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Video Geekery

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…

Stupid Oblivious Hippies

One thing I definitely won’t miss about San Francisco will be the stupid-ass hippie granola factor. Case in point: two of my neighbors were sitting out on the sidewalk playing a long, repetitive bongo drum duet for about a half hour late this afternoon. It was the same eight beats over and over again — enough to drive any sane person crazy — and I could hear it all the way in the back of the flat even with the windows closed. It was loud…

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went downstairs to see how long they were planning to continue. I asked the thirtysomething guy and his twentysomething female companion if they’d be playing much longer.

“Oh, probably not.”

“Good, because I can’t hear myself think anywhere in my apartment.”

They promptly and without incident stopped their little performance and went inside. It wasn’t like they were being defensive or confrontational or anything. In fact, they almost seemed hurt that someone didn’t appreciate their musical “gift” to the neighborhood. What really bugged me was that stupid fucking deadhead kind of obliviousness, as if they couldn’t wrap their brains around the fact that not everyone on the block really wanted to listen to an hour’s worth of the same drum loop over and over again all night long. It just hadn’t even occurred to them, apparently…

I guess they just assumed that everyone else within range was as stoned and stupid as they were…

What WILL I Miss?

I guess we’re really going…

A big part of the packing is done (more thanks to Mark than to me) and last night we started saying our official goodbyes by having dinner with Sarah and Brad. And I’ve hit that point where every time I visit a certain store or restaurant, I’m assuming it will probably be my final visit…

Strangely enough, I’m finding that — friends aside — most of the things I’ll miss aren’t actually IN San Francisco. That may be due to the fact that aside from work and home, I haven’t really spent that much time within the city limits for several years now. My leisure time is spent in Oakland and San Jose and even Sacramento and Fresno, and it’s these places that I think I’ll really miss. And I’ll hate not having LA nearby as well, since I’ve lately found it much more fascinating than San Francisco…

So very much of what I used to find so interesting about San Francisco either isn’t here anymore or isn’t exciting to me anymore. Most of the bars and clubs I liked are closed –or radically different than they used to be — and I don’t really care about that scene anymore anyway. Except for parts of the Richmond and the Sunset and the Outer Mission, the city has pretty much have become a boutique caricature of its former self, a theme park if you will. Of course, this was a trend which was well underway even in 1992, but it’s gotten completely out of hand now…

Some other casualties:

  • Live 105 before it turned into the land of Limp Dipshit and Korn.
  • The dogs, Jim Gabbert’s editorials, and even the KOFY call letters on channel 20.
  • That whole great neighborhood of warehouses and piers that used to be where SBC Park is now.
  • The Emporium.
  • Mike’s Night Gallery.
  • Army Street.
  • The little cafe that used to be in the building where I work and serve lasagna every Wednesday, even though they always ran out by 12:15 or so.

More to come. And all sentimental notions are, of course, subject to change…