We continued our way down the left coast and stopped to visit SF and drive the Pacific Coast Highway before cutting east for our last wedding. Real quick we need to set the record straight about SF. TV and movies make it seem like a warm and friendly place, and it mostly is. That being said, it seems like a pretty easy city to be homeless in. Now, that last statement could be processed a number of ways so let’s deconstruct it. It could be indirect speech implying that it’s so goddamned expensive, one could spend themselves homeless. This is true, but not what I meant. It could mean that as the weather is rather favorable year-round and hospitable throughout the day, and given the abundance of wackjob liberal hippies, if one were in fact homeless they would have an easier time fulfilling basic needs of warmth, sustenance and shelter here as opposed to elsewhere. Close, and very true; but not quite. No, what I really meant was you can be homeless as fuck and no one really seems to even notice or care. And by ‘homeless as fuck,’ I mean you can literally piss in the middle of a busy sidewalk – grotty dick in your hands and in the direction of pedestrian traffic – and not even attract a sidelong glance. People will gracefully form a path around you (careful not to cut too wide a berth – that would be rude) and you can go back to washing windshields with damp newspapers or spinning yarns about needing bus fare or whatever the hell it is you do to earn your next graduated barrel. And I was careful to use the word ‘literally’ in that description. Also, it’s pretty dirty. I’m amazed at how much trash people talk about the east coast but somehow SF gets a pass for being well on its way to becoming the Naples of America (not counting Naples, Florida). But it’s not all litter and hobos. Well, there are a lot of hobos. Seriously, just so many of them. So it’s not all litter, and there’s a ton of hobos, and we also got to meet and catch up with some old friends who are in the area now. Neither of them are homeless. One of them (Merz) is an internet entrepreneur and you should all buy his games for iPhone (Android coming soon). The other (Bill) is a game developer and future internet entrepreneur. We already figured out how he’s going to make his millions at the oldest bar in SF. You’d think they worked together, or had even met before since we all went to the same school at the same time in the same major but the world is just a bigger place than that I suppose. Either way it was cool to nerd out with some people from the old school again. They haven’t changed at all, not even a little fatter or anything. To both of their credit, they took us all around town and introduced us to a ton of cool things on pretty short notice. With Bill we checked out Noisebridge, a hackerspace in the Mission district with a reputation for performing some cutting edge research as well as attracting squatters. It was awesome, a huge old loft with nothing but workbenches and whiteboards in every direction. And an entire back wall of computers that is probably just for show, cause let’s be honest, if they wanted serious parallel computing power they would just buy a couple racks or lease some time on EC2. It costs practically nothing these days. He also took us up into the woods to get a great view of the city from the outside. We visited the one true video game museum in San Fran (the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment. I don’t know how they abbreviate it). If you’re ever in town I implore you to stop by. It’s 5 bux0rs and you can spend an entire day playing some really great rare and classic video games (I talked to the curator and he told me most of it came from the offices of Gamepro when they closed). Even when arcades were still relevant and the dollar was still worth something you couldn’t beat that deal. Interestingly, Merz also took us to a kind of video game museum when he was showing us around town. There’s an arcade near the harbor that specializes in mechanical and a couple classic arcade machines, the oldest of which is from the 1800s. We played a game of Pong, which I honestly assumed would never happen again in my life and then saw some seals slap the shit out of each other. Then we all met in the Mission district for the one true burrito. There may have been a gay bar involved too, but it was all in good fun. The next day Merz sent us off with a free, awesome, free, healthy, free, delicious lunch at the Mindsnacks offices before we took the PCH down south. Also it was free. The weather was overcast and bobo, and the route goes up and down through mountain roads and forests, through fog and on poorly lit winding roads. It kind of sucked, and at one point I was so distracted by motion sickness and disoriented by the complete lack of visibility that I couldn’t tell if I was driving up or down, or if it was raining or if I was just falling into the water. It was a nice callback to Iceland but a little less nerve-wracking. When we eventually did settle in for the evening I distinctly remember being grateful for flat land a late checkout. Next up was the road east to Arizona. I hear there’s a big hole there. And no hobos.
[1] 12 Nov This entry was written by , posted on November 12, 2013 at 4:58 am, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.