I smell a franchise opportunity…

My current big project (aside from moving) involves organizing and burning to DVD hundreds of music videos I’ve recorded over the years from old standbys like MTV and VH-1, and such gone but not forgotten sources as “Night Flight” on USA and “Night Tracks” on TBS, among others…

I’m also interspersing them where possible with nice, new clean copies recorded from VH-1 Classic. It was on that channel yesterday that I was reminded of my FIRST music video project back in 1982, when I got my first Beta format VCR. I managed to catch “It’s Raining Again” by Supertramp, which was the very first music video I taped on the old Beta VCR at age 17…

As I remember, I taped it the first time from HBO, along with “Our Lips Are Sealed” by the Go-Gos and “Allentown” by Billy Joel. HBO used to run music videos between movies. Those were the pre-MTV days on most cable systems, and you sort of grabbed these things where you could find them…

Elmo, strapped into the rental car for a trip down the coast…

As if I needed a reminder about why I’m leaving San Francisco, I walked out last night to find that my car had been broken into for the third time in less than a year…

Keep in mind that my car is a piece of crap, which gives off no vibrations that anything valuable might be kept inside. Generally, it gets “accessed” on rainy nights and the seats are always in the “recline” position. Nothing is ever missing from the car or the trunk. All this makes me pretty sure I’m a target more because some street person needs a dry place to sleep (or do God knows what else) and he’s pretty certain my dumpy Corolla doesn’t have an alarm…

But an extra $130 every three or four months for window glass is a small price to pay to make sure some crackhead is warm and cozy for the evening, huh?

My neighborhood is really getting bad lately. There are a lot more homeless folks around and a lot more sketchy characters in general. And the lovely new piece of “mural art” across the alley seems to be beckoning every gangbanger and gangbanger wannabe in a fifty mile radius to come get stoned and look at it while listening to really obnoxious music at 11PM…

I used to think nothing of walking around this area alone at 2 or 3 in the morning, but I sure as hell wouldn’t do it now. My car has been broken into more times in the past two or three years than in the first TEN years I lived here. I never used to feel nervous South of Market, but it’s pretty common for me now…

I am SO happy to be leaving this place…