san francisco.
winter finally announced its unequivocal arrival last night in san francisco, with a proper storm coming through from late sunday afternoon until the early morning hours of monday. the system dumped hail and cold rain on the city, and snow in the coastal mountain ranges. the sierra nevadas, which are located further inland on the opposite side of the central valley, received two feet of snow in the last eight hours and it is still coming down.
the last few days have delivered the kind of blustery weather that sees unbridled black umbrellas cart wheeling down market street near the alabaster white ferry building on the embarcadero. some of them collapse into a heap, landing at the bottom of the bay while others end up in the hands of lucky pedestrians, who seem all too willing to rescue an ownerless umbrella while they take shelter from the downpour.
weather forecasters say that the temperature might drop below freezing during the day time on wednesday, as a high pressure system moves in. this is quite remarkable, to say the least. though not unheard of, but it certainly is the kind of meteorological event that plants itself on the lips of many chatty (and concerned) san franciscans.
even in los angeles, there is snow in the local mountains.
this is not surprising, if you find yourself in the san gabriel mountains that hover over the glass skyscrapers of downtown los angeles – for much of december through march, their shoulders are always covered in snow; but the mountains along the tejon pass, also known as the grapevine on interstate 5, barely reach 4.000 feet, and i’ve heard on the radio that it is snowing there.
there might even come a light dusting of snow on the santa monica mountains along the coast, and hopefully by the time that i arrive in venice tomorrow afternoon, the snow might still be there on the jagged green peaks to greet me during a late afternoon stroll along the beach.
THE WEEKEND PAST
in a week that is not atypical from other weeks, i flew up to san francisco on a thursday night, so that i could spend a few days with a. in san francisco. seeing that it was my birthday on friday, i might normally have chosen to celebrate that weekend in venice, but a.’s office was hosting their annual christmas party, and my presence was expected.
the mood at the party was generally sedate if not lugubrious. a.’s company has just been through a series of lay-offs, while they’ve recently opened an office in a city on the east coast – so the combination of two dozen overworked jetlagged employees arriving from the east coast a mere few hours before the party with the rest of the overworked-underslept work force suffering from survivor’s guilt and unreleased frustration as a result of the lay-offs did not make for a good environment. it did not even make for a potent environment where scandal might break out at a moment’s notice, which would have at least made things interesting and possibly memorable. people were too tired for that.
we said hello to a few of a.’s colleagues, drank some wine and tasted a drink made especially for the evening called a “baracktail” in honour of the incoming president. we listened to the dj who, despite an impressively receding hairline, somehow had a headful of curly hair style, like a blond afro. we watched the oddly coiffed man attempt to inspire the guests to dance to his combination of latin beats and holiday rock and roll, while we wondered why not one of the firm’s partners got up to make a speech (this is typical californian to not do something like that). sensing that conditions at the party would not improve, we made our way home.
during the taxi ride back to the apartment in the dogpatch neighborhood, i thought about the horror stories that i had heard coming out of the recent fiascos at several companies in silicon valley. one company hired extra security on tuesday so that on wednesday, several dozens of its middle managers could announce the lay-offs of 1.500 employees in their sunnyvale office (just south of san francisco). each laid-off employee was told by a middle manager that they would have forty-five minutes to pack their belongings and grab their personal files off of the company computers. they were then escorted by a security guard to the front door, where television crews and journalists waited to interview them as they stepped out into the cold california sunshine and the rest of their lives.
lay-offs in america have become a spectacle, with up to the minute television and internet coverage broadcast live to a world obsessed with the morbid details of failure and catastrophe, especially when such high profile “successful” companies as these are forced to “reorganize,” as they call it.
to cap things off, on thursday, this same company unceremoniously laid off the middle managers who were in charge of wednesday’s firing rounds, and thus the purge was complete. companies like these will lose some of their best people and even manage to inspire a new generation of cynics and skeptics. there won’t be that many talented people left in their companies to create the products that they became famous for in the first place. we’ll see what happens.
i see a lot of new start-ups in the future, with an attitude that says “we’ve nothing to lose.”
