Cities of Contradictions

I like the San Francisco Bay Area a lot. Here is similar to many of the places I enjoy or have enjoyed or could enjoy living; they have a consistent theme. San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Cambridge, Austin, Madison -- the connection is, of course, a liberal political environment. The San Francisco Bay Area might well be the hub of all such places in the USA. Ann Arbor is certainly more liberal as an entity but SF and Cambridge etc. share their space with a larger metropolitan area and that necessarily means a lot more purple shading and not a pure blue political mapscape.

For some reason the contradictions of this place seem more acute. Mind you, I am not just living in the liberal environs of the Bay Area, I am now a resident of the People's Republic of Berkeley. Yet even here the political contradictions abound. In fact, the insular nature of left-wing, eco-fascist, world-beat, recycle your disposal diaper land begins to look frighteningly like a right wing communist pluralistic oligarchy, if you don't share the current politically correct flavor of the month. I mean if you don't intend to vote against war, you had better not try to run for Berkeley City Council. I mean the last big war here was devastating here, the potholes still pockmark most city streets.

But as I said, I like it here. More often than not toleration is the theme of the debate. I wonder how it feels to be a liberal in Montana or Idaho? What is the most liberal place in the north central US? And which university calls that city home?

Pictures: To answer the question posed by a reader the other day. "What comes first the picture or the text?" Well, most of the time I try to conform the pictures on my blog to the topic I have already written on. And I do have a stash of photos I really want to use some day. Today, however, the picture came first and inspired me with contradictions of politics and place. Oh and yes, for you east coasters, mid-westers, southies and others, that is the Golden Gate Bridge.

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photo credit: friendsofirony.com

A Room With a View

There are some visuals that just can't be captured with a still camera. The Grand Canyon comes to mind, the Taj Mahal, any ocean at any time and the view from the windows in my new apartment. The shot above was the closest I could find but it is only a fractional glimpse of what I get to see every day.

Let me just swivel you through my daily view. If I lift my head up from this computer and look straight out of the six foot windows that cover the entire west facing side of the living room, I see centered in my view - the Golden Gate Bridge.

The photo above was taken from the Berkeley hills, that cluster of buildings in the foreground is the UCB campus. The hills are about six miles from the edge of the SF Bay, the apartment is nestled in a tree filled neighborhood less than two miles from the water. Nestled is really not the best descriptor since I am on the eighth floor facing due west with all the building between me and the water less than four stories. I have an unobstructed panoramic view.

The Golden Gate Bridge is another nine miles over the Bay, you can see the two towers in the picture above but, of course, it ain't the same. If I look just a fractional head turn to the south, I see the east section of the Bay Bridge running out to Treasure Island and then the west struts that jog back south to San Francisco. The downtown sky scrapers poke above the island in the foreground, I have a direct view of Russian Hill and the north side neighborhoods of SF out to the Presidio and south approach to the Golden Gate.

To the north, I can see Sausalito, Tiburon and much of the North Bay beyond the Richmond Bridge. The view south would be blocked by the end of the living room but no... that is where the sun room begins with another wall of windows. On the east side of the Bay I can see as far south as downtown Oakland and then with the sea level South Bay taking over, I have a clear view of the mountains that snake down the pennisula and wrap around San Jose and the Silicon Valley.

All of this in the lower third of my view with massive sky above. I have already seen storms crash in through the narrows of the Golden Gate; fog creep up and over the hills and envelope San Francisco; and well, the sunsets will be massive distractions. I promise not to turn the blog into a exercise in solar imagery.

The real question will be whether I have to turn my desk around and face away from all of this visual glory, there is work to be done. But occasionally I will offer you glimpses of my daily visual tableau.

By the way, if you come to visit and you have a good camera with a long range lens, please pack it. I will offer some long range shots from my mini-digital but it was acquired to get headshots of poker players in card rooms and not for vistas like what I am going to enjoy right now!

First night rainy sunset over the Golden Gate.

Berkeley, California

Rainy and chilly in the Bay Area today. I can't even see the Golden Gate through the pall of grey. As soon as the weather clears I will give you a shot of the view from my new apartment. Yes, it is official; tonight I sleep in Berkeley. I once again have a mailing address that actually bares some resemblance to where I rest my head.

First, item on the new nesting agenda is to get back into a regular routine for writing. While I have been productive during my Great Wandering, I have several projects that need immediate attention and having a solitary den to sleep and write in, tis always good for my productivity.

For those familiar with the East Bay and Berkeley in particular. I am now living on Dana Street, which is just a block west of Telegraph Ave. and five blocks south of the Berkeley campus. Strolling distance to a great library and many good ethnic restaurants. I already have hit one of the three farmer's markets in the area and plan to begin some neighborhood exploratory hikes as soon as the rain lets up.

For now, all my bags are unpacked and I'm ready to stay.

By the way, the picture at the top of the Golden Gate in the rain is really quite a shot, take a look at it bigger and clearer here.

The Day is at Hand

Well my year plus of un-domiciled existence will be ending this week. I booked the carpet cleaner for Thursday, which means I will have a new mailing address in Berkeley come Friday. The process of removing 25 years of books, art and papers from the apartment has been daunting but also very interesting. As Mira likes to say: we were always one envelope, one box, one more file folder away from finding another treasure. All 3500 books have been shipped to the dealer or donated to various worthy institutions. The dust of decades has been blown away and now the art has started on its next journey to find new homes with someone who will appreciate and treasure the many pictures, textiles, brass and well just too many forms of expression to measure.

