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.