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the next day, we met up with two of our friends, asd and nm, who originally come from paris and, up until two months ago, lived in san francisco but now live on the east coast. the husband works with a., while the wife is a fashion designer (though, since they moved to the east coast, she’s now an out of work fashion designer). we’ve done a lot of trips together with them over the past few years when they were san francisco residents, and they were our reliable dining companions when we had time to go out to try new restaurants in the city, though with the new economy (which, with christmas in mind, we now call “the new credit-crisis holiday-slowdown economy”) no one, including us, is spending too much money on things like dinner or vacations.
after a chance encounter in the neighborhood of hayes valley with our friend oc (whom everyone now seems to think looks like barack obama because he happens to be young, tall, thin, a snappy dresser, smart and black but really, the only part of him that looks like obama is the part above his eyes – they have the same hair)…. well, after the four of us had a chance encounter with oc, we enjoyed a modest brunch at a tiny french restaurant that oc introduced us to by taking us directly to its door.
we then made our way to the recently renovated de young museum in golden gate park for a survey of the architect maya lin’s recent work (which borders more on sculpture than it does on building design). there was also an extensive retrospective on the works of fashion designer yves saint laurent (which picks up nicely from where we last saw his work at his own institute in paris).
i found myself distracted by my suddenly uncovered habit of getting into angry, tight-lipped discussions with the security guards. i managed to annoy the security guards on three occasions – my shoulder bag caused consternation for one, my camera for another, and my cell phone for a third (apparently, sending a text message while standing before an yves saint laurent bridal gown is an absolute no-no).
the day continued with a twilight walk along the beach at crissy field (which used to be a military airfield overlooking the golden gate bridge and then became an abandoned airfield overlooking the golden gate bridge but now the airfield is gone, replaced by grasses and dunes and sculpture gardens and promenades).
while driving us to a nearby metro station, asd quietly confided to us that she “has trouble with red lights” after slamming on the brakes in the middle of an intersection, which encouraged a few other motorists to gesticulate irately at her. “in paris, i wouldn’t think twice about driving through.”
. . . . . . .
on sunday, a. and i planned to sail on the ferry out to angel island, the nature preserve in the san francisco bay located between tiburon in marin county (across the channel from sausalito) and the former prison island of alcatraz. the mountainous angel island provides outstanding views of the entire bay, including the city, but the incoming storm put a change to our sunday ambitions. instead, we took a train and a bus to japantown, located near pacific heights.
riding the bus in san francisco is an interesting social experiment. most people who have some money do not ride busses in san francisco, and the same generally applies to los angeles. in both cities, the only white people who ride the busses are europeans or the truly destitute.
while in los angeles, busses are genuinely underused and in surprisingly good condition, occupied mostly by cleaning people and low income wage earners. things are different in san francisco, where the busses are the run-down traveling circuses of the city’s infirm, the desperate, the homeless, the disenfranchised and the confused. in their zeal to find the exit, elderly chinese women push their way through the crowded aisle, inner city teenage kids who have no other way of getting around use the bus as their recess courtyard, recently arrived honduran immigrants will crowd a corner of the bus while a homeless guy will strip out of his clothes just as the occasional hipster in his vans sneakers will pretend not to see anything as he lowers his eyes to type messages into his iphone.
you very rarely see working people ride the busses, much less people in suits.
our friend, mg, a lawyer from new york, used to ride the bus to work, until he was assaulted not once but twice. the first time, someone threw a half-consumed burrito at him, smacking him on the side of the face. he never saw it coming and it knocked him backwards into a row of seats. he quietly stepped out of the bus, hailed a taxi home and spent the rest of the day picking black beans out of his ears and hair. he was later the victim of some homeless guy’s projectile vomiting, thus shattering his ego while ruining his suit. now a man twice defeated, he walked all the way home and stayed inside for the rest of the day. he bought a mercedes the next day and has never ridden a bus since.
nonetheless, on sunday, we rode the bus, taking us through different parts of town with different income levels and different cultural backgrounds, as the passengers who got on and off the bus along the way reflected these differences.
sunday’s bus ride also provided us with the pleasure of sitting next to a weatherbeaten vagrant who had crafted a raincoat out of a black garbage bag and wore it over his tattered striped sweater. he reeked of unwashed clothes and a four-day hangover and his skin was leathered and dirty. he would nervously swat at his garbage bag raincoat. every time the bus slowed down, he complained loudly, moaning to no one in particular: “typical, typical, some people have to work, you know. whenever you are running late for work, the bus is always in no hurry. they just take their sweet, sweet time.”
while ultimately agreeing with him, i wondered what kind of work he might be late for? it is true, also in the reverse: whenever a bus or train is needed, it will never be on time, but when time is not an issue, there’s always plenty of trains or busses.
stepping off at japantown, we had luncheon at a small restaurant called mifune, located in a small distinctly japanese shopping arcade.
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