Aaaaand They’re Off!




November already? Blimey. It’s been a busy 2007, but it doesn’t seem like a year since I wrote the first words of what would eventually become Satan’s Schoolgirls. And now here we are again. It’s NaNoWriMo season, and I am again obsessed with word count and the ever encroaching deadline of December the 1st.  This year, I’m giving an old short story the respect it deserves, and opening the world it contained up to closer examination. The story is The Prisoner Of Soho. It’s got magick, gang warfare, kerosene powered mecha and espresso-fuelled madness drooling off every page. You will need this story in your life. Trust me, I’m a writer. 

You can find ongoing word-countyness and choice cuts from the story as it develops by simply clicking on the PARTICIPANT icon to your right at the top of the page.
Yeah, by the way. The only reason I’m hammering it out so quickly is cos I’m at home with flu at the moment. Little to do except sit and write.  Trust me, that’ll change. By month’s end I’ll be panicking about the deadline just like everyone else. 
Shouts to my writing buddies this year, Clive and Rob. Good luck, guys, and just remember. Keep cranking it out.  

Some Laughs, Some Tears, and L’il Viggo

After the craziness of last week, it’s been nice to take a few days to decompress and catch up on some sleep. However, we still ended up with a busy old weekend. 

Saturday afternoon saw us as Leicester Square. We’d booked up for a couple of screenings through the London Film Festival. Unfortunately, the one we wanted to see, Todd Hayne’s I’m Not There, sold out scary quickly. The films we chose to see instead were by no means poor replacements.
First up, Grace Is Gone, with John Cusack playing a house -husband who finds it impossible to cope when his wife, an Army sergeant, is killed while serving in Iraq. It’s been widely, and favourably reviewed, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The film’s rep as a tear-jerker is also well-founded. I certainly had something in my eye at the end. 
It’s very much an exploitation movie, though. By which I mean, you’re there for one purpose. Grace Is Gone wears it’s politics lightly, and the linear plot is engineered to take you to the place at the end of the film where you can have a bit of a cry about how awful it all is. Let’s put it like this. It’s a road movie. Once the characters reach their destination, there’s nowhere for them to go but back home to mourn what they’ve lost. The single bit of narrative tension comes from not knowing when Stanley, the John Cusack character, is going to tell his kids they’ve lost their mother. And it’s pretty obvious. 
A film like Grace Is Gone is all about characterisation, and this has it to spare. John Cusack is on top form as Stanley, a failed soldier and the bad cop of the mother/father team, who suddenly has to take on a lot more than he’s ready for. Spontaneity is almost impossibly hard for him, and this really shines through. It’s a long way removed from Lance in Say Anything, that’s fur shure. 

Shélan O’Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, both first timers, get props for the incredible job they do at portraying Stanley’s daughters. Utterly believable. In short, I’d recommend it, if you don’t mind being gently but insistently herded towards an involuntary sniffling fit at the end.

