Los Angeles

Orright,

Meeting up with Mark Rhomberg was an event some (almost) 7 years in the making. As if meeting up with Dan and Gabe 4 years after my Paris visit in 2001 wasn't enough, I was to top that by seeing a guy i first met on my very first month of my very first serious overseas trip, in Dili, East Timor, of all places in November 1998.

Mark, among other things, is a human rights activist, and was working for the East Timor Action Network, campaigning for East Timorese independence from Indonesia. He was visiting the capital, Dili, and the surrounding areas on a bit of a fact-finding mission, as well as building up a network of contacts, liaising with journalists and the like. I was there as a curious tourist, one of only 3 Westerners I met in 3 and a ½ weeks that wasn’t there as either a journalist or NGO activist. I’d had a little bit to do with the Timorese independence movement in Australia as a rampaging, idealistic University student activist back in Melbourne, but actually visiting the place, and meeting Mark and learning from him, among others, really helped me to understand the issue more clearly. I guess I can be proud that I was involved in a campaign that succeeded, albeit with the sacrifice of many, many Timorese lives.

So anyway, here I was, seven years later, hitting this guy up for accommodation. To be fair, we had kept in regular contact via email over the years, and the offer had been put forward to me (altho I wonder if these people I meet and offer me couch space actually expect to have to come thru with it!! ;-) ). Nevertheless, it was good to see the lad again.

Having somewhere to stay in a city like L.A. is a godsend. Even the cheapest backpacker dorms cost in the region of US$30 per night, and as I was planning 3-4 nights in L.A., this would save me a packet of money. Mark, a high school teacher, lives in an apartment midway between Santa Monica and Brentwood, which you could say is in one of the nicer spots in the city. Three miles from Santa Monica beach, one mile from UCLA. Not too far from the Hollywood stars’ enclave of Bel Air.



Los Angeles. Now, depending on what kind of experience you want from this city, you could spend weeks here, and empty your back balance. Disneyland, Universal, Warner Bros and NBC Studios, Baywatch styled beaches, Hollywood star spotting, clubbing down Sunset Strip, you name it. Or not. This wasn’t what I wanted from L.A. I had 4 days Max here, and a minimal budget. I guess you could say I was in the wrong place if I didn’t want to spend a wad of cash. I reckon I did okay.



Mark’s schedule during my stay was pretty hectic, so most of the time, I was left to me own devices. Day One, I devoted to checking out and hanging in at Santa Monica and Venice Beaches. A 10minute bus ride from Mark’s gaff, and I was there, right in the thick of Santa Monica, dropped off practically at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the beach, and Santa Monica Pier.



If you ever watch Hollywood cop-based movies, the kind where the young novice is teamed up with the old guy whose retiring tomorrow, and they have a manhunt thru a crowded beach side carnival scene, it’s inevitably filmed here. Santa Monica pier is a relic of times gone by, its quaint 1920’s carousel (featured in flick The Sting) being the sentimental favourite among all of the amusement park rides and sideshow stalls, market vendors and street artists plying their wares. Despite being thronged with tacky tourists with bratty kids, I quite enjoyed strolling along and among the crowds.



This is also the beach where Baywatch was filmed, and yes, it’s true, the lifeguard chicks do all wear those red one-piece swimsuits with accentuated boob jobs bulging out the top, carrying the tiny little floatation devices. And yes, it’s also true, that this is the place where all the ‘beautiful people’ of the city come to show off their tans, pecs, abs and biceps. And no, it’s not true, I am not one of them!



Up top, on the cliffs overlooking the beach is Pacific Palisades. Aside from people watching, the favourite pastime of folks up here, particularly the seniors, is shuffleboard. There’s something like 6 or 8 shuffleboard fields up here – now that’s something I never expected from L.A.!!

Strolling along the beachfront, I slowly made my down to Venice Beach to check out the bustling street market along the Venice Boardwalk. Ignoring all of the tacky tourist trap shop-fronts selling cheap t-shirts and fridge magnets and postcards and the like, the street stalls themselves were a hippy/counterculture paradise on earth.



Loads and loads and loads of artists of all description selling their goods, lots of tie-dye stuff, musicians and performers, tarot readings, activism groups with card tables full of petitions to sign, even a young Aussie Aboriginal busking away on the didgeridoo, the whole bit. And on a 30-degree day with bright blue sky, hundreds of people.



The Lonely Planet describes it as thus: “If aliens landed on Venice’s famous Boardwalk, they’d probably blend right into the human zoo of bikini-clad cyclists, chainsaw-juggling entertainers, wannabe Schwarzenegger’s, a roller-skating Sikh minstrel and zealous ‘meat-is-murder’ activists. This is the place to get your hair braided, skin tattooed or your aura adjusted. It’s a freak show that must be seen to be believed, preferable on hot summer weekends when the scene is at its most surreal…When you require quirk, Venice definitely provides your quota.”

It was great. My kinda scene. Grabbing a cheap slice of pizza to eat, I then sat down at a public outdoor basketball court with a few dozen other folks, and watched a few games of 2-on-2 between super athletic young black and Hispanic kids, catching some serious sun in the process.

A visit to L.A. would not be complete without a Saturday night down on the Sunset Strip, checking out the bars and clubs where the L.A. rock n roll scene is at its peak.



I wanted to check out the Whisky-A-Go-Go where the Doors were the house band in the 60’s, the famous House of Blues, the Roxy, the Troubadour, and of course Johnny Depp-owned The Viper Room, where River Phoenix met his maker many moons ago.



Only problem with all of this, is that this is L.A. right, where dress codes are strictly enforced by big burly bouncers who don’t take any shit, and I’m a poor backpacker with about 4 changes of clothes, none of which would meet the standards required.



