Adventures in the Bay Area...

Flight time

Friday August 17th

I woke up very early and noticed I had a missed call on my phone. Godfrey had been trying to contact me. The coverage on the island is generally very poor, with passing ships causing the calls to drop, so I had no way to contact him back.

Before I had time to think, I received an e-mail from Godfrey asking if I could come flying. He had called Deirdre who explained my lack of phone signal and told him to try e-mailing me as I tend to check it fairly regularly..

It was a very rare occasion where there wouldn’t be any fog over the Bay Area, so perfect for flying and photography.

I told him I’d get to Half Moon Bay airport as quickly as possible, afterwards remembering I had to somehow depend on public transport to do this.

Godfrey told me he would pick me up in San Francisco, but he was already doing enough for me and I didn’t want to put him out of his way. He insisted he at least pick me up at the bus stop.

I got a bus into the city, a bus to BART, BART to Daly City and two more buses to a random bus stop on Hwy 1 where Godfrey collected me.

It was still pretty early by the time we got to the airport so that left us with plenty of time to prepare.

It’s the kind of airport where you can drive on the runway, so Godfrey took me for a spin around first, then we parked at the hangar door.

Inside the hangar, Godfrey talked me through the aircraft, a Cessna 172SP, N842LP, then told me to move it outside where we would go through all of the pre-flight checks.

He got me to do pretty much everything which was great experience for me.

After checking for things like water in the fuel tanks, we went back inside where Godfrey used the hangar’s blackboard to go through our route.

I wanted to fly over my island to get some photos (spy..) so that involved entering SFO and Oakland’s airspace. We had to stay below a specific flight level to enter these areas, and had to stay between the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge.

Thankfully GPS marked out these boundaries.

We got into the aircraft and Godfrey got me to drive the aircraft to the runway. This was actually the part I found most difficult.

Just after takeoff, we headed over the nearby hills which made things very, very bumpy. Interestingly, Godfrey is not at all comfortable with that.

He handed the aircraft over to me and got me to fly towards a certain point which put us overhead Santa Cruz Boardwalk. I practised climbing, descending, banking, etc, then we turned around and headed back up the coast where I was able to get pictures of the houses of pretty much everyone at the yacht club. (Large size available for a small fee..)

I learned that it’s really difficult to keep the aircraft level while taking photos.

While taking pictures of the Devil’s Slide and a small beach community just beyond it, Godfrey suddenly banked us hard left without explanation. We had accidentally drifted close to SFO’s airspace!
Well worth it though for the close view of the sections of Highway 1 which have slipped into the ocean.

It’s quite amazing to see it from that angle, speeding cars so close to the edge which is crumbling away rather rapidly.

We headed up along Ocean Beach, and as we neared the GG Bridge, requested permission to do some sightseeing in the area between the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge.

Godfrey had told me to keep an eye for other traffic as we entered the busy SF area. He was talking to ATC and I was flying, when I noticed a dark shadow out of the corner of my eye on the ocean below.

Suddenly that dark shadow was cast upon us. I can’t describe how incredibly cool it was to lean forward and see a 747-400 straight overhead!

Unfortunately the camera couldn’t focus quickly enough.

We flew straight overthe Golden Gate Bridge which provided some pretty cool photo opportunities.

I was quite happy to hand the aircraft over to Godfrey at this point, promoting myself to chief photographer.

I was surprised at the size of Golden Gate Park from the air. I never really go there due to the massive population of homeless people. I was more surprised though by how orderly San Francisco looks from above. Knowing the Sunset and Ocean Beach region as well as I do, I would never consider them so “orderly”.

We slowly headed back towards Half Moon Bay, getting some more sightseeing in as we went.

It was cool to finally see INTO a particular air force station right beside Deirdre’s house which I regularly spy on through the fence, unable to see much.

There was a strong crosswind for our landing so that made it rather interesting.

Overhead the yacht club.

After landing, Godfrey got me to refuel the aircraft.

We put the aircraft back into the hangar and safely stored everything away.

After a quick drive around the airport, we went straight to the nearby yacht club.
I assumed we were going to the bar, but instead, moments later we were on a sailboat with two other guys and I was at the helm. It was incredibly windy by now, and the fog was quickly rolling in, but I was on a boat with three pros so I figured they could take over if anything went wrong.
We stayed on the water until it got dark, the sailing challenging but smooth.
Afterwards we went to the yacht club where we took advantage of a buffet dinner and fine wines.

While there, we were joined by Terry who owns the sailboat I used to go out on last year. He asked if I would be interested in joining a crew of him and two others in sailing his boat from Richmond, CA to a harbour south of Half Moon Bay, CA, the following week. It was up in Richmond for an overhaul and needed to be brought to its home base. I told him I would let him know within a couple of days, unsure if the times would clash with my sailing class and exam.

After our night at the yacht club, we went to Godfrey’s house where he photocopied everything I would need to know for the written sailing exam. He had taken it a few years earlier.

He and his wife then insisted on driving me home, a long round trip for them. I was fine with being dropped back to a bus or train, but they were concerned about me going alone as it was now after 1am. Little did they realise I regularly embark on such trips..

They brought me all the way home and dropped me right to the door. I can’t praise them enough. It’s very refreshing to meet such kind, genuine people. And what a day!

Helms alee!

Friday August 10th

Deirdre had been telling me for a while about an upcoming sailing class at the yacht club. It was taking place over a number of days though and would require me to stay at Deirdre’s as it would involve early mornings and late nights.

I hadn’t been sure if I’d be working or not, but found out on short notice that I would be available on the days of the course so I decided to go for it.

I was rather concerned about how I’d cope, knowing I’m the same person who usually spends my boat time hanging over the side, but I was crossing my fingers that if I’m actually doing something, I wouldn’t have time to think about being sick.

I got the evening CalTrain down to Mountain View to meet Deirdre and her friends who work in the Space industry.

I was amused to watch the constant rotation of shuttle buses pulling up at the train station with ‘Google’, ‘Nasa’, ‘Adobe’, ‘Ebay’, etc, on the side.

We went to an Irish pub where many straight vodkas were consumed. Jesus..

Afterwards we headed to the coast to D’s beach house, near the yacht club. Deirdre and Wes, along with quite a few others I know from the yacht club, were taking the sailing class too. Most were doing it to brush up on their skills before going on the British Virgin Islands trip which is taking place in spring. (I’ve been invited along as crew but I have no idea where I’ll be by then..)

I spent the night at the yacht club with Terry and John, both engineers. I sailed with them both last year on Terry’s massive boat. Terry was in joke-telling mode, putting the origin of various engineering methods into very (gross) PLAIN terms. John and I spent the night laughing our heads off listening to his alternative outlook.

It was very late by the time we got home.

Saturday August 11th

We had an early start, spending all day in the class room. It was incredibly intense and a tad difficult to take in all of the technical information following the previous evening and night.

There was one woman in the group, P, who made me (and everyone else) want to transfer to the shooting class. She insisted on constantly interrupting the instructors to talk about her ‘years of experience’ and give the class tips. It was obvious her only reason for being in the class was to show off her amazing skills.

Of course she had arrived late and didn’t realise that quite a few of the guys in the class have competed in races all over the world, while others regularly sail to Hawai’i. This wasn’t a beginners class by any means, though I had virtually no experience.

We went from technical info to knot-tying while I prayed I would NEVER have to be on the water with P.

Towards the end of our day in the classroom, an elderly man with a very strong southern accent spoke up, politely pointing out that we should really let the instructors offer the advice. This followed P’s terrible tale of how she somehow got LEFT behind on the dock because the inexperienced sailboat crew she was with cast off too soon.. There were smirking faces all around.

After class, I approached the older man with the southern accent to ask him where he was from. He told me he was from Cocoa Beach, Florida (right beside NASA) and I immediately asked him if he had watched many launches. He informed me he had actually worked for NASA for many, many years. I questioned him further and learned he worked the entire Apollo programme! I began to ask him about the Gus Grissom era, etc, and he was only more than delighted to tell me endless fascinating stories. He worked as a communications technician in THE control room (I’m looking forward to watching the moon mission footage to try and spot him). Previously, he had been an AF air traffic controller, and had many great stories from that era too.
He had recently moved to the coast from the Sierra Nevada region and joined the sailing class to meet new people.

Everyone was completely exhausted after so many hours taking notes but we were crewed up and sent out on the water on Cal 20s.

Thankfully I wasn’t crewed with P! I was talking to Nasa Dave when they were picking groups so we got sent together. We were told to rig the boat and get it ready to sail, they had breifly gone over this in the morning class, amongst everything else sailing-related.
We were assigned what can only be described as a very anal instructor. He was insistent on EVERY bowline being exactly perfect, and made us re-do anything that wasn’t up to his standard. In hindsight, this was good experience for our first trip.

We got home around 9pm, and Wes’ friend Jon came over. He is VP of one of the biggest Silicon Valley companies.

He’s in his late 50s and remains incredibly handsome. He took us in his L to a fantastic restaurant where I had to eat Squid amongst other things. Let this be my notice to all; I’m REALLY not the biggest fish fan. People hear ‘Galway’ and assume I start my day off with Oysters and Guinness.
While I’ll eat anything (other than eggs), squid doesn’t give me very much pleasure..

Jon travels 340 days per year, with most weeks involving a couple of trips to Japan. He donates his air miles to charity.

For a guy in such a senior position, he remains incredibly down-to-earth, genuinely nice, and very enjoyable to spend time with.

Sunday August 12th -

Deirdre, Wes and I got up early to go hiking in the nearby hills of redwood trees.

While on our way to the hiking trail, Deirdre casually pointed out Neil Young’s house to me, and mentioned he sometimes plays at the local dive bar we occasionally* attend!
*People throw glasses at each other and toothless men force you to dance with them at that bar, hence the ‘occasionally’.

I’d heard Neil lives on a large ranch, and was glad to see it was actually true. While the home is rather grand, it’s not Beverly Hills by any means.

We parked the car on the hillside above his house and were only on the hike-trail a few minutes when a snake jumped out of the grass towards me. I was impressed at the speed he moved at. I had my camera in hand so was able to get some footage. [*will upload footage when I have a better connection!]

A while later, we could hear a rattlesnake in the nearby grass but I decided not to bother aiming for a photo with it.

It was pretty hot in the hills so the miles of hiking got difficult at times, but I was able to get some nice photos which I will upload some day in the not-so-distant future.

It’s a banana slug. I got interesting footage of this guy too, he went from about two inches in length to.. very long!

It was afternoon by the time we got back to the car, so Deirdre and I decided to head to Pescadero for dessert. It’s a very picturesque cowboy/Western town.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know if these places are really as backward as they appear.

We stopped into Duarte’s Tavern for some pie, and I recalled hearing someone at the yacht club mentioning the Tavern and some kind of shoot-out incident.

After a LOT of googling, I eventually found the story.

[quote]

According to published reports, it was shortly after midnight on Aug. 12, 1988, when county Sheriff’s deputies got a call from a shaken man claiming he had just shot someone in Pescadero.

Seven hours earlier, Stivender, then age 36 and living in Fresno, arrived in Duarte’s Tavern at the corner of Stage Road and North Street. He reportedly made a nuisance of himself, walking through the bar seeking debates on God and politics.

“I’m not sure if he was drunk then or got drunk there,” recalled Robert Bishop, a retired prosecutor who pursued the case during his stint at the county. “Finally, and this must have been hours later, someone said to him, ‘Go down to Santa Cruz. That’s where they talk about that kind of crazy stuff.’”

The comment came from Chris Dutsch, a Pescadero sculptor and regular at the bar. A short time later, Dutsch found himself with a gun to his head.

“The bartender had asked (Stivender) earlier to leave the bar, which he appeared to have done,” said Wagstaffe. “He left. But it was to get his weapon.”

“The guy left right when I asked him to,” Duarte’s bartender Jim Boice told the Review the week following the crime. “I should have known something was wrong. It was just too easy.”

According to court reports, Dutsch swung around and tried to knock the gun out of Stivender’s hand. A second man, Raymond Villa, had been sitting at the bar and rushed over to help Dutsch. In the fray, Villa was shot in the arm.

Still wrestling over the weapon, the two fought their way out the tavern door where several more shots were fired. One of the shots hit Dutsch in the arm and another lodged in his shoulder. An additional blast hit Pescadero resident Debra Harley.