Between times, Clare decided we should stand by the barriers at the premiere of I’m Not There, on the offchance that a certain Mr. Ledger should show up. No dice. she had to make do with Christian Bale and Ben Whishaw, which doesn’t seem like much for 90 minutes in the cold and damp. Still, I’m not a fan, so what do I know. 
Back in the warm, and we settled in to watch Talk To Me, Kasi Lemmons’ affectionate retelling of the life of Petey Greene, Washington DJ, comedian, and peoples activist in the 60’s. This is a straight up, unapologetic biopic, and a fine example of the form. It’s a bit disjointed, a bit obvious, but the tale is still told with a lot of verve. It’s also very funny, thanks to Don Cheadle’s pimp-roll of a performance as Petey Green. The show’s stolen by Taraji Henson, though, who is hilariously OTT as Green’s long-time girlfriend Vernell, big hair, big … lungs on display throughout. Chiwetel Ejiofor also deserves a shout as the solid foundation of the film, playing Petey’s manager Dewey Hughes, a man who stifles his own showbusiness dreams in the face of a greater talent. He, and director Kasi Lemmons were at the screening, where she described him as a national treasure. A sentiment the whole of the Odeon West End wholeheartedly agreed with.
We would have stayed for Q&A’s, but trains and the need to hit the sack before 1am took precedence. That’s the one pain about living in Reading. You can’t leave it too late to get home, and the trains that run any time after half 11 stop at every third lamp post. Slow trip back, but at least you can doze safe in the knowledge that the last stop is home.
Sunday. Miserable, cold and rainy. The perfect day to cocoon with the papers and Goldfinger as a matinee, but I had other plans. Back to The Square, to meet up with Clive and check out the new David Cronenberg, Eastern Promises.
Apart from the rotten title, this is a cracker. It’s written by Steve Knight, who also wrote Dirty Pretty Things, and it shares it’s focus on the grimy side of London life with this earlier film. The cast and direction are uniformly excellent, but most of the attention is going to be on Viggo Mortensen, who plays the Russian anti-hero Nicolai with a cold precision that’s beautifully chilling. Right up to the fight scene in an Islington steam room, where he’s set on by two Chechen assassins. He’s naked. Boy, is he ever naked. This scene will show up in best fight scene polls for years to come, I betcha.
After the movie. Clive and I retired to a nearby pub to plot the next month’s activities. He’s being foolish enough to join me in this year’s NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words in 30 days. Regular readers may recall I made the total last year, and loved the experience enough that it was a must for 2007 as well. This time, I’m going in with a reasonable idea of plot and character, which is a big step up from 06. Expect posts on the blog to be brief at best, although I may throw the odd scene in to break the tedium.
Now, if only I hadn’t knackered the letter N on my laptop…

Frankenstein

Well, they couldn’t have timed it any better. On the day that a UK mother has given birth to twins developed from an egg developed from cells grown in a laborotory, ITV screened an updated version of Frankenstein, that taps into the idea of genemod research. For the most part, it wears it’s ideas lightly, preferring to be a juicy modern gothic rather than being a serious discussion of the issues at hand. This is where Jed Mercurio’s script and direction work best, I think. Despite his former work as a doctor, the science by which the Monster comes to be is sketchy at best, and still seems to involve a honking great tank full of bubbling chemicals and lightning. Hardly the cutting edge of biotech. 

The film falls over when the plot steps away from the simple story that should be it’s heart – the relationship between parent and child. By shoehorning a spurious sub-plot involving the military-industrial complex into the midst of a perfectly satisfying relationship tale, Mercurio drags the classic tale down to a standard monster-in-a-box horror. I felt a little cheated by the quick ending. I’d love to have seen a story that deals with a family dealing with the most special needs of all children. I’d loved to have seen a story that dealt with the implications of growing a human being, and the consequences of that. I felt like there was plenty more that could have been done with the story. It’s a 21st century Frankenstein. Is this the best a gifted writer like Jed Mercurio could come up with?  
However (in my reviews, there’s always a however) there were some neat nods to the mythos, not least the sequence with the child, which did not flinch away from the nastiness of the original script. And Helen McCrory was, as ever, great, and the most believable thing in the whole film. On the whole, not bad. Just not great. It was something of a wasted opportunity.

On A Mission (part two)

Sorry about the hiatus. Being crazy busy left me with little time to blog, so apologies if I’ve been leaving you hanging.

We’re home again. The washing machine is running on overtime rates, the kettle is on pretty much constantly, the cats are conspicuously sulking and I’m viewing everything through a fog of exhaustion. A happy exhaustion, though. It’s good to be home. There’s a clean English blue sky outside, and a tang of autumn in the air. It’s a long way from the heat, and the heart of San Francisco. 
Saturday night on Union Square. We spent some time in a bar that the late great Chronicle writer Herb Caen called ‘the last of the great nightcapperies” – The Gold Dust Lounge. It’s a dodgy tourist trappy saloon that’s been in place since the 30’s, and looks like it hasn’t been decorated since it opened. Dirty gold coloured Anaglypta on the walls backing saucy tapestries and fading photos. It’s a long thin space, with a couple of bars. The long one is the place to belly up to and start snarfing beer and shots. 
The other one only serves music. The band sits behind that, and they dole out a thick cocktail of blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll. The drummer looks like Kenny Rogers, which made the version of “The Gambler” they tore through doubly surreal. Oh. “The Gambler” has also been adopted by the English rugby crowd as an unofficial anthem, and it was requested by an Aussie girl with an evil grin. Earlier that day England had lost the Rugby World Cup to South Africa. I have to think it wasn’t a coincidence. Anyhoo. The place is pretention-free, with a great mix of people all having a good time. About as cool as a chili dog, and I didn’t care two bits. I was too busy paying my respects to the Maker. 
 
