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Now really, who WOULDN’T want to do his laundry at the Pineapple Laundrette?

I drove down to the city on Saturday, taking pictures and generally poking around. San Jose is nice, and it’s a handy reminder to Bay Area residents that we do in fact live in California. San Francisco has its own charms, but it’s really Californian only by virtue of geography…

San Jose, on the other hand, is more reminiscent of that cliché Southern California “dream” which draws so many people to the west coast. With its cute little single-family houses and neighborhood shopping centers from the 1950s, and with its freeways and low-rise orientation, and its palm trees and semi-trpocal vegetation, San Jose looks more like California is “supposed” to look: informal, sunny, modern, and open.

San Francisco looks stuffy, cold, damp, claustrophobic, and old. Residents are stacked on top of each other, many of them don’t own cars, and the freeways are more likely tobe demolished than repaired or expanded. There are dingy corner stores rather than big (or small) shopping centers, and any palm trees one finds look rather lost. It’s no wonder people are so surprised to find this very east coast city on the tip of a Penisula in California…

I’ve been doing this for eight and a half years now, and I deserved a month-long vacation, even it was unplanned and unannounced, dontcha think?

Anyway, here’s what’s been consuming my time and attention of late?

• Thyroid Be Done: It’s been dosed with radioactive iodine and I’m optimistic that the little bugger is well on the way to dying for good. Alas, I’m warned that the next two months or so may be a bit of a physical and emotional roller coaster while they get me stabilized, which sucks, because I feel really good right now…
• The Videotape Eradication Program: Having recently purchased both a DVD burner and a component DVD recorder, we’re well into the process of eliminating all analog magnetic video media from our home. This is a BIG task for me as I have hundreds (thousands, maybe) of hours of video to wade through, but it’s great beacuse it’s keeping us from leaving the house or otherwise spending money every weekend. The electronics should pay for themselves in no time…
• Traveling Frankenberries: We’re going to Hawaii to watch Mark‘s sister get married in August. Unfortunately, by doing so, we will miss seeing The Cure at SBC Parr anyplace else in California. Missing them entirely is not an option for Mark (who won’t admit how much he hates me for seeing them in Greensboro a dozen-plus years back), so we’re flying to Seattle to see them the weekend before…
• It’s Our Birthday Too: Mark is celebrating his tomorrow night at the Tonga Room. You should pop by, or just buy him something. Mine is in August, and I’m not sure where I’ll be spending it. Since it’s a big one (40), I’d sort of had my heart set on LA, with a semi-public gathering at Clifton’s Cafeteria the Saturday before. Alas, all the other travelling during August sort of makes that scheme less prudent and attractive, so I may just skip it and find some other, better-timed day to celebrate…
• The Silliest Place on Earth™: It’s my new trademarked slogan for San Francisco, and yes, I did register an associated domain name…
• And the Rest: Dinner with an old friend from Greensboro I’d missed very much, salivating after a Corvair convertible in the Haight, cruising the bay (in a boat, silly), and realizing it’s time to buy that G5…

Mmmm. Corvair…

A note to certain of my co-workers: if working for a large corporation so offends your sense of ethics that it becomes the only thing you can talk about — or think about — all day, do you maybe need to ask yourself at some point why you continue to accept that tainted paycheck every week instead of just moving along and doing something else?

It’s just a thought…

Yes, like many San Francisco residents, I work with a number of annoying anarchists. Actually, they’d probably be more inclined to refer to themselves as “individualists” or “non-conformists”. Evidently, individualism is defined by a need to recite recycled dogma on an hourly basis and to have as many tattoos and vaguely repulsive piercings as possible, while non-conformity means ignoring rules just because they’re rules and questioning all authority just because it’s authority.

Mind you, despite this focus on the individual, there is a community focus too. It usually seems to involves parking one’s obligatory, non-polluting, non-conformist bicycle in a narrow passageway INSIDE the office so as to make it more visible to the less-evolved (who take the bus), not to mention to create as much of a safety hazard as possible to anyone who might damage himself on its protruding handlebars. Like me. At least once a week…

I keep reminding myself that they’re young, idealistic poseurs who will eventually grow up and get slightly less annoying. But they probably won’t, particularly here in the insulating womb of San Francisco, where non-conformity is a fashion statement and individuality is rewarded (tolerated) only when it poses no threat to — nor asks any questions of — “the community”…