a surrogate for attention. I savor the brief smile of the checkout girl, the fact that salesmen have to pay attention, and at the end of the day, the sum of money-mediated human interactions represents a significant chunk of my social life.
 

The popular press delights in mocking the Bay Area's political climate as an insulated microcosm, a sandbox where aging intellectuals gather to bury their heads. First of all, I think many residents of this sweet country of ours are gobble up the rankest shortsighted bullshit supplied by the amazingly shallow CNN and FOX who only perpetuate febrile stereotypes to simplify America's already feeble world understanding. Moreover, all is not Green, Pink Triangled, and racially balanced in the bubble; there are microclimates within the microcosm, political features that creep along the subtle features of topography. Oakland is one of the nation's most diverse cities while it's neighbor to the north houses one of the whitest pockets. –isms pool, ebb and flow; the vertical classism of the hills and the flatlands, the ever-shifting pattern of hot-or-not neighborhoods in San Francisco, artistic elitism of downtown vs. no-town, isolationism from snobby neighborhood with their purposefully twisty streets and 6-way intersections like in Piedmont, that weird city-within-Oakland.
 

Traffic sucks. Cope. Redefine terms; heavy traffic ain't a traffic jam until all lanes are stopped, and even then you have to be able to play a good game of soccer with your neighbor drivers before you're entitled to complain that nothing's moving. At least Bay Area drivers are good at their trade. When you pull onto the freeway, you join a vast hive mind struggling to optimize traffic flow such that there will be minimal fuss if everyone pays exacting attention. Merging lanes zip together. Slower drivers are mechanically passed without an air of smugness. We change lanes in microseconds, neatly and without allowing time for panic or second thoughts. Drivers aim at the space between cars, unlike New York drivers who aim at your car or Boston drivers who just don't aim, they just accelerate in grim hope. It's not fun, it's not not fun; we just drive.
 

You quickly realize that no matter what, every point in the same city is exactly 23 minutes away, and every point between cities is 1 hour and twenty minutes away. Cross my heart.
 

Or you can just not drive. I walk to work, bike for groceries. It's pretty easy to do here, thank goodness.
 

Rent sucks. You know what happened after the economy crashed and went to hell here? Home prices rose 8%. Expect to pay $900 for a studio, $1200 for 1br, $1600 for 2br, and $2300 for 3br. Hone your sense of humor; you walk into some places and have a split second to choose between giggles and sobs as you gaze at the solitary kitchen cupboard and murmur, "so, that's the '+' of a 'cute 2+ br cottage?'" You compete with your peers, students, starving artists, hopeful families with cute kids, and some just plain creepy people to just be allowed the honor of submitting a rental application for a place you may not like. Here's a few hints for the housing search:

• Yes, it sucks.
• Whore yourself. Even if you hate a place, it's the most fabulous thing you've ever seen. As someone who's tried to get subletters, I can testify that nothing sucks more than hour after hour of meeting with apathetic schmucks. If someone talked adoringly of the molding, the good vibe of a room, how excited they were, they scored major points. The others, I wanted to push a button and flush them into a Rankor pit and enjoy their fading cries of torment. 'dis my home, will yah? The point is: lie, dance like a monkey, do what it takes.
• craigslist.org. Love the craigslist community.
• When someone says they have an n bedroom space, they really mean that they want n – 1 people living there because 9 times out of 10 they're basically lying about one of the bedrooms and/or don't like couples. For example – and this happened in many other permutations -- four of us visited a 4 br place and the landlord was delighted to learn that two of us were a couple sharing a room, and then flatly forbade us to find a 5th roommate.

But the rent is not an entirely bad thing. Whereas in most cities conversation openers are limited to "so, what do you do?" in the Bay Area you can ask: "So, what do you do?" as well as "so, what body parts did you sell for your apartment?"
 

There's a lot of culture here, or at least Cultural Events. Dance if you're into watching people move their bodies impossibly, performance art if you're into self-over-indulgence, electronic music if you're into bloops and clicks and drum loops, and probably mauve penguin cabaret if you're into, uhm, that. Most of the culture is concentrated in San Francisco (which is a tiny city given its region importance), and the remainder crops up in feisty Oakland and Berkeley venues that maintain subtle antagonism to the fact that all cultural Events occur in San Francisco.
 

I'm careful to say that there are good cultural events here and not generalized culture because outside of a few carefully chosen venues, the area is comatose. Whereas in other cities reserve streets or entire blocks for the dubious distinction of never sleeping, SF closes everything but bars at 10pm, and it cuts the bars off at 2am, but the locals don't seem or put anything but the sloppiest effort to creating alternative burn-the-midnight-oil festivals of energy.
 

I've been to a fair chunk of the SF clubs. I'm not a club kid by any stretch of the imagination (I guess it comes from a distaste for drugs and inability to see baggy pants as anything but silly) so I can't keep up with the total freakids, but I'm not one of those detestable mangy 20-something curs who go to clubs just to be at a club and stand around looking trendy, bored, stupid, and confused about how to service their need to mate. I go to clubs because I like the music and I'm a people-watcher.
 

