United States II (2009)

From:	Greig
Sent:	Friday, 2 October 2009 8:03 AM
Subject:	Postcard from San Francisco (2): Folsom St Fair & other loose ends……

 

Hi All,

Yes, alas, our month in the US has drawn to its end. We’re actually already home! (Shhhh – don’t tell!!)

Having managed to sleep with people in all the right places, we managed to score an upgrade on the return leg, so the relative luxury of our preferred exit row economy seats turned out to be nothing compared to the pampering of business class.

I’d planned to send this to you from San Fran Airport, but I wasn’t going to pay $US8 to T-mobile to send one e-mail.

But you don’t want to hear about the airport or me gloat about Business… I wrote the following whilst in the US:

Back in San Fran we’ve continued to have fun. We’ve made the pilgrimage to Spike Coffee just off Castro St each day and continued squandering your inheritance. We’ve seen a lot of Macys in at least 3 different states.

You might have seen my post on Facebook before we left, marvelling at why everyone in Sydney listening to their MP3 player seems to do so with a dull, lifeless look on their face.

Here it’s definitely not the same. We’ve encountered people on the subway bopping, tapping and swaying to the beat, and yesterday we passed someone on Market St singing along out loud: “hanging around / nothing to do but frown…” ["rainy days and Mondays always get me down" - the Carpenters!]

I cracked up at that one. How *so* not cool. (Although yes, it was me who recognised the song he was singing, I know). [Note to self: delete all Carpenters tracks from the iPod].

Glen put it quite nicely: it was a shame that most of those who went naked didn’t bother to iron their outfits first.

It seems public nudity is “not illegal” here. It’s not a right, but not illegal.

Apparently the event has been a bit more “outrageous” in the past, but it was very tame this year. There were signs at the entrances explaining the “3 warning” system that applies, but I didn’t see anyone who was likely to breach the public decency requirement (sheer ugliness not being illegal, just bad form).

I was a little surprised to find one pair doing a bad job of concealing their session with the glass Ventolin inhaler, but that was the only display of anything dubious that we caught.

There were a hell of a lot of people in attendance, and by late in the afternoon all of the pubs and clubs were chokkers and of course people were getting a little rancid. We bailed and had a siesta in the Hotel for a bit.

Later we returned to Castro St for dinner and some clubbing. I joined Glen in bed around 2am.

We seemed to have chanced a particularly windy afternoon to do the ride too. The wind brought me to an abrupt stop on the bridge at one stage.

The last couple of days have been general shopping and wandering. Levi 501′s for < US$50 were irresistible.

We found the Cable Car Museum, which houses the one motor room that runs the 4 lines. They’re completely independent of the each other, with individual 510HP GEC electric motors, running off 500V DC and pulling 810A. The drive wheels (“sheaves”) are around 8′ across, and if you care, the gearboxes offer around a 59:1 reduction to drive the cable at a fixed 9.5MPH. It’s all quite impressive if you get off on that sort of stuff.

Our last day in San Fran only had one scheduled (post-coffee) event: the obligatory tour of Alcatraz. This we found quite interesting, but I was quite surprised to find myself unmoved by the audio tour that described the breakout attempts and even pointed out the shrapnel marks in the floor.

Whilst a pleasantly warm day, the wind was blowing a gale on the island and it was absolutely freezing there. I wore my beanie when we were out in the open and we’d both dressed warm for it. I can certainly understand the belief that the 3 guys who tunneled out of their tiny 5′ wide x 9′ deep x 7′ high cells never to be seen again would have frozen to death in the Bay.

I’ve made some notes of general tidbits that I’ve forgotten to reference until now:

• At the Grand Canyon, unimpressed teenager to parent: “I know – it’s a bunch a rocks”.
• On Castro Street, San Fran: young lady to her friends: “That was delicious. It was like, gourmet”. (She pronounced ‘gourmet’ correctly thankfully).
• In Phoenix, there was a story in the newspaper promoting a new service to find “walkies pals” for your dog: www.findmydogadate.com. (Clearly a slow news day, or is Phoenix like that every day??)
• Meanwhile, the newspaper USA Today is peppered with little “Snapshots” – tables of interesting facts and stats. I was reassured to learn that homicides in the workplace are on the decline. “Work-related murders dropped 18% from 2003 to 2008″.

Specifically on flying, we took 4 internal flights here in the US, and I was surprised to find:

• Not only do you need to check in ahead of time (as we do at home), but when you get to the airport the baggage check-in process is now also DIY. You take your bags to an unattended counter, identify yourself to the terminal, tell it how many bags you have, provide credit card details if this is more than the 0 or 1 free bag you’re permitted for that fare, and it (secretly) prints the luggage tags. Only then does (eventually) a disinterested staff-member saunter across to take the tags and attach them to your luggage. At one airport we even needed to take them ourselves from this point and place them on the luggage travelator thingy.
• When landing, basically as soon as all the wheels are on the ground, the captain is on the PA doing his “welcome to , where the local time is ..” and you’re allowed to turn on your mobile! When will we be able to do this in Oz, and why can’t we now??

I’m looking forward to getting home and not eating for about a week.

I suspect the Americans (as a nation) share my lack of discipline when it comes to food. They like to eat, and don’t know when to stop. If there’s a buffet, they’ll fill the plate and then only eat half. We’ve seen the untouched leftovers just scraped into the bin without a care. :-(

Phoenix offered us the giant billboard “Life’s Too Short For Oatmeal”, brought to you by the Quick Trips chain of convenience stores / gas stations, accompanied by a picture of delicious cinnamon rolls. And getting shorter it seems, with a supposed 64% of the population overweight.

One unique moment was back in Chicago when we were scoping somewhere to eat lunch. We walked into one store that turned out to be very similar to Subway. As we made a hasty exit we noticed two teenagers bolt upright at their table, each with their hands clasped, heads bowed in prayer (that they might survive the meal still wrapped in front of them?). When was the last time you saw that??

Alcohol’s been fun too. Far too much of that.

Clubs and pubs all free-pour their spirits, and then charge bugger-all for it. One pub in Chicago had a $1 spirits special, and even after you’ve added a couple of dollars tip for the bartender you’re still going to be walking in zig-zags after two of these and still have change from $10. For the pair of us.

Needless to say, the Responsible Service of Alcohol is a very foreign concept.

In the restaurant at Niagara they were selling wine by the glass, and you could buy the normal-sized glasses, or the “jumbo” ones, which were 50% larger. No pissy little 125ml line etched into the glass here, oh no.

Occasionally in the news back home I recollect various councils threatening to publish the results of their food safety audits. They do that here (at least in CA / LA area). So it was pleasing to see lots of food outlets with their prominently displayed compliance notice sporting a big “A”. Funnily though, the fine print says the venue is “largely compliant [with the health codes]” or words to that effect.

We were surprised and disappointed to see that the only venue we saw requiring corrective action was the “coffee bar and bakery” on the Queen Mary (!!!)

Whilst it might seem strange to you, here in the US there are a range of taxes applicable to any given purchase, and it’s rare to see a place advertising a tax inc price. If it’s a tourist trap it’s pretty-well a given that any visible price is ex-tax.

I was amused (in a twisted way) to note the poster in the window of a burger chain advertising a burger for something like $1.00 or $1.99. The words “excludes tax” were in capitals, but of a height even smaller than the decimal point of the price! I kid you not! Talk about fine print…

Anyways, I think that’s enough from me. This cattle-truck is about to board, so I should dispatch this and jump on.

Looking very much forward to catching you when we get home.

G & G.