It will probably take another couple of months for all of the art to find its way down the hall and out the door but enough space has been reclaimed for me to live in the apartment for now. Besides there are literally hundreds of pieces of art and no docent to tell me not to pick them up to take a closer look.

Sometime this spring or early summer we will begin remodeling the entire unit but that is phase three. We are nearly done with reclamation and removal (phase 1). Next comes occupancy (phase 2). Once I am in, I will give you a description of what this place is like and twill be clear why all the labor was worth it. Yes, besides helping out my good friend #3; I had an ulterior motive or two.

For now. Nearly to the next station, wonder who will be waiting on the platform. I will venture a guess they have no idea who is about to disembark. Please to meet you, won't you guess my name.

Names Have Been Changed

A loyal reader noted recently that I often tell stories about "my olde friend" or I begin a tale with "a friend of mine was going to the park the other day when.....".

My curious friend noted that I seemed to make most of my "friends" anonymous on my blog and she wondered if there was a reason for that. First, guilty as charged. I guess I should have used the O.J. mugshot here.

I do protect my sources and my friends by making most of my stories generic. I don't want to embarrass anyone in my little blog and quite frankly not everyone wants to be as 'out' as I make myself in my posts. In fact, this blog is a bit of an "outing experiment" for me. I have been protective of myself for most of my life. I don't tell stories about me and I haven't been personally in depth with most of my acquaintances. So for the past three years I have been slowly opening up on these pages.

When we wrote the Matusow book, we struggled with which names to keep and which to change. The obvious "I did some meth with _______" were easy changes, but the girlfriends and strippers were not always so obvious. At some point we got confused and didn't know if Kim was Kim or a pseudonym we had made up. It took us the better part of a three day weekend to get all the names straightened out and the guilty protected.

In my current semi-autobiographical, demi-fictional novel/tell-all, I am using the real names of friends, enemies and lovers in the drafts. When I get the completed work ready for a publisher I am going to give everyone the opportunity to vote. You will get to say "me" or "not me" and then I will change the names of all the cowards. Until then, if I disappear, someone had better delete the manuscript. You can find it on this laptop in the "RtM" folder.

As for the blog, I will continue to tell my "friend" stories, but I think I will start numbering them. Something like: "My olde friend #32 was having a dustup with his 24 year old girlfriend when....." Those of you who are regular readers will get the inside joke. Once I am a ridiculously famous author, the late comers will have to read back all the way to March of '10 to get the insider insight.

Until then: "An olde friend (#16) walked into a bar. He spots my other olde friend (#23) slouched in a chair by the juke box. Friend #23 looks at friend #16 and says: 'Did you have to bring the gerbil?'"

Stardust Memories

I was just having a gulp of water one day this past January while I was driving across west Texas. I happened to notice that my water bottle was the one I got the last night the Stardust casino was open in November of '06. I have the last player's card ever issues by the Stardust, the last water bottle ever given away and until recently a one dollar chip from the last hand of poker ever dealt in the Stardust poker room I gave the chip to Amy.

What I pondered while my car slowly devoured the vastness of west Texas was that as a journalist I wrote in my article the next day for PokerNews that I had played one of the last hands of poker ever played at the Stardust. You see the last night at the Stardust was a night of nostalgia. Lots of old players, dealers and staff had come by to say farewell. Right around 10 o'clock the poker room manager told the dealers to hold up and then he announced that the next hand would be the final hand ever dealt at the Stardust. Then all four of the remaining tables dealt a single hand, most players stayed to the river just to be there for the final showdown.

As a journalist I reported that fact: four final hands at the Stardust. But today I was working on my current fiction project and I reproduced those events but, of course, I made it THE final hand and, also of course, I lost the hand on a river bad beat. I love being a writer and I am not a guy who tosses around the word love all that often.

I apologize to my non-poker readers for the nostalgia and the poker jargon. But think how my loyal poker readers feel when I write about wallabies, wombats and wampeters.

Sleeping Through Insomnia

It has been a very, very long time since I have had a bout with insomnia. If fact, one of the true pleasures of my life is the adoring relationship I enjoy with sleep. Which is why last night was so strange. Around midnight I decided that the novel I am reading was not to lure me for a third straight night, its a bit too dark. So I just tucked myself under the blue flannel comforters and assumed the position. Instead of my ever faithful fall into the realm of Morpheus, I lingered in a hypnogogic limbo for over an hour. There were no entertaining fantasies or story boards dancing like sugar plums, just tedious processing of the old mundane business of life.

There really are no pressing issues emotionally or and other -ally for me right now. I just had a long night of struggle with what for me is generally pleasurable and easy. I woke perhaps half a dozen times during the night and finally fell into a deep sleep less than an hour before I needed to be up and at the world again.

I felt post-downer dull when I heard the early stirring of my friend and knew we had to be off to Berkeley to meet with the remodeling contractor. A solid half day of errands and consultations awaited us. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for her, she had had a similar night to mine, so we shared a scone and grumped our way to the other side of San Francisco Bay to put in our time in the real world.

This evening, I am going to bundle up in some heavy cotton, curl up with a good, if mindless book and grab the very first train to the land of Nod. Got no needs to do, no promises to keep.

p.s. late today I noticed an item I was reading on the web last night, a NYTimes book review on, of all things, insomnia.