I ain’t the pretty young thing they’re looking for at the door. And, two blokes, one in his early 30’s, the other in his late 40’s – not gonna happen. Even then, the queues at the door to get in were quite lengthy, and I hate queues…oh, and the cover charge to gain entry even if you do wait, and pass inspection, well, lets not even go there! So, with Mark as my guide we drove down to The Strip, walked up and down the Strip a few times, took a few happy snap pics, popped into an old 1950’s style diner for a coupla beers, then headed home, in bed by 1am. Well, at least I can say I’ve been there, done that.

Mark was pretty keen to show me some of the lesser known spots of L.A., so early Sunday morning we drove thru the Hollywood Hills to Topanga State Park for a spot of hiking – a nice 5 or 6 mile return trip to the top for a view across Bel Air and looking down to Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean. This I appreciated – there’s nothing like a solid hill walk to dust off the cobwebs and fill your lungs with some fresh morning air (before the L.A. traffic pollution arc-ed up and filled the atmosphere with carbon monoxide of course!)



Afterwards, I was dropped off at the Getty Centre in Westwood while Mark took care of his high-school assignment marking duties.



The Getty Centre is an amazing $1 billion dollar (!) museum of Art, set on a hilltop overlooking the city, set in immaculately landscaped gardens, within awe-inspiring post-modern architectural buildings. It is a legacy of deceased philanthropist John Paul Getty, a gift to the City of Los Angeles, and man what a gift.





I spent a couple of hours wandering the halls and gardens with jaw permanently agape at the displays. My only disappointment was that the Photography Hall was closed, as they were midway thru an exhibition changeover. I could easily have spent many more hours there, and highly recommend visiting it. It’s also free entry.





The strange thing about Los Angeles is that because it is so unbelievably huge and sprawling, it’s actual ‘Downtown’ district is really quite small. I found this hard to believe myself, but the financial district is only a few square blocks in size. L.A. instead has several pockets of activity spread all around the metropolis. For me to catch a bus to Downtown is well over an hour eastbound.



This I did, with the idea in mind of visiting the Museum Of Contemporary Art, where a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition was on display. This famous young Graffiti artist grew to fame quickly in New York the early 1980’s, worked with Andy Warhol briefly, and was dead of a heroin overdose at age 27 in 1988. Myself always being intrigued by pop culture and sub-cultures, had to see this exhibition.



Most of the works on display were on loan from the Brooklyn Gallery, and were for the first time on display outside of that Gallery. I have to say, I thought it was pretty darn impressive. I didn’t have an enormous personal knowledge of Basquiat, just what I had read in art magazines and saw of him from the late 90’s film of his life, but now I think I could give a reasonable account of his life and work.





The rest of my time in the Downtown district was spent scene-spotting, with the aid of a tourist info book. The Bradbury Building where Harrison Ford, as Deckard, in Blade Runner hunts down the replicant Pris (Darryl Hannah) was my favourite scene-spot.







Another short bus ride, and then my afternoon was spent walking on foot around the Sunset Strip again. This time, mid afternoon, I actually managed to get into the House Of Blues for a beer, just one, mind – no door bitches on yet to scrutinize yer threads, and chill out on the rustic patio overlooking the city. When it came time to pay up, chatting to the bartender, he clocked my accent and gave me the drink on the house. Nice!





It was at this point that I realised I hadn’t even bothered to check out Hollywood yet. Not my kind of scene, but seeing as I’m here, I may as well. Another short bus ride down Sunset Boulevard, and as I’m getting off the bus I turn around I notice the sun just dropping behind the Hollywood Hills.



Ahh, it doesn’t get any more clichéd than this – standing on Sunset Boulevard just at the moment that the sun is doing just that. What a Kodak moment. So then, I stroll up to Hollywood Boulevard to check out what Hollywood wankers have put their names to stars on the footpath. I’ve been told that it actually costs the star $5000 to have their named ‘star-ed’, so basically anyone who is vaguely famous and has a spare Five Grand can do this...such a vanity moment, don’t you think?



Anyway, as I’m moving along the street is suddenly cordoned off, police and barricades are everywhere, and thousands, literally thousands of people gathering on the street. Getting a little closer, I see rows of beaming halogen spotlights and photographers by the dozen, and then a stretch limo cruises by me with some pretty young thing in a sash of cloth masquerading as a dress pops out (no clue as to who it was)...it’s a Hollywood movie premiere I’ve stumbled upon. “Flight Plan” with Jodie Foster. This is kinda funny, and a bit of a spectacle, so I hang around for about 15 minutes, then move on, bored by it all already.







My next goal is to try and get a pic of the classic ‘Hollywood’ sign way up on the hills – still haven’t seen it yet, but it’s dark now, so I pass on the idea, and bus it back to Mark’s. People always say that L.A.’s public transport system is crap, but I’ve used it to good effect the past 3-4 days, and I’ve found it alright. I’ve even used it at night, supposedly the dodgiest time with the dodgiest characters coming out of the woodwork. Granted, I didn’t hit East L.A. or South Central, but It’s all fine and good as far as I’m concerned.

So, with that, and one last night at Mark’s, I’m out of here. The Greyhound Bus station is a bitch to get to. Gotta get the same bus into Downtown as the other day, walk about 10 blocks, then catch another bus to the dodgy industrial district Southside of town. To top things off now, after 3 days of beautiful blue skies, the weather has turned the wrong side of shady, and it’s bucketing down with rain.

Los Angeles, it was short but sweet. Nice place to visit, could never live there tho.

Santa Barbara - L.A.

Dateline: September 15th, 2005

Hey there,

Man, what a trippy ride this little stretch from SB to L.A. turned out to be.

I'd checked the train and bus schedules to L.A. and they were both hours away, so I decided to give the hitchhike method a go. I'd been incredible successful with this in Washington and Oregon, but had yet to try it in California.