Sunday morning dawned, waaaaay too bright and sunny for a boy on the bourbon and his vodka-soaked doll. But there was nothing we could do about it. We had been bad. And so we would have to go to prison. 
Alcatraz. Sat on the shimmering waters of the Bay, a cruel reminder amidst the beauty of the darker side of human nature. A natural outcrop of sandstone that has been used as a fortress, a military lock-up, and most famously as the prison where America’s worst were sent. Since 1973, it’s been run by the National Park Service. At it’s most populous, there were maybe three hundred inmates on the Rock. Now, it’ll see five thousand people a day in high season. And today, we’re amongst that throng. 
There’s a strange atmosphere to the place. Visitors treat it with a kind of reverence, a quiet respect. The ranger’s introduction at the dock area is jolly and welcoming, but doesn’t really seem to gel with the experience you get from the rest of the place. You get extraordinary views of San Francisco, a ten minute boat ride back across the Bay, and that’s part of the problem. For the bright lights and the sounds of the city to be that close, and that far out of reach, must have been close to unendurable for all those prisoners. 
They don’t do the thing any more where you’re locked for a little while in a cell, but you can wander in and out of a couple of them. I’ve seen better equipped animal pens. The isolation blocks are worse. Windowless steel boxes, two long paces long by one wide. If you misbehaved in Alcatraz, you’d spend some time in one of these. Alone. In the dark.
The audio tour that comes with admission now tells the story of how one prisoner coped (I’m paraphrasing here, but not by much): 
“I’d pull a button off my shirt. Then I’d throw it somewhere. Then I’d turn around a couple of times, get down on my hands and knees, and I’d look for that button. And once I’d found it? Why, I’d do it again. You had to do something in that black hole, just to keep yourself sane.”

We were both quiet for a little while after that. It’s sobering to consider that the island itself is now a major tourist attraction, with rare species of bird and plant calling the place home. Yet it’s the tales of misery and suffering, the cages and the shrapnel marks in the floor, that draw the crowds. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Something for another post.
We were in the mood for something uplifting when we got back to the mainland, so we hopped onto a bus crosstown, to Golden Gate Park. One of the great urban parklands, I think it can hold it’s head up in amongst company including Central Park and indeed Hyde Park. It’s bloody massive, that’s for sure. Thirty blocks long by ten wide, stretching from Haight St to the sea. You couldn’t walk it in one day. Fortunately, we didn’t have to. After checking out the Conservatory of  Flowers (imagine a dinky version of the big greenhouse at Kew) we hooked up with a couple of the guys from Friday night, Auntie and Gnash, who whizzed us around on a guided tour in Auntie’s pickup. There seemed to be impromptu parties and pockets of craziness everywhere, including a stomping mini-rave by the car parks. On a warm sunny Sunday, it seemed to make perfect sense to head for somewhere green, and rock some ass.
I, of course, had other ideas. Gnash drove us to Ocean Beach, where we soaked up some hazy afternoon sun and cocktails at The Cliff House, a three-story restaurant perched on the cliffs overlooking the wild Pacific. All very decadent, and a tad Hitchcockian. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Cary Grant hanging by his fingernails while hanging over the cliffs, before straightening his tie, and heading to the terrace room for a martini. The cocktails were very good. 
It would have been nice to sit and booze out the evening there, but we still had things to see. Notably, after plenty of remote nagging from different sources we finally hit the western end of Haight St, and Amoeba Music. 