The first problem any Bay Area newcomer runs into is that it's hard to know what to go to. I mean, the SF Chronicle's entertainment section and SF weekly magazine are amazingly useful, but you can't easily tell between bona-fide clubs and shitty bars with club aspirations and bogus performance art. Here's a crib sheet of legit places I've been to.
 

In San Francisco, you have The Bottom of the Hill for cheap indie shows and a decent group of people, Bimbo's 365 club for the kind of swank interior you generally only see in 1920s gangster films featuring sultry molls singing in posh tawdriness, the Great American Music Hall for maverick shows that neither fit in a small bar nor a large venue, the Elbo room for slightly world-esque music that appeals more to twentysomethings who want to tell themselves that they're dancing to Latin/Brazilian/Hindu rhythms rather than actually hear real music, Ruby Skye for the hands-down prettiest space-age ballroom club space and most godawfully preening 30-something clientele you'll ever want to punch, Justice League for a good vibe of hip-hop types and a wacky space dominated by a poorly placed giant bar, 1015 Folsom for an enormous 4-room warehouse to store too many too-young club kids dancing to music that's rarely anything but tragically trite house, DNA Lounge for the coolest sound system and most intelligently designed space of any club, 330 Ritch St for campy pop fun, and the Top for a tiny dance floor that's often packed by good kind of people – earnestly dancing not-too-self-aware types. Although they're more performance spaces than clubs, the Fillmore and Warfield deserve mention because that's where I've seen all my great shows in San Francisco. They both hold about 1,500 people, but I like the Fillmore better because (a) it doesn't have assigned seats (or any seats, for that matter), (b) it has some very pretty chandeliers, and (c) they always have an ever-stocked barrel of really good red delicious apples in the lobby. My favorite venues are DNA Lounge (Thursdays, industrial-drum'n'bass-broken beats), the Top (Tuesday nights, better drum'n'bass), and the Fillmore for shows. I'd like the Bottom of the Hill better if they didn't seem to be waging a constant war of obscurity in their band selection. I highly recommend going out on nights which aren't Friday or Saturday because those cost a lot ($15-$20 is normal), places are packed, the crowds suck because they're people who go out just because it's a weekend evening, not because they particularly want to be there. I love having a lazy Thursday evening, chugging some mate around 9:30 for chemical fortitude (legal, smoother than coffee), then heading out for a few hours of getting myself lost in an artificial world of loud music, too-dark lights, cavernous spaces, and weird people.
 

If you're headed for the San Francisco nightlife, you'll have to drive unless you're fond of waiting an hour in a scary depot for the Transbay bus. Driving means you'll have to park. Good fucking luck! South of Market (DNA Lounge, 330 Ritch St), that's cake. North Beach (Bimbo's 365 club, lots of bars), you don't have a prayer. Just bomb your car and have it over with. The Haight, stick with the major roads, actually, because the residents are wilier that you'll ever be about nosing parking in their windy tributaries. My general Parking Technique is this: head straight for your venue. When you get within 3 blocks, suddenly turn in the direction exactly opposite of where people want to be. Aim for scary warehouses, dark buildings, menacing industrial wastelands. You just might find a space. Lock your car. Put the Club on your car. Remove your CD player. Hide valuables. Remove your hubcaps. Slash your own tires. Then stroll the mile or so back to where you wanted to go, enjoy yourself. When the time comes to go, always remember the following (clip 'n save):

• You want to cross to the south side of Market
• Cross Market. NEVER FUCKING EVER attempt to drive down Market, even though it looks so tempting on the maps. That is the path to despair.
  • Watch for lanes suddenly turning into bus only lanes.
  • Watch for bus lanes suddenly turning into raised section of the road.
  • Watch for getting your car stuck on said raised section. This was really embarrassing. I blame San Francisco and the rain.
• Left turns are rare commodities in some parts. Three rights will save your sanity.
• The helpful "this way to the freeway" signs do, in fact, lie. Especially for 101, but also for getting onto the Bay Bridge.

Honorable mention for nightlife fun: the Oxygen Bar (22O2) in San Francisco (17th and Valencia) is the silliest most California thing ever, right up there with wheatgrass shots. I highly recommend it. You – dig this! – pay someone for air. No shit: lots of money. Aromatherapy oxygen. And there's also relaxing herbal elixirs whose descriptions read like someone walked into the "healing herbs" section of an upscale supermarket, shoplifted one bottle of everything, and mixed them together in a secret downstairs lair while mumbling "cauldron boil, cauldron bubble…". If you're just kickin' it in the Oxygen Bar and someone comes up offering to give you raw detoxified natural organic food, kick her in the shins; only after discovering that it tastes like the dirt from whence it came you'll be informed that you owe $10 for the "gift." You can justify kicking her in the shins by claiming that she was poisoning your aura. Ah, California; fight fire with fire.
 

