Big in Japan On Tour

Back in March, when I last posted regularly to this blog - for shame! - my Financial Adviser and I took a friend of a friend of hers around San Francisco. We dragged her to burritos, we insisted she take a scenic walking tour, and we were so worried that she’d miss the Golden Gate Bridge that we walked across with her.

Granted, this was about two weeks before the unofficial beginning of summer. That’s okay as long as you remember that global warming doesn’t exist. Summer months for San Francisco, traditionally, tend to be a bit in April and May, with a bit more in September before a big final hurrah in Ocotober.

Lisa, as she insisted we address her, was from England. Our fog rated high on the “wimpy” scale.

To be honest, she loved our namesake bridge. As did the FMA, and even myself. Y’see, there aren’t many natives, or even transplants, who’ve walked across the entire span, up from the Presidio in SF and down the hill to Sausalito. THe day we went was windless and warm, with clear blue skies reflected above the bridge towers and in the water below.

That, of course,is part of the grandeur of the Golden Gate. It not only inspires, but it kills. The waters beneath are notoriously lethal for both suicidals and those who make tragic mistakes.

The bridge, though, she perseveres. We love her for her beauty and symbolism, and rarely curse her for the lost souls that throw their bodies over her barriers. Like the moon, she is a harsh mistress. Yet nobody leaves her presence without realizing that despite all the metal, despite the era that she was the pinnacle of and not the entrance to, she has maintained through the years to assert her prowess as a symbol that we all respond to.

To write about San Francisco and ignore the Golden Gate is to write about New York and assume that the World Trade Center never existed, or that the canals of Tokyo were nothing but a fiery dream.

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Today San Francisco held its second “Sunday Streets” event of the year, where Our Fair Mayor attempted to greenwash his horrible record on alternative energy and quality-of-life improvements by closing the Embarcadero from 8 a.m. til 1 p.m. There were a couple of problems that I had with the event, all having to do with it being too short, and no future events scheduled.

Otherwise, it was a fine idea that should return ASAP, regardless of what office Gavin the Slut is trying out for next.

The FMA has been making great strides in her urban biking prowess, but wasn’t quite up to the task of pushing herself clear across town on two wheels just yet. Taking migraine medication that prevents her from sweating - no, really - doesn’t help, so we took our bikes on the bus and headed downtown.

Once there, we headed south. Around noon, the crowd wasn’t that dense. Cyclists, scooter-pushers, skateboarders, and rollerbladers (whom I always want to call bladerunners) of all ages were moseying up and down the closed northbound lanes of the Embarcadero. Southbound still had internal combustion traffic. We both commented on how many children were out on bikes. There were kids as short as three or four years old pushing mini-BMXs with training wheels around. Clearly, people were having a grand time.

At South Beach Park we encountered the hula hoop contest, along with the first of a half-dozen Obama for President stations and at least 10 other organizations vying for the hard-earned eyeballs of passersby. We stopped for a pricey hot dog that went for 80 percent over cost because it benefited a neighborhood group… we hoped.

At Mays Field, the proscribed route banged left to continue its southern bearing. We passed by a group of dancers, and encountered the Old West ragtime pianist who just couldn’t bike without his piano.

By the time we reached the beleaguered Pier 70 and the local sporting goods chain Sports Basement, the cops were pulling down directional signs and the DPW crews were out recovering portable barriers. Last in line, we managed to get free bike chain lubes and minor tune-ups. It was less dirty than you’d think it would be.

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Peet’s Coffee was the proto-Starbucks, the Alex Bennett to their burnt-bean Howard Stern.

They make some mighty fine coffee, and my Financial and Menu Adviser - best you forget me before her, otherwise she’ll come around and kick your booty - and I buy our weekly grind from them. Most often it’s a pound of Colombian, ground to perfection. Perfection, you must understand, is a stove-top pot.

Today, the Peet’s closest to my office had run out of Colombian. I settled for Costa Rican, which I hadn’t had in years and therefore couldn’t pick out of a criminal line-up. I ordered the Costa Rican, and the barrista - oh, fuck it, she’s a goddamn coffee-slingin’ wage slave, the poor gal - asks me to choose the Free Beverage of My Choice and to give her a name to attach to the order.

