Marcel in California

Marcel is SO over the cold. So he hopped a plane to California to have some wild Cali adventures.

He toured the offices of SF Chronicle, wandered about the Mission, Japan Town and downtown, ambled through Mountain View Cemetery, drove up Highway 1 on a rainy day, ate sushi with Crocker and a burrito at Chrissy Fields, shopped at Ikea and Thrift Town, drank at the Fairmont, the Tonga Room, the Albatross and the Mallard and crossed the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges on multiple occasions.

Marcel does not like people much but he did not mind these folks/animals/small children: Jackson, Sarah, Jeff, Travis, Rufus, Jen, Henry, Matt, Sue, Renee, Molly, Ivo, Lauren, Anabelle and Sophie. In fact, he likes San Francisco so much that he decided to stay on a bit, even after I left.

See it all in the video of Marcel's California travels:



Enjoy SF Marcel, you lucky bastard.

PS I didn't bring my video camera to CA so I could take a "real" vacation. Turns out that 700 frog photos later, I cannot stop my obsessive compulsive streak from discovering an outlet. Oh well, at least it is not heroin.

Coastal Aftershocks

I've been back in VT for almost 4 days now and I am still a bit discombobulated.

The day I left SF it was stormy and as I drove my PT Cruiser (yes, laugh if you must, old ladies deserve bright blue old ladee rental cars) back to the airport, a large chunk of me wanted to turn around and drive back, up the 101 North to my little rainy city by the bay.

I barely made it home through the snowstorm that was pummeling the East Coast all day Wednesday. The plane tossed us around like jumping beans and I closed my eyes so Heidi Klum was not the last image I saw before certain death.

When we landed in VT it was dark, snowy and freezing. I could barely get a ride home from the airport and everything was dead and impassable. My car was buried beneath 4 feet of snow and I could barely get my suitcase in the front door. Could I really have been outside wearing a t-shirt and sniffing bright purple flowers 8 hours earlier??

Since I couldn't stick around, I left a silent, morose piece of me back in SF, and hopefully he is having a grand old time in my absence. I am sure the town will be dry of liquor in no time.

I'll be thinking of you SF and Marcel and imagining all your calamities! Until we meet again or until I discover a way to be bi-coastal! Au revoir!

Freeways and Bridges, Oh My!

My friend Susan is visiting from Oakland with her boyfriend Brian this week. Susan and I have been friends for 20 years (!?) and met at VT's GIA which is basically a summer camp for arty freaks (also attended by my HS pal, Guppy Boy's Zach Ward mind you).

We got to talking about Oakland and how different life is there from here. I got a bit nostalgic, I admit it. I started missing the spectacle, the immense views, the ocean, the speed, the lit-up night sky, the "Ooohs" and the "Ahhhs" and my favorite Italian restaurant Lo Cocos' tiramisu.

My nostalgia turned to mud, however, when I discovered that the Bay Bridge is CLOSED for the weekend for the new freeway construction (coverage here). This means that you have to take a HUGE, traffic-filled detour to get into the city which basically means you are SCREWED.

That is the thing about life in the Bay Area, you are ridiculously dependent on cars, freeways, BARTS and the like. Without transport over the water, you are stuck. Kind of like how I am stuck in Vermont but different.

To make matters worse, I discovered that a MAJOR part of the freeway recently crumpled into nothing - POOF. In April, a section of the MacAurthur Maze collapsed when a tanker truck caught on fire (story and creepy pics here).

I used to take this bit of freeway home EVERY single night. And in an instant it was just...gone?! And it was not even an earthquake that took it out, just a tanker truck? How random? How surprising? How Bay Area.

Even more astonishing, the connector was rebuilt only 26 days after the original accident for the minor fee of $90 million. Ba da bing.

Life in the Bay Area is fluid. You gotta roll with the bridge closings, freeways collapses and other sporadic punches or you will get knocked out.

I could not be any more glad that I am stuck here in VT where life takes a much slower pace and there are no bridges or freeways to fall on top of my head, just packs of carousing college students looking for the next best party.

Excitement-Eating in California

"...the Fitzgeralds did not seek ordinary pleasures. they wanted something unusual to happen, some act that they might not even understand. Zelda had never seen a young man who loved excitement, antics, outrageous happenings as much as she did, perhaps more."
- The Women of Montparnasse, The Americans in Paris
by Morrill Cody and Hugh Ford

Zelda Fitzgerald described her youthful, heedless life as excitement-eating. Zelda was a terrible flirt and men like Hemingway got pissed when she didn't deliver.

Zelda was a girl after my own heart, leaving Scott to go to her own set of parties, competing with him for attention and trying to become a ballerina late in life. She ate much excitement, she had her fill and some helpings from other people's plates as well. She was an excitement-glutton.

Let's not think about the fact that she lived out her later, less-excitement-filled years in a loony bin, abandoned by Scott, until she was burnt up in a fire that is. Loony bins lock you into your room at night so if a fire breaks out...Shudder.


After 7 days of excitement-eating in Northern California, I am ready to gobble Pepto Bismo, but also, ready to take on my next set of tasty tasks. Chomp, chomp, You see, things are afoot and it looks like I may be Stuck in Vermont for a good long while. Oh boy! Slurp, munch!

