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The Death of a Blue Collar Ethic: San Francisco
January 13th, 2010 by Myer Thompson, under Travel and Leisure. No Comments
It starts all over again. I start the process and begin the re-treading of familiar themes. Yes, I lived in San Francisco. I frequented hotels in San Francisco until I ran out of funds. Then, I stayed with anyone and everyone I could hustle a couch from. Pride is the first thing out the window in old San Fran. And yes, I know locals would never call it that — the precious dears. But I call it that.
There was a time when San Francisco was tough as nails and replete with sails. It was a sailor’s delight. It was the Paris of the West, the new metropolis of Manifest Destiny. If you wanted or needed the sweet thrills of a proper city, you went to San Francisco. It was a modern, imperial city. It was the largest, most happening port on the United States Pacific Rim. There was New York, Chicago, then and San Francisco.
Time never stops and we keep trying to make sense of it all. Jogging down memory lane, hoping to jog loose a recollection long forgotten. A shipyard stalwart turned into some kind of smooth, dainty thing. From the tough-minded, no-nonsense expectations of the Forty Niners to a soft, consumer capital with nothing going for it but a vampiric need for tourists.
It’s a challenge to juxtapose WWII and San Fran, but the two did share time and space together. In fact, San Fran was one of three primary embarkation spots for lads shipping out to the Pacific. It was a rough-and-tumble town filled with fist-fighting sailors. But it was the end of the war that brought an end to its blue-collar underclass and rooted sensibilities.
Rot is an odd term to associate with a town that charges $2,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. But, as the GIs and sailors dashed off to college and industries shut down or relocated, San Fran started its grand, splendid rot. It seems to be some retrofitted juggernaut kept afloat so people can use it as a kind of capitalistic flotilla. Hey, that sounds a lot like a town in Northern California that I happened to spend a great deal of time in.
Before you head to the City by the Bay, be sure you scope out all the hotels in San Francisco. Don’t let the rot ruin your time in the City.
Sleepless Sound Gardens In Seattle
December 31st, 2009 by Myer Thompson, under Vacations. No Comments
No, I wasn’t born in Seattle. But, I got here as soon as I could. In the wake of that move, some village in Texas was left without an idiot. I can’t tell you why I moved to Washington State — the Emerald City specifically. It was something intangible. Something magical.
Yeah, magical. But, by magic I don’t mean I subscribe to the pixie dust and wizards kind. I’m talking about something primal, something elemental with ancient powers. Yes, some ancient rock god had pulled my from my mothers bosom and dragged me to the land of perpetual gray. Something pulled me 1,500 miles to bear witness to a time and place and movement.
I never drank coffee before i moved here. In fact, I had no idea what a coffeehouse was, except for paragraphs in history books about Bohemians arguing about philosophy in German. My experience of the Seattle cafe scene was all of the above — sans the subtitles. I was introduced to ideas and books and more books. You can only sit in a cafe so long before you get bored with staring and decide to read.
I thought Pearl Jam were terrible. I was not unimpressed. In fact, had I any friends who cared to ask, I would have said of all the bands on the scene in the early Nineties, only Soundgarden had a hope booking a gig outside of the state. All the other bands seemed like some bad take on punk rock and I was sure nothing was going to come of any of this. How wrong I was.
In fact, when I heard Nirvana play for the first time, I wasn’t much impressed. Granted, I was miserable and not in the mood to hear Cobain scream through his throat. I was hold up in a ramshackle hotel in Seattle trying to ride out one of the thousand rainstorms. I caught the flier and caught the show and caught a cold.
If you are looking for a lovely hotel Seattle is the place to find one — and for reasonable prices.