Live from Austin!

We arrived at Logan Airport in plenty of time. Given that it was about 35 celcius, I felt it was justified to hire a cab rather than lug suitcases on the T. I did my usual thing and tried to remove all metal from my person and put it in a pocket of my carry-on bag, in a vain attempt to evade the metal detector. Unfortunately, something set off the doorframe detector, and I was given a severe wanding. As mentioned earlier, the security guy even asked me to unbutton my jeans—the buttons at the front set off his metal detector wand, so I think he suspected I might have shoved sharp knives into the front of my underpants. Hey, the terrorists are mad zealots…

The flight was as pleasant as any six hour plane flight can be. They fed us, they remembered that I’d asked for vegetarian food, and there was coffee. So that’s three points for United, zero for American.

We got a shared van ride to the hotel. We were taken on a delightful tour of south San Francisco. It turns out to bear a startling resemblance to Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto 3… in fact, SF in general reminded me of Liberty City, right down to the hilly Italian district, the maze of tunnels and bridges, the subway, and the look of Chinatown. Our hotel even had dubious looking clubs nearby offering “adult” entertainment. (San Francisco Tourist Office may use the above endorsements in advertising.)

Yes, as you can guess, some corners had been cut in the hotel department. We were at a Holiday Inn on the edge of the theater district, which is one of the seedier parts of town. Also, I’m told, one closest to some of the best restaurants. If the bums had been aggressive, like their East coast counterparts, it would have been unpleasant. Fortunately San Francisco’s homeless seem to be a mellow Californian type, and pretty much leave you alone. Anyway, point is, it was the only place near all forms of public transit and less than $100 a night, so I wasn’t complaining.

Public transit in SF is pretty good. There are abundant buses, which run until 01:30 or so, followed by “night owl” services. There are also trams, which are mostly authentic old streetcars that have been repaired and put into service as a tourist attraction as well as a form of transport. Below ground is a network of more trams; and of course, there are the famous cable cars, which climb some of the more picturesque hills. A $15 pass got us unlimited travel on all of the preceding. To go further afield involved the subway, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). Aimed at commuters, it heads out to Berkeley and Oakland and the delights of Contra Costa County.

I’m not sure when I first became aware of California. Maybe I saw it on TV. Or maybe on a box of raisins.

No, I think it was the Beach Boys. I was a young boy at a seaside resort in England, and music was playing. It spoke of a far off world, a mystical place where people stood on polished wooden boards and somehow rode on the waves. I’d never seen waves like that on an English beach—or at least, not on a sunny day. Waves like that ought to mean the gale force winds and torrential rain of an English summer.

Ironically, decades later I learned that Brian Wilson was morbidly afraid of the water, and would never go near the ocean.

Clearly this “California” was a strange and marvellous place. People threw plastic discs at each other through the air, and they sort of hovered. I found one in a seaside shop and tried to interest my family in the idea, but they didn’t seem as inspired by it as I was.

At some point in the 70s I must have seen The Streets of San Francisco. All I remember is the way the cars would drive really fast down a hill, hit a crossroads with a thump, and launch slightly into the air.

I don’t think we’ll be trying that.

My young mind gradually came to understand that California was more than one place. In fact, it was three places: San Francisco; Hollywood, where TV and movies came from; and Disneyland.

Years later I got SubLogic Flight Simulator for the Atari ST. The default start location was a runway at Oakland airport. My first and favorite route was to take off, fly across the Bay Bridge and over Alcatraz, and dive for the Golden Gate Bridge. After New York City, it was the most impressive scenery in the game.

The point of all this is that my strongest associations with San Francisco have always been unreal ones. That’s part of why I wanted to confront them with reality.

The following is the text of a half-page advertisement placed in the Winters Express newspaper of February 20th. It was paid for by the “Save Winters Committee” of Winters, California.

A new library will end up costing the people of Winters over $30 million in new taxes… And for what? A library that is only used by less than seventy people a month. It would be far cheaper for Winters to hire taxicabs and send people to the University of Davis Library than for us to pay millions of dollars to entertain a few people.

The fact of the matter is that very few people use ours or any other library. Oh sure, supporters will bring out children to cry, “We need a new library.” But where are those children any other time? Watching television, visiting friends, or doing something else besides reading. A new library opens up the door for a bigger and bigger Winters. A big new library is a great sales tool for developers. A new library will help Winters become just like other drug cities like Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Jose. They have new big libraries… Do you want to live there?

The world is changing. People like to watch things on television and video. We must understand that libraries are going the way of the local milkman, cheap gas, and small towns.

If the friends of the library want a new library, fine. Let them spend their own money and build it themselves. Don’t make the rest of us pay what few dollars we have left to make them feel good.

—Reported in Harper’s Magazine, June.