It’s one of the best record stores I’ve ever been in, and dumps from a great height on the soul-less Virgin Megastores and HMV’s that clog up music retailing so much. This is a megastore with heart and soul. As you can see from the pic, it used to be a bowling alley, which has been stripped out and is now home to as much cool stuff as your poor aching credit card can handle. They hold free live shows here (turned out I missed gigs from The Go! Team and Thelma “Don’t Leave Me This Way” Houston this week) and have the DVD department that beats ’em all and has ’em coming back for more.  

In some ways, it’s probably best that we found the joint so late in the week, because otherwise, well, lordy, luggage excess would have been putting it mildly. Gnash told us that the trade counter gets very busy, not least with rip-off kids burning all their purchases to disc then getting the cash back. I wouldn’t have the heart. A place this good deserves support, and it’s doing great business by all accounts. 

This is really heartening news. I’ve made my views clear on the state of music retail in the UK clear recently, but my shift towards downloads has more to do with the fact that music stores in general are just no fun to be in anymore. There seems to be a focus on pushing a limited range of titles, and charging through the nose for back catalouge. Plus, a majority of UK music stores are nasty, soul-less warehouses. (No, not all of them, so don’t rush to defend Selectadisc or What Music or Andy’s, I’m down with those guys and support them as much as I’m able)(actually yes, do, let’s have a list of cool record shops for me to bankrupt myself in!)) This was never the case with Fopp, and isn’t with Amoeba either. The fun of the browse, the wander guided by fuzzy logic, coming across albums you’d forgotten about or artists who seemed interesting, all yours for a fair price. Wandering out blinking into the sunshine wondering where the last hour had gone, with a warm glow in the belly and a smile in your eyes. Then off for a pint somewhere to paw over your new lovelies. You know, the fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. No wonder I never got into football.
Right. Sorry. I was telling you about San Francisco. Although we’re pretty much at the tail end of it now. Gnash drove us back to the hotel, where S3’s and sock changes all round were definitely in order. Then out for dins.
The one problem with being based in Union Square is that after a long day’s sightseeing, you’re not in the mood to get back on the bus to find somewhere for dinner. And dining around Union Square can get tourist trappy if you don’t choose with care. I fancied a meal at John’s Grill, which had been made famous in The Maltese Falcon, only to find out they charge 28 bucks for a steak. Which is taking the piss and cruising on a reputation all in one sharp kick to the monetary nads. No thanks, John. 
We ended up in a jazz place, listening to a rather cool four-piece who really could have used a foxy female vocalist (I’ve yet to hear a convincing version of Cry Me A River sung by a man)(yes that’s a challenge. Find me one!) and eating a nice mahi-mahi en papiette. “Ooh,” I think, “that fish has come in a nice filo pastry basket. Tastylicious!” It’s more robust than it looks, and it takes me a little while to bite a piece off. Once I pop it in my mouth, I realise my mistake. (quote of the day) En papiette is literally, in a paper bag. Oops. I try to spit the soggy piece of chewed brown paper out onto my plate so that Clare doesn’t notice. I fail. One of the many reasons I love this girl? She doesn’t take the piss when I do that kind of thing. Much. 
And then it’s Monday, and we’re jumping up and down on our cases to get them to close (HA. No, we’re not. Two words of advice from a seasoned traveller – squishy bags. Nevertheless, it’s a tight squeeze (other quote of the day)). The lovely Madame X volunteers to take us to the airport, and she takes us to lunch before dropping us at SFO. Time drags, in the way it only can at an airport. I spot Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s Fell – Feral City for sale in a news concessionary – which is a bit of a culturefuck as it’s on the same shelf as rants from right wing publicity-whore nutbags Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter. 
And then we’re on a plane and I don’t sleep despite the Dramamine and hypnotherapy and I blink again and it’s Tuesday and we’re home and it’s autumn. Honestly, you’re away for a week, and someone kills the summer. Oh well. If you’re going to stick a knife in, you might as well twist it.
Crikey, what a week. San Francisco is an extraordinary place, with a friendly vibe that instantly puts it up amongst my favourite places on the planet to stay. We’ve met some great people, and seen some amazing things. We’ve only really raised goosebumps on the place. We want to get better acquianted. We’ll be back.
Oh yes, my lovelies. We’re coming back. 