Looking back, I almost wish I had waited for the Bus.

According to Mapquest, it is 96 miles distance, drivable in 1 hr 40 minutes roughly. When I set out it was around 2pm….I eventually got there (Los Angeles) well after nightfall. Here is another Tony Tale, in all its detailed glory, coz this story needs to be told like this…

Following the tried and true hitching technique of hitting a highway on-ramp at the edge of town, I wandered 2 to 3 Kay’s along the beachfront boulevard, sweating in the 30 degree heat with my rucksack and daypack on. Finally, I found a spot that looked promising, got out my bit of cardboard and marker pen to scribble my sign.

True to my form of previous experience, I got picked up within about 20 minutes. It’s a beat-up old late-80’s Toyota. A short geeky looking guy with glasses and a whiny voice and a stocky middle-aged black man, named Michael and David respectively, were my new friends. They were going all the way to L.A., more specifically to San Fernando Valley, whereas I needed to get to Santa Monica, but this was close enough I thought.

Two miles down the highway, and Michael has launched into his life-story. Then he suddenly pulls off the highway at the next exit. Turns out Michael is an Attorney-at-Law and was on his way to meet a client, and just needed to stop in his office for 10 minutes 'to pick up some documents', if that was alright with me…who am I to argue. I’m then left with his car while the two of them disappear into an office block….it’s been over 20minutes with no sign of either of them, and I’m contemplating grabbing my stuff and trying my luck on the highway again, only it’s about a mile down the road, it’s stinking hot, and this is potentially a ride 95% of the way to my destination.

David then appears and makes some apologies. Apparently he needed to print out the documents, not just ‘pick them up’, and the printer’s fucked and he doesn’t know how to fix it, and it’s gonna be another 10minutes, and we’ll be on our way. Okay, fair enough. Another 20minutes, then David reappears – with a bottle of water kindly enough – and says “okay, the printers fixed now, 10minutes and we’re honestly outta here’….Mmmm, we’ll see. I seriously wondering about these two guys now – very, very scattered, and one of them is reputedly a lawyer! I’m also wondering whether, if I had’ve stayed on the highway, if I’d have gotten another ride by now.

Right, so now we’re on our way, after our hour long, supposed 10minute, delay. Half an hour into the ride, and I really wished I had passed up on this ride. The lawyer dude Michael is a pure simpleton, while his mate David, who seems to be the smarter of the two, seems to be in total deference to Michael, agreeing with every simpleton remark being made. I’m trying to keep out of the conversation.

Along the way, Michael’s driving is incredibly erratic. He’s skipping up off ramps to side lanes “to try and beat traffic, honestly we’ll save time this way”, attempting short cuts, and is perpetually changing lanes’, braking late, going up the emergency lane to try and overtake. It’s madness. Ordinarily this wouldn’t bother me, but the guy’s sanity, or lack thereof, kinda does.

Next thing I know, Michael is panicking coz the water gauge is rising and is worried about breaking down on the highway. I’m worried about that too. By this point its seriously afternoon peak-hour traffic, and speeds on the freeway have dropped to about 20miles per hour, and we’re still only ½ way there. So we’re having to treat the car very gently now. It stalls. It won’t restart. I ask why, if he’s an L.A. lawyer, is he driving an old beat up vehicle like this one. Apparently his Beamer is in the mechanics, and this is a loaner. He was supposed to have his Beamer back a week ago, but the mechanic still hasn’t finished the work. I suggest he should change mechanics, especially if the loaner car’s he’s giving out are barely roadworthy themselves. He agrees.

Finally the car restarts, and we’re moving, very gingerly, down the highway again. I can see the smog riddled Los Angeles skyline, a pall of filthy transparent brown hovering above the skyscrapers. Then, on one particularly erratic lane change, a Highway Patrol police car is suddenly behind us, with the megaphone advising us to take the next exit off the freeway. We were getting pulled over!!….what now!! This is all I need. Pulling into a service station, the L.A. cop is all very business-like.

“May I see your drivers license and registration, please, sir”
Michael produces the license, but the car’s a loaner remember, and the rego isn’t in the glovebox where it usually is.

“Are you aware that your rear left brake light is not working?” “No, Officer, I was not, this is a loaner from my mechanic”

“Well, what’s your mechanic doing loaning you an un-roadworthy car?”

This whole conversation went on for 5 minutes, and then the cop started grilling David. David, being a black man, has issues with police, and is being very uncooperative, especially regards identifying himself. I’m sitting in the backseat, just wishing they would cooperate so that we could be on our way, but they want to argue every point in fine detail. Because Michael’s a lawyer right, and he knows the law, and what the cop is requesting, they are not legally obliged to give him, frigging nit-picking stuff. And then it was “Do you have any drugs in the vehicle?”, and I’m hoping and praying that they don’t.

The cop had also questioned Michael about me. “He’s a friend of ours from Australia”. As soon as he heard my accent, I was no longer a concern to him – he didn’t even bother to ask for my ID, even though I had my Passport right there. The only time he referred back to me was when I put my hands in my pockets – “KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!” Fine, hands instantly back in my lap.

During this whole altercation, the cop had gone back to radio in the few details that he had eventually extracted from David, and must have requested some back up, coz another patrol car arrived. Cop #1 was back, interrogating David now. “Excuse me Sir, but do you have any further information for me? There are approximately 25 people fitting your name and description with warrants out for their arrest”. Oh Christ, I’m thinking, I’m gonna end up in a freaking police station now.

Eventually, the matter was sorted, and Cop #1 and Cop #2 left the scene. Only now, our car wouldn’t start, again. They filled the radiator, it still wouldn’t start. And so now, they’re amateur mechanics, discussing the fine details of the engine and what the matter was with it, and disagreeing, and arguing!! “It’s the fuel pump” “No, it’s the spark plug”, “Maybe it’s the alternator”. Christ, I’m stuck in the outskirts of L.A. near “The Valley” with a couple of morons, its almost dark, and its taken almost 3 hours to get here when it should’ve have been 2 at the most, and I’m not even anywhere near my end destination.