In a bizarre twist, the bullet that hit Harley also killed Segura. In the scuffle outside the bar, one of the shots that was fired went through the tavern wall across the length of the bar, grazed Harley and then hit Segura in the chest.

After the shots were fired, Stivender fled the scene on Stage Road. He was apprehended by authorities after running to a nearby home where he asked to use the phone in order to confess his crimes.

[/quote]

Seems Pescadero hasn’t moved too far away from the old wild west..

Afterwards, we drove through some VERY rural roads towards San Gergory.

We passed some interesting ranches along the way..

House protection..?

En-route, I saw many old barns and proper-looking cowboy houses so Deirdre pulled over for me to get some photos. When we were close to San Gregorio, I noticed a little old school next to a large red barn and walked across some land to get a pic. Moments later I was being chased OFF the land by two savage dogs and their redneck owner. I didn’t wait around long enough to see if he was stereotypically carrying a gun. Deirdre could see me in her wing-mirror ushering her to put the car in drive. She was surprised to see me moving so fast until she noticed the snarling dogs on my heels.

Our next stop was at San Gregorio General Store, which is also a pub, a real ‘throw your guns on the counter’ type pub.

They seem to attract a mainly biker-crowd and had some rather amusing t-shirts.

They have Irish music sessions on Sunday afternoons too, played by American musicians who are friends of Deirdre.

We went to the yacht club on our way home and invited one of the instructors, Charlie, over for dinner. Charlie is a hugging Doctor with a very philosophical side. We discussed my Dad’s recent 7.5 heart operations, then Charlie went off on the theme of Original Sin and how it directly relates to suicide bombers and Iraq.

It was certainly one of the more interesting intellectual opinions I’ve listened to recently.

Monday August 13th

Deirdre and I got up early and headed to the beach where we studied and tied knots ahead of our evening on the ocean. Actually, Deirdre studied.. I took photos and gave occasional knot tutorials.

At the yacht club, we were divided into groups of twos and threes and appointed instructors.

We headed out to where the sailboats are docked and were once again left to complete the rigging process. I got moved between boats to help with the rig, probably because I was much younger than everyone else, and more mobile.

While still docked, a lady on one of the other boats received an incredibly hard wallop to her head from the sail boom. Of course we were all warned about that but I guess she didn’t expect it when the boat was still tied to the dock.
Because I was being moved between boats for the rigging stage, I was one of the last people to be assigned to a crew. I turned to my good old Irish Catholic faith to keep me apart from “pro-sailor” P.

I was delighted to see Wes being the last person assigned to her boat.

I was put with Ben, a guy in his late 20s who was as enthusiastic about everything as me, and V, an older lady who had much experience but was more contained and not as thrilled at the prospect of really making the boat heel.

Our instructor seemed to think we were far more experienced than we actually were. I was immediately put on the tiller and main sail, even though I was by far the least experienced of the class of 18.

We got out onto clear waters and the instructor told me to “do a jibe”. A jibe involves sailing downwind, swinging the boom to the other side of the boat while keep the tiller straight and on a steady course. The jib sheets also need adjustment. Of course at that point, I didn’t know what a jibe was, having chosen photography rather than study earlier that morning.

I was initially finding it incredibly difficult to hold the tiller still while swinging the boom and main sail across in a jibe. I had no idea how much of a physical workout this sailing stuff would be! And I didn’t have gloves so as soon as I had put a couple of jib sails up, I was suffering from rope burns.

Being thrown in at the ‘deep end’ actually turned out to be good for me as it gave me a good feel of the boat and its (lack of) sensitivity early on. (It took many people until the last class to touch the tiller).
After about an hour at the helm carrying out tacks and jibes, I changed over to working the sails which is much easier, mainly because there’s far less responsibility.

Ben took over as skipper. He has quite a bit of racing experience and seemed to enjoy heeling as much as I do. He understood that the worst possible thing that can happen is you end up in the water. And with everyone wearing lifejackets, that’s not the end of the world!

Another hour or so passed, and it was time to rotate crews again. This time V was at the helm, and after just a couple of minutes, we experienced the one thing we were warned about repeatedly in class, the only thing that will realistically capsize the boat; an uncontrolled jibe.

Ben and I were up front managing the jib lines. Luckily we were already both crouching below the main sail’s boom, just in case.

We also just happened to have our feet hooked beneath the rope on the boat’s floor which keeps you in when the boat’s leaning heavily.
That kept us in the boat, while V latched onto the tiller, swinging us even further in the wrong direction. I think the poor instructor probably considered a new career for a few seconds. We got ‘in irons’ (stalled) afterwards so we learned very early on how to recover from such a situation. We took some water into the boat so got to spend the rest of the night wading with soaked shoes and socks.

All of the sailboats have different coloured sails and we noticed a blue-sail passing us by, its occupants laughing at us.

After V’s little incident, I went back to the tiller.

A short while later, I was following along behind another sailboat when I noticed them sharply veering towards the coast. It was the blue sail again. They were on a run (where the wind is directly behind you) and moving way too fast. We decided to be nosey and go closer, just for the laugh.

I saw Wes sitting near the jib with his arms folded, shaking his head.

As I got closer, I realised ‘pro-sailor’ P was at the helm!

With all of her “experience” she was immediately put on tiller (meaning she was in full control of the boat, and had to advise the crew of what to do at all times with the sails, etc).

Though everyone on the boat knew they were heading straight for shore, expert P knew what she was doing, and couldn’t admit otherwise. We laughed hard as they RAN AGROUND!
They actually had to climb out of their boat in knee-deep water and push it out of the sand.

Thankfully everyone was talking about them when we eventually got back to shore, and our uncontrolled jibe was long forgotten.

Tuesday August 14th

We seemed to barely be off the ocean when we were back out again for another day of sailing. Wes got crewed with P again, and another lady, C, who was equally as clueless but didn’t pretend to know it all. C is a very sweet lady in her 50s who is constantly smiling and always miles away, probably because she’s generally stoned. I’ve realised the least likely contenders in California are huge potheads, especially those anti-alcohol Church-going types.

It was incredibly windy and foggy, and few were thrilled at the prospect of spending the day tackling such conditions.

It didn’t take long for my hands to become very sore from rope burn, due to the constant required line adjustments. I was with two experienced guys which was good for such weather conditions.

The instructor was fantastic. Though the previous day’s instructor was a nice guy, it was obvious he was quite nervous about letting such inexperienced people have total control, particularly after our uncontrolled jibe.

Today though, we had a guy who was hanging off the bow and jumping from side-to-side to avoid the boom.

We took in quite a lot of water due to our adventurous crew, but it was my kind of sailing.

I was at the tiller when I noticed Wes’ boat coming straight for us. Again, he was sitting at the bow shaking his head and rolling his eyes. C was on the tiller and was smiling over at us. We were assuming they were carrying out a maneuver and would tack away at the last second. We had right-of-way (as we were on a starboard tack) so I didn’t technically have to act. When they were about twenty feet away and rapidly approaching straight for the port side of our boat, I decided to make an emergency tack. Rather than freaking out, the instructor held on to the bow and laughed at the unfortunate instructor on C’s boat.

We cleared the near-impact zone, while the other boat suddenly tacked left and managed to ground themselves on the only obstacle anywhere in sight; a floating dock. They hit so hard that they actually tore a hole in their hull as they bounced up onto the dock!

Our instructor advised we head further out, far away from Wes’ boat.

We went out further than any of the other boats and were safe to execute all kinds of man-overboard drills and other maneuvers without the worry of someone running into us. All of the other boats were long docked when we came back in. We had to do a few missed approaches to dock as the wind was moving us fast and blowing us dangerously close to all of the other docked sailboats.

The wind had picked up further as night rolled in, and I was freezing by then. Being soaked up to the knees didn’t help.

We went inside to the yacht club to discuss the day. Godfrey (the pilot) was present afterwards so we chatted for a while. He told me he was watching the weather and we would go flying within a few days.

Deirdre and I drove to San Jose late that night.

I found it incredibly difficult to sleep due to the consistent rocking motion I was experiencing.

Wednesday August 15th -

I woke up early, aching all over. You really use your muscles to stay in the boat when it’s totally on its side, and they’re muscles you don’t normally use.

I also felt incredibly cold, probably after spending so much time in very wet clothes.

I headed back to SF.

I finally managed to catch the Simpsons movie that night. I wasn’t expecting to like it but I really enjoyed it. It’s a little disjointed in places but that can be easily overlooked.

I decided it was time to lock my future travels in so I finally began booking flights up, down, back and fourth across America. I’m going to have more time in the air than some airline pilots after this trip!

As my cellphone won’t work once I leave the Bay Area, I need to have everything well-planned. I need to know what bus to take across rural Texas to get me to the dry town I’m staying in (yes.. dry..), allowing for 6 hour flight delays, 10 hour Amtrak delays, etc.

It takes quite a bit of research to learn that there’s no public transport in many parts of Texas on a Sunday, including Dallas!

I’m sure there’s much I haven’t even thought about, but I’ll just have to take a chance..