On A Mission (part one)

Long couple of days here in the Bay. Lots to cram in. Lots crammed.
Saturday morning, and it was impossible to find a place for breakfast that didn’t have a queue out the door. The queue for Sear’s and their tiny pancakes nearly stretched back to the corner of Powell and Sutter. What is it with America and breakfast? I know it’s supposed to be the most important meal of the day, but this is bordering on the obsessive. We make do with a coffee and pastry in the coffee shop at Borders, and head south of Market to find the Cartoon Art Museum. After a false start thanks to my godawful sense of direction, (but which led to Clare getting a photo-op outside the San Francisco Chronicle) we find the place just as it opens. Just as well we weren’t too efficient then.
The place is a little gem celebrating the great ignored art form. The five galleries that make up the exhibition space give a decent chronology of the American development of comics, from the Yellow Kid up to the small press boom. This modern offshoot is especially well represented, with cartoonists in residence and works in progress from some of the best that the Bay Area has to offer. There’s an great retrospective of the cute, sharp and often moving work of Lark Pien currently, and a good overview of US foreign and domestic policy through the eyes of political cartoonists. But it’s the archival work that really does it for me.  Seeing original Tom Palmer pages for The Avengers or even *swoon* a Will Eisner Spirit page from 1963 really brings the grit and the craft that goes into a single page of funnybook is quite something. I won’t say I had to be dragged away. Clare knew full well I was at church, and not to be disturbed. 
Back up to Market, and the F trolley to the Castro. These are great fun, although not in the same wind-in-your-hair, life-in-your-hands way that the cable cars can be. They’re rattly and drafty, but a good way to see the city for a buck fifty. Plus, design classics, or what? Buck Rogers, anyone?
The F terminates at the top of Castro St, and in case you weren’t aware you’re hitting a free-expression zone, there’s a honking great rainbow flag at the entrance. As clear a statement of intent as that evinced from the high concentration of gentlemen in leather shorts and extravagant moustaches.
 
I sneer without reason. Castro Street is chilled, happy and friendly. Loads of good bars and cool shops, and a rock-ass comic store called Whatever that nearly tempts me with the Green Lantern beltbuckle in the window. Yeah, geek pride, baby. Geek pride. 
From Castro St we hook south, and down to the Mission. Valencia St is the place for lunch, with crepes at Ti Cuz, a recommendation from Dr. Jones. Big buckwheat pancakes with intensely savoury stuffings. The couple next to us have a crepe suzette so loaded with alcohol that it nearly takes the waiter’s eyebrows off when he sets light to it. The joint is funky, charming, and the perfect place to let the ache in our feet mellow down to a twang. 
Post lunch is a slow amble round the Mission, the Spanish/Latino quarter of the city. Valencia St is the posh bit, boho and designer, and any tattiness is decidedly on the surface and elaborately hand-crafted. Mission St, one block north, is the real deal. It’s littered with the dead husks of old cinemas, proud but useless, ignored by all but the geeks with cameras who see a photo op and think they can make a point. Mission St is what it is, poor, but vibrant. Real, and therefore a little scary. We move through it quickly, pausing only to snap photos, ignored as we slip on through, taking a taste and moving on. 

Up On The Streets

We caught our second wind today, and perversely got loads done by taking things a little easier. We breakfasted heartily (at the Persimmon Cafe, two doors up from the hotel. Proper sausages and hash browns, finally, none of this patty nonsense), before taking a stroll through Chinatown. This was nice in a Chinatowny kind of way. Sorry to sound blase, but I’ve worked in Soho for nearly fifteen years. Funny pointy hats on phone booths are not a big deal to me. 

