I am in San Francisco. Yesterday it was cold. Today it is hot. So I brought something with me.

I’ve been on the road for just under a week but it seems like so much longer. Wednesday I drove on a two lane road from Lancaster to just south of Bakersfield. One might think this would be a hellish, boring road. But really, there is something very special about that part of the world. It’s special because there is nothing built there yet. It’s a hot and wasted land, but with wildflowers as far as the eye can see and an ominous mountain range in the distance.

I was talking to someone in The Vine a couple of weeks ago, about the magic of Coalinga. Coalinga is a nothing town off the I-5, but there is a motel there way off the interstate that I sometimes stay at when I have to pass through. From the door of your room you can see the sun set over the mountains to the west, and though it is hot, and desolate, it is beautiful. It has a lonesome, unnoticed kind of beauty. Like the highway from Lancaster to just under Bakersfield.

Driving along Highway 99, you enter each town with it’s mile high signs for McDonalds, Motel 6 and Chevron, and you cringe. In Coalinga, you look one way and see the mile high signs, but you look another and you see a desert sunset. In the Central Valley of California, it is pretty bleak. You’ve got to seek out the hidden beauty, no matter how elusive. If you can do this, you can make a boring road meaningful and colorful.

Anyway. I am in San Francisco, staying in the flat I lived in the last four years I lived here. It’s like going home, but now, after four years away, it’s like going home in a real-time memory. Yesterday, after a marathon slowtrav party (more on this later, like tomorrow) I got into the city and walked up the wood staircase to the flat. My old roomies Leigh and Laurie were there, and just happened to have a bottle of sparking wine on ice. When you live with someone for four years, it is beyond familiar, and that was how it was yesterday, walking in there.

Then they had to go to rehearsal for the new play they are doing called Mudd’s Women which is based on the 4th episode of Star Trek. Leigh is playing Captain Kirk and Laurie is directing and is one of the women. Based on this alone you can probably tell how fun and cool Leigh and Laurie are.

Left alone in the flat, I walked around a while absorbing my past. Everywhere, there are things to look at in that flat – my roommates are consumate kitsch collectors and fabulous designers. Even when I lived there I use to look at everything all the time. I would have just stayed, drank some wine, and ordered up some takeout, but there was something else going on that I had to at least try to check out, and that was the Arcade Fire show at the Warfield Theater. I did not have a ticket, but I had to try to get in, and first I had to eat. So I headed out into a windy and cold San Francisco night.

My old home! What a trip to walk down to Church and Market in footsteps I’ve already walked in a thousand times. I had a dozen places I wanted to eat, many dishes I miss and want to eat while I am here. I ended up at Chow on Church Street, because there is this weird thread on pizza on the slowtalk message board and I just needed to eat pizza out of a woodfired oven really, really bad.

It was magical in Chow. It’s a life I no longer lead, but for the first time in four years, I missed San Francisco. Sitting at the counter, watching the staff with their crazy hair and nose rings, the whole place packed and crackling on a happy Sunday evening, drinking a glass of Banfi Corvina while waiting for my pizza… it was, well, like putting your cold foot into a warmed, furry slipper, one that has been stuck under the bed for a while. It only took a second to realize who the guy sitting next to me, pounding a Thai noodle salad, was. A bartender at a place called the Orbit Room down the street, a guy I always had a little crush on, a muscle car type with a slight lisp. Once, he carded me, and when he read my ID he said I was a couple of months older than him. This was years ago, and I still know exactly who he is. And he is now 40, just like me. This kind of familiarity with someone you don’t even know could only happen after living in the same place for fifteen years. I was over San Francisco, but now, I suddenly miss it. I love Ocean Beach, but I don’t have that same familiarity there, especially with strangers, if that makes any sense.

So yes. The cold Sunday evening, a wall of voices, and PJ Harvey playing loudly above that, even. Steam on the windows, the streetcar going by. This is San Francisco. This is really, really great. And suddenly I miss it.

Got on the F Line down to the Warfield, where my quest for an Arcade Fire ticket was unfruitful. It sucked – it was a scalpers market, with more buyers than sellers. I had a little sadness trio going with a really tall, skinny British guy and a long-haired nerdy type. The British guy told me he saw a woman hand over fifty bucks for a ticket, but then the guy just walked away without giving her the ticket. The nerdy guy kept saying “I can’t believe I am getting contempt from a SCALPER.” And there was some contempt, because they had us. I told one of them I’d pay fifty bucks and he contemped me. One dude walked by and had an extra ticket to sell at face value close to where I was standing and I was in the wrong spot so I didn’t get it. He made these two people flip a coin and it was brutal. The British guy came up to me and told me he was giving up. The streetcar was coming, and I gave up, too.

I gave up, and that is the only reason I am functioning today. So there is a bit of beauty in everything, even in missing an Arcade Fire show.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2005 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.