Once again, eventually, we got the piece of crap car going, and we head for Michael’s meeting point. My original game plan when these dropped me off was that I would get a bus, or two, in order to get to Santa Monica, but that was when I was expecting to arrive well before dark. At this point tho, I’m contemplating a cab, but it’ll cost me minimum US$50 bucks, more money than it would have cost me to get the bus or train in the first place! David then suggests “Seeing as we’ve put you thru all of this drama, we’ll drop to where you need to go, but first Michael has to meet this client to get those documents signed. This'll take 20minutes tops, I promise”.

Fine. At least then I’ll be there, and I’m not having to deal with the L.A. public transport system at night, which I’ve heard can be sketchy. Especially as I’m carrying around my life on my back! So I sit with David at the car, parked a hundred metres down the street, in the middle of some sketchy part of San Fernando Valley watching the sun disappear behind the artificial horizon created by the smog, while Michael disappears into a el-cheapo looking labyrinthine apartment complex and has his meeting with some paranoid Bulgarian guy “who doesn’t like strangers knowing where he lives”. Okaaaaayy.

Once again, car-starting issues arise, but once again, with some coaxing she gets started. More arguments about the best way to get to Santa Monica, what’s the best freeway to take (and god knows there’s scores to choose from in L.A.), and now it’s fully dark, in Friday night peak hour in L.A., and we’re crawling along still in a panic about the radiator and now the fuel gauge is looking scarily low.

Miracle upon all miracles, at around 9pm, fully 7 hours after I left Santa Barbara, I got dropped off in Santa Monica, at the HI Hostel, where I had arranged to meet Mark. Only we’d got our wires crossed, and he’d said Venice Beach!! Problem was that I was without mobile phone service and was using phone cards at public phone booths, and if I didn’t get thru to anyone, all I could do was leave a message, and if anyone wanted to contact me, all they could do was email me. Anyways, a coupla phone calls later, and my buddy Mark arrived to pick me up. I had been invited to a party he was attending that night, but by this stage it was well and truly winding down, so we headed straight back to his apartment, had a beer and called it a night.

That was seriously one of the oddest afternoons of my life. At no point did I feel in any danger, but I think I’m gonna be a little more selective in my rides when I next take up hitchhiking.

Monterey to Santa Barbara

Hey,

Checking in to the HI Hostel in Monterey turned out to be a masterstroke.

I was tossing up the ideas of either Greyhound busing it to Los Angeles, or hitchhiking there out of Monterey.

Come breakfast the following morning, my decision was essentially made for me. While taking advantage of the free pancakes and jam and cream, I got talking to a group of four young, early 20’s, lads with very hard to pick accents. They were from Norway. I wish I could remember their names now – I know two of them were typically Scandinavian – Bjorn and Pieter.



Anyway, these lads were on a 3-month road trip around the U.S. and had bought a car on the cheap to do it in. But this wasn’t any ordinary car, this was an old-skool 1978 Lincoln. I’m not a car person, but this car was amazing. It was a typical American car – big, and a helluva gas-guzzler, but man, it was stylin’! It had electric windows, and sunroof, a big ass square-box shaped bonnet with obligatory hood-ornament, cherry-red leather interior, bench seats, and an acre of room inside.





I mean, if you could picture this, my initial impression was that its original 1970’s owner would have been a Stetson hat-wearin’, cigar-chompin’, pot-bellied oil-rich tycoon with big-ass aviator sunglasses, driving his portly wife and two chubby, bratty kids with ice-cream and chocolate smeared lips down to the beach on a blazin’ hot summer’s Sunday. It was a Classic. And these Norwegian boys picked it up for a little more than US$2000!!

A polite enquiry as to whether there was room for one more person to Los Angles, to help split the fuel costs, and I was in. Sweet. This was gonna be fun. Cruisin’ down the Cali coast, mid-summer, in style, with the windows down and cool tunes from the old skool stereo…sure as hell beats the Greyhound!….

Highway 1, as I’ve mentioned is spectacular. It is also very, very curvy, winding around bends, hugging the coastline all the way down to L.A. Just as well we weren’t in a hurry. We re-traced the road I’d taken with Cathy the day before, but with the added bonus of the 17-Mile Drive around Pacific Grove, once again stopping a million times for happy snaps. Bjorn had a camera that was the pretty much the same vintage as the Lincoln, which impressed me beyond belief – I love those old cameras.



Along this stretch of highway sits the hilltop mansion of the infamous media magnate William Randolph Hearst, known as Hearst Castle, upon which the incredible Orson Welles movie epic Citizen Kane was based. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it was late, late afternoon and was closed. I would have loved to have toured thru that house…it is apparently on such an epic and grand scale as to be beyond belief.



On one of our stops, we checked the map, and quickly came to the conclusion that we had a snowflakes-chance-in-hell on making it to L.A. by nightfall, especially if we stuck to the Highway 1 route. The small university town of San Luis Obispo had been recommended to me by Dan, so we opted to stop in there for the night, checking into the HI hostel.



Another fortuitous turn of events was that we arrived on a Thursday, the night of the famous farmers market street party. Not only that but it was the first week after college reconvened, so the streets were absolutely jammers packed with young students and market stalls and musicians. Great atmosphere on a late summers evening here I gotta tell ya.



Most nights of this trip, I’ve been eating out for dinner, and spending accordingly. Tonight, after seeing the awesome hostel kitchen, I decided to cook, and treat the lads to some of my culinary skills. Spaghetti Bolognese was the universal choice, and my personal fave of my own cooking. Damn I can do helluva job on that meal!!