That slow stroll up Grant Avenue brought us out into North Beach, the area of the city best known for nurturing the Beat Poets. It’s as shabbily boho as you’d expect. Strip clubs face off against coffee shops, with the odd chichi addition and blow me if we’re not back in Soho again. The Beat Museum on Columbus sports a sign outside which states “the wearing of berets and over-use of the word ‘daddi-o’ is discouraged”, which made me smile. And someone had attempted cutout poetry outside the City Lights bookstore, using masking tape and permanent marker. The end result wasn’t worth the five minutes of work that must have gone into it. 
We stopped for coffee at Cafe Triesste, the oldest coffee shop in SF. They still do a good cup of joe, and there’s a nice line in opera standards on the Wurlitzer in the corner.  The opera’s live there on a Saturday, apparently. Bet they don’t do anything by Philip Glass.
Onwards. We head west, and grab a bus to Union Street. Lots of fun little girly shops and restaurants full of ladies wot lunch, so we’re in Kensington now. But now the sun’s out (spits of rain while we strolled Chinatown) so it’s fine, and we promenade. Clare frowns at the lingerie shops, and decides she needs more Victoria’s Secret stuff. So, back on the bus, then a bare-knuckle straphang hanging out of a cable car back to Union Square. This is the way to commute. The wind in your hair, the smell of hot metal as the gripman hauls on the brakes, the whoosh of traffic inches from your kneecaps. Knocks the tube into a cocked hat, that’s for damn sure.
We split to do more shopping, which is a foolish error on Clare’s part, as she leaves me in the Graphic Novel department of Borders. I’ll draw a discreet curtain over the feeding frenzy that followed. I leave an hour later, heavy of bag, light of wallet with a wild glint in my eye and a slightly sickly grin on my face. Folks, lemme tell ya. When things are half price, don’t necessarily follow that you have license to spend twice as much. 
Got back to the hotel in time for a quick S3, before we trundled out to meet up with Madame X and some more of Clare’s buddies for a night at the movies. The film of choice was Rendition, which has some guy called Jake Gooberballs in it. I can’t think of any other reason why Clare would want to see a film on covert torture.
There is a good film to be made about the dreadful practice of extraordinary rendition, but this isn’t it. On the plus side, it looks suitably gritty in that Syriana/Traffik grainy, heavily coloured mood. There’s a clever time-pull towards the end that reconfigures the plot in quite a neat way. But apart from that, it’s standard Hollywood issue-by-numbers, without ciphers in place of characters, (Meryl Streep as Cruella de Ville again, Reese Witherspoon as the most annoyingly vunerable soccer mom on the planet (tiny, blonde, wide-eyed and fifteen months pregnant furfuxache), and the aforementioned Goofsitall as the CIA analyst who gets a backbone in act 3 for no discernable reason whatsoever) and a dumb revenge motive instead of a credible plotline. We had much more fun bitching about the film afterwards than while we were in the cinema. 
Ooh, and I got a handy tip that will inform tomorrow’s activities. There’s a Cartoon Art Museum in SF. 

Over The Hill

A glorious clear day here on the Bay, not a cloud in the sky. A perfect time for a cable car ride up to Fisherman’s Wharf, to book up for Alcatraz. Cable cars are so very cool. The world’s only mobile National Monument, they are both efficient and beautiful objects. I’m poignently reminded of the Routemaster bus. The perfectly adapted transport for the urban terrain. The brakemen that drive them are courteous, charming and funny. Entertainers in charge of running a cable-driven mechanical wonder up 1-in-4 gradient hills safely. Only one in three applicants for the job will make it. It’s not a job I think I could successfully handle. 

Yeah, let’s talk about the hills. They’re something else. I know SF is famed for the vertiginous quality of it’s landscape, but the sheer comedy value of how steep things can get is actively surprising. It’s like the whole city was designed by someone with a serious thing for rollercoasters. You become very aware of the downside to every upside. 
Here’s a downside. We’re both knackered. Well and truly. I’ve dragged us up and over every hill in SF over the last couple of days, and the exercise has caught us and given us Chinese burns. Not good when you only have a week to squeeze in as much as you can, and all you want to do is splat in your hotel room. 
However. Still a nice day. I’ve got a touch of sunburn to the nose after basking in the unexpected sunshine at Aquatic Park today. We have eaten extraordinarily well for very little money at Nonna Rose’s. And we have been culturally nourished too. We took a trip to the Museum of Modern Art (half price on a Thursday after 6, cheap art fans) and checked out the Olafur Eliasson retrospective. Some extraordinary work in here, playing with ideas of colour and light in ways that left my head spinning. An example. The lift doors to the exhibition open to a flood of yellow light. This is Room For One Colour. The lobby is lit by monochromatic lamps, that shut the spectrum down to yellow and black. It’s like being in a Sin City out-take. Skintone becomes greyscale with bright sunshiney fill. It’s deeply bizarre, and you can’t stand it for long. Well, I couldn’t anyway. Colour’s too important to me for it to be lost so easily. 