A coupon supplied by Parental Unit the Younger provided me with an opportunity to get any free drink of my choice, as opposed to the regular free tea or coffee, iced or hot, and given the “scorching” San Francisco weather I chose something chilled and loaded with chocolate and caffeine. Also, I gave my name - Diego Montoya.

She laughed and asked if that was my real name. Sure it was, I said - in Japan. Turns out, of course, that she had lived in Japan for a year, and so we talked briefly about names, the TH dipthong, and getting by in Nipponland.

As I left Ye Olde Caffeine Depot, I realized that only half of that energy surge coursing through me was due to the recently-imbibed chemical influx. The rest came from the thrill of making a connection with a previously faceless, unknowable person.

Having just finished Clay Shirkey’s excellent book, Here Comes Everybody, which ties the disparate threads of computer social networking and real-life consequence together into a neat little bow, it became apparent that this kind of connection was the quintessential experience of my generation: We meet strangers, and discover that they are not so strange, and are perhaps more like us than we had previously thought, and possibly even build longer-lasting business or personal connections with them - even though that last example wasn’t the case today at Peet’s.

The point of all this is that I am terribly sorry for not blogging for the past several months. I’ve been busy, but who hasn’t? Much of the busy-ness has finally paid off, with two promotions leading to a slightly less panicky approach to having spent three decades harrassing people. I’m a bit more able to balance my time, instead of solely - um, dually - focusing on work and karate. I haven’t stopped photographing, so there will be more photos. I haven’t stopped writing, even though most of my writing has been work-based of late. That’s great if you’re into software or watching me make a boring fool of myself on video, less so if you don’t give a fig.

So, in the future you can expect more Live! Nude! Girls! I mean, more hot, steamy photos, cold drug-laced drinks, and the kind of rare commentary you can get only from a native son living in his hometown.

Stay tuned. (Oh wait. Does that outro show my age?)

Tree roots and Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Seth Rosenblatt (c) 2006.

For the past decade or so, there has been a massive effort by the Cambodian government to restore as many temples to as close to their original glory as possible. This sadly doesn’t mean that they’ve brought back the sacrificial altar. Instead, it’s all about clearing away the rainforest and jungle that have encroached upon these sanctum santorii.

While this is probably the best coarse of action for scholars of Southeast Asian and Angkorian culture and architecture, the temples that haven’t been “rescued” resemble nothing so much as what can happen to any man-made structure after hundreds of years of neglect. It’s starkly poetic, and as good a reminder as any that we are impermanent.

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Tree roots in the main courtyard of Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Seth Rosenblatt (c) 2006.

Ta Prohm is probably the most famous of the Angkorian temples, besides Angkor Wat itself. It’s hard to not appreciate the wonder of nature reclaiming its own, of walking through a post-apocalyptic world that tips its hat to the great irony of the impermanence of man.

It’s just not our apocalypse.

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A koala and her joey at Cape Otway, Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia. Seth Rosenblatt (c) 2005.

While in Australia, I saw several koalas, including this one and her joey. I also saw an echidna, a couple of spiders that have the odds in their favor of being lethal, and several hundred screaming galahs.

I saw two kinds of kangaroo, as well: the ones hopping madly away from the car, and the ones on my plate. Kangaroo meat is, simply put, delicious. I find it strange that in California we have all kinds of Aussie imports, from the Rupert Murdoch-run Faux News to the occasional jars of Vegemite to what seems like several billion eucalyptus trees. Yet we don’t have any kangaroo farms.

Kangaroo meat is lean, 97 percent so. It is redder than a country town in Kansas. And it is the juiciest, most tender meat I’ve ever had. I can do things to fish that’d turn the most avowed carnivore into a pescetarian, but kangaroo is this magical mystery meat. Marinate it or don’t, all it needs is a bit of searing on each side to convert a lifelong vegetarian to the dark side.

Healthier than beef, tastier than chicken, smarter than pork, the only disappointing thing about ‘roo is that it’s actually not as easy to find (or afford) in Australia as you’d think.

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Two Naxi farmers who taught themselves traditional instruments to preserve Naxi music, Baisha, China. Seth Rosenblatt (c) 2006.

Journalists are finally allowed back into Tibet, but there’s no little indication that the Chinese are acknowledging that much of anything took place. They’re still denying that anybody was killed, and while the true number of fatalities might not be in the low hundreds as the Tibetans claim, it’s doubtful that not a single person was killed. Read the rest of this entry »

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