Next day we pushed off early, with our first planned stop being the plush Santa Barbara. The town that’s famous for its soap opera setting and rich, Mediterranean styled houses decked out with red-tiled roofs and gleaming white stucco, nestled on the Pacific Ocean with tall, elegant palm trees lining the boulevards being cruised along by pretty young things in BMW’s paid for by Daddy, and just dripping, literally dripping with money.



A couple of hours was all I spent here. It’s funny, but I feel really uncomfortable being surrounded by such opulence. It’s as if I feel like I don’t deserve to be here or something – not necessarily that I don’t belong, but that I don’t deserve to be here. I feel much more at ease slumming it in 3rd world countries, or at least places where the wealth is not so blatant and obvious. It’s like there is some injustice being committed with me being here when so many others could never dream of seeing a place like this. San Francisco for example, I felt totally comfortable in, because that place has some character and soul, and I caught elements of realism there, that real people with real struggles lived there. Santa Barbara just seemed like a place where everyone had million-dollar bank accounts.



The Norwegian lads had decided that they’d camp here for the night, while I wanted to push on to Los Angeles where my mate Mark was living. Now there’s an irony for you, given the rant I just gave in the last paragraph, that I was headed for L.A., the land of Hollywood, a place where realism has been suspended for the better part of 100 years.

My journey in getting to Los Angeles was a bit of a fantasy ride in itself, and I guess is quite fitting. More on that next entry.

SF to Monterey

Hey all,

Having finally left the magnificence of San Francisco and the edgy Oakland, I found myself bus-bound for Monterey, on the central Californian coast, about 4 hours away. More specifically, a small little hideaway town called Carmel-by-the-sea, where Gabe (Dan's big bro) and wife-to-be Cathy, lived.



You'd think I'd be able to manage a 4-hour bus journey without any hassles. Think again. I was on a 'stopping all stations' bus bound for L.A. and our first stop was a short 20 minutes at Santa Cruz. Time enough for me to nick across the road to the Subway fast food joint to grab a sandwich for lunch. Now just as we had pulled into the bus station, another bus had also pulled in, also bound for Los Angeles - this one 'express'. Now, the bus driver did say something about what Bay number we were in, but I had my headphones on and missed that crucial bit of info.

Bet you can see what’s coming from a mile away!!!

Returning from the Subway, I noticed a heap of people boarding an LA bus. I join the queue and sit down. As the bus pulls out of the station and the driver navigates thru the side streets to the main highway, he is welcoming everybody 'On board the Greyhound Express to Los Angeles. EXPRESS!!! HOLY SHIT!! Thankfully the driver had only gone about two blocks, and was able to pull over and let me off. I'm sure it would have been a funny-as-hell site to see me sprinting down a side street, with a 1/2 eaten sub in one hand, CD Walkman cables dangling all about my body, trying to hold up my shorts with the weight of my walkman and wallet in my pockets dragging them down.

Luckily, the other bus was still there, just boarding folks as I arrived back at the station. Phew! No further dramas entailed, and I arrived safely in Monterey, where Gabe picked me up.

It was an unusual time for me to arrive in their life again - one week before their wedding. Slightly stressful I'm sure for a guy who was a brief acquaintance from 4 years ago to lob up needing a crash-palace for a night or two. So i am extremely grateful for them that they could even put me up for one night of the two i was planning to stay in the area.



In the lead up to this trip, whenever I mentioned that I would be staying the Carmel-Monterey area, the unanimous response was "Oooh, wow, you lucky bastard, that's a really, really nice spot". Carmel-by-the-sea is a bit of a yuppie-playground of sorts. The village became a bohemian retreat after a serious earthquake in 1906 forced artists to find a cheaper place to live. Since then, it has become a quintessential example of a self-ordered Californian community, driven by the dreams of a sophisticated upper class. Local by-laws ensure it remains rustic and picturesque - there are no streetlights, sidewalks or mail delivery service (every one has a post office box). Very quaint indeed.

The town of Monterey is situated at the edge of Monterey Bay, the USA’s largest marine sanctuary. It is this richness of marine diversity, along with enormous sardine populations that originally gave this town life back in the 1800’s, fame in the boomtown era of the early-mid 1900’s, and sustains it mainly as a tourist town to this day.



Cannery Row is Monterey’s heart and soul. In a thirty-year period, the sardine industry and its canning operations turned this sleepy little enclave into a hustling and bustling, albeit very smelly, metropolis, peaking in the late 40’s with an annual sardine catch of 250,000 tonnes.

The town really hit national and international fame with famed-author John Steinbeck’s novels ‘Cannery Row’ and sequel ‘Sweet Thursday’, recalling empathetic tales of the drunkards, ne’er do wells, and bums with hearts of gold who lived in the town during this era.

While I was back in San Francisco, I purchased these books with the idea of getting to know the background of the place before I arrived. I was also told that ‘Cannery Row’ in particular was an essential piece of Americana writing, which intimately captured a time and a place in the nations history, heart and soul. That couldn’t be any closer to the truth. While sitting on the beach directly behind Cannery Row, I finished the last few chapters, and could vividly imagine the characters, so well depicted, being a part of this town.



The cannery’s have long since closed down due to over-fishing and population depletion, but the town still thrives on tourists traveling down the Central Californian coast, stopping by to check out the restored and renovated cannery buildings and in particular the Monterey Bay Aquarium, noted to be the 4th most visited tourist site in the state, having some 2 million visitors every year. It is amazing.



Heading south from S.F. to L.A., Monterey is en route to Big Sur, one of the most gorgeous stretches of cliff-top coastal road you could ever imagine. Figuring that as the Greyhound bus takes the inland route, Cathy took some time out of her busy working and wedding planning schedule, and took me on a spectacular drive down Highway 1, stopping several times to satisfy my shutter-bug photographic psychosis. The way this highway hugs the cliffs, there are points where you think that at any minute now the soft earth is going to give way and send you and your vehicle tumbling down to the jagged rocks below. It didn’t (obviously), but with the Californian coast sitting right on the earthquake prone San Andreas Fault line, you can imagine it’s only a matter of time.