Titleless

Friday Aug 3rd I left my island for another island, Alameda, for dinner with Clark, my Texan boss from last year (pictured in last entry). We went to a REALLY authentic Chinese place. We were the only non-Chinese people there. Clark had a Chinese friend translate the menu for him in advance so he knew which items were safe to point at. I’d never done the chopsticks thing before, but we were left with no other option (even for the soup!).. I totally surprised myself and didn’t even have to stab the food to get it to my mouth! While we knew which items to pick, I guess we ordered out of sequence so we had our starters sometime after our desserts. And we had more desserts on the table than main course.. A lot of you will probably already know that I do NOT do egg. I will eat absolutely ANYTHING in the world - I’m the person who always picks the weirdest thing off a foreign menu, then ends up sick - but I will NOT eat eggs. (Come on guys… think about where they came from!) I was happily consuming what I thought was regular soup, it looked and tasted quite like the usual crab and sweetcorn flavour, but it was actually raw eggs and sweetcorn.. I was really enjoying it until I asked Clark what I was eating. The dessert was delicious. We were served with a flaming cake in a wicker basket. Once quenched, it had a white layer on the top which was coconut, and the rest of the cake was yellow and lumpy. We could taste custard and mangoes and I’m not sure what else (I chose not to ask this time), but it was incredibly good. We went to Alameda island harbour afterwards. I noticed a huge flock of the same birds I keep seeing all over the base. They’re Canada Geese apparently and don’t normally take over NorCal at this time of year. Not sure what’s different this year but they are EVERYWHERE on both islands, picking at the grass. I explored Chinatown in Oakland for a while afterwards. I got some rather horrid video footage of all types of live animals being thrown out of a truck and sold to the local food places. There was a HUGE green-ish fish (about 4 feet in length) flapping all over the road until a man gathered it up. There were armfuls of live ducks being dropped into buckets. I walked onto Downtown Oakland and wandered around there for a bit. I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who will say I really like Oakland. It’d be the most beautiful city if you could just replace 99% of the current residents. I’ve never felt very unsafe there, the only real danger is getting caught in the crossfire, and for the most part the people who get shot there probably deserved it. I wanted to go down to Lake Merritt where I used to hang out quite a bit last year but I guess some part of me values my life a little too much so I cowarded out, for a change. I walked past where Oakland Journalist Chauncey Bailey was shot the previous day. I’m not sure if this case is making the headlines nationwide but there’s a great movie in it. I somehow missed the 250-man swat team raid on the Black Muslim Bakery where they got Bailey’s killers. Think of the pictures! :( I guess I avoided quite a few other fatal shootings by not hanging around… Saturday August 4th I got word on Thursday that Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová would be playing a free instore gig at Amoeba records in Haight. I grew up seeing Glen play with his band ‘The Frames’ in Galway and Dublin. The band were formed in 1990. From the age of 13 to 17, my father seemed to constantly be driving me to see some show that had the Frames on the bill. I wouldn’t consider myself a big fan (they’re a great band but just not really my thing) but I’ve probably seen them play more times than a lot of huge fans. To me, they’re a kind of houseband in Ireland. They’ve got a very big following but their fans tend to be the people who totally support every single Irish band, even if they haven’t heard their music. That annoyed me off when I was younger and so I kind of ignored The Frames. Many years ago, Glen starred in the cult-hit film ‘The Commitments’. This year, he took the lead role of a busker in a film which seems to be doing VERY well in the US, called ‘Once’. Today, Glen and his co-star would be performing tracks from the film. I turned up at Amoeba about an hour before the set was due to begin. I was early because I wanted to dig out some rare vinyl records before the set. I’ve seen many huge acts play at Amoeba and the crowd is ALWAYS dismal. For a very well-known American band, you can expect about 20 people, 15 of whom will continue browsing through CDs during the performance. Bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, White Stripes, Paul McCartney have all recently played at Amoeba. I was completely gobsmacked to see a HUGE crowd on arrival at the record store. I wondered if perhaps there was another show on before Glen. I asked a cashier and he told me people had been lining up for hours to see this gig. I squeezed my way through the people to the front so I could get some pictures and represent the Irish by shouting phrases at Glen such as “Go on ya good thing!” and “Up ya boya”. Glen (and I) were surprised to hear a “Give it socks!” from somewhere near the back. To my right was a woman in her 30s from Chicago who had flown over especially to catch this and another secret gig Glen would be playing later that evening. She got (scarily) excited when she heard my accent and started attempting to extract every Frame-related piece of trivia I could think of from me. She then introduced me to a lady in her late 50s from Sonoma Valley. This lady was attending the show with her son, who had driven her down. She seemed to be having difficulty breathing and her son kept checking on her. I assumed there was something wrong with her, until her son explained she was very nervous at the prospect of seeing her hero in the flesh. I was trying to get my head around someone being excited about Glen Hansard (no disrespect but..!) when she burst into tears the second he graced the stage. This woman cried throughout the show, and more worryingly still, she wasn’t the only one! More surprised than me by this reaction was Glen himself. He admitted he was quite terrified. Throughout the show, there were requests such as “Come to Northern Texas/Idaho/Iowa/Kentucky”. I could not believe that people in these.. erm… (back-of-beyond) states were ecstatic over the fella from the Frames! Afterwards, Glen and Markéta did a meet-and-greet/signing. I took this photo two hours after they finished playing. If you look closely, you will see a line of people around the entire edge of the HUGE record store, waiting to meet Glen! And there’s a lot more store which I didn’t capture in that shot. The Frames play a show in San Francisco next month and it’s been completely sold out for weeks. It seems the Frames may just have done something few European bands manage to do; break America! And I’m not sure it’s something Hansard is at all prepared for. — It seems to be America’s aim right now to make me fat. After the show I was due to meet Deirdre and some of her girl friends who were coming up to the city to celebrate a birthday. I ate first, assuming they would’ve already eaten. I took a break from very affordable Mexican food and went for a huge portion of Grilled Chicken Caeser Salad instead. I met the girls and we went to the swankiest spot the city has to offer; the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. The cheapest glass of wine (by far) on the menu was $11. They did provide some free snacks though.. So more eating.. Before entering, we agreed we’d say we were from Ohio if anyone asked, just for the hell of it. We sat next to two American guys who immediately asked us where we were from. They got very excited when they heard Ohio, telling us they were actually from Cincinnati. Of all the states… :/ They were doctors but avoided ever saying the word ‘doctor’ when telling us what they did. We decided they must be penile doctors or something and were too embarrassed to admit it. They were on a business trip to check out a new drug.. (Viagra Mark II?) After much expensive wine, we moved onto ‘Biscuits and Blues’ (a cool underground bar/restaurant) where we had biscuits.. and Blues.. Having already eaten, I skipped straight to dessert. It was again very expensive again with small portions by American standards. Deirdre wanted me to go back to San Jose with them afterwards so I had to do a quick trip out to the island to pick up some warm clothes as we’d be heading to the coast to the yacht club for a couple of days. I was correctly predicting fog. I went to the dark horrible terminal where I get transport to the base from, and outside on the sidewalk at 9.45pm were two small children sitting amongst a huge pile of suitcases. I could immediately tell that they weren’t homeless. ANY part of the Bay Area at night is pretty terrible for anyone to be alone in, and this was two small kids about 4 and 7 years old with LUGGAGE! They were surrounded by the usual homeless guys pushing shopping carts, but it’s the people you can’t obviously see that are the danger. The children were German. I asked them where their parents were, and they told me they were inside the terminal looking for directions/a bus. I told them to make sure their parents NEVER left them again as it was very dangerous. I waited with them until my transport arrived. Their parents still hadn’t returned but I couldn’t miss the only form of transport available to me. I packed some stuff as quickly as possible and caught the bus again before it had departed the island. The children were gone by the time I got back to the the city. I rejoined Deirdre and the girls, who had now gone to Johnny Foley’s Irish Pub on O’Farrell street, at the edge of the Tenderloin. They didn’t realise what area it was in. There are nicer places to walk through alone when carrying a diaper bag complete with laptop, passport, money, etc.. There was a great rock covers band playing at Foleys, they were doing all of 60s blues/rock, including some Cream tracks which impressed me! I got chatting to two girls next to me who happened to be from Cork. They were over on a week’s holiday with their parents. Their sister is doing on the same visa as me in Santa Cruz and the whole family decided to “surprise” her by coming out for a visit. Lucky her….. :O They were going back on Monday at 6am, hadn’t gotten to the Golden Gate Bridge or Alcatraz, but they were getting up at 4am to catch a hurling match which would be screened in some Irish pub in Haight. I guess we all have different priorities.. The band finished up and we headed back for San Jose. We passed an iHop along the way, at 1.45am. Everyone was hungry.. again. So we went for more desserts. Deirdre and I split the most delicious banana, chocolate and cream cheesecake complete with ice-cream. It was actually up to the standard of the Cheesecake Factory! It was pretty late by the time we finally got to San Jose. I skipped having any more desserts before bed. Sunday August 5th Deirdre and I headed to the coast. The weather changed dramatically as soon as we began to head west. Fog. Fog. Fog. Upon arrival, we went straight to the yacht club to see who was about. I noticed a rather weathered-looking man amongst the regulars at the bar. I was intrigued to know who he was but he was talking to someone else. He looked like a typical Haight-character, someone who would know a lot about 60s music, so I eventually approached him and got talking. He told me the only music he knows about is the 43 different types of purr his 15 cats make. He told me that in his lifetime he has proven his theory that a cat will sit by you until you fall asleep, then it will purr 5 times, and walk away. I asked him what his name was, and he introduced himself as Dave. Then he asked me what kind of potatoes we grow in Ireland. Dave is known to all as ‘Eelman’. But he prefers Dave. I had heard of this ‘Eelman’ character, but this was my first meeting. I was only more than happy to sit and talk to (interview) him. He is an incredibly interesting character, just like most of the less conventional members of our society tend to be. Dave told me about the patch of land he owns (squats) on the Ocean front where he has a vegetable and fruit garden. He shares his home (an 8’x4’ foot shack) with 4 Mexicans. There was a 5th Mexican but he recently died. Dave isn’t sure what happened to him, he just fell down one day while tending to his Mexican tea leaves in their garden. He was in his 30s. Dave wasn’t sure if he had any family, and didn’t feel the need to inform anyone of his death. He was upset because he had asked the lady working at the bar to come see his garden and she had promised she would. He was very excited about getting to show off all of his hard work, but when he was ready to take her, she backed out. I told him I would go see it, and learned a great deal more about this ‘eelman’ character as we went. His eyes lit up when he saw I was actually following him along to see his garden. As we walked, he shared many theories about all kinds of far-out issues. He gave me much unusual advice about how to be happy in life. He explained the importance of freedom, and not feeling the need to conform. I told him he need not worry about me, nothing holds me back from going wherever I want whenever I want. He led me through an overgrown area behind the yacht club and up a little lane between some areas where much building work is going on. He was very unhappy about how close these developers were moving to him. I asked him if there was a chance they could build on the land he occupies and he told me “it’s complicated” and that he was the only person that currently has the right to enter that patch of land. He seemed to have spent a great deal of time preparing a full tour in his head and was able to rhyme off the explanations of every leaf type, vegetable, etc as though he was tourguide to a 200-person group. The bar girl decided to join the little tour when she saw I hadn’t been kidnapped or murdered. Deirdre came too. He gave us many fruits to sample. He’s managed to grow plants that shouldn’t grow in CA, and certainly not right on the coast. I asked him what he does for a living, noticing he owns a pick-up truck, and he told me works 5 days per week and earns between $400 and $700 per week, but he couldn’t disclose what he does.. He also fishes. He sells most of what he catches and completely lives off his garden (along with the 4 Mexicans who also found freedom). I asked him where his boat was, not seeing any, but almost breaking my neck over partially-stripped engines and all kinds of random boat parts buried in his garden. He told me he would tell me much more as long as I would never disclose the info to anyone at the yacht club. I promised him I wouldn’t. So I won’t be writing the true meaning of life here. I will write about the boat he built. He told me it was the most innovative design any man will ever see but he was afraid he would get thrown off his land by the people at the yacht club because they wouldn’t “get” it. It is far too ahead of its time. He felt they might think it was an eyesore if he parked amongst the more conventional yachts so he’s hidden it up the coast for the time being. Until he feels the time is right. Satisfied that I had enjoyed enough fruit from his garden, Dave locked up his patch of land and we wandered back to the yacht club. His 15 cats followed at his heels. They’re incredibly fond of him. He told me they’re all male, he lets the females wander on elsewhere. He believes the female of every specie is evil. I asked him if this applied to humans too. He told me about how one of the rather well-established women at the yacht club clearly wanted to take him over and he suspected she was particularly evil so he ran his finger in a circle around his nipple three times, then flicked it while she was hitting on him, and she immediately backed off. This proved to Dave that she was indeed evil. I wondered how Dave became ‘Eelman’, so I carefully asked him about his background. He told me a terrible tale of a childhood where he was held captive in a basement. His thoroughly depressing upbringing story was validated to me later by someone who’s known him all of his life. Knowing his background made me understand why this tiny patch of ocean front land is so important to him, and why he appreciates his freedom so much. And also why he needs the 8’x4’ confined shack to feel safe in. I said my goodbyes to ‘Eelman’ and told him I’d see him and his garden again soon. Monday August 6th Deirdre, Wes and I spent the day white-picket-fence building. Sounded like a nice, easy way to spend the day outside in the sunshine at the Ocean front beach house. We weren’t outside for long when the fog rolled in and a strong, COLD wind picked up. The fence came in sections so it soon turned into a mathematical disaster as we tried to figure where to cut the fence to make it curve around the garden, leaving no gaps at the joining sections of the fence. Between hammering and sawing, I was being kept entertained by the very nearby runway where a pilot was doing barrel rolls shortly after take-off. That night, we went to a VERY nice authentic Italian restaurant. On the journey there, I asked my co-fencebuilders if they knew any of the guys flying out of that airport and they told me they knew one guy, Godfrey, who is a commercial pilot and sometimes takes a plane out of there. We sat down at the restaurant and ordered our food. After a few minutes, a couple recognised Deirdre and Wes, approached us and joined us to eat. Turns out it was Godfrey and his wife Jeanne! Needless to say, I had much to talk about with Godfrey. He promised he would take a plane out one day soon and take me up overhead the city. I gave him my number, not really expecting to hear back from him. I had to leave early the following morning to get back to San Francisco on time. Tuesday August 7th Orlaith mentioned earlier in the week that she had never gotten to a baseball game while in the US. I decided that was one of the things one really should do, so I called her up after work and we headed to the Giants Ballpark. The previous night, Barry Bonds was due to hit the record-breaking 756th homerun. I knew we wouldn’t have a hope of getting tickets for that, and I hadn’t heard any news so assumed all of the fuss would be over. We squeezed on board a very crowded MUNI metro and our hearts sank when we saw the HUGE crowds outside the ballpark. I tried all of the ticket desks and all said “Sold Out”. Orlaith would be leaving San Francisco for NYC on Friday so this was her last chance to catch a game. We quickly realised tonight was probably the night that the record, previously held by Babe Ruth and Aaron, would be broken. I spotted an old guy working at one of the main entrances. I approached him and asked if there was any chance he could somehow get us tickets, explaining Orlaith was leaving. He told us this was the biggest game they had in years, we wouldn’t be able to get tickets anywhere. A young guy who was in line overheard me and advised me to get some tickets from one of the nearby touts. I noticed Orlaith hiding her face from this guy. I later learned he was the same guy who had recently hit on her in a bar.. and not in a very subtle way. I’ll save her the embarrassment by not writing what he said.. I turned to walk towards the touts, but before I got the chance, the old man called me back, asking me not to give them money. I told him we had very little money anyway, but didn’t have any other option. He told us to follow him and he would get us tickets. Little did Orlaith’s friend realise how much he helped us. The old man spoke to a lady at the ticket desk and he had her print us up two tickets. I was terrified they were going to try to sell us $200 tickets so I told her they had to be as cheap as possible. She asked us how $18 would suit us! So we ended up getting great (really close) seats at a totally sold out event for cheaper than anyone else paid! On the water outside the ballpark, waiting to catch a ball.. Number 756! I’ll put up high quality versions of these on flickr soon. I love the expressions of pretty much everyone in the background. The ball landed very close to Orlaith and I. We had made a deal that if we caught it, we’d split the proceeds. There was no chance of getting it though. People were pretty much willing to tear each other’s limbs off for it, and I had a camera to protect. It was so much fun to be a part of the celebrations. Everyone went nuts. The sky immediately lit up with fireworks. Brighter than the fireworks were the camera flashes coming from all over the stadium. I’ve never seen so many. As we left the stadium, a guy offered me $$ for my USED ticket stub. More money than I had paid for it. I was very surprised that anyone would want someone’s used ticket. On the train, more people were looking for tickets.. As I walked the street on the way back to get my bus home, people shook my hand and congratulated me on attending the record-breaking game. It was altogether very surreal. Our one and only baseball game this year! Wednesday August 8th I was below street level eating at Bloomingdales (multi-story shopping centre joined onto the huge Westfield mall) in San Francisco when some kind of alarm started sounding. It was very subtle and I was hungry, so I ignored it. Then lights started flashing in the walls but again, it was pretty subtle to say the least. Most other people were continuing to eat too. Then a man started announcing over speaker system “This is an emergency evacuation of the building. Please exit through the nearest fire escape immediately”. I assumed there was an earthquake nearby or something so I reluctantly packed my dinner and stood against a wall while everybody else got over-excited. It was quite clearly the highlight of the security guys career. They panicked everyone by yelling “CALM DOWN! REMAIN CALM, Let’s just get out of the building. REMAIN CALM!” and rushing everyone towards the doors while the tactical response unit tried to enter the building. I got physically moved out onto the street and noticed everyone was flowing out of every door on the block onto Market Street. The Westfield shopping centre was being evacuated too. I had my MacBook, camera, etc in my bag and I was figuring it was a pickpocket’s heaven, so I moved up about 30 feet to get out of the main crowd. I went to stand outside Walgreens (joined onto Bloomingdales) and noticed a mob on top of three black guys on the sidewalk. They tumbled and knocked a jewellery stall over while ‘the captured’ were strong enough to break free a number of times. The three guys ran into walgreens and one was knocked to the ground and cuffed by staff, while the other two went to the back of the shop, attempting to climb over the pharmacy counter. It was good to see that every man in sight was doing their best to stop these guys who seemed to be using the emergency evacuation of the block as their opportunity to loot. I immediately wondered if these guys had called in the emergency in the first place.. The sister of one of the criminals then got into a racial argument with a crazy old homeless guy and they started arguing by the door. I stood in the middle of it all recording video clips on my camera. The police waited until the Walgreens staff had all three guys cuffed before they entered the store.. I crossed the street to apple afterwards to email some people the video clips of a typical day in SF. A couple of minutes later, all of the alarms went off on that side of the block! I, and many others, chose to completely ignore them this time! That evening, I had a pass to the press screening of Rush Hour 3. I wasn’t even sure I’d bother attending, but I had nothing else on so decided to check some of it out, and if it really sucked, I would take a nap in the very comfortable cinema seats. I hadn’t bothered to watch Rush Hour 1 or 2, so I wasn’t expecting much. I was picturing men wearing white tracksuits kicking each other for 90 minutes.. I ended up really enjoying it! Jackie Chan is incredibly charismatic, and there was much humour to their kicking. Afterwards, I decided to pick up some milk in the same Walgreens I’d been to earlier in the day, before heading home. I was standing by the milk fridge when I noticed one of the same staff members from earlier in the day leading a blacksuit-wearing business man in his 40s with a briefcase down the aisle, cuffed. He wasn’t even protesting his innocence. Instead he was begging the cashier not to take him in the back. He wanted to be dealt with where people could see him. He seemed to be very familiar with the whole procedure. The cashier reminded him that when you steal, you go through to the back where you will be dealt with. Another staff member had to help drag the criminal through to the back.. I really feel for the staff at that branch. Thursday August 9th It was Orlaith’s last night in the Bay Area so rather than wasting the small amount of money we had going drinking, we went to a cinema in Berkeley which screens classics, to see Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’. It was great to see it on the big screen, and it was amusing how everyone giggled at the parts that would’ve been terrifying to most in the past. I got the bus back through Emeryville and Oakland and was sitting in the Embarcadero MUNI metro station for a bit afterwards when I had a very trippy moment. I guess there was a problem with one of the trains so they pulled it out of service delaying everything. The screens didn’t update so the trains all went out of sync. Everyone started boarding the wrong trains. They tried to correct this sudden build up of trains by letting them pass through the station without taking any passengers on board. The overhead digital screens which tell you train info decided to drop the first letter, so they suddenly started to continually flash “RAIN NOT STOPPING” while at the exact same moment, the elevators stopped working. The station elevators have a very comical bad 60s-movie space robot voice, and they began to repeat “Elevator Problem!”. So I was surrounded by *flash* “Rain not stopping” - “Elevator Problem!” - *flash* “Rain not stopping” - “Elevator Problem!”.. I wondered if Hitchcock was trying to get me back for laughing at his Psycho.. Many more updates coming very soon…

