San Francisco, CA (continued)

Yes, I'm still here. Why would I leave?

In my Portland blog I had a rant about hipsters, and admittedly San Francisco also has its fair share of people who are just a little bit too cool for school. In fact I'm concerned that I may unwittingly be turning into a bit of a hipster myself, on the outside at least. I wear a flat cap and I feel that's justified by my advancing years and by me being from the north of England, but when it's combined with the khaki shorts and sandals and - above all - the facial hair, onlookers could be forgiven for making certain assumptions about me.

I do my best to dispel the hipster impression, partly by boycotting all Apple products, and partly by overt mainstream-isms such as walking into a coffee shop and ordering 'black coffee', as opposed to 'grande single shot 4 pumps sugar free peppermint nonfat extra hot no foam light whip stirred white mocha'. Also if I have music on my earphones then I'll turn it up a notch so that people know I'm listening to Guns'n'Roses and not some indie label Bolivian alt-jazz collective. (Or are Guns'n'Roses hip again now? I don't know. I keep seeing T-shirts). My keen interest in craft beer also gives off a whiff of eau de hipster, so if there's baseball on TV in the bar then I can dispel that hipster whiff by joining in with the whoops and fist-pumps whenever the home team scores a touchdown or whatever it's called.

One hipster thing I did do was to take a stroll down to Haight-Ashbury, which was the place to be, back when hippies were hip. It's still a funky street but inevitably it's not what it used to be. Last time, in 2008, there were still lots of independent stores selling random stuff you wouldn't find elsewhere, or at least not in one place. (People of my hometown and generation will know what I mean when I refer to Durham Book Centre). Those shops all seem to have gone now. I can't really complain, because I probably spend as much money on Amazon as anyone else. But it was depressing that I couldn't find a single Sly & The Family Stone T-shirt anywhere in Haight-Ashbury. I'll just have to find one elsewhere. On Amazon, I suppose.

Looking back at downtown from the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge

Coit Tower, seen from the top of Lombard St

View from the top of Coit Tower.
This is the reverse view from the photo above:
Lombard St runs from the bottom middle to near the top left
Golden Gate Bridge just visible in the mist, at the top.

Every Dodge convertible needs a cute fluffy polar bear in the back seat.
Right?

1967 novel at the Beat Museum, which is otherwise mostly devoted to Kerouac & Ginsberg.
This couldn't have been published before the 60s, and it couldn't be published now.
It only goes to show, doesn't it?

San Francisco, CA

There are good mornings, and there are really good mornings, and then there are mornings where you grab a bagel and a coffee and stroll downhill to Pier 39 just in time to catch the Golden Gate Bridge being cleared of mist by a newly-risen California sun. San Francisco is the place that I love most in the whole wide world.

I've waited seven years to come back here and it was worth the wait. This place has everything that I could ever want from a city. (If you don't agree, well, Apple and Facebook and Google all have their HQs in this part of the world and collectively they're a lot smarter than you, whoever you are). The climate is sunny but with cooling breezes. It feels authentically American, and yet when you dodge out of the midday sun you can suddenly find yourself in a peacefully shaded traffic-free alley, with painted stone walls, that makes you feel like you're in Provence or Tuscany. And there's cultural history to spare, which for me personally runs in a long wavy line from Jack Kerouac to Sly & The Family Stone all the way through to Metallica. OK, anyway, you get the point. Me likey San Fran.

I'd love to tell you all about the crazy bohemian journey from Portland to here, a day or two of jumping freight trains and hitching rides on the backs of rusty old pickup trucks driven by baccy-chewing Vietnam vets with shotguns under the dash. But it would be a lie. I flew United and it took 90 minutes. I'm getting soft in my old age.

On Tuesday I went to an Irish bar and watched Sunderland 1 Man City 4 at 11.45am local time. I was sat between two Yanks, plastic Man City fans, who yelled constantly about "shutouts" (clean sheets) and "closing" (scoring). A deflating experience, to say the least. But after the game I reminded myself that a) it was only football, b) it was only the League Cup, c) I still had my health, d) the sun was shining, e) I don't have to go back to work until 2016, f) I'm in San Francisco, and g) my pint of draft New Belgium Snapshot was really nice...And so on. Always look on the bright side of life! Easily done, here.

Obviously...

