Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Oh yeah...
Free Wi-Fi at the airport terminal makes a huge impression on me... SFO & OAK should take notes...
PDX to OAK
"So when are you moving up here?"
I hear this everytime I come to the pacific north west on business and spend time with my beloved friends M&M. My brother has decided that this might as well be my second homee and I think there may even be the thought circling around my family and what not that I would pick up and move to this "derevnya" (village). Why am I so bloody inlove with this place? I feel completely at home here. I arrive and its like I haven't left or maybe that I left and came back through a nostalgic portal where I found myslf homesick for the place I already am. If I had to create a list of those things that I find most attractive about the Portland it might look something like this:
Affordable homes
Green, everywhere
Bridges and rivers
Mountains
No sales tax
The microbrew capital of the US
Feeling at home and alien at the same time
Powells
Saturday Market
Vistas and topos
Architecture
A city rich with photography
A sense of something yet to be spoiled
I think that about rounds it out... I mean lets face it. There are some things that are really askew with this place. Everyone drives like it was Sunday. You will get pinched for speeding in this town. There's good food, and there's more and mor ethnic food, but nothing like the gastronomical wonderland that is SF. The ocean is two hours away, ok at my rate of travel maybe more like 90 minutes, but its still far and I've enjoyed living on the lip of the world since I moved to the Richmond. There are some pluses to living here, winter sports are just an hour distant. I suppose part of my laziness to hit the mountains comes from the four hour drive wich can stretch to six with traffic. This doesn't exist here, its so close you can taste the powder as it acrues on the mounttainside.
Of all the major cities I've travelled too and been in, this is one of a handfull that I can live in and see myself growing some serious roots. I can see myself living in NYC for a spell of time, but I'm mot sure I want to shoot my roots too deep into that soil. I don't think I could do Chicago, there's no contour there, the land is too flat. St. Petersburg, I want to know what its like in the winter, that ominous darkness of being near the North Pole, and then moving into the mystical light of white nights as the summer months stumble through the calendar, but I doubt I could stay there for ever either. South CA is out of the question, not much in the way of he midwest attracts me, but Portland, yes, I do find myself able to spell h-o-m-e here. Maybe its a foregon conclusion and just a matter of time, but this place calls me.
I hear this everytime I come to the pacific north west on business and spend time with my beloved friends M&M. My brother has decided that this might as well be my second homee and I think there may even be the thought circling around my family and what not that I would pick up and move to this "derevnya" (village). Why am I so bloody inlove with this place? I feel completely at home here. I arrive and its like I haven't left or maybe that I left and came back through a nostalgic portal where I found myslf homesick for the place I already am. If I had to create a list of those things that I find most attractive about the Portland it might look something like this:
I think that about rounds it out... I mean lets face it. There are some things that are really askew with this place. Everyone drives like it was Sunday. You will get pinched for speeding in this town. There's good food, and there's more and mor ethnic food, but nothing like the gastronomical wonderland that is SF. The ocean is two hours away, ok at my rate of travel maybe more like 90 minutes, but its still far and I've enjoyed living on the lip of the world since I moved to the Richmond. There are some pluses to living here, winter sports are just an hour distant. I suppose part of my laziness to hit the mountains comes from the four hour drive wich can stretch to six with traffic. This doesn't exist here, its so close you can taste the powder as it acrues on the mounttainside.
Of all the major cities I've travelled too and been in, this is one of a handfull that I can live in and see myself growing some serious roots. I can see myself living in NYC for a spell of time, but I'm mot sure I want to shoot my roots too deep into that soil. I don't think I could do Chicago, there's no contour there, the land is too flat. St. Petersburg, I want to know what its like in the winter, that ominous darkness of being near the North Pole, and then moving into the mystical light of white nights as the summer months stumble through the calendar, but I doubt I could stay there for ever either. South CA is out of the question, not much in the way of he midwest attracts me, but Portland, yes, I do find myself able to spell h-o-m-e here. Maybe its a foregon conclusion and just a matter of time, but this place calls me.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Matisyahu!!! a.k.a. Hacidic Reggea
I know, it sounds like a byproduct of clonning, something that went terribly awry in the lab and Dolly the sheep up and grabbed a mike and began to flow. But its for real, this cat is unbelievable... if you like Marley and Peter Tosh then you must listen to Matisyahu...
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
The ninjas! The ninjas!!!
Seems like our colliseum cowboy wasn't the first to boast such a witty plackard. Thanks brian for finding this:
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Monday, August 15, 2005
The Best Sign Ever
I saw this walking across the bridge from the Oakland Coliseum to the BART station to head back to SF after the A's trashed the Twins. I've been chuckling since Saturday afternoon:
Please help. Family kidnapped by Ninjas. Need $$$ for karate lessons.
"sign sign everywhere a sign..."
Please help. Family kidnapped by Ninjas. Need $$$ for karate lessons.
"sign sign everywhere a sign..."
