…I announced officially that San Francisco was over for me. It came as no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. I’d made it abundantly clear for several years that I had come to despise the place where I’d once planned to live the rest of my life.

Most of what I wrote at the time still holds true. I don’t regret having lived there and I don’t for a second regret getting the hell out when the time came. I came to know a lot of what now defines me while living there; I was very much shaped by that environment. But nine years after leaving (and three years after my last visit), I still don’t really care if I ever set foot inside the city limits again.

As predicted, it’s LA and other non-San Francisco parts of California that I really miss now, as well as “the lack of overt religion and the cool, foggy weather.” I have, as I’ve mentioned on a few occasions, realized that what I believed was a distaste for urban life was actually just a distaste for San Francisco’s version thereof

It’s interesting that many of my friends there have also left the city. It’s even more interesting that two who remained (my ex and my ex-roomie) were originally among the most vocal members of my circle in their distaste for the place. They’ve both managed to make lives there and good for them. I couldn’t do it.

Life hasn’t been all peaches and cream for me back east, but I stand by my decision.

My friend Jeff’s birthday is on Tuesday so last night I offered to buy him a birthday beer somewhere. Against my better judgment, I allowed him to talk me into going to Greensboro’s giant queer dance club. It’s a big warehouse of a place and I hadn’t been there in probably twenty years. Not surprisingly, it’s pretty close to being my personal version of hell.

When we got there, I was surprised to see that even though it used to open right onto the street, it had now sprouted a huge parking lot in front. They’d also added a big front porch with rocking chairs and it felt a little like a Cracker Barrel…clientele and all. The whole industrial area had been transformed into something surprisingly suburban-looking.

Inside, it was as annoying as ever, and it wasn’t very long till I was ready to escape. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Jeff anywhere. After spending more time that I wanted looking for him, I decided to just leave.

For the life of me I can’t remember how I ended up on Patterson Street near the Coliseum. About halfway between Holden and High Point Roads, I saw what I thought was Jeff’s car, which surprised me because Jeff doesn’t drive. I was curious and decided to try to see what was going on.

As I closed in on the car, I noticed another car next to it and the two of them seemed to be driving kind of erratically and aggressively. All of a sudden, shots were fired out of the car that I thought belonged to Jeff. The other car returned fire.

I noticed a police officer had someone stopped on the other side of the street. I wondered why he didn’t go chasing after the two cars that were shooting at each other but he never did.

I backed off, hoping to avoid the fireworks. The two cars sped on toward the Coliseum and I figured I was safe at that point. And then one of them made a sudden U-turn and I realized I was just about to be in the line of fire.

Then I woke up.

I like this…

Update (20 April): I would have liked it even more from the outset if I’d realized that COOL was a spinoff of the departed Apollo Ghosts.

This is not introspection. This is me announcing that I’ve finally taken the time to root out and correct the PHP memory errors I’ve been getting on this site and on Groceteria ever since a server reconfiguration that happened several months ago. It means I’ve been able to do some format tweaking here. More importantly, it means my address spreadsheets on Groceteria (even the big ones) are working again.

I’ve been playing with HTML more than usual at work lately and it’s made me realize I kind of miss that whole web content thing. I’ve been sort of lazy about it lately. Maybe I’ve found new inspiration. Heck, maybe I’ll even start doing things on my professional site again. Or maybe I’ve just fixed a problem and will let it go at that. Only time will tell.

Islands
Death Drive (2013)