More than anything, I am just so damn happy, and so dang lucky! Lucky to have such lovely and talented and thoughtful friends and happy to have been able to see so many of them in flesh and blood, face to face. I'm not worthy. God, I miss 'em something terrible.

And oooh, the landscapes, the majesty, San Francisco, the Bay Area, they never cease to amaze me, and when you combine 'em with the people, well, YUM: cheese and baked goods and massive renovation in North Berkeley, heavenly meatballs in Piedmont with Robin, crazy views from Sarah's bird's nest in the Fillmore...

...a picnic lunch at Fort Mason overlooking Alcatraz, never ending sushi boats in Japan Town with Danny, the lizard-like shapes of over-lapping freeway overpasses, Hawaiian drinks with Jeff and Robin and an active volcano, a gang of school kids in the Marina...

...the nose-bleed SF hills that leave you worried you might tip over, the red bridge looming on the horizon from Lev's convertible, Market Street after dark falls, Lemondrops underneath the Bay Bridge with Sarah, a sudden burst of bougainvillea (ab0ve with Miss Jackson)...

...lying on the grass outside the De Young with Travis, a drunken meal in the Mission with Renee, Joanne and Jeff, a 50s Brit girl band in a packed club, bubbly in an Albany backyard with strawberries, Sue and Jen, ice cream on a Friday night near Dolores Park and an art show in Margaret's apartment.

Everything is so big and impressive and colorful in California, even a simple mural in a pee-infested alleyway in the Mission leaves an impression on a country mouse like me.

It all makes me feel so small and awe-struck. It is almost too much, too beautiful to be real. California dreaming seems more accurate, reality has no place in those surreal landscapes.

I spent much of my vacation marveling quietly to myself and savoring these awesome fluttery feelings whilst riding on BART trains, the 38 Geary bus or in my friend's Bugs, Minis and Miatas.

My love affair with California is not over yet. I think I saw sides of her that I never knew existed, little corners of her personality that were obscured when I lived inside her gates.

I plan to visit Cali at least once a year, so there VT, you will just have to accept that my heart will always belong to San Fran Sissy. No offense. I love you both equally. And as everyone who carded me noticed, "You look so happy in your license picture!"

"That's right," I said and then I told them the story of my recent move to VT and how shocked I was when the people at the DMV were NICE in Vermont, chatty even, laid back!

Unlike the Oakland DMV where you knew that any moment someone might snap, break out of a long line of angry people and start shooting, and that it might be you who pulls the trigger.

"So THAT is why I am smiling! Because VTers are nice." My little VT story. I swear, I told that to about 5 strangers in Cali this trip. Did they care? I think the girl at the Mac counter may have been listening...

More Cali blogs to come, pictures a plenty even if I did manage to resist bringing my video camera. But look at this here, a Castro collision of Junk Thieves and Deadbeats over tea as chronicled by Monsieur Thief.

IS it me or do I look like I am about to EAT him in this pic? I got carried away with my excitement-eating, as usual. Gobble, gobble.

Most importantly of all, the main reason for my trip, to SURPRISE the SHIT outta Jeffrey Raymond at his 40th birthday party as planned by his ultra amazing hubbie Charlie. Well, total success.

After a morning of sky diving, the boys returned to their NEW house (yes, apparently it is still possible to buy a home in SF!?) to a room full of well-wishers. I thought Jeff might screech bloody murder and run down the street screaming (I would have) but no, he did the gracious thing and entered the house to talk/hug/shower love on people.

Jeff is not much for birthdays, surprises, attention or large groups of people. So he did an amazing job of hosting, even after Charlie went to bed. What a swell 40 yr old guy.

I love you Jeffrey! And damn you for looking so young and vibrant and putting the rest of us ol' codgers to shame! Can we sit on a porch and whittle when our excitement-eating days are through!??!

And in closing, a word from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, which, I must add, takes place in SF and is my current HOT read:

"Well don't dynamite her too much, what do you think of her?"

"Sweet! And you telling me not to dynamite her."
Archer guffawed suddenly without merriment.

.... "Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown, Spade paid his fare and left the taxicab. San Francisco's night-fog, thin, clammy, penetrant, blurred the street."

Eva Goes to Cali

Well, this week has been mad for a number of reasons which I will not bore you with today. Instead, I will say that if you are my friend and live in California, please call me. You know the #. I am going to be in your fine state for 7 short days and I want to see each and every one of you. Tea, drinks, coffee? You name it!

Who am I kidding? No one in California reads my blog EXCEPT for the most fabulous Junk Thief. I think when we meet in person, angels will sing, buildings will collapse and monkeys will fly out of my butt. Junk thieves and deadbeats, you can never know enough of 'em!

My home in the Fantastic Fillmore will not have a TV or a computer so I will be trolling around for internet access at various unsavory spots. This blog will no doubt, get rather dusty in my absence. Will post if I can.

Will also eat LOTS of sushi, burritos and crepes, visit the hot springs often, NOT buy any more clothes and chill the fuck out. Things have been too crazy here for too long. See you later deadbeat!