As mentioned, Gabe and Cathy’s hospitality could only extend one night, and I checked in to the HI hostel, which turned out to be a rather fortuitous turn of events. But more on that later.

San fran-tastic cisco....and Oakland (part 2)

G'day again,

After spending nearly 2 months trying to compose my Burning Man write-up, I have finally gotten started on the rest of my West Coast sojourn thru the United States.

I started writing this 2months ago as well, then was trying to put my thoughts together on B-Man. In the end, I had to give up, coz i was just spinning out garbled shite that made no sense whatsoever (some of you may be saying - "so what's so different from what you normally write"!!)

But, anyway, back to San Francisco and Oakland. Post-Burning Man, and arriving back in San Francisco on the Green Tortoise bus at 7am, I was a dirty, dusty, exhausted and emotionally drained wreck. We all were. Getting back to the hostel, I knew I wasn't going to be staying there, but those who were, were told rooms would not be ready until Midday. So you had dozens of dirty, dustry, tired and emotional zombies flopped out in chairs and lounges in the communal area, trying to come to terms with what they had just done, where they had just been, and that they were back in "the real world", a concept that was a mind-fuck in itself.

I was gonna have to wait around anyways until my couchsurfing buddy Brad finished work and could meet me. I was moving on to Dan's place, where I would stay for the remainder of my time in The City. I met Dan in Paris waaaaaaaay back in June of 2001, along with his brother Gabe. We stayed in the same hostel, hung out for a few days, and most memorably, had a picnic of baguettes and salad, and shared a coupla bottles of the cheapest red wine in the corner market - all on the train station platform of Gare du Nord (the Northern Station). And now, 4 years later, I would be staying in his house for a week!

Him and his girlfriend shared a huuuuge house in the Oakland inner city 'burbs (right by the very picturesque Lake Merritt) with 3 others, and both worked full-time, thus leaving me to my own devices during the day. My English friends were to be staying on in The City for a few days also, and so my general daily routine was to wake up early, get a cafe brekky on trendy Lakeside Ave,



then train it in to SF on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), hang out all day and most of the evening, and get one of the last BART's back to Oakland and walk the mile or so back to Dan's.



Pretty hectic really. Our first night back in the 'real world', we decided to treat ourselves to an all-the-trimmings fancy restaurant dinner.

Venue of choice was "The Stinking Rose", a celebrated and well-famous 'Garlic Restaurant'. This place prided itself on their excessively large quantities of garlic they go thru each month - "We proudly serve food with our Garlic". It was pretty bloody good too. Very imaginative and wide-ranging menu. I had the 'Silence of the Lamb Shanks'...'with a Chianti glaze and fa-fa-fa-fa-fave beans' and side serve of garlic mash. Yummo. This place was seriously garlic. They had thousands of cloves in a string draped along the walls and across the ceiling ala christmas decorations....they even had garlic ice-cream on the dessert menu!! I tried it, gave it a shot like i am want to do...but i gotta say I didn't like it!! This place was so good, and the menu so artily designed, that I pilfered one which I plan to frame and hang on the wall.





Next day, it was time to play tourist.



If yer in San Francisco, you can't not go to Alcatraz. We all met up again for the ferry ride across the Bay, to perhaps the most famous prison on the planet, with the Golden Gate Bridge away off in the background.



It was a strangely very chilly day, and with the wind blowing made for a very cold day. I'd left the house in shorts and t-shirt, and had to purchase a hoody-top from one of the tacky toursity shops on the Fisherman's Quay district. Alcatraz was pretty interesting. More interesting than I thought it would be. Given its history and legend, it was fascinating to hear the stories Al Capone and other crims, the escape attempts, the living conditions, and of the ruthless wardens ruling over the inmates with brutal iron fists. It certainly gave you an appreciation of the place not gained from simply watching television doco's on it. Unfortunately, I've had a minor mishap with some of my pics (i lost one of my photo cd-roms), I can't share with you my Alcatraz experience.



Come evening time, another visit to the fabulous Mission district for another meal out, this time Spanish at a tapas bar, Picaro, for a mini-reunion of Burners, swapping photos and stories and gulping down carafe after carafe of that sweetest of Spanish alcoholic refreshments, sangria, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.





Golden Gate Park and the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco was where the seeds of the 1960’s Flower Power movement were sown, was where the Human Be-In was, and the Summer of Love in 1967 began, where LSD and free-love and the sounds of psychedelia emanated from, and was where the anti-Vietnam War movement really found its feet and got organized and coalesced into one of the most significant monuments in history to the true power of the people.

Here was a hot-bed of an underground movement of politically agitated students, activists, bohemian hippie-types and protesters. It’s where Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead called home. In short, once again, it was a place that I had to be, to investigate and explore and pay homage.



Of course these days, it’s little more than a tourist mecca, full of funky fashion boutiques, trendy bars and knick-knack shops, but it still retains an edge of bohemia and counter-cultural vibe.



It’s still heavily populated with students, artists, musicians and fringe-dwellers of society, and hence still an incredibly cool place to hang out, window-shop, or flip thru the racks in amazing record stores with a jaw-dropping diversity of music, sit in a café or bar and people-watch. And it’s a great place to get around by bike, despite the massive, steep hills you need to navigate around, which what the English crew and I did for the bulk of that day. I’m sure as a local you’d discover the short cuts and by-passes to avoid this situation, and I’m sure they’d laugh at watching the tourists struggle to pedal in the lowest gear up Haight Street.