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The Elephant Derby
Wasn't it yesterday when they were
from sunrise to sunset or before
we wake to ward off evil
there's the dropping of anchors
through the ceiling into the clank of private
places where we couldn't hide
the walls shook
the photo of grandmother shook
as if her laughter crossed
from grave to nook
"the bottom floor's for peasants"
she gave me the right of displeasure
to shake my fist at the ceiling
curse their names and smile
when I heard a wailing cry
sometime lying between the curve
and your thigh, keep it steady
the horns and the spades
tail and tell the story never ends
a constant thunder
thrown in with, thud
thump and that wail
like murders happen
here in my province
the elephant derby
defiantley tromps on.
from sunrise to sunset or before
we wake to ward off evil
there's the dropping of anchors
through the ceiling into the clank of private
places where we couldn't hide
the walls shook
the photo of grandmother shook
as if her laughter crossed
from grave to nook
"the bottom floor's for peasants"
she gave me the right of displeasure
to shake my fist at the ceiling
curse their names and smile
when I heard a wailing cry
sometime lying between the curve
and your thigh, keep it steady
the horns and the spades
tail and tell the story never ends
a constant thunder
thrown in with, thud
thump and that wail
like murders happen
here in my province
the elephant derby
defiantley tromps on.
Friday, August 05, 2005
I decided
I want to be the subject of one of Eleni Mandell's songs, but that would mean I would've had to have fucked her over somehow... or at the very least broken her heart.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
On a night of classical music...
Four times Vivaldi or something like natural
rhythms he imagined in quarterly colors
where Mussorgsky can paint the museum,
there's a wash floating in on plastic buckets
the fish monger wishes well on the call
to say a prayer for the dawn's rose red
affair, being strewn among the names
black to jingo, its not wailin' not jam
sport and spot the micro verse he wrote
what small voices verved will have held
such years have passed allowing milk
steamed dreams, hot on the tip
sprinkled once with chocolate shears
she's a betty alright, dolling drams
if you lift that board you might get inside
crawl under the spread of concrete
sheets in thin slices cross blocks
wandering through the trip of boundary
the steps of the ladder enumerated
counting how deep the rabbit goes
if only we knew how deeply larry is cutting
there might be blue on the floor at the danube
way laid and gestating visible euphoria
i'm an invisible faction borrowing fame
in order to fight urban synapses,
the collective gestalt has rules beneath
the belt -- its held up like this,
not much of a ruse to nest a cable
the handbrake and the conductor
are a synonymous logo -- without clear using
the lepers own the colony without really owning
anything is for sale to the highest bidder
like sex you can see but can't touch
getting off on this vibe, man its all in the head
i've detached myself from myself from other
self is sullied western bourgeois shite,
i'm beyond that now he said holding his cup,
his mug, a peace of social earth -- black gold
swearing in the nation by reading the paper
its all there proofed in the pudding face
how he quotes despair dissolves like sugar
small sips -- how he can't savior savoire farire
mottled gestures in the rain swept vertices
where the gaze splits the horizon three fold
to one part the being there can not have been
sitting on that swing summering in youth
present factions delaying progress -- front page
and breaking into something unscripted
the titles blurred between the stacks -- why not
play hide and seek to loose our names.
rhythms he imagined in quarterly colors
where Mussorgsky can paint the museum,
there's a wash floating in on plastic buckets
the fish monger wishes well on the call
to say a prayer for the dawn's rose red
affair, being strewn among the names
black to jingo, its not wailin' not jam
sport and spot the micro verse he wrote
what small voices verved will have held
such years have passed allowing milk
steamed dreams, hot on the tip
sprinkled once with chocolate shears
she's a betty alright, dolling drams
if you lift that board you might get inside
crawl under the spread of concrete
sheets in thin slices cross blocks
wandering through the trip of boundary
the steps of the ladder enumerated
counting how deep the rabbit goes
if only we knew how deeply larry is cutting
there might be blue on the floor at the danube
way laid and gestating visible euphoria
i'm an invisible faction borrowing fame
in order to fight urban synapses,
the collective gestalt has rules beneath
the belt -- its held up like this,
not much of a ruse to nest a cable
the handbrake and the conductor
are a synonymous logo -- without clear using
the lepers own the colony without really owning
anything is for sale to the highest bidder
like sex you can see but can't touch
getting off on this vibe, man its all in the head
i've detached myself from myself from other
self is sullied western bourgeois shite,
i'm beyond that now he said holding his cup,
his mug, a peace of social earth -- black gold
swearing in the nation by reading the paper
its all there proofed in the pudding face
how he quotes despair dissolves like sugar
small sips -- how he can't savior savoire farire
mottled gestures in the rain swept vertices
where the gaze splits the horizon three fold
to one part the being there can not have been
sitting on that swing summering in youth
present factions delaying progress -- front page
and breaking into something unscripted
the titles blurred between the stacks -- why not
play hide and seek to loose our names.
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