Standing on the dock of the bay

The Anchor brewery, on Mariposa St.
In my view it's America's 3rd best, after Brooklyn and Sierra Nevada.

Castro district

Edd vs Food #23
'South Of The Border Scramble': scrambled eggs, avocado, chorizo, cherry peppers and cheese.
With hash brown & wheat toast. I'm not sure what the strawberries are doing there though.
At the Taylor Street Coffee Shop.

Portland, OR

The train here from Seattle was very nice. Tons of room in an empty carriage, functioning wi-fi, and we arrived half an hour early. Here we see the benefits of publicly-owned trains. If only there was somebody I could vote for to get the same thing back home.

Portland doesn't really have many tourist attractions or photo opportunities. It's simply a very nice place to, like, just totally hang out, dude, as the locals might say through a sleepy haze of pot smoke. There are microbreweries everywhere and it seems pretty much everyone is a skateboard coach, or a bagel decorator, or a marketing consultant for a vegan dance troupe...

In general I am amiably disposed towards that kind of thing, but everything has its limits, and I wonder if the atmosphere here is not just a little too complacently self-satisfied about how kooky and alternative it all is. We can't all be hipsters: somebody somewhere has to get on with the business of providing life's essentials. All these fascinating little cafés and galleries and specialist shops are touted as a sign of prosperity, but they are the fringe benefits of prosperity and not its causes. And people who piously insist on their $2 coffee being FairTrade, while remaining indifferent about the provenance of the $1000 MacBook sitting next to that coffee, need to spend less time preaching to others and more time educating themselves. But that kind of thing is by no means limited to Portland. It's my blog and I'll rant if I want to.

Enough negativity. My hostel is in the peaceful and charmingly-named Nob Hill district. Nearby is Powell's, the biggest and greatest second-hand bookstore in the world, where I exercised heroic self-restraint by spending only $25. There have been enjoyable nights with fellow guests of various nationalities in the surrounding bars, including the Deschutes brewpub - you can get their stuff in the UK, in the better off-licences if not in the supermarkets just yet.

In the hostel garden I had an amusing chat with a young woman from Pensacola (I've been there! Pensacola, not the girl) who was a firm 'believer' on the subject of alien abductions and UFOs and all that malarkey. Her beliefs were backed up by things she'd read: 'on the internet!' she added for emphasis, as if that was a mark of authenticity compared to unreliable tittle-tattle like, y'know, books.

Separately I talked with an even younger girl, an 18-year-old college fresher from Orlando, who had just heard Afrikaans for the first time and described it, unimprovably, as sounding 'like a gay Hitler'. I rewarded her with a bottle of Blue Moon White IPA, despite her being under 21. In doing so I perpetrated not only the deed for which Socrates was put to death, but also possibly a legal misdemeanour. She was just starting out in the world of underage drinking and fake IDs and all-night parties. Et in arcadia ego.

Less pleasing was a discussion about gun control with an American chap who was firmly 'anti' (anti the control, that is, not the guns). I put it to him that when the 2nd amendment mentions "...a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." it's clearly referring to the fact that the US didn't have a standing army in 1791; and that since the US does now have a standing army, quite a substantial one in fact, the amendment is simply out of date. Judging by the rather vacant stare I got in response, I'd say his enthusiasm for the 2nd amendment hadn't extended as far as actually reading it.

I avoid lecturing strangers with whom I disagree. I prefer a kind of poker-faced Louis Theroux approach, just asking questions, because you're never likely to change someone's beliefs and it's better to try to understand where they're coming from. So I gently suggested that it would at least do no harm to ban assault rifles and large handgun clips, neither of which can serve any legitimate defensive purpose (the word 'assault' is there for a reason). Here is a rough but unembellished transcript of the ensuing exchange:

Me: If you want to defend your home and family then surely you're better off with a shotgun than a pistol or a rifle.

Him: No, I got my Glock pistol with a 12-round clip, that's what I'd use if I heard noises downstairs.

Me: But a shotgun would give you a wide burst of fire. Margin for error in the darkness.

Him: Don't need it. The pistol has a light beam so I can see what I'm shooting.

Me: Your gun has a light shining out of it - surely that means the burglars can see you but you can't see them...

Him: No, because I'd already be pointing my gun at the burglar when the light went on.

Me: But if you can aim without the light, then what's the light for?

I can't remember the rest of it. I was losing the will to argue, and indeed the will to live.