It was quite funny commuting between Oakland and SF each day – I was spending so much time at the Green Tortoise Hostel that the staff must honestly have thought I was staying there! So much so, that at the twice-weekly free-feed evening meals the hostel put on for its guests, no one so much as batted an eyelid when I stood in line and was served up a plateful of pesto pasta and salad. I s’pose given that I had spent US$360 on their B-Man tour, I felt slightly entitled to a free meal or two…

Alas, that all came to an end when the English crew reached the end of their American stay and jumped on planes back to London.

Despite staying at Dan’s place, I had hardly seen hide-nor-tail of him and Heather since I’d been there. As I say, they were both working full time, and I was out till all hours soaking up what The City had to offer. The Thursday night tho, Dan’s work were having a social drinks session at a bar in fashionable Nob Hill, to watch one of their workmates play in a band, and I’d gotten an invite to come along. I’m always up for checking out new bars and seeing new bands, so I was there. It was good to get a drinks session in with Dan and meet up with a bunch of new folk, I was feeling kinda bad for not being able to socialize with him.

Next up on my San Franciscan adventure was a visit to University of California Berkeley campus, followed by the ubiquitous bike ride over the Golden Gate Bridge, and down into the bayside resort town of Sausalito. It was a big day, bike wise, with a lot of kilometres covered.

I’d rented a bike for a couple of days after the English folk departed, and so cycled out to Berkeley from Oakland, some 45 minutes journey. The city of Berkeley has as it’s unofficial moniker “The People’s Republic of Berkeley”. Apparently this was originally meant as a Communist red-baiting disparagement, but has since been embraced as a rallying cry.



The University there was the radical core of the student-led free speech movements and anti Vietnam War protests of the late 60’s, and is now home to 30,000+ ethnically diverse, politically conscious and active students.







When I turned up there, the school year was just beginning and it was Orientation Week. There were thousands upon thousands of students on campus, all of the various Clubs and Societies had their tables out and reps handing out propaganda trying to entice new recruits to their cause. The main street leading to the campus, Telegraph Avenue, was thronged with young, wide-eyed, eager and excited kids crowding out the cafes, bars and shops.





The street-stall/flea market scene there was amazing as well, with all sorts of wares on sale, predominantly of the sloganeering t-shirts, hippie beads and bangles, and smoking paraphernalia ilk. The campus itself was beautiful, with age-old buildings nestled in behind well-landscaped gardens, spacious and open walkways and grassy lawns dotted with students lazing about, smoking, reading or chatting away. It made me want to be back at Uni again, for a little while at least.

Leaving Berkeley, I trained it out of East Bay and over the Oakland Bay Bridge to Downtown San Fran, and made my way out to Golden Gate Bridge, taking the long way round to take another peek at Haight-Ashbury. I thought I’d figured the city out to a fair degree by now, and hoping to try and avoid the more serious hills, I in fact did the opposite and rode straight in to the hilliest region in the city. I guess I didn’t know it well at all! I had to give up and walk my bike up one hill, and at one point I even had a copper pull up beside me in his cruiser, giving me a friendly slagging and having a chuckle at my efforts.

Now obviously the Golden Gate Bridge is one of those iconic sights, well-known and famous around the world. Built in 1933-37 and over 2 miles long, it is incredibly popular with tourists, and therefore was thronging with people wanting to walk or ride over it. In spite of myself, I got kinda excited about it myself, camera at the ready, trying to get the picture perfect shot. But this bridge must have been photographed literally millions of times. With the tops of the orange-coloured spires enshrouded in the famous SF Bay fog, and overcast grey weather, it provided an eery vista, kind of like you would see in a spooky Hollywood thriller film.



Cycling over it was indeed fun, my bell working overtime with all of the foot traffic in front of me. Over the other side is Marin County and down the hill to Sausalito, a pleasant, little yuppie playground town – a bit expensive, but a good spot for fish & chips and a pint, before catching the ferry back across the Bay to The City.



Now, the main reason I’d been hanging around SF was that I was waiting for the 7th Annual “Power To The Peaceful” Festival, a free peacenik activists’ music festival at Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park, run by Michael Franti from Spearhead.



As I mentioned in my last SF entry, I had put my hand up to volunteer for this event, wanting to be a part of this – not just a spectator – as it had been something I’d been looking forward to for at least 3 years.

The weather had been a tad gloomy the past few days, but this day was beaming with sunshine and blue skies – absolutely picture perfect. Rockin’ up at 10am, I reported to the Volunteers tent, was handed my free, bright orange volunteer T-Shirt and laminate badge, and was given Donation Collector duties, using my vocal chords and good-natured smile to request $1 minimum donations from punters, to cover event costs, as they entered the site. Two hours of that, then I was home-free, the day was mine.

The festival had everything you would expect to see, and the on-stage line-up consisted of a mixture of political activist speakers, outspoken black-power rappers (Saul Williams),



lefty-leaning punk-rock bands (Anti-Flag)



, celebrity speakers (Woody Harrelson)



, and of course, Michael Franti & Spearhead headlining with a 2hour set from 3.30pm.



To top things off, they even had a small section at the front cordoned off for the hearing-impaired and a deaf-sign language interpreter on stage, signing out the speeches and song lyrics to them. Now, that’s all-inclusive if I’ve ever seen it. That’s a perfect example of the kind of attitude and vibe permeating the festival.



The Michael Franti & Spearhead set was, as you would expect, nothing short of excellent. This man seriously has the most uncanny ability to raise the level to euphoria and carnival-party fun to stratospheric heights. The energy he gives out, and then subsequently feeds off the audience is truly phenomenal. He truly enjoys what he does and you can see that as he jumps bare-footed around the stage, dreadlocks flying, like a madman. His lyrics are enfused with a social and political conscious – music with a message – that resonates true and heartfelt, and this is reflected in his ‘one world, one people, everybody equal’ style of engagement with his audience on stage.