Over The Bridge And Into The Trees

Early call this morning. X picked us up from the front of the hotel in her old Range Rover, and whisked us off on a guided tour. Breakfast first, though, in a chic little place off the Presidio, where I fiddled with X’s iPhone and decided that, regardless of the sensible justifications and conclusions I’d come to before I went away, actually, I do rather want one of those cool devices, thanks.

Then, out to Fort Point for photo ops before driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Marin County, home of the redwood forests. The Bridge is a bold red slash of colour against cloudy skies, almost unreal in it’s massive assertion of human control over the landscape. It certainly doesn’t slip into the background, anyway…

Marin County is green, fresh, and home to the most absurdly twisty roads I’ve ever seen. I don’t get motion sickness easily, but the multiple 90 degree hairpins X flung the Rover through gave me the queeeze. We drove to Muir Woods, a National Park dedicated to the preservation of these majestic arboreal giants. We walked in silence through the forests, the trees reaching hundreds of feet above us. Deer picked their way fearlessly through the undergrowth around us. The woods were peaceful, dripping gently after morning showers. It was ten miles and a milion years from the busy streets of San Francisco.

We returned to those streets for lunch, then headed south-west into Haight-Ashbury, to soak up some of the old hippy vibe. I’m disappointed to report the area was a little less scuzzy than I was led to expect, with some cool thrift shops and quirky designer stores. There’s a strong smell of incense and weed in the air, though, which doesn’t seem at all localised. It’s as if the scents have been soaked up by the very stones.

On the way, I found Isotope Comics, a very cool comics store that Clare could have quite easily left me in for the rest of the day. I had to settle for spending a measly hundred bucks in there, the majority of that on Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s massive tribute to the Tijuana Bible, Lost Girls. One for under the cover reading, I feel… Isotope is part of a triangle of comic shops in the Haight-Ashbury area, all of which are worth your custom. For friendliness and quirk value they beat the crap out of Forbidden Planet, anyway.

Soundbite on Devisadero Street: “…and they were all totally naked! I didn’t know where to look! It was super awkward!” Delivered at some volume by a camp, skinny chap in a suit into a mobile. Sometimes, you know that the other end of the conversation can’t possibly be as interesting as you picture it. This one? This one could have gone anywhere and I wouldn’t have been surprised…

Tomorrow: North Beach, Chinatown and the Wharfs. And if we’re lucky, Alcatraz.

Venality And Greed

I lasted till half eight, then whoever it was with control over my nervous system jammed a thumb hard on the reset, and that was me cycled out for ten hours.

We rose, blinking, to a cloudy California Tuesday. Breakfast at a cheap diner, then shopping on Union Square and environs. Not a pretty sight, so I won’t elaborate. Suffice it to say we’re all stocked up for the winter now. Bags everywhere in our room.

We’ve found a good place for eats on Powell: Sear’s, which has been there since the 30’s, and gets regular queues outside for breakfasts, which are apparently legendary. I don’t queue for breakfast, so I wouldn’t know, but on the strength of their lunches I could well be tempted. The Pulled Pork Sandwich was possibly the manliest thing I’ve ever eaten. Sloppy barbeque in a bun. Half a dill pickle the only garnish. Deeeelish.

We’re back at the hotel now, chilling amongst our new treasures before venturing out for dinner. X is driving us out to Marin County tomorrow for views back across the Bay. Prepare yourselves for awe-inspiring photos.