As for Berkeley night life, pickings are slim. If you like folk music, you should get to know the Freight and Salvage which attracts some amazing performers but which seems to bank a bit heavily in Berkeley being a throwback to a bygone folk era. The Starry Plough bar has occasional surprising performances, the subterranean cavern under Blake's sports a huge range of shows which tend to either rule or completely munch butt but are always overrun by undergrads hoping to score booze, and then there's Gilman, a punk venue which draws respectably irrespectable rockers and a surprisingly pleasant very young crowd, with the downside that gutterpunks often bring their abused dogs inside.
 

I have found heaven in two Berkeley bars. The Albatross, along San Pablo just north of University, is just a really cool place. An honest-to-god-bar with good people, lots of board games and pool and darts and free popcorn and a dark hardwood atmosphere. The Pub, along Solano just past the Albany border, is the smallest, cutest, and quietest pub I've ever seen, perfect for cozying up with a Guinness and a book. In fact, I'm sitting here drinking a Guinness as a I write this, nursing my wounds after a disastrous bicycle ride over. Spats is another decent place, sporting ratty-Paris-in-the-20s décor and serving superb extraordinarily girly drinks. But it manages to be randomly closed all the time, which is extremely annoying.
 

The Bay Area is starved for Performance (with a capital P) and even OK shows tend to sell out pretty fast. The sad truth is that you have to use the web and buy tickets with obscene "service charge" markups weeks in advance if you want to see anything big. I have no idea why the fuck ticketweb charges a $6 service charge per ticket when the service is just one computer telling the database a few dozen bytes of info in an exchange taking 0.002 seconds. Fucking monopolies.
 

Fun can also be had in the daytime and early evenings, especially in the summer. The best bands drop into town, there's free Shakespeare at Lake Merrit, mimes run amok through the parks of San Francisco, random quartets gather outside, and major venues like Act, the Berkeley Rep Theatre, and the SF symphony fan interest in the start of their fall season events.
 

There is a lot of theatre out here, and some of it is OK. The more established houses are too polished for my taste (I've seen too many shows where I want to kiss the lighting designer and feed the director to the Rankor), whereas the less established places are prone to wanking. Avoid anything labeled as a "cabaret," it's just a talent show sans the former. I've had the best luck following companies I like, especially the Shotgun Players (drama) and Killing My Lobster (comedy).
 

Friends drop into town, hang out, and after a day or two ask, "so, what's there to do in Berkeley?" The sad truth is, not a lot. It's mostly a residential area with some commercial areas sprinkled around. People want to absorb it's past, but how do you do that? I usually take people to visit Telegraph Ave to eat a tasty and very cheap lunch at Intermezzo (home of the world's biggest salads) followed by an obscene spending spree at Cody's books and Amoeba records, which has everything you didn't know that you desperately needed. But between the gutterpunks and the trendy retail outlets trying their best to look trashy, Telegraph Ave is just sad after a while.
 

Basically, if you're going to have fun in Berkeley or the Bay Area in general, you have to eat. A lot. Because that's where the area really shines. We get some amazingly burstingly ripe and cheap produce year round. God, Berkeley Bowl with its 1.5 acres of produce, 5 kinds of avocado, is just breathtaking... César is really fucking expensive, but they'll treat you right and educate you about wine. Party Sushi is really fucking cheap and the inflatable Godzilla is really a nice touch, but stick with simple stuff and for God's sake don't try their spicy-anything. Kirala is a Japanese place that's as good as its reputation and twice as expensive. Juan's for Mexican, Cha' am for Thai, Kirin for Chinese, and of course Zachary's pizza for soul. I don't know SF as well. Throw a rock, you'll hit a good restaurant.
 

It's too easy to not leave the bowl that is the Bay Area. There's a lot of great areas in California and I've found that simply sanity requires frequent day trips. Get out to Pinnacles, mosey up the coast to Pt. Reyes, drive to a beach and emulate the slob seals that just lie there. Go to the Mojave for unblemished nature and isolation. Everyone talks in hushed tones about Yosemite, but I really don't think it's the cat pajamas. There's too many people and too few trails from the valley floor. Backpack in the desolation wilderness if you want to see the Sierras, go to the Embarcadero shopping centers 1-4 if you want crowds, y'know what I mean?
 

There's always wine country. 'Wine tasting' my ass; getting trashed for free with yuppies is more like it. And it's fun! The only rules are these:

• Rope some schmuck of a friend into being designated.
• Go to Sonoma, not Napa. The Napa wineries are crowded and have the audacity to charge you for their wines.

Oh, before I forget; if you're in Berkeley and see a weird bus with too-big tires, run for your life. These are the Lawrence Berkeley Lab shuttles and their drivers are out of their goddam minds with the need for speed. They will mow pedestrian, cyclist, and tree over in their unrelenting circuit.
 

And there you have it; everything you ever needed to know about life out here.