1. What vegetable is only sold fresh, never sold frozen or canned?
2. What US landmark is always moving backwards?
3. What do you call a cow with no legs?
4. Why do cannibals not eat clowns?
Let’s just say that one woman with a fashionably updated 80s hairstyle really got into the quiz, which was more than just the above four questions.
Pilgrimage. My time in San Francisco was quickly coming to an end, which meant that it was time for a pilgrimage. I spent the first few years of my life growing up in the San Francisco area, specifically Daly City. When my parents decided to move to SoCal, I’d tell my SoCal friends that I was from San Francisco. My mom would correct me and say we came from Daly City. At the time, I didn’t understand this concept. How could we not have lived in San Francisco versus some unknown city called Daly City?
I jumped onto the BART, getting off at the Colma station. I headed up the hill towards the apartment that I spend the first 5-ish years of my life. I didn’t know what to expect. My memories of my life in that apartment are vague. What do I remember? I recall discovering a mushroom growing out from the carpet. From street view, I remember the building being well-kept and very tall with other apartments lining a long street. The apartments on the street were painted in light colors. And when we were moving, my last act in the area was very stupid. I was riding on my Big Wheel and after I was done I left it on the sidewalk. When my dad and I went looking for it, it was long gone.
So what did I see in 2013? A very rundown row of apartments with paint jobs from at least a couple decades ago. The apartments weren’t that tall at all and the street wasn’t that long, which I expected as I understood I was recalling memories from when I was 5-ish. What I didn’t realize was that a cemetery was at the end of the street. I totally don’t recall that. I took some photos and then gave a call to my parents to let them know I was standing on the street where I spent the first years of my life.
I then walked over to the cemetery and took a quick photo before heading back towards the BART station. A woman who was gathering items from her car had noticed that I had taken a photo of the cemetery and so when I passed her she started a conversation. She told me how she’d taken a photo of a crane killing a gopher for dinner inside the cemetery. It was a powerful nature scene, she said and mentioned that she had cropped out the grave stones as she felt that it made for a depressing setting for her photo. I replied, “Maybe you should have kept the grave stones in the photo as it was perhaps appropriate that the gopher was meeting its death in a cemetery.” Maybe I’m a bit sick in the head.
Music and San Francisco. I mentioned in a couple previous posts that I was getting lazy regarding the SF music scene. I was off looking for Los Angeles based bands versus trying to get familiar with San Francisco based bands. I also mentioned that I was going to stick to re-visiting the local venues that I’d already visited. I decided to shake things up a bit. I went looking for a new venue and attempted to head out on a night that featured San Francisco bands. I was only partially successful in this. I headed off to an art gallery called Sub-Mission. I thought I was heading off to this “new” venue to catch some San Francisco bands. The two bands I saw weren’t from San Francisco. One was from San Jose – okay, close enough – and another was from Phoenix – not even close.
So what’s this Sub-Mission venue? It is a DIY art gallery in the Mission District that didn’t exactly have much art inside. Bolted to the ceiling was a van that held all the sound equipment. I’m actually not sure if it was a real van or just a cool sound room made to look like a van. The music? A punk sound that reminded me of how much fun it used to be to hang out at The Blue Star on a Friday or Saturday night.
The first band that I saw went by the initials INFM. Don’t ask me what that stands for. I believe M is for Monkey. The drummer said the name twice, but he went through the name so quickly I just couldn’t pick it up. He did say an alternative name for the band was: Inside Nude Female Models. The bassist drove his body through every note and beat of every song. And after their set, I couldn’t help but over hear the drummer talking about the economic and accounting classes he was taking.
Moovalya was the other band I saw and they came by way of Phoenix. They quickly had the crowd in the circle pit. Their sound definitely represented the best that one would have seen in the past on a good summer night at the Blue Star. Comment made before their set: I got old and I got smart.
As for the crowd? It was extremely light. The maximum had to be 25. Considering there were 4 bands, half the crowd at Sub-Mission were folks in the bands. Too bad, I say. Yeah, I only saw 2 of the 4 punk bands, but those two bands gave it their all and definitely deserved to be heard by more than 10 paying customers.
Southwest.
Comment #1 (when we learned the plane was stuck on the LAX runway due to flight traffic at SFO): I know this is really lame, but there are folks at the gate who were told they need to wait 1.5 hours. At least, we got on the runway and need to wait only 30 minutes.
Comment #2: If I ask you what you want to drink and you say, ‘Ah, um, um,’ that means you want water.
Moment #1: A girl was telling her mom, “It’s too late. It’s too late.” I figured she wanted to use the bathroom before the plane took off. She was encouraged to go talk to a flight attendant. And what happened next was so cute. She went up with a book and asked the flight attendant if she could see the pilots. She then was allowed to enter the cockpit. The pilots signed her book. Not only that, but one allowed her to sit in the pilot seat. And those strange warning sounds coming from the cockpit, those sounds were caused by her pressing buttons. This is the cuteness you see while flying on Southwest.
Comment #1 from a passenger: I asked a woman once if I could take the seat next to her. She said, ‘No.’ She wanted to sit by herself. She didn’t understand Southwest etiquette.
Answers to Southwest Quiz Time:
1. Lettuce
2. Niagara Falls.
3. Ground beef.
4. They taste funny.
No comments:
Post a Comment