Touching Base

I relocated again on July 15th to what is my permanent home for the
summer in SF. I now live in a Naval Base on an island!!
It’s without doubt the coolest place I’ll ever get to live.

It took a few days to adjust to the total silence only broken by
ships’ foghorns, shrieking seagulls and low-flying aircraft.
It’s very difficult to describe but I’ve never experienced such an odd
atmosphere before.
I’d LOVE to have grown up here as a kid. There is so much to be
explored, and children can get away with climbing inside the restricted-access areas!

I’m blacking out exact location to block potential stalkers/freaks/creeps/weirdoes/other.

There is only one gate in/out and on two occasions so far, I’ve seen the island locked! We had to wait quite a while before being allowed to enter where we live.

I find the numerous warning signs particularly amusing.

And to anyone who’s concerned by the last one, I’m quite happy to take the risk on it. I won’t be eating soil and my exposure will only be short-term.
There are signs here because the Navy HAVE to test for toxins.
I’ll bet if you were to test your back yard, you’d dig up just as many hazardous chemicals.

This is my current favourite sign:

The island provides many stunning views of the surrounding area, with all of San Francisco’s famous landmarks (Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, etc) within view.

(alcatraz)

And I won’t be complaining about the low-flying aircraft either!

Monday July 16th - Orlaith and I went to see that DIRE new Robin Williams movie, “License to Wed”. I can only assume the director had compromising photos of Williams and he had absolutely NO choice but to star in this horrendously bad film.

Afterwards, I tried to purchase a Frappuccino to wake me up but
encountered difficulty with my Bank of Ireland credit card. Nothing beats being informed that your card won’t work in front of a long line of people!
And this happened a few times recently.

Tuesday July 17th -I had free time in the afternoon and decided to go to Ocean Beach for a walk. Well, it was a walk with a purpose..

The evening before I left Ireland, my grandmother gave me this statue of the Child of Prague.

Here it is sitting on my grandmother’s wall before my departure.

Backstory:

My great-grandfather (deceased for many years) had this headless
statue of the Child of Prague in his bedroom all of his life. When my
grandmother’s brother, my grand-uncle, was emigrating to America at the age of 14, he was given this headless statue to carry with him to “keep him safe”. Its head had broken off years previously and sat on the window ledge of my great-grandfather’s room.

Over time the head became misplaced and the family were unable to locate it the day my grand-uncle was emigrating so they sent the statue off, headless.

Years later my grand-uncle returned from the US to visit the family
and he brought the statue back with him.

As well as headless, the statue was now bottomless. But he had both
pieces. He gave the broken statue back to my grandmother and it became misplaced over the years.

A couple of days before I departed for the US, my grandmother was
clearing out some cupboards when she came across a sports bag of
clothes. At the bottom of the bag were both parts of the statue. She
glued it back together and wondered if the relations in NY still
remembered the statue, and if perhaps I could bring it back to them.

I am in e-mail contact with the family in NY and will visit them when
I reach that area. I contacted them and they did indeed remember the statue. My mother’s cousin PJ (who I am in very regular contact with) requested that I bring the statue with me, to keep me safe.

So I did.

(Meanwhile my grandmother is keeping an eye out for the head as she’s sure it’s still in the room it got lost in all of those years ago.)

So I decided if I’m going to be carrying this headless ‘child’ across
the US with me, I might as well allow it to visit some well-known
locations.

He’s already been swimming in the Pacific, visited the GG Bridge, etc.

It was too windy that day to let the statue go swimming, so he stayed
in the safety of the sand dunes.

The dull lighting made it difficult to get him clearly no matter where I put him, and after a few raised eyebrows from passers-by, I packed the statue back into my bag and walked along the dunes.

Moments later, I came upon the scene below:

I no longer felt embarrassed about my tiny finger-sized statue.
In fact, for the first time in years, I felt almost NORMAL!

Meet Wan. Wan noticed me taking photos of him taking photos of his
cardboard cut-out and approached me, asking if I could take some
photos of him with his ‘friend’ on his camera…

I did.

I asked him who she was. He looked at me like I was a bit retarded and told me it was the/a girl from Star Wars.

I felt perfectly okay about not knowing this!

He briefly tried to convince me that he wasn’t nuts before heading to
the ocean to take his flat friend for a swim..

I reassured him somewhat by introducing him to the Child of Prague.

After that encounter, I made my way up along the coast and finally came to the Giant Camera Obscura on an occasion when it was actually open!

Before entering the camera, I took the following picture of the
coastline in front of me:

I was only inside for about three minutes in total as the camera got
rather.. crap. It whited out completely and I couldn’t see anything any
more. I exited the camera to ask the guy what was wrong with the thing, assuming the light entering the top had somehow become ‘blocked’.

When I stepped outside, I was greeted with fog. Lots of fog.
As much time as I spend at Ocean Beach, I hadn’t previously noticed how quickly the fog comes in there!

Thursday 19 July - I picked up the best MacBook bag EVER!
Not one from the $300 Stealme range at the Apple store. Nope..

I got a Diaper Bag for $9 from Ross! It’s perfect. It’s got numerous pockets (for clean diapers, used diapers..), it’s well padded (due to the internal changing mat..) but the main reason for purchasing; NO-ONE will ever steal it!
It was a tad embarrassing when the cashier insisted on wishing me luck with the baby I don’t have.. And now I have to carry a bag around that says “Babies’ Alley” on the side. But I can get over that when it comes to keeping my computer safe!

Friday 20th July - At approximately 4:40 am on Friday morning, I
was very suddenly awoken by what I immediately thought was
room-invasion. It was in fact the contents of my partially open closet very suddenly exiting the closet. I quickly came to my senses and was relieved to find it was an earthquake.
It began with two large jolts and then the normal shaking began. It was very noisy with all of the pipes in the attic banging together and items which had been on my top shelf hitting the closet doors and breaking my floor lamp.

My bed moved over a foot in one direction and about four inches in the other direction, while I was on it!

The steady shaking lasted for over 30 seconds, which gave me time to get out of bed, go sit in my swaying doorway, and text Orlaith who hadn’t felt any of the previous tremors we’ve had this summer. I KNEW she had to feel this one! And she certainly did.

Oakland’s power was knocked out and quite a few windows were broken around the area.

I checked online immediately to see the live reports coming in and it was registering as a 4.3. We experienced a 5 last summer and I knew this one felt WAY stronger than the 5.

