Joachim's Travel Blog
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
On Obesity and Waste
It's true what you've heard! Americans are fat! I noticed it in San Francisco, but I think there people are mostly a kind of healthily fat, like the kind of fat Indians wish they could be if only they had the money. Actually Indians who do have money are sometimes fat. It's a sign of prosperity. But when I got to Santa Fe, I realized that a lot of Americans are really just fat. Most of the natives here are overweight and a lot of them are seriously overweight. The anglos stay slimmer, but then in America it's thinness that's a sign of prosperity. By 'native' I mean here native New Mexicans, but I think a lot of the Indians are also fat. There are a lot of fast food places around here.
You see these big cars driving everywhere with just one person in them, of course. And here in New Mexico, obviously everyone has an SUV or a huge pickup. But there are other kinds of waste. I never realized how much meat I ate until I didn't eat much for a few months. Well actually at home I didn't eat that much meat either but now that I'm eating Mom's food again, I realize that her cooking is pretty meat-centric. That seems very strange to me now. Also I find that water use in this dry state is pretty much out of control. At least I know I use a lot more water here than I did abroad. I guess I was using a lot of bottled water, which cost money (and was not always available since in India they don't have 24 hour convenience stores), so I was more careful with it. But it seemed everyone was more careful with resources in India. I mean, except for wood and natural stuff like that. But anything they had to pay money for, they husbanded dearly. The cab drivers would turn off their engines at lights to save gas. Try getting someone to do that in the States!
Santa Fe
Andi dropped me off at LAX in the morning. It's really close to her house, which is pretty cool if you're travelling by air. After my usual x-ray, search and scowling looks from the local security personnel, I proceeded onto the aircraft and flew to New Mexico. My parents came to Albuquerque to pick me up, and after some lunch we jumped on I-25 and headed north for an hour to Santa Fe.
I've been here for two weeks now, but it doesn't feel like it. I think in the far East I learned to pass time better than I was previously able. Well, also, my parents live their lives in a highly scheduled and regimented fashion. I never seem to have enough time to do anything, even though I don't actually do anything at all. It's a little strange. Anyway, it's beautiful here and the weather is nice - I don't mind the cold and when the sun's out, you worry more about being hot than anything else. Mom's cooking is still great and since I've been here longer than my usual few days, I've had an opportunity to explore some of the more interesting sights.
We did a little hiking around the semi ghost town of Cerillos, walking through beautiful hilly desert studded with abandoned mine shafts. And we've walked a little around town, around the pretty adobe buildings and through the plaza where the Indians sell jewelry. We visited an Indian museum too, which had some really nice examples of, of all things, silver spoons made by Indians. I guess they were popular for a while so the Indians made them in the 1800s instead of jewelry. They still make them sometimes and some of the contemporary examples were really stunning.
There are a lot of pickup trucks here. That reminds me of Thailand. But somehow in Thailand the trucks seemed to have more stuff in them. I think Americans just buy pickup trucks (and SUVs) 'in case', like so maybe if they buy a boat they'll be able to tow it, or something like that. They don't often get used. They do often get lowered, so you see a lot of really short pickups with their really short tires sticking out to the side. Well, different strokes, I guess.
Los Angeles
I visited my friend Andi in LA. Whee! Visiting Andi is always like Whee! I was only there for a couple of days, though, and during the week, so we didn't get to have our usual huge party. Mostly we drank and looked at pictures from my trip. During the day I travelled around LA in her new Scion and enjoyed the scenery. Oh and I ate some great Mexican food at this place right around the corner from her house. Damn I love Mexican food.
San Francisco
I got a little behind in my posting, so I'm going back and doing things right starting from my return to the US.
My friend Michele lives in the Marina district of San Francisco, North, near the bay. The first morning I was there I walked through her neighborhood to the water. The place was eerily quiet - I guess everyone was at work. There were no people at all, and actually no signs of life whatsoever. At the same time, everything was spotlessly clean. It looked, and felt, like an abandoned movie set. To tell the truth, it weirded me out a little.
There were a few people by the water. I walked through the Marina itself and saw some passersby, most of them apparently tourists. Tourists travel on tourist bicycles in San Francisco. I stopped to sit on a public bench (!) and look at the bridge for a while, and Alcatraz. The cold wind was blowing my hair around. No biggie - since India I've gotten more used to people staring at me.
In India they thought I might be a movie star. Here they think I might be a terrorist.
If you walk along the water eventually you come to Fisherman's Wharf. I'd been told to avoid it so I tried to pass through as quickly as I could. I made for the World's Curviest Street or whatever they call it. I was going to walk up it but I turned one block too soon and crossed it at the top. Looking down Bay or Ocean or whatever those streets are called you get a fantastic view. You can see the Bay Bridge and Oakland, and the ferry terminal or maybe it was just the Embarcadero. But it's cool being in the middle of a city and still being up on a hill with a view like that. San Francisco is definitely a pretty town.
