"Someone once asked me if I felt like a pilot when I DJ and if everyone dancing felt like my passengers. "No," I said, "everybody dancing should be a pilot. I want to be the weather." - DJ Lotus, Toronto "Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era --- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...." - Hunter S. Thompson
This is the log of my trip to visit my friend Nikita in San Francisco.
Leaving for the airport at 7 AM. It's _early_. I'm tired. I don't feel like going anywhere, let alone getting on a plane for 8 hours (why, oh why didn't I book a direct flight?).
Somehow, I have managed to pack 3 times as many books and computer/hardware/CDs than actual clothing for my trip (+ Brio, for Brio-deprived Nikita in California)
Layover in Detroit. I eat in a restaurant themed after "Cheers"; it feels weird to use American money. I managed to lose my ticket in between getting off the Dorval plane and getting on the connecting flight to SF. D'oh! They let me on anyways, thank god.
Flying over California is great. The snowy mountains leave place to greener and greener land. It's _green_ down here. Get off the plane. The air smells so good, like water and green things.
Land at SF. Where is Lenore? Did I miss her? Did I give her the wrong gate? Frantically call Nikita. See Lenore. Get into Lenore's VW.
Drive to Lenore's house. Wait for roomate. No roomate. Go to Nikita's and Kevin's. Meet Kevin. Tell him bad math joke ("What do you get when you cross an elephant with a mountain climber? You can't cross them: the mountain climber is a scalar.") Disorganized attempt at getting food. Grouchy. Have goat in a Pakistani restaurant.
Party preparations. Attempted nap. Sleep. People arrive. Sleep. Get up. Wander around sleepily.
I try fitting in Nikita's dryer. Conclusion: not with these childbearing hips. NOTE: it is later discovered that Lenore fits into the dryer _with_ Russell. Whoa. The disco ball that Kevin and Nikita bought is a big win.
After a small time of wandering around, I collapse asleep on the futon. By the time I get up, everyone is gone, Russell is sleeping on the couch, and Nikita and Kevin are really drunk.
I feel like crap. I am rapidly developing a cold. I have breakfast/lunch with Lenore at a nearby cafe while Kevin and Nikita sleep some more. Lots of interesting conversation about careers and working in the Bay Area. Lenore is cool. Spend the rest of the day feeling sick and crappy. We order pizza. Conversation with Kevin: "Ok, let's get a veggie between us. Do you like olives? No. Do you like artichokes? No. How about feta cheese? No. How about cheddar cheese? No. How about capers? No. How about mushrooms? Yes. Good! We agree about something!" We watch the Simpsons, the holy hour.
Foray into SF. Wandering around downtown. Walk into random sushi place. The sushi is _awesome_. A little hole-in-the wall random place, and the sushi is almost better as the best places in MTL. Sit down to write postcards to all my friends whose RL addresses I know (ie, two people, and one of those is my roomate) Visit FAO Schwartz, that is like a toy store on crack.
Visit Fisherman's Wharf. This is really as touristy as people say it is. Sea lions are hanging out on a pier. The Bay is beautiful. I can see Alcatraz. I start being glad I'm here. There's lots of ocean birds around, real seagulls. I even see a pelican! Walk up to the beach, put my feet in the water. Look at the water lap the shore as night falls. Walk a bit on one of the piers; but I leave quickly since it's almost deserted and only homeless people remain.
Walk in a high park above the water. Stumble upon a man that feeds park animals every day: skunks, raccons, wild cats. People are so friendly here. The moon looks really beautiful as night falls. Ride the tramway back to downtown.
I start feeling some huge amount of angst about how all my friends are smarter than I am.
Go to Stinking Rose with Ian, Nikita, Lenore, Russell. Start doing math with Ian. Ah, we've always done that well. I've always loved doing math with Ian.
I ask Nikita about math problem I'm working on. Carries on to house. Kevin jumps in "hey, that sounds like math", we work on problem together. It turns out pretty cool.
Stay up all night talking with Kevin. He shows me his manifolds. Experience puppies phenomenon ("Wow, you like puppies _too_! We have _so_ much in common!) Wow, you've skipped 2nd grade too! We have so much in common."
tourist around Haight-Ashbury with Kevin. The summer of love, and all that's left is lots of head shops and tie-dye.
Eat disappointing Mexican food. Sit in bookstore with Kevin, on the floor in the middle of the aisle, reading Dr. Seuss aloud to each other. Coool.
Go clothes shopping in the Castro. Note: although the men's selection is maaah-rvelous daah-rling, this isn't really the place to go for women's clothing. ;-)
We search for dessert, to no avail. End up in some place that looks good, but has crappy desert. Have long conversation about God, vegetarianism, and everything.
Sit around at home. We watch Blind Date, the most terrible show on earth. For those not fortunate to have seen this particular product of American voyeuristic culture, is a show where they match two people, preferably pathetic, shallow and completely unsuited to each other on a date that's way too intimate for a first date (Tomorrow's date: mud-wrestling).
Highlights:
"I like to make women feel like they're #1, but they're not" or "What do you do" "Err, like, um....um, like, an occupation, or something? Well, er, um, I get up...I eat..."