I called USGS and did the phone-in report thing. They ask a whole bunch of questions such as “Did any walls fall down? Any chimneys collapse? Any items of furniture move?”. Going by my answers, they told me I was estimating that it was felt as a 6 at my location.
I felt I had answered the questions very accurately and was confused as to how their register was showing it as only a 4.3 but they called me back later and told me I was exactly correct; intensity was
being reported as a 6 for my zip code and it was due to location quality (a ‘landfill’ island which basically reacts like jelly when shaken, which is why it went on for so long) and the fact that the quake occurred very close to the surface with its epicentre occurring nearby.

A Drugstore in Berkeley.

I managed to get a couple of hours sleep afterwards, through some
aftershocks, before going to meet friends from last year. My friend Naeema came up from LA for the weekend to see me. We decided to turn it into a big meet-up and hunt down all of our friends from last year.

We called Rita who had moved house but was still in the area. She came and picked us up at Bay Fair BART station in the East Bay and we headed off to meet everyone else.

Rita and Naeema.

Rita had to collect some paperwork from a client as we headed to our
destination. She took us on the ‘scenic route’; a tour through the worst parts of East Oakland. She showed us the scenes of some of the more famous recent shootings.
While collecting her paperwork, she warned Naeema and I to stay in the car and duck as soon as we heard gun fire. I decided to heed her words on this occasion but Naeema got out to get something from the trunk and the second she did so, there were a bunch of shots. I’m pretty sure they were just fireworks (though it was day….) but it’s been a while since I’ve seen anyone move SO fast!

Rita came out telling her to “hit the dirt” and reminded us that we should never be too proud/embarrassed to do so. (Of course knowing me, I’d be too busy taking photographs to even consider pride/embarrassment).

It was so much fun to see everyone again!

Pascal, me, Naeema, Clark.

Naeema, Kuljit, Jeff and Rita.

Nancy, Naeema and Gloria.

We ate at the Elephant Bar afterwards. We went there all the time last year. It’s got to be the best food in the East Bay.

Naeema and I agreed that we’d pay for the desserts and numerous Pina Coladas, as Rita was always paying for our food last year.
Rita was insisting she pay, so I discreetly handed the waitress my credit card, only to be informed moments later (again!) in front of the whole table that there appeared to be a problem with my card.
Naeema quickly stepped in, handing the waitress her card to
save me from further embarrassment. We returned to sipping on our
delicious drinks, until moments later when the waitress returned
again, this time telling Naeema there was a problem with HER card.

We ended up finding enough cash between us (most of mine was in
quarters due to the subway change machine..) to pay. Rita was feeling terrible for us both by then, convinced this was our first meal in a long time. Neither Naeema nor I were sure why our cards wouldn’t work, but we knew there was money in them!

Naeema eventually resolved the issue with her bank; her card wasn’t set up to work outside of LA. But mine remained unresolved..

I brought Naeema to see the cooler parts of San Francisco and we did a bunch of shopping in Castro (the gay district).

Sunday 22nd July - While on the theme of finding old friends, I shot an e-mail to my Silicon Valley friends (Deirdre and Wes) from last year. They happened to be at their beach house on Sunday, and told me to come down right away.
So I hopped on a bus (actually, 3 buses and two trains..) and headed south.

I used to go yachting with these guys on weekends last year; they REALLY know how to live!

I absolutely love their yacht club and all of its members.
Those of you who know me know I’m NOT a fan of dressing up, mainly because I feel it goes hand-in-hand with bullshit. One of the best things about the Californian yacht clubs is how casual they
are. Even though they’re all multi-millionaires, the members are totally down to earth and it’s all about Hawaiian shirts, good food, wine and having fun!

It was very foggy along the coast on this occasion so that hindered sailing time but these guys don’t need to leave the harbour to have a ball! They put on Irish music and Deirdre and I taught them all some Irish dancing… though neither of us can actually dance.
Thankfully none of the Americans had seen Riverdance and decided we must be the experts!

It was overall a very relaxing few days. We leisurely explored the coast and though the fog made all photos dull, I still got a couple of cool shots here and there. Keep an eye on my Flickr account as I’ll be uploading them to there.

\

We went to a Mexican warehouse on the seafront which has anything you can think of, very very cheap. I purhcased a large box of breakfast cereal for 79c.. It tastes a lot like cheap cardboard but I really shouldn’t complain at that price! (EDIT: I think it makes me sick too.. but still, SO cheap!)
I also picked up lots of unusual t-shirts for a few dollars each.

Deirdre also managed to get us tickets for the US Open Series Tennis
Tournament which was taking place at Stanford University.

Here are a few photos to keep my male and lesbian readers (hey, I can’t go leaving anyone out now!) interested:

After all of that shopping and event attending, we needed a relaxing break so we went to Deirdre’s private Decathlon Club where we played tennis, sunbathed, swam, used the jacuzzis, saunas, etc.

Afterwards we hit the town for more Pina Coladas.
Deirdre, like me, understands the importance of skipping boring dinner and going straight for dessert, so that’s what we did, after a few cocktails of course..

I was also taken to some great second-hand/charity stores around the region where I managed to pick up a SILICON VALLEY MONOPOLY BOARD!!
Those who know me well will know how cool this is to me. I LOVE monopoly and particularly love collecting boards from different locations, and I’ve never even seen the Silicon Valley version on Ebay!

Deirdre ended up giving me a board she had at her house too, another version I didn’t previously have:

Friday July 27 - Went to the San Jose Grand Prix.
Upon arrival, I wandered into a quiet park to make a phone-call to locate Deirdre. I noticed people sitting on a large pair of dice in front of me, and after reading the notice, realised I was standing on the world’s largest monopoly board!

The Grand Prix was too noisy to successfully make contact with Deirdre so I started to walk around the track and ended up bumping into her after a few minutes as I walked past one of the worst corners of the track. For me, corners are the only place to stand when attending the Grand Prix, but Deirdre was standing
on the wrong side of the corner..

I kept the camera in my hand long enough to get this pic - note car facing wrong direction - then decided to safely pack the camera away.

I led her to a more interesting area (and an even better corner!) where I got into the pitstops, etc last year.

Luck was on our side and for the second year running, I got into the
building where the teams were housed.

I can’t say enough good things about all of the Grand Prix guys! I deserved to be told where to go for being cheeky enough to get photos like this, but they were completely welcoming at all times and only more than willing to talk about the cars, engines, etc, even though they were very busy.

I also got into the pitstops!

Then I brought Deirdre to the best (or worst?) corner on the track. They put up a lot more barrier this year so that made it more difficult when it came to photos but we got to see a few crashes, and also caught the BMW series racing from one of the Grand Stands (which we also shouldn’t have been in..).

(whoops!)

The best thing about the track is that it’s under San Jose International Airport’s flight path so while I couldn’t get any good shots of the fast-passing cars, I got some pretty cool aircraft shots!

After more Pina Coladas and good food, I decided it was time for me to head back to SF.

Due to issues with my useless credit card, I ended up having to catch the Greyhound (rather than train) back to San Francisco, via Oakland.. at night..

I think I need to ride the Greyhound from time-to-time to remind me of why I absolutely shouldn’t ride the Greyhound.

Deirdre was concerned about me getting it alone at night (if she only knew..) and while I was in line to board, I noticed her talking to the Persian driver.. in Persian…
She got him to pre-board me so I’d have the front seat, telling him I was her daughter and she was very worried about me taking my first trip alone.

While D was talking to the driver, a young girl (about 16/17) approached and asked when the bus would arrive at a stop which the bus had passed about 3 hours earlier.. I assumed she must have fallen asleep.
The driver then asked the other passengers on board if anyone else had been looking for that stop and suddenly everyone at the back of the bus came forward.. I guess the driver hadn’t called the stop or something and all ended up a long way from their destination in the middle of the night!

It was good for me though because it immediately halved the amount of freaks and creeps on board hence dramatically increasing my chances of survival.

As the bus was about to pull off, a young guy (about 20) came on board and decided he was sitting next to me. I’m NEVER normally rude but this was Greyhound at night! I told him to go sit elsewhere as I wanted to sleep but he refused to move. I asked him where he was going (hoping he’d get off at the next stop) and he told me he didn’t know. He had GLUE all over his nose! He gave me a
rose which I immediately gave back to him. He sniffed it and got a petal stuck to his nose. He then broke all of the other petals off and put them on my lap because I had “upset him”. He went off to the Greyhound’s toilet (shiver) with the petal still on his nose and returned to the front about 20 minutes later. I had of course moved by then to the seat across the aisle (directly behind the
driver), and Mr Rose Petal couldn’t work out what happened to me. All that remained on the seat were the petals. Failing to glance across the aisle, he gathered up his petals and moved to the
back of the bus, mumbling something about my leaving to himself..

The journey was fine after that and the bus wasn’t even shot at in Oakland!

I was very awake when I eventually got home and started checking online for flights for my upcoming travels. I found an EXCELLENT deal and jumped at the chance of going to a destination I didn’t think I’d ever get to. I picked the perfect seats on board the aircraft and was all set to go.
Then I got informed that my credit card was “not authorised to be used by my bank”. By this point I had enough!
I had told my dad to make sure there was enough money in it, (which
there was) and he spoke to the bank in Ireland a number of times and they said the card should be working fine. I had been assuming it was the places I was making purchases rather than the card that was the problem.

I tried to book similar flights with a couple of other airlines, and all
came back with the same problem.
I sent BOI an angry e-mail in the heat of the moment, asking them what the hell was going on with the “useless piece of plastic that is unnecessarily weighing down my pocket”.

When I purchased my MacBook on July 9th, Apple had to call Bank of Ireland and get me to speak to them, to get approval/permission to use my card! (And there was me thinking credit cards were for purchasing stuff on..)
Apparently it was a security measure due to my being overseas. The guy at Apple told me a horror story of where this had happened before and the bank had ‘locked’ the person’s card, assuming it had been stolen.
When I thought about it, I realised the card hadn’t actually worked since the July 9 purchase!

I e-mailed my dad telling him the situation, and luckily he happened to be online and was able to connect me through Skpye to Bank of Ireland, where I was able to argue with a human, rather than taking my anger out through e-mail. The ‘human’ at the other end of the line told me my card had indeed been locked because I had made purchases at blacklisted companies. I asked her what companies these were, and she told me ‘The Apple Store’. I hadn’t realised I was dealing with a shower of crooks when I purchased my MacBook.. Good job BOI were looking out for me, eh?!

She said they should have told me over the phone when I spoke to them at Apple that they would be unauthorising my card, but they didn’t. She told me I should have let them know I was leaving the country. (Surely after speaking to them from the Apple store and correctly answering all of my card’s secret questions, that was good enough..?!)

They didn’t mention it to my dad on the numerous occasions since, when he visited the bank checking what was up with my card. She told me the bank doesn’t have access to this information.. Only HQ does.
They also failed to send a letter to let me know what was going on. This from the bank who send a pile of junk-mail DAILY!

The BOI rep brought my card back to life after too long on the phone answering stupid questions, and the following day, I managed to book my flights. But not the same flights I originally had and I lost the window seat on my outbound flight so I can only hope I’ll be able to get it back when I get to the airline’s gate on departure.

It took FIVE days for BOI to my highly amusing (in hindsight) angry e-mail. They thanked me for e-mailing and signed it off with “Many thanks for bringing these issues to our attention”.
Not even an apology!

On Aug 2 in the mail to my Irish address, I finally received a two-page apology from the bank telling me their security measures had caused the card to be shut down and they should have informed me, etc. It wasn’t really an apology though so much as a shifting of blame to the criminals who make purchases at companies such as Apple..

Sunday July 29th - After too long living the good life, I found myself back wandering through the Mission, seeking a cheap, filling burrito.

Sunday Afternoon Preaching at BART..

As I walked the block from BART to the Mexican place, I passed two guys on the sidewalk with a coat hanger attempting to break into a car.. in the broad daylight..
They were completely useless at it and probably didn’t have a hope of actually opening the door unless they drunkingly fell through it, but I decided on this occasion to report it to police. I turned around to walk back to the BART station where the police usually are and got
about three steps when the doors of the local store burst open and one of the local alco-homeless guys tumbled out onto the sidewalk, beneath a bunch of men.

