sf kills me. 10 days in the land of fog and dudes brought my level of jadedness to a new high. i know im just being a hater. but i just couldn't resist making a comment about everything. stereotypes perpetuated themselves at every turn...and everyone embraced typecasting as a part of their liberal creedo. where do i even begin my rant??
i spent the first half of my trip downtown. hanging with checkered shirts and fitted khaki googlers. eating japanese american sushi and drinking moderately. luckily amanda was on a rampage so we hit up mr bings. sf is funny. it's a heavy 6th generation asian american population frequenting the local cheers bar. mr bings. a cliched chinatown hollywoodset. mr bings is a chinese dive bar in the middle of downtown with an "uncle scooter" manning the triangular rackety duct taped bar. cash bar allows 4 dollar full whiskey pours and the spikey haired asian americans down the bar playing dice yelling in english...with uncle scooter yelling back in a russell peters chinese accent. the place was starting to get rowdy. tsingtao banners hung from the walls along side red dragon stencil cut outs. customers continually took smoke breaks bringing in new friends. it was fun. it was a hit. yelp it.
there's many forms of being liberal. on friday. i decided to go the organic liberal route. my friend who works in the SF DA's office said "we dismiss any case with marijuana in it. it's just not a good use of HR. they're not doing anything bad. they're eating and spending money into the economy. we just don't have time to prosecute peaceful activity" she made it seem like it was good for you. and so did the dentists who have ovaltine jars and jars full in the living room telling you to enjoy the bounty...so i took part in the SF experience. which absolutely took me out of commission for 24 hours. i dont think i've ever had a good experience. im not dying. im just hallucinating. panicking. sweating. and not feeling well. the car ride was horrendous. eating didn't help. and eating a lot more didn't help. and so while steve went shopping...i sat in the car having a daytime nightmare alone. i don't even know how i made it to dinner.
finally feeling better the next morning...we went for 5 miles run down the embarcadero and afterwards i treated myself to the minibar. an amanda farewell. it just so happened lana was in town so i walked to lunch. and that's when i walked through the center of town realizing the homeless are everywhere!! the city gentrification has gone out of its way not to infringe on civil rights of the homeless. making sure they are comfortable in the middle of the city, in the middle of the sidewalk, disrupting traffic flow, pedestrian safety, air quality. urine and fecal matter are a common place meme and text message between friends...as i passed through little saigon for the infamous turtle tower....joe pointed out "shit alley".
to understand the overbearing, unnatural liberal nature of the bay area is to basically drive yourself crazy. for an area booming in tech money, it goes so far out of the way to be the new frontier of better ways to do things, better ways to be self sustainably eco and better ways to be people and better ways to be efficient. i feel its all bullshit as it seems painstakingly out of the way to be eco/efficient/sustainable/organic/etc. annoyingly liberal without using any common sense is unnatural and fiscally backwards. on saturday afternoon, i made my way out to palo alto and got a first hand account of prius highways and ikea households even when joint incomes exceed half a million dollars annually. then there's the ridiculously overpriced property value for the burgeoning educated tech employee families that fight for the limited school district enrollment. it's expensive in the bay. so you tell yourself u need to save on the luxuries in life, but yet you over indulge in the cheap items. and then you drain the rest of your disposable income on organic overpriced everything. cookie cutter suburbia couldn't be any more frustrating.
moderation just isn't for me. esther knows this. esther worries about me...and she can't stand watching my life in this flux that i feel comfortable in. but i came for her. i came to do what she needed. i came to be there for her final month of pregnancy. carrying things, having lunch, going to ikea, putting together furniture. and while i needed a bottle of ketel one to keep me company at night...esther tried to offset that with green juice in the morning. and i tried to offset that with a morning run around the stanford campus. it's a beautiful campus. unfortunately...it's overrun with chinese parents who probably have nothing to do with the school infesting the lawns with morning taichi and tourist photos to send back to the motherland. the oval lawns are grand and mezmerizing. the atrium esque buildings and neighboring residences are spatially placed apart making student population seem sparse. i ran in the mornings, i ran in the evenings. and i ran in mid-september hunting for stereotypical college life. trying to sniff out fraternity row, beer and youthful shenanigans in the vicinity. i found nothing on campus. boring! eventually i found a dive bar downtown palo alto filled to the brim with pimple faced four eyed dudes. zero women. no exaggeration. how is that even possible to fill a bar with all dudes? even gay bars have a quota of female patrons. what would richard sherman do??
esther and brian had only just moved to palo alto for a week or so before i visited. so they were exploring the area as much as i was hunting the area. with their domestic habits, they felt it was good to use me as an excuse to visit the infamous rosewood hotel on thursday night. the rosewood is a palo alto hotel lounge bar that vanity fair did a piece on exposing the underbelly of the VC/Cougar meat market ranging from matchmakers, to hookers, to milfs, and it absolutely lives up to every piece of the articles description. this swanky suburban hotel was filled with fresh blonde hair blowouts and cocktail dresses. if milf isn't the politically correct age modifier, then i'd say they need to use more spf for the californian sunshine. and each waft of perfume allured an even more poignant stereotype of khaki button down loafer VC angel. the rich and horny trying to pick up the horny and gold digging. it was a perfect storm. and i ended up talking to the korean waitress. poignant.
silicon valley'ers are a bunch of liberal smart people. that live life in converse and a beard. they are the OG hipsters, before brooklyn trademarked the term hipster and added tattoo's and gel to the prerequisite. tech valley perpetuates the pressure to pro-actively be smart. to self-induce geeky smart-dom within their own corporate structure of work life balance. which is an oxy moron in itself. and yet when u go into the meetings, u realize all that new age work life is for the masses. as top level decision makers are still left to the jews. collect the data, present well, have charisma and expand the network. then head to the cafeteria to save money on apple subsidized lunch. subsidized salad is a plastic box filled to the brim a rubberband needs to hold it closed. 30% greens. and the rest is as any item that you think can fit in the plastic rectangular box. vege, shrimp, tofu, cheese, egg, seeds, croutons...etc etc. even if you eat it all...Californian healthy cuisine is still bland. i'm over it. i went to napa and the presidio food truck fair the week before. and i have nothing good to say about either. napa is far and wine flights are usually a waste because the first 4 tastings taste like unripened crap. and why are empty wineries so snobby about "reservations??"...the food truck craze at the presidio was subpar and expensive. when i wanted asian, i was taken to the slanted door and some organic tofu joint near the berkley bowl. all i wanted was authentic MSG laden asian food.
...and so the next weekend we drove to san jose and followed a recommendation given to us by the woman working at the daiso. absolutely freaking amazingly mother effingly delicious!!! vietnamese broken rice. number 1 special. so friggin good. just stare at the foto. i want one right now.
i took a night off from suburbia and cal trained it back into the fog of downtown. it was such a coincidence that juri had moved to SF. joe was down for drinks. and jane met up with us afterwards. it ended up being a pretty good night catching up with old friends. going from bar to bar each one filled with more and more dudes...drinking whiskeys and eating crappy bar food. i didnt make it home till the next morning. and while hungover and walking to the caltrain at 5am...i bumped into a group of indians in front of me. only to look up and realize they were taking a selfie in front of intel.
i got home at 7am. slept for 2 hours. and headed to big sur. america is huge. the land is majestic. absolutely stunning. and that pacific coast highway is made for domestic tourists to rent a mustang, burn petrol, and enjoy the scenic drive. very american. very far. because by the time i got there...i wanted to get out of the car.
there was a drought going on in california, but you would never have known it at pebble beach.
oktoberfest.
.jpg)