When I got back to michele's place, I did my laundry. That night we went out for some tasty Sushi at Ace Wasabi and had a good time, and some good sake. Our waiter was very attentive. Maybe he had the hots for Michele, or for me?
On the second day I satisfied my urge for Mexican food, frustrated the previous evening, by lunching at Taqueria Farolito in the Mission. The bus there from downtown takes you through a fairly sketchy area. It's funny how I could fearlessly travel through these nasty hoods in foreign countries but when I get back to my own country, everything seems scary. The poor people in San Francisco, and there are a lot of them, all seem threatening to me. In India they just seemed poor. Anyway, the burito was fantastic. Mexican food may just be the best thing about America.
After eating I headed back to downtown and walked around. I went up to the ferry station, at the end of Market, and looked out at the Bay Bridge. It is rather pretty, after all. Apparently "connoisseurs" prefer it to the Golden Gate. I don't but I do think it's nice. I hiked around downtown a little more, stopped in at the Goethe institute and picked up a little light German reading, and passed through the Cable Car Powerhouse and Museum (mostly just to use their bathroom but the museum was modestly interesting).
Michele only had one set of keys, which made for some minor organizational difficulties. She and I were both going out (separately) this Wednesday evening, so I had to get the keys back to her somehow. I dropped them off at her office - she was out meeting with clients but came back for them later. Thus returned to my natural seminomadic status, I proceeded back to the waterfront area to allow my friend Stephanie to more conveniently pick me up. She was on her way into the city from her home in points North.
Stephanie is one of those extraordinarily fun people you stumble across every now and then. So somehow it didn't surprise me when she knew of a Middle-Eastern restaurant and hookah bar in the Haight. My hookah experience in Italy with my friend Alkan left me instantly addicted (maybe he put crack in it?) so I was very eager to visit this place. Another friend of mine, Lang (of Lang & Stephanie), and three friends of theirs, were all in attendance. We had a good time and sure enough that hookah kicked ass. Afterward I stopped in at a coffee house Michele had introduced me to, the Grove, because I was home early and Michele, that party animal, was out late, wining and dining the client, as I understand it.
Michele and I had jointly agreed that I should only stay in her (tiny) apartment for a few nights. No one likes having unexpected guests for too long, and no one likes being that guest (well I don't anyway). Plus the key thing was getting on our nerves. I packed my big bag and followed her to work on the bus. From there I headed West, looking for the internet cafe I'd visited a few days before so I could look up the phone number of the local traveler's hostel. Somewhere around Mason Street, I realized I could just call information (yes, my cell phone is again operational). I called them and they had two numbers. One was a headquarters somewhere and the other was the actual hostel on... Mason Street! Had I just walked one block further I would have seen the place. Well anyway that was how I found the Hosteling International San Francisco hostel.
I've stayed with these guys before, in Washington, DC, when I went to get my (useless) visas for Cambodia and Vietnam. They're clean places, with an internet hookup, kitchen and sightseeing ideas. I was in a room for four with an attached bath, but there was only one other person in there with me, a friendly but non-anglolingual Korean guy. It was a little bit noisy because the room was on the corner of the building and the building was at the corner of Mason and O'Farrel, both relatively large streets. But other than that it was really nice. I have to admit I felt a certain sense of freedom that I hadn't felt while staying with a friend. Even though I was paying $25 a day to be at the hostel, I realized I didn't want to accept Betty's outstanding offer to come and stay with her.
I was pretty tired that evening and I took what was supposed to be a brief nap. I ended up sleeping from 5 to 9, which pretty much ensured I wasn't going to get a good night's sleep. I decided to go out for dinner after waking up and I found a diner down the street (they love their diners in San Francisco) and had way too much to eat. I never should have ordered that milkshake with my burger. Anyway I was glad that after this relatively unstructured day (actually I can't remember now what I did that day) tomorrow I would go on an exciting wine tasting tour of Napa Valley.
The wine tasting tour was cancelled. Not only that but the guy didn't even call to tell the hostel about it so I ended up sitting around for an hour waiting for him to show. Well, it was all right - I made some progress in my book (Gulag Archipelago). My roommate checked into a different room because it was too noisy. And I went to Sausalito.
I sauntered over to the ferry terminal and got there just as a ferry was departing. Turns out it was mine. Rats! Well there would be another one in an hour and a half and I hadn't eaten so I stopped in at one of the restaurants and had some lunch. Very tasty chowdah. I watched the Bay Bridge some more and then my ferry finally showed. It was a nice trip - there were about ten people on a boat that seats three hundred, so we could wander around and look out of whatever windows we wanted. I spend most of the trip on the back deck, even though it was a little chilly with the wind and all. You get some great views of the bridge from the ferry.