I recognised him as this guy:

The week before, I had helped him to purchase some food at the Mexican place. I decided that was the best way to avoid him hassling me to give him some of MY food. (They’re inclined to stand over you while you eat, waiting for your leftovers..)

Typically, he went and bought cheap Mexican beer and by the time I got to sit down, he had fallen asleep into his food!

Today though, he had somehow managed to steal what seemed like half of the alcohol in the shop and the customers and store owner were determined to get it back.
It really looked like some of them had been waiting for the opportunity to beat the crap out of someone.
They wrestled him on the sidewalk and cans were rolling out of his trouser legs and there were a bunch inside his coat too!
I’d have filmed the whole thing but the other two idiots were a few feet behind me, still trying to break into the car and I decided they’d probably go for the camera instead if they saw it.

Some other passers by came on the fight and assumed this poor old guy was being randomly attacked, so they got involved and started pulling the mob off him. He was eventually let free and stumbled back to the BART station. I came across him again a while later getting drunk on someone else’s beer.

And typically, there were no police anywhere in sight..

Monday July 30- It was a hot afternoon and Orlaith dragged me to the top the Oakland Hills to an outdoor swimming pool. I was VERY over the novelty of it by the time I got to the top but I eventually realised it was worth the hike.
When we got into the pool, a young Irish man approached us, welcoming Orlaith and I to the “non-working Irish club”. I then realised pretty much everyone there was Irish. I guess they’ve spent the summer sunbathing, playing ball in the pool and swimming!

Orlaith and I are very sorry we didn’t discover this lifestyle sooner!

Tuesday July 31- Spent the afternoon planespotting/sunbathing in San Jose, got some awesome pics which will be appearing very soon on flickr. It was a
long day and after the bus/bus/train/bus journey back to SF, all I wanted was to get back to the base to sleep.

I boarded the bus that takes me to the island. Behind me, the usual gang of troublesome guys boarded and as always, one of them showed a transfer (ticket) from the previous day. For a change the bus driver didn’t accept this. I think he was pissed off and how these guys skipped the line (which always happens too). The rest of us line up for 20 minutes, then these guys push in front of everyone and board the bus without bothering to pay, and everyone is too afraid to say anything to them.

There were quite a few guys together and the driver wasn’t exactly sure which one showed him the invalid ticket so he told whoever it was to come to the front of the bus and pay.

Things got out of the hand, the guy wasn’t willing to pay, and the
driver called the police.
Everyone was yelling at the guys to go up and pay and stop delaying us all. My main concern was that I had just purchased ice-cream and it was now melting in my bag.

When the police arrived, the driver got off the bus to speak to them.
At this point, one of the group of idiots pointed out that the driver had left the bus running and had disembarked. He started making jokes about how he would drive the bus across the bay
bridge, etc..
It got entirely out of hand and the police suddenly stormed the back of the bus through the back door without warning, knocking the people who were standing at the back entrance. They removed the problematic passengers and we finally (after over 30 minutes!) embarked on our journey. We were given police escort all the way (a cop car in front of us and one behind us) and the police got out and stood by the door every time passengers got off the bus.

My ice-cream was very liquidy by the time I finally got home!

Wednesday 1st August - I embarked on a morning expedition to take photos around the base.
I’ve been unsure whether or not I could take photos here.

It’s definitely not okay to take photos on the base.

In the evening, I brought Orlaith out to see my current location. I
was figuring if there are two of us that look like big Irish tourists,
we’d get away with photos and wandering.

I was right. We found the coolest little hidden beach very close to my
house and then followed trails/passages through the trees, up along the hills, to get some very cool scenic photos.

‘X’ marks the spot..

I was kinda concerned about passing through so many “restricted access” areas but I asked a guy we met along the way and rather than telling us to stop, he gave us directions to the best places to get photos! And who am I to question some random guy?!

Much of the island is very Lost-like, and they have shot a few films here.

Thursday August 2nd - I got a two-person pass to the premier/press screening of ‘Underdog’ tonight so I brought Orlaith along with me. I enjoyed it quite a lot actually. Superman fans will particularly like!

Coming back on the bus tonight, there was a record producer on board and a young guy decided to use this as his occasion to showcase his rapping skills in the hope of getting the producer’s backing. He stood at the front of the bus and asked people to throw topics at him which he would free-style about.
It made the journey highly amusing. He was given all kinds of topics from spirituality to homosexuality to the environment to Iraq, and he free-styled on them all.
Though I hate rap, it’s moments like that which make me love the Bay Area. At the end of the journey, the producer took his name and number and asked him to call by his studio tomorrow.

I’ll leave you with a couple of random pictures.

This is one of the local Mission characters who TOLD me to take his photo one evening recently while I was trying to be as discreet as possible with my camera to photograph a proper Mexican Cowboy/Ranchero.

This one was taken at Muddy Waters Cafe in the Mission District, on Valencia and 24th. These two old guys meet there daily to hang up their hats and chat, play cards, monopoly, argue, etc, all over a cup of coffee of course..
When I took this photo, they were discussing an Irish man who cheated them out of their lotto winnings. It was one of the more amusing conversations I’ve overheard recently. “All of them Irish are the same… Cheats.. Crooks..”
I decided to stay right out of that one..

I took this one on the day of the pride parade.

A homeless couple in the Tenderloin, NOT soaking up the fun atmosphere.
I have quite a few (what I consider) great captures of homeless people here but I usually avoid posting them as they tend to bring up the whole “exploitation” argument, which I’m not interested in getting into.
The way it tends to work here is you give the people a couple of dollars and have a chat with them before/after taking their photo. You listen to their story and they’re only more than willing to let you take their picture. That takes the exploitation element out of it for me, and I prefer to have a story behind the picture anyway.

And here’s my current favourite.

Don’t ask! Just appreciate the view…

And surely I don’t need to plug myself any more times.. You know where to see more photos by now!

(flickr…)

Drugs.. drugs.. more drugs..

It’s been a while because I try to avoid updating in real time. People like a happy ending, and I like to provide one. I don’t want to make an entry on a day where I will end up leaving people worried about me (mainly family - “where is she moving to NOW???”), so I prefer to write everything in hindsight when I know the outcome.

I spent most of last week house hunting for my permanent location for the rest of the summer. All of my searching was conducted through craigslist , which is a bible for the Bay Area.

You have to REALLY read between the lines before accepting
anything on craigslist. The site attracts quite the er… wide range of people. Feel free to check out the ‘personals’ section to see what I mean (not for kids!).

I placed numerous ads requesting drug and pervert-free housing. I received many responses offering me rooms at ‘smoke free-420 friendly’ houses.. Uhh, slight contradiction there guys!

While I don’t really have a problem with other people smoking/getting high/etc, I have no desire to live in a house of potheads who may pawn my belongings to buy drugs…..

It’s not just drugs that are a problem in San Francisco. Diverse cities attract… diverse people.. (i.e. freaks)

Here’s one of the many odd replies I received:

Hi there, I have a great Live work Loft in [city centre area]. I propose to share it for free with a nice Woman. You sound perfect.
The Place is as follows:
When you walk in there is a computer nook and then a big leather
couch. Then two closets and quite a bit of storage space than a good sized studio room, it is big enough for 12 people when we play poker.
Then there is a ladder to the upstairs sleeping loft.
The place has Wood floors, Exposed brick Walls, Historic, ceiling fan, View, Great location.
I am a single guy and was hoping to find a nice girl like you who would be interested in sharing with a nice guy.
I don’t need rent. I just thought it would be nice to find the right person to share with.

How could I possibly pass up on a rent-FREE deal like this???! And he wasn’t even asking for chores to be conducted in the nude!

He included his first name and phone number with his response. From this, I was immediately able to locate his address, court records, details of the last job he worked, prison release date…

The first site his address brought up was “A Rare Selection Escort Service for Adults in San Francisco”.

I was also able to locate his ads where he offers FREE massages to
women! What a guy!

I’ll spare him the potential embarrassment and not link to his ads here.. [email me for all the dirt!!]

I didn’t view his place..
I did view a number other places though, which passed my initial background checks. Going into random strangers’ homes is always fun!

I met one very interesting guy in his early 40s called Hardy who lives in the Mission district, which is where I lived last year.
Hardy made a lot of money in Silicon Valley and now he’s writing a fictional novel based on his experiences in the financial sector of a big technology company. He’s almost finished and will soon start submitting to publishers. The room at his place was perfect and he seemed like a nice guy, but unfortunately the landlord would only offer a 6 month lease.

It was the same story for most other places I viewed. No-one was keen on having to spend days showing rooms to people through craigslist again in a couple of months time, when they could find someone who would move in longer term.

I did manage to find somewhere, and I move to that location tomorrow. All I can say at this stage is it most definitely appears to be safe.
Safe as in, you go through a security checkpoint to enter the base..

I checked out the place we lived in last year too, still standing. We occupied the apartment which takes up the bottom right, from the corner to the window above the door.

I don’t think I realised just HOW central that location was at the time!

July 4

The fourth of July was pretty mellow. I was kind of exhausted following a few very long days so just hung out at the Wharf. There were a group in from Oakland who were using the closed streets to their advantge, performing dance-offs against a crowd (gang?!) from Richmond.

I didn’t bring my good camera out with me so didn’t get any good fireworks shots unfortunately.

It took me two hours to get home after the fireworks, it would normally take 15/20 minutes max.
MUNI weren’t running the streetcars but put buses on their lines, just very few buses for the thousands of people who were on the Wharf.
It would’ve been much easier to walk back to the city, but it was getting late and people were being really stupid with illegal fireworks, so I chose not to.
BART was also horribly overcrowded, much worse than I remember it being last year.

July 5

On Thursday, I checked out the band Earth who were playing a free gig at Amoeba, the fantastic record store on Haight Street (where the 60s ‘happened’).

‘Earth’ is fronted by Dylan Carlson, (AKA the guy who bought a gun for Kurt Cobain to kill himself with..)

Sadly, I didn’t recognise Dylan at all as the guy I had last seen on TV a couple of years ago.

Kids, don’t do heroin!

The show was totally instrumental - the music was great! - but I found it thoroughly depressing.
I love the music but grunge is best left dead.

There were only a handful of people there, and all were typical early-90s Seattle guys, stuck in time.

I was reminded of Buzz Osborne of The Melvins telling me that anyone from the scene who wanted to survive has long since left rainy Seattle and its heroin-fueled music scene to live in sunny LA.

I decided to walk away from the after show meet-and-greet session; it felt too much like exploitation of Carlson for my liking.

Breaking away from the heroin scene, I stopped in the busy doorway of Amoeba to safely return my camera to my backpack before heading out onto Haight Street.
I was immediately approached by a well-dressed but slightly haggard-faced woman in her late 40s. She looked very out of place in hippy Haight.
She asked me what type of camera I had, which caused alarm bells to ring in my head. I made sure my bag was as fastened as possible before answering her. I half told her the make, sizing her reaction, and it was very apparent she knew nothing about cameras, nor cared.
I asked her if she was interested in photography and she gave me some story about her friend being really into it and that she was intending to start a class. We talked a little more, while I tried to figure what her agenda was. (Let me be clear here, it is VERY normal for random strangers - mainly aging hippies - to have conversations with you in Haight-Ashbury).

Normally in conversation, people tend to ask me what my accent is, or what brings me to America.. She didn’t. She asked me if I knew the Haight area well, and I told her briefly about the gig I had just attended in Amoeba. She knew nothing about music..

She stepped a little closer to me and I got the “hey listen, I don’t usually do this but..” line. She opened her handbag which
contained a dealer’s dream; drug paraphernalia AND a great range of drugs!
Thankfully she didn’t try to sell me heroin or cocaine, instead
taking out two small bags of hash and attempting to place them in my hand so I could feel the weight.

I immediately backed away thinking ‘police sting operation’ (I probably watch ‘Cops’ too much..) and glanced around, neither wanting to draw attention in case police presumed I WAS buying off her, nor wanting any of her packages to touch my hands.
I told her I wasn’t interested in buying but she need not look far for customers…. (Literally two feet away there were three buskers sitting on the sidewalk smoking weed.. yet she approached me!)

I told her I was surprised she couldn’t smell the weed, it’s the most plentiful aroma in the Haight district!
I asked her if she had been dealing for long, and she told me she had never done it before but she needed the money and that it was a
one-off…
I hope it was, ‘cause customer scouting clearly isn’t her strong point!