If you've read this blog all the way through then thank you, and I'm flattered, and I hope you don't feel you've wasted your time. However if you've skipped straight to the photos then don't worry, I forgive you.

PS I've just had my head shaved, and having no hair puts me in a tricky situation re my next destination...I might have to put the flowers in my beard instead...

Downtown Portland from the west. 

Mount Hood (11,249ft) is visible 50 miles away to the east, in the distance near the left.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

Edd vs Food #22

Generic but delicious pile of Mexican comestibles at ¿Por Qué No?

3524 N Mississippi Avenue, Portland

Lady and the tramp

Signs that you're in a hipster town, #34: a blinged-up Volvo 240.

Seattle, WA

Even though it's only 10 months since I last left, I'm glad to be back in America. (I didn't quite feel that way in Los Angeles, but Seattle has brightened my mood considerably.) Much as I love living in England, there are some things about being Stateside that life back home just can't match. Taco Bell, I have missed you so much.

This is my first time in the USA's Pacific Northwest. It was a gloriously scenic flight north: mountains and valleys, forests and deserts, with hardly any clouds save for the huge ochre-coloured smoke stacks rising from the wildfires in northern California.

The climate in Seattle is warmer than I was expecting. It's a very affluent and bohemian city - there are hardly any fatties - and, as with Colorado, hash is legal here now. Also it's a thriving hub for what I believe is nowadays called the LBGTQ community. Some of the trannies seem to take a rather pick-and-mix attitude to the different visual aspects of femininity. I'd better not try to explain that one in detail.

Seattle cuisine is overwhelmingly fish-based, which is not to my tastes, but I'm mostly being cost-conscious and cooking my own meals in the hostel. Indeed, on Friday, not only did I have hot dogs & baked beans for lunch, but I got all the ingredients (including ketchup) from the 'free food' basket left by previous hostel guests. It's not really possible to stoop much lower than that, short of drinking water straight from the toilet bowl.

With mountains and oceans and greenery all around, Seattle has probably the most attractive visual setting of any American city I've visited. All in all, it's gone straight into my top five and I recommend it to everyone. Hopefully my next destination will be equally pleasing. In the meantime I’m feeling slightly jetlagged, and I’m in Seattle...I wonder if there are any lame film-based puns I can make out of that?

The Space Needle and downtown Seattle.
Seen from Kerry Park, in the 'burbs about a mile north of town.

Piers on Seattle's western shore.

This is the very first Starbucks. Like, off of ever.
It joins Roswell and the 'Neighbours' set on the list of places that I've visited without knowing why.
Ideally I wanted a picture without any selfie-taking Asians in it...
...historians estimate that this was last possible some time in the late 1990s.

Slightly non-PC archive newspaper (see sub-headline on right) in the Museum of Flight.
Seattle has a huge Asian population and I'm surprised this is still on show.
But then, they started it.

Also at the Museum of Flight - an original Supermarine Spitfire.
The World War II room contained fighter planes from all the major combatants:
this one is obviously the prettiest, not that I'm biased. 

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest air-breathing jet aircraft that ever was or ever will be.
At top speed it did 37 miles per minute. And it looks superbly evil.

Los Angeles, CA

Tuesday was literally the longest day of my life. 32 hours. 8 time zones is the furthest west I've ever travelled in one go. For those of you with whom I haven't spoken recently: yes, this is the start of another jaunt, and a very big one at that.

I'm not at all enamoured of Newcastle Airport since its recent 'makeover'. I resent having to do the IKEA-style Yellow Brick Road trek through the handbags and smellies and other assorted tat before getting to the bars, all of which now seem aimed at orange-skinned people who have white deep-pile carpets and drive Audi TTs and grow goatee beards to cover their double chins.

And my 11-hour transatlantic flight from Heathrow was delayed by two and a half hours. The only saving grace was that I got one of the seats right at the front of cattle class, where one does at least get all the legroom one wants. During the flight I watched 'American Sniper', which prompted some novel ideas for making Sunderland city centre a bit more pleasant on a weekday afternoon.

Sadly, Los Angeles remains a complete dump. But I'm only here for one night, just breaking up the journey. Tomorrow I'm moving on again, and then after a few days hopefully a more cheerful and informative blog post will follow. I don't take my readers for granted, you know.

Los Angeles.
It's crap.