Sausalito wasn't as much fun as I expected. Granted, it was winter, cold and raining, but I just couldn't see how there would be much to do there even if the weather was good. There didn't seem to be many shops, and I thought the place was all about shopping. Well I am not a big shopper and anyway I wanted to get out of the rain so I ducked into a cafe and had a coffee and some key lime pie, or something like that. It was pretty good but I didn't like the clientele, which was middle-aged California. I guess they were locals.
After my coffee it wasn't raining so much so I went out and started walking. Turns out I went the wrong way so I doubled back but headed up the hill a little so I could see some of the nice houses. I was the only pedestrian, of course (I usually am). A stairway led me down from the street I was on directly to the bus stop, and as I got there I could see the bus trundling away, almost close enough to touch. A friendly old lady informed me that it was, indeed, my infrequent bus that I had just missed. It would be an hour before another arrived. So I went shopping.
Now remember, it was raining and cold and the middle of winter - not exactly peak tourist season. Most of the galleries were closed, and most of the open ones sold garbage. I did manage to find one that sold African sculpture and I looked around for a while. They had a really nice piece in the window but they wanted $450 for it and I didn't want to pay more than $300. Oh, well, at least the attendant was pleasant to talk with. There was also a photo gallery and a couple of closed painting shops with nice stuff in the windows. Finally, my bus arrived.
Back at the hostel I figured I was in for another long evening so I took my book up to the reading room and sat down. After a while, though, I struck up a conversation with the other reading room denizen, a girl from Montreal named Sally, and we ended up going out to get some dessert at a pleasant outdoor cafe near Chinatown. The night got a little exciting when one of the paper tablecloths flipped up over a candle and lit itself on fire. We alerted the guy sitting at the next table and he put it out quite expertly by beating it with his napkin. Bravo!
When we got back I was all ready to turn in. Sally and I were making tentative plans to explore the Presidio together the next day when Yvonne, one of the desk people at the hostel, came up to lock down the kitchen and, in passing, inform us that she and some of the guests were going out drinking. Never one to pass up a good drink, I decided to join them. Sally remained behind (bah - sober people). We had a couple of Danish guys, an Australian, a Swiss Girl and Yvonne and her husband. And we had a great time. First we went to the Buddha Bar and then somewhere else in North Beach and then back to the mysterious sixth floor of the hostel to imbibe some leftover bottles they had stashed up there a few nights previous. It was a fun time.
The next morning, Saturday, I headed for the Presidio. I jumped on the N line of the MUNI Metro. They have nice trolleys in San Francisco, though I think most visitors never realize this, because they're underground around downtown. They're made by Breda, who built the new trolley cars in Boston, but unlike those, they seem to actually work. Plus they have a great system at the stations that tells you what kind of train is coming, how many cars and how many minutes it will take to arrive. Sweet.
The ride out to the Sunset district was very pleasant. Trolleys are neat because you have, simultaneously, the normally exclusive feelings of being in a train and being on a city street. And in some cases, this trolley passed perilously close to cars, buildings or whatever, which added to the fun. It took me about fifteen minutes to make it out to Sunset Boulevard, 37th Street. There I caught the 29 bus which should have taken me to the bridge, but didn't. Turns out only every other bus goes that far, and I was on the other bus. Well no biggie - apparently I'd been dumped around China Beach, so I walked down to the strand, then back up to the woods and along the water to the bridge. Fantastic views all around, of the sea, the Marin headlands, the bridge and Western fringes of San Francisco. There were more naked people than I expected on the beach, but they looked just about as cold as I would have expected.
That evening I had another delightful sushi meal with Michele and her beautiful and very amusing friend Kate. Before eating we stopped in at a wine bar which was a little pretentious for my tastes and plus the wine wasn't that great. But I guess it's nice to have one in the area if you need to impress somebody. They thought it was pretentious too. We had a great time making fun of the shockingly overwritten menu. They made these wine flavors sound more like characters in a kung-fu movie, the way they supposedly "exploded with punishing fruity aromas".
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. My last day in San Francisco. Finally, finally I find my dear friend Betty Ray. My original plan had been to spend most of my time in the city with her but her plans (and she does have so many plans, poor thing) planned otherwise. So on my last day I got to see her. Betty is one of my favoritest people in the whole world so I was certainly glad to be able to catch her, but I have to admit I was wondering, could she really live up to the hype? Of course she could, and brilliantly. I think it was the primary-color outfit, with yellow overalls, blue shirt and red suede jacket that did it. Well anyway we went to a crepe place and had a tasty alternative brunch, and then we did a little real estate shopping and then just hung out talking about the music in Varkala (she's in the music biz). And that was that. I got my big bag out of the hostel's storage locker, got on the BART with it and headed to the airport. Sayonara, San Fran. And look out LA, here I come!