The whole episode was a little too ironic for my liking..

July 8

On Sunday, I decided to go somewhere on the ferry. I met Orlaith at the Embarcadero and we caught a ferry to Tiburon, via Angel Island.

We definitely have to have a picnic on Angel Island. It looks incredibly cool!

I had passed through Tiburon on bus last year, but always got distracted by nearby San Quentin Prison, so this was my first time
actually visiting the quaint little town. It’s incredibly picturesque, in a way that’s near impossible to capture on camera.

Gotta have a white picket fence!

Don’t you love when people build houses like this in an earthquake zone?!

The ferry provided some cool Bay views too, like Alcatraz from an alternative angle:

And fog rolling in over the bridge, as usual..

And this one’s for Cathy:

We both briefly worked for the company that rents these bikes out last year! The joy… (not!)

I was on the bike-crowded evening ferry back to San Francisco when my landlord-to-be, Israel, called me. He works as a doorman at the best venues for all of the big concerts around the city. He told me that if I could make it to the Warfield venue as quickly as possible with my passport (as ID), he could get me into a very exclusive corporate gig with bands such as the Black Crowes playing.

I don’t normally carry my passport with me for fear of it being
stolen, so I emarked on a MAD rush across the city. I ran from the ferry to the streetcar stop, and waited 15 minutes for a streetcar to pull up. I was considering flagging a taxi but with traffic being
so slow, and me having a pass for public transport, it seemed like a big waste of money, and I was hoping the streetcar would pull up at any second..
I was delighted to finally see a streetcar approach, but not so delighted to see some sort of difficulty on board. There was a young
man lost within a hoodie refusing to disembark the streetcar. Two female drivers were attempting to remove him and things were getting out of hand so the police were called. There’s only one track, so no other cars could pull up at the stop.
I decided to run to the next stop hoping to catch a car there.

Luckily I caught up with one ahead. Unluckily, some guy caused the backdoor of the car to jam as he disembarked and the driver would not pull off until it was functioning normally. He removed all of the passengers (including Orlaith and I) from the car and attempted to fix the door. I waited about ten minutes before I could take no more.

(Orlaith and I seem to jinx public transport in this city..)

I flagged a taxi to get me to BART as quickly as possible.
Though cheaper than expected, I was still annoyed at wasting $10 of what I would’ve potentially spent at the gig that night because people don’t know how to exit streetcars!

I made it back to the venue, over an hour and 45 minutes after receiving the phonecall telling me to come immediately! Due to being so late, I encountered difficulty at the door, and the staff wouldn’t believe I was on the guestlist!
Luckily Israel happened to come to the front door and sorted me out with my access-all-areas pass!

I entered the gig, complete with free bar/free food (and VERY good food too!), which was being held for the All Star baseball players that were playing a big game in San Francisco on Tuesday night. It was incredibly cool, and I stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all of the baseball guys! There seemed to be very few females there anyway, and I didn’t even have my SF Giants baseball cap on (for a change)!
After a while avoiding being hit on by random men, I got chatting to a nice guy called Pete, a software programmer, who was there for similar reasons to me. His friends work for Budweiser, who sponsored the event. I ended up spending the night hanging out with the Budweiser guys, and had a great time! The bands were fantastic and it was very cool to be at such an exclusive event with so few people (I couldn’t complain about the free food or drink either!)..

July 9

And now onto another type of drug..

On Monday, I somewhat spontaneously decided I couldn’t wait any longer and needed to purchase a MacBook. Thanks to Kent for much help and advice.. And troubleshooting..

I have no idea how I survived being computerless for so long!

Since then, I haven’t really done a whole bunch.. Well, other than spending a LOT of time in Apple (even more than usual) attending various tutorials. (There’s no point attempting to conceal my geekiness!)
I guess I don’t need to feel so embarrassed about spending so much time there now, I’ve paid my membership for a while!

I’ve been video-chatting a lot! I think it’s very reassuring for the family at home to see that I actually am alive and well.

My current favourite thing about San Francisco is unsecure wireless networks which appear to be EVERYWHERE. I’m talking under the bay
bridge, on any of the beaches, at the Marina, Embarcadero, all of the piers, random sidewalks, and of course every cafe, etc too! It beats me why anyone would pay for Internet in this city. So far, anywhere I’ve tried to connect, I’ve been successful!

I spent this evening at the Aquatic Park (near Alcatraz) using a connection called “VERY SLOW NETWORK!!!” which.. well.. wasn’t at all slow! Off-putting names aren’t enough to protect your network against people like me!

July 12

A different form of surfing takes place at Ocean Beach!

(oh, that’s my anti-sand deflector..)

A reason other than plane-spotting to lie on the beach! (yeah.. sunbathing really isn’t my thing..)

July 13

Friday the 13th wasn’t unlucky for me, but was for some. After a day attending Apple tutorials, I was walking along Market and sixth (bad area) when a leather-clad man in his 20s with a huge Mohawk almost ran through me.
Seconds later, he was knocked to the ground by two police officers who were in pursuit. He loudly proclaimed his innocence as the officers cuffed him on the sidewalk, with a large crowd watching. They searched him and quickly removed a BIG package of what appeared to be cocaine from the inside pocket of his studded jacket.

He quickly told them it was not what it looked like, and again reminded them of his innocence. They asked him what exactly was in the package and he very humorously tried to convince them it was hair wax. He offered/begged to rub it into his hair as proof, but they didn’t seem too convinced.. :/

I attended this event yesterday evening:

The Making of ‘Cotton’
Discover the magic of the Mississippi Delta Blues as independent film director Michael Afendakis shares excerpts and stories from his documentary, Cotton, capturing the life and influence of musician Chris Cotton. After Michael’s presentation, don’t miss a very special live acoustic guitar performance by Chris Cotton himself.

He’s a very talented musician.
The crew gave lots of technical info which was cool (equip used, etc), but were unwilling to disclose any financial details. When asked how they funded it, the producer answered “With US Dollars…They’re very important to get a doc off the ground”..

So tomorrow, I relocate for the.. fourth time (?) since I got here. It’s been over three weeks, and my aim in life is still to unpack!

Maybe soon..

Keep an eye on Flickr for many more photos, including higher resolution versions of the above when I get the chance.

Fame

Today I’ve learned a very important lesson.

One must never be presumptuous.

Last year, living in the Mexican district of San Francisco (the Mission),
Cathy, the boys and I would regularly consume Burritos from our local food place.

The Mission is as Mexican as it gets. It’s pretty rare to find English anywhere.

In Ireland, we are not taught Spanish. I studied French and
German, but picked up a few Spanish words here and there
over time. For example, I knew that ‘mañana’ is one of their most popular words. I also knew that ‘carne de vaca’ was ‘beef’.

I was only too happy to translate the menu at the Mexican take-out for my house-mates.

I assured all that the three words appearing on the menu before
‘beef’ were ‘roast’, ‘grilled’ and uhh… ‘fried’. Today I learned
otherwise.

An English-speaker has started working there. He’s translated the menu.. to “Beef tongue”, ‘Beef head meat” and “Beef brain”.

So uhh… sorry about that guys! But at least I helped you to experience something you might not have otherwise experienced!

And hey, I was almost still experiencing it right up to today!

So to pick up where I last left off;

Talking to a webcam outside Apple..

I also made it into the ‘pissed people’ video (scroll to third video, the one with the guy being smacked in the face) which is in Gizmodos Top 5! Woohoo!

We were pissed because Apple, which provides free internet, was closing early in order to prepare for the iPhone release.

Thanks to my favourite airline pilot Kent (go check out his site - it’s an order!) for sourcing the videos!

The line was getting more humorous throughout the day.

It KILLED Orlaith and I that we hadn’t thought to do this;

That’s SPOT, not POT, like 90% of those around her thought..

I won’t mention how much people got for selling their places as it’s sickening, but I sure could’ve done with that $300 to $1200!

Needing a break, I headed to Fisherman’s Wharf for a bit
with Orlaith. I walked her towards the Golden Gate bridge, but didn’t
want to miss Apple re-opening so we didn’t get far.

I was fretting because time was getting tight. We were standing at the
streetcar stop in the Wharf when a stretch limo pulled up. The rather insane but hilarious driver got out and approached, telling us that only the homeless ride streetcars and they can give you nits so he’d do us a deal. He’d bring us wherever we wanted to go for $5.

I decided to take the risk of getting brutally murdered and dumped in the bay at Hunters Point to make it to Apple on time.

It was worth the risk. A couple from Santa Barbara joined us in the limo.
They had to tip more because “people from SB are rich”..

He also told us he could fit 25 Japanese into the back of the limo ” ‘cause they have small asses”, compared to only two Texans!

We pulled up outside Apple and I had my camera around my neck. I walked into the middle of the press line (2nd row!) and started taking
pictures.

(Work for the associated press? High quality originals and eye witness account of FIRST iPHONE PURCHASE* available for a small fee!!) *in SF..

NBC were parked outside the store since Thursday afternoon, yet somehow managed to miss the exclusive by sitting in their truck when the Apple doors opened..

When they saw what they were missing (a few minutes after the main excitement), their reporter tried to move me (star of Gizmodo’s top 5 video) out of my position!

It was pretty late when I got home on Friday, after hours hanging around Apple (it was open until midnight). My phone was
dead so I put it on charge in the living room and eventually worked up
the energy to take a relaxing shower. The water was running less than 5 minutes when everything went dark.

Now I usually quite enjoy power outages; locating and lighting candles, making shadows on
the wall, playing the guitar.. There’s a novelty factor.
This occasion was not a novelty. Try navigating your way around a
house you’ve lived in for a couple of days in TOTAL darkness, without
even so much as a phone or an outside light source. And my cellphone comes equipped with a built-in torch but the battery was dead!

I eventually made my way back to the living room and located the
couch (I’m even more proud of my navigation skills now than
previously!), and I slept until the power came back. I managed to catch
the local news airing me in all my “exiting Apple” glory, but couldn’t record because the VCR re-set itself and went into a weird mode!


Saturday

It was morning. I was on Market Street. I went for a walk. I kept going.

It was windy!

No longer satisfied at ground level..

“Vertigo” fans will recognise this location.

I’m happy to certify that it is structurally sound.

And going…

I found THE coolest place on earth to sit and couldn’t get my head around why no-one else had climbed up to my new-found spot.

After a few hours sitting on a giant former tree stump overlooking the bay, I made my way back down to more solid ground and met a professional photographer called Steve. He had the most AMAZING 30-second sunset and night exposures of the bridge. Unfortunately he doesn’t do the flickr thing, but he spends all of his time shooting the bridge from the surrounding hilltops so I’ll get his e-mail next time!

I asked him why no-one was shooting from where I had been sitting, and he pointed me to the numerous ‘no entry’ signs..

When I got back to solid ground, I noticed all of the old military bunkers and tunnels in my not-at-all natural hilltop..

I kept on walking, exploring many of the old abandoned buildings as I went, and also accidentally ending up on the roof of one huge building, which provided great views of the bridge.

I was so busy watching for and avoiding poison oak all day that I completely forgot about sunblock. It was VERY windy at my elevation and quite cold so I didn’t notice I was being burned.

I eventually turned back, but only when my camera battery was completely flat and my 1GB and 256MB cards were full..

I got home after 9pm, completely exhausted. By 9.30pm, I was ill. I felt
very, very hot, weak, dizzy and generally burned out. I presumed it was
due to walking and climbing and hiking so many miles. I fell into a
deep sleep and woke up sometime around 5am, sick.

Caught a glimpse of my VERY tomato-like head in the mirror at some point and realised I had sunstroke. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after last year..

It took until later to realise I was very dopey and confused. Over night, I didn’t have the energy to get up, let alone do anything about it.

Sunday

I decided I couldn’t waste my Sunday being sick so somehow forced myself to go to Church. No, I wasn’t on some kind of medication-related trip. And I haven’t suddenly found strong faith and religious determination in the USA.

It’s Glide.

Located in the heart of the Tenderloin, it’s the coolest Church I know. Very different to Catholic Mass in Ireland.

Cathy and I attended last year. It’s not for everyone, but she ‘got it’ as much as I did.