As you can see, most of the fun of this show lies in making fun of the participants ("If you can't laugh at your mistakes, make fun of other people")
Wednesday: visit to Berkeley campus and Soda Hall. Hang out in Nikita's office, which is covered in computer books, journals, hardware boxes, computers, soda bottles, and it is the ultimate happy-geeks-at-work office.
Have dinner in Berkeley. Talk about geometry with Kevin.
Visit SF Exploratorium. Visit Tactile Dome, the inspiration for Tactile Parties.
Tactile Dome:
Tactile Dome is this a big dome where you crawl, slide, walk, climb around in pitch darkness, guided by your sense of touch. I'm warned that the Tactile Dome is not for claustrophobics. Uh-oh. I'm a bit claustrophobic, but I decide to try it anyways.
I'm close to panic a little ways into the Dome. Thankfully, I have Lenore on one side and Kevin on the other, and they hug me and hold my hands and calm me down. Somehow it doesn't feel as bad to be stuck here with friends. I hold on to that feeling as I go on in the darkness, that people care about me, that I'm not alone, that my friends are there, and things are ok.
Things go so well that I go back a second time, this time much more calm. The first time around I was mostly concentrating on not panicking, this time I check out all the cool textures inside the Dome. We all meet at the resting room on top of the Dome and hang out there for a while.
We all pile into Lenore's car. Go have dinner at "The Steps of Rome" The waiters yell at each other, very dramatic. A long discussion of people's relationship status ensues. Russell thinks he looks like one of the waiters. Kevin is picky. Nikita wants Lenore to get him a BMW. I want to have multiple boyfriends in different cities. Tal wants someone to play with. Lenore likes smart guys.
We go back home and watch more of the Simpsons.
Have long dinner in Mexican restaurant with Kevin. Have real Mexican food for the first time! Try mexican coffee, brewed with cocao and cinnamon. Yum! We have no good mexican food in MTL. :-( Go wandering around the Berkeley campus, which is _so_ beautiful. There's also a strong, trippy sense, at least in my field, of continuity with all the great scholars that have come there in the past. This is the same campus where all these famous people walked.
"There are two things to come out of Berkeley, LSD and BSD. We do not think this is coincidence." -- unknown
Buy some math books at the bookstore. Wandered on Telegraph avenue. Bought some political stickers. Went to Cody's books.
Went to Bab 5 gathering. Play settlers of Catan. Fall into my usual multiple-player game-playing pattern:
- be a total non-contender at the beginning of the game, either thru not paying attention or thru not knowing how to play. Because of this, no-one pays attention to me.
- In the middle of the game, look up and notice that I'm somehow winning, probably because everyone else has been pounding each other without noticing me.
- Turn into a total gloating despot, at which points everyone gangs up on me and I finish second.
I was reading about game theory recently, and the book warned that a danger of appearing too threatening is that all the weaker players will band together to gang up on you.
Boring conversation about politics. Tried starting a conversation about sex-toys to end the politics conversation : "I'm going to visit good vibrations tomorrow. Does anyone have any recommendations?" Lots of good info.
Took BART. I really like BART, for some reason. It seems to be the most well designed public transit system I've seen. It was actually fairly straightforward to understand: by the end of the week random people would ask me questions about BART and I could answer them.
Went to Good Vibrations, the sex-toy mecca of the world. Bought the sex toys of my dreams. Hope I don't get searched at customs.
Drove with Nikita to get pizza. Show up at Ian's house, where John is busy engineering the dark room.
Putter around. Nikita is reading a book about Marx. "Opium is the religion of the people." (Err, or is that the other way around?) More and more people arrive. Go to store to get water for the party with Nikita. Nikita drives me around like a crazed maniac in a shopping cart in the parking lot ("Hey, I said 'drive me in the shopping cart', not 'drive me around like a crazed maniac in the shopping cart'." "Well, you should have said so. How did I know you didn't mean 'drive me around like a crazed maniac'?")
I love Nikita. It's so good to have a male friend without any sexual tension. We have so much fun together.
Back at the ranch. Snuggle on the couch with Nikita. Sonia is there! Sonia, with whom I spent half of CFP gossipping (There's something especially perverse about gossiping at a privacy conference). Ian is there! I meet snuggly Len, and lots of other awesome people. Ping is there! Lenore is there! All these awesome people are there. I never understood Ian's obsession with getting large groups of people together to do everything, but now I do.
Take a cab to Nikita's house. Stay up talking for a while. Fall asleep snuggling with Nikita.
Go out for Sushi Madness with Nikita, Kevin and Lenore. No one is very hungry, so Sushi Madness is rather lacking in the "Madness" part. Catch tail end of cypherpunks. Hook up with Ian and go get futon leftover from party. Everyone is totally wiped from the party, so we go back to the house and watch movies. Ben Lahaise comes by. I tell him about problems I've been having with apmd with my laptop. He suggests: "Have you tried to 2.4 kernels? They're really stable now. They just fixed that data-corruption bug." How reassuring.
Flying back to Montreal. Nikita and Kevin come with me to the airport. The morning is gray. John Digweed is playing. We drive past the tollbooth from _Groove_. I don't want to go home.
"San Francisco has only one drawback.''Tis hard to leave" --Rudyard Kipling
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