Being as big a fan as I am, I was right down the in the front section, boogey-ing away completely in raptures, soaking up the virtually electric energy surging thru the crowd. Several times thru the 2hour set I found myself grinning from ear to ear, and with tears streaming down my face, tears of pure joy and euphoric ecstasy. One girl beside me saw this and just gave me one big, huge hug, sharing in the spirit and vibe of the moment.

Special guest appearances were made by Zap Mama’s Marie Daulne, and rabid high-profile lefty Woody Harrelson who had a few pertinent words to say about George Dubya and the Iraqi War. Damn that guy is funny!! Also, super human-beatbox-er extraodinaire Radio Active hobbled on stage on crutches, victim of a drunk driver hit-and-run, and set the mic alight with his superb oral maneuverings.

After two encores, and the gig finished, Franti did as he always does with every show he plays, and jumped down into the audience to chat with his fans, generously giving hugs, signing autographs and posing for fan-photos. Naturally I was in there, and am now the proud owner of Tony & Franti digi-pic. Happiest guy in the world at that point!




Later that evening from 9pm, there was to be a Power To The Peaceful after-party club gig at a venue called 1015 Folsom, where there would be 4 rooms of music, one of them being a gig area. Spearhead, on top of the 2 hour set they played in the late afternoon, were to be playing another 2 hour set from Midnight to 2am!! The guy is unstoppable!! This gig had a $20 entrance fee, however if you volunteered to help set up the venue prior – free entry. Two guesses what I would be doing!!

Straight from Speedway Meadow to 1015 Folsom, with a pizza slice for dinner en route, a couple of hours of set-up and venue decoration…it was a long, long day. I’d hooked up with and befriended another coupla volunteers there, two cute young gals from San Jose who were as big a Franti fan as I am (No, I’m not the only fruitcake on the planet!!). Another superb set, with several hundred fans reveling in this intimate space with their hero just yards away on stage.



Wow, what a day. Another long-term dream realised – attending and volunteering at the PTTP, meeting Franti, and being an active part of an enormous event in the San Francisco calendar.

Another vital must-see site in San Francisco for me was the Fillmore Theatre in the Haight-Ashbury district. This music hall has been around for decades and has hosted most of the worlds most famous musicians and bands. Everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker and The Grateful Dead to U2, Metallica, Nirvana and The Flaming Lips – and everyone in between have played here. History has been made in this venue, and some nights of musical, magical extravagance have gone down in folklore as some of the most special in time immemorial. I had to see a show here.



The Decemberists were playing two nights as the opening of their new North American tour, and having seen them play at the Summer Camp festival in Bend, Oregon, and having enjoyed their show immensely, I thought ’what better show to see is there this week than this’. Walking in to the venue, the walls are adorned with gig posters of events from the past 40 years that left my jaw dropping with amazement. At each and every show, gig posters are printed in their thousands and handed to patrons upon leaving the event, so I have my very own Fillmore Theatre gig poster, which will be proudly framed and hung on the wall at some point in the near future.

As with the gig in Bend, the band were sensational, their quirky pop sensibilities on show with accordian, mandolin, fiddle and double bass instruments delivering a decidedly different sound. The band are obvious college student faves, with the crowd demographics heavilty leaning to early-20's funky charity-shop clothes wearing types. The vibe was great, and with the band on form in such an awesome venue, I had an amazing night out.

Being in America, the visit would not have been complete without taking a baseball game. It is after all, their Number 1 sport, reputedly. Having mentioned in passing to Dan and Heather that I was interested in catching a game, they immediately suggested that San Francisco is possibly the best city in which to do so. The stadium, SBC Park, has an awesome location, right on the Bay's edge, so much so that any home run that is hit out of the park ends up in the water!! There are guys in dinghies sitting out in the water waiting for such an occurrence to happen, paddling over to souvenir any ball that comes thier way.





Not being a huge fan of the game, I have minimal knowledge of the intricacies involved - and believe me there are a lot, I have since found out - so it was very much a novel experience for me. I simply just wanted to soak up as much Americana, local culture, as I possible could in my short time here. The Sunday afternoon game I saw between the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs, the 3rd game of the weekend between them, Chicago having won boththe Friday night and Saturday games. San Francisco had to win this one.



Approaching the stadium, scalpers were rife, but with one big difference - they were selling tickets below face value! I couldn't figure that one out. They weren't fakes, either, which my initial thought when asking about the price. Whatever, I couldn't knock back any offeres like that. I was prepared to spend $20 on a ticket, which would have given me an okay-ish seat. Instead, for the $20 i had, I was sold a $38 dollar ticket, which had me seated right in line with 3rd base and Home plate. Pretty darn good.



It was great day out all in all. The weather was fantastic, bright blue skies and a pleasant 27-ish degrees, and a very laid-back, family friendly atmosphere in the stadium. The only down side was that the San Francisco Giants lost, 3-2, thus dashing any faint hopes they still had of making the playoffs, just 2 weeks away from the end of the season.





I'm still not a huge fan of the game, but I do now have a more than passing interest in it, and I can now say I do have a better understanding of it. It also then generated somewhat of an interest in the World Series Playoffs happening later that month, and meant that I could at least participate in a conversation about the game. If I'm asked whether I follow a team, I can nominate the Giants.



The next morning, I was off, on a Greyhound bus, bound for Monterey, to stay with Dan big bro, Gabe and his fiance (now wife) Cathy.

So, that pretty much sums up my time in San Francisco - a time and a place I could never forget. That city, in such a short time, occupied a place deep in my heart so strong and enduring that it ranks up there with the best of my experiences across the globe.

If you ever, ever, ever get the chance or inclination - GO, do it, and don't give it a 2nd thought.



Talk later,

Tony