For me, it’s about the music. The Glide Ensemble (top quality jazz) are good enough to make me sit through a 2-hour service any day, which says a lot.

This week, a gay and lesbian couple had their shared baby christened.



And a photo from last year:




I didn’t have the energy to do much else on Sunday, which kind
of killed me.. I HATE losing a day, doing nothing. It doesn’t
matter if I was here for the next 20-years, I’d still find it very
difficult to stay still and be lazy and not experience something worthwhile or interesting.

To make myself feel better about my laziness, I purchased my monthly transport pass for July so there’s no stopping me now. Free to get on any form of transport anywhere around here.. MUNI must hate passengers like me!

This morning was tied up with job-related stuff. I spent the afternoon and evening at the Aquatic park, cargo-ship watching. I had
intentions of taking many ‘bridge at sunset’ photos but didn’t take
any. I got quite a few 747s overhead though!

I made the local news again.. though I haven’t watched for myself yet. This morning, I got “captured” entering and boarding BART.

I guess I’m becoming kind of used to the fame.. After a while, you stop bothering to catch up with yourself. Turn on the TV.. Oh, there I am again! Meh.. I can always look in the mirror!

Hmm.. Wonder when I start earning that price of fame everyone always talks about..?

Appleitus

Moved for the THIRD time in 5 days on Tuesday evening. I’m living at
Kelley’s at the moment. She’s away on a business trip so I’m house-sitting. It’s SO wonderful to get peace and quiet and time to write and a proper bed (as great as Orlaith’s partially inflated air bed was!).

There are pros and cons to living out of a suitcase. I can’t remember
the pros right now so I’ll focus on the cons.

After day 2, it’s like a black hole evolves somewhere below the second layer of clothes and items you know you packed start to
disappear. These are sure to re-surface about two months down the road, and no amount of searching will make them turn up any sooner.

No matter how carefully you pack liquid items, something is sure to
leak. This time it’s been a black pen on my favourite light blue
jeans. I’m attempting to pass the massive black/purple stain off as fashion.

Oh, one pro that comes to mind is the homeless stop asking you for
quarters when they see you constantly emerging out of BART hopelessly dragging your life behind you on wheels.

About 70 seconds after moving in, Kelley and I left for her caving
meeting in Menlo Park (not the one in Galway). It takes place at the
USGS (Earthquake Hazards HQ).

They showcased an awesome fly-through video of a cave in Germany which was created from hundreds of photographs stitched together.

Most of the members are seismologists and they were showcasing photos from their treks to caves all over the US (and some in Europe).

I glanced to behind me during the meeting to notice a guy greatly
resembling Langly [far left] of the Lone Gunmen (X-Files) knitting a large square (about 2 feet by 2) of.. knit..

The guy next to him was wearing his mining hat and shaving a metal
object with a blade.

Even still, I’m surprised how many long-haired men in their 60s in
home-made Hawaiian shirts and tie-dye socks exist in this part of
California, and how they all find groups such as this one.

Their last meeting was in Klamath Falls, Oregon (I’m sure I’ll have
told most of you of my experience of THERE!). Their tents took off in
the wind, with a miner attached..

The meeting was enjoyable and I love going to events like that, knowing most other students who come out here for the summer waste their time away drinking and sleeping. I’d like to go caving when I settle down more. Looks like there are some great photo opportunities.

Headed into town on Wednesday morning and had lunch with Orlaith at Bloomingdales. Afterwards, we were crossing Market street @ Powell and I was on my phone when some idiot walked flat into me (or maybe I walked into them..). Turns out it was Louise (she’s in my class, flew over with me from Ireland).
As big and all as SF is!

She was with Emir, they were trying to find the Golden Gate Bridge..
On Market Street.. I sent them off in the right direction and haven’t heard from either since..

Orlaith and I headed out to Ocean Beach. Getting there was an
adventure in itself. We got the MUNI Metro which has a habit
of being unreliable but is the only easy way to the beach.

It was running late and when it finally did arrive, was insanely over
crowded. Orlaith and I stood right up front beside the driver’s cab (the only space available). There was virtually no standing space so some people were standing on the steps, but placing weight on the steps causes the doors to open. After some minor commotion from the driver, we pulled off.

We were out near Church when Orlaith nudged me to look through the dark glass at the driver. I noticed he (a long white-haired guy in
his late 50s) was playing a game on his phone.. while driving..

The MUNI isn’t like BART which is completely automated. The MUNI
drivers must actually drive.

It didn’t take long before a guy who had earlier been “targeted” by
the driver for standing on the steps noticed the gaming and started
banging on the glass at the driver. Then some crazy drunk lady got up and started shouting at the driver, because she could.

The driver pulled the metro up in the middle of nowhere
and told everyone to get off. Of course nobody moved, not
realising he was serious, so he climbed out of his cab and abandoned the train. Then a bunch of guys ran after him asking what the hell he was doing.
People were either laughing or yelling.

I spotted another MUNI approaching on the line so Orlaith and I walked up to where it would stop, hoping to get on board before the crowd saw it.

The driver of that MUNI got out and started telling the other driver
that a “retarded ******* monkey would drive the damn thing better”
than he did.

Soon everyone had spotted the second train and they all jumped on
board an already over-crowded train.

The game-playing driver was refusing to move his metro, blocking the line for the second train, but eventually did. He got about two
blocks forward, then the police pulled him over.

Meanwhile everyone was arguing on board the metro we had now boarded because so many people had gotten on, it was difficult to breathe.
The driver got pissed off and after a few minutes, he pulled over and
made everyone get off!

It was like Groundhog Day. The whole episode was repeated, with the
driver of the train behind HIM getting out and yelling.

At this stage, a lot of people ended up just walking. Orlaith and I
squeezed onto the third train and others just stood there shaking
their heads. 2 hrs 15 minutes later, we got to Ocean Beach (which is just a few miles from the city..). I’ll be taking a leisurely walk there next time!

Loads of kite surfers, etc at the beach. And more interestingly (for me), many 747s passing straight overhead, nice and low.

It was a relaxing escape from the city for a few hours. We walked along Highway 1 (or maybe it was more I dragged Orlaith along Highway 1..) and I got some photos from the cliff top where the camera obscura is.

Yes, it’s a tennis ball.

We got a bus back to the city and headed our separate ways.

I was in the Mission afterwards going to the Cyber Cafe and I saw
another guy get hit by a car! This time it was a drunk Mexican and it
was quite humorous to watch, as he basically fell under the only moving car on Valencia street. The driver and a homeless guy dragged him off the road, threw him on some steps and yelled at him for a bit. They weren’t getting any response so the homeless guy started slapping him in the face. He eventually came back to life and started crying, saying “I’m a drunk, a drunk, a drunk..”

Thursday

Met Orlaith at the usual place (Apple). I was surprised to see people
were ALREADY queuing for iPhones.

They’re available from 6pm ‘til midnight tonight (Friday) so looking forward to watching other people buy what I wish I could buy.

Orlaith and I went to the zoo. The MUNI goes through Castro on the way so I dragged Orlaith along for an impromptu tour of the home of gayness. There’s an old movie house there that shows rare/old films. They’ve got a silent film festival coming up next week so we’ll check that out.

It was late by the time we got to the zoo so we got in for free, because we couldn’t see the person collecting money..

The animals are kept inside very low fences compared to Ireland, which is good for photos but a little concerning otherwise..

I headed back to the city and walked back past all of the nutters (sorry Kent!) queuing for the iPhone. They had now expanded quite a bit and a miniature golf course had been erected!

These guys move fast!

I got a slice of the best tasting food on earth, Cheesecake at the Cheesecake factory, and was heading back through the Mission when I passed the exact spot where the drunk was thrown the day before after falling under a car.

The guy was in EXACTLY the same position (lying sideways across some steps) and it looked like he hadn’t moved at all in between, except now he had a big cast on his leg and a zimmer frame thrown down beside him.. :/

Right now, I’m being dragged out of Apple which is closing until 6pm, when the iPhones become available.

I’m going back out to sit with the guys who are running a webcam on gizmodo.com, it’s the justin.tv one.

I’m wearing a green T-shirt and jeans and will be kneeling in front of the cam waving at the family back in Ireland.

Departing Berkeley..

I hate being out of touch with the news, both local and the news back home.  I have to get online to find out about the fires in Tahoe (where I have friends living), Chris Benoit killing his family and then himself??

I came upon a horrid accident yesterday; a man got hit by a car on the crosswalk in Berkeley, the car jumped the red light. I can’t find anything about it online, but the victim looked VERY dead. It was a very gruesome sight to witness, one which remained in my head for the rest of the day.

I went out in Haight-Ashbury with Louise and Emir last night. It was their first trip there. 

I took Orlaith up to Haight’s crazy clothing stores the other evening. We picked out stupid dresses for each other to try on and took photos of ourselves wearing them.

The gang I’m living with went out in Sunset - Irish area of SF - last night  so I missed them along the way. (I didn’t want to go out in the Irish district, too many Irish! Might as well be at home. Berkeley is like being at home sometimes too. As I walked to the internet cafe now, everyone I passed on the sidewalk was Irish.)

It was pretty late when I got back to Berkeley, had to change train at 12th Street Oakland (the joy!) and then had to embark on that 1.7 mile walk through dark back streets alone. I was very happy to see there were quite a few police cars around the place. The other girls have no idea how dodgy these places are for walking around at night. I don’t think you can warn anyone not to go to places like Richmond and West Oakland. I learned how bad they are by going there myself last year. No-one was going to tell me not to go. But at the same time, I consider myself more aware than a lot of people might be.

Two nights ago, Orlaith, Orla and I (yes, there are two of them..) got followed from the bar by two hicks. I had noticed them earlier in the night watching us in the bar and being paranoid, regularly look behind me as I walk. 

We stopped to see if they were actually following us, and they stopped too. We walked on, then Orla pretended to use her phone and they caught right up with us, waiting for us a few feet ahead. We doubled back and went around the back of the block and eventually lost them, mainly because they were very drunk/stoned and couldn’t keep up. 

I’m moving back to San Francisco this evening. I’ll be living right beside BART which is good. I’m going to spend the next few hours hanging around Berkeley.

I was very anti-Berkeley last year, mainly because of the high factor of Irish-ness. But it’s actually an alright place to live, just a little too spread out for my liking. For whatever reason, BART is a long walk from Telegraph street, where the action is. There’s a good laid back atmosphere and it’s been interesting to attend frat house parties, actually experiencing what it’s like to go to college here. It’s very innocent compared to college life in Ireland!

On Saturday night, we went to a party for a guy who’s joining the navy and a homeless guy managed to sneak in. He looked VERY like Mark Lanegan and had his whiskey in a brown paper bag (while all of the Irish openly slugged out of the bottle..). I think he was probably the only non-Irish person at the outdoor table. He came over to Orlaith and I and introduced himself as Sean O’Reilly. He went to shake Orlaith’s hand, then quickly retracted his hand when he saw hers, not liking what he was seeing I guess.. He eyed her suspiciously for a long time, while Orlaith asked him how he had such an Irish name. He asked her what her name was, then shook her hand, quickly brushing her germs off right afterwards. She told him he looked JUST like Liam Ó Maonlaí and he looked at her like she was completely nuts, rolled his eyes, shivered and quickly walked as far away from her as he could, shaking his head as he went..

He seemed to get on very well with everyone else at the party!

I think a lot/most of the Irish here have difficulties understanding the cultural differences between Ireland and America. It’s really not acceptable here to drink until you’re in a light coma (even the street people don’t do that)! Last year, the only question all of the J1ers wanted answered upon arrival at SFO was where would they buy fake ID…

Haha.. there’s a Hispanic guy at the counter of the Internet cafe where you pay for your internet usage and his bill is much higher than he expected it to be, so he’s trying to pay off his debt with a prescription for some kind of medication..

Everyone keeps asking me about Pride so here are a couple of pics. I can’t post most of them because they’re a tad.. inappropriate.

City Hall 

  With Pride comes much leather and nudity.

 This was my favourite costume by far.  

Until it got attacked…

And here’s a photo from the Captain’s seat on the 767-400 we flew to Atlanta on.

I’m going to stop writing now before I need to pay my bill off with some kind of drugs too!

Spending too much time in Apple drooling over things I should not buy.