On my final night in San Francisco, I thought I’d take a few moments to reflect on the experiences I’ve had.
The sense of community is adorable. Apparently, the air was going to be poisonous today, if people drove cars. To prevent people from dying mid-stride, public transportation was free to anybody who chose to use it, and carpooling was encouraged.
They have strange carpool waiting areas here, which are just sidewalks with a sign that says something like “Carpool Waiting Area”, where you apparently wait for someone in your carpool to come and get you.
The one I saw had 200+ people waiting around, and a parade of cars would scoop up random people. Keep in mind, this is 200+ people on one side of one road on one block. I wish I had my camera, because it looked like one of those “diversity” ads that I always thought were imaginary. There was the Asian woman in hospital scrubs, honkey businesspeople, blue-collar Latinos, sassy African-American ladies, et cetera.
Everyone was pitching in to prevent death.
I contemplated this briefly, as I zipped around in my Mustang convertible, alone, with a cigarette.
This is probably an okay segue to the homeless problem.
You see, since I watch the news, I knew that public transportation was free. Aaah! Try and get bus fare out of me today!
I was three for four. One guy busted me this evening, I think. He wanted $1.90 to go to Santa Rosa, and offered to wait while I went back in to the hotel to get the cash that I alleged was in my room.
“Isn’t it free to take a bus or subway somewhere today?”
“Not to Santa Rosa.”
“Oh. Well, I’d imagine you could get much closer.”
I don’t know where Santa Rosa is, and the crapass connection I have here makes it not worth looking up. For all I know, it’s as imaginary as the secret stash of money I was keeping in my room.
He offered to sell me an “antique” watch, which looked like it could have come from Fred Sanford’s corpse, before having been stored in an asshole since the Reagan administration.
I declined his offer.
Later in the evening, I had my very first “Are you from Europe?” for this trip. I told the nice valet person that I was from Detroit, not Europe. He replied that the fact that I was smoking, combined with my “accent” made me a dead ringer for a European. I can only hope he didn’t think I was German.
However, he was more delighted to find that I was from Michigan. You see, he likes Michael Moore, and is of the belief (apparently) that the population of Michigan is responsible for producing him, and keeping tabs on his life.
“Does he still live in Flint?”
“I think he lives in New York now. But he comes to Michigan often.”
“Really? Like, you see him walking around town and stuff?”
“Well… not exactly. But he comes whenever he’s trying to sell something.”
“You must see him a lot.”
“I think every resident of Michigan is legally entitled to meet him in person. We don’t have many celebrities.”
“Really?”
Before I could formulate a comedic response, someone wanted their car parked. He thanked me for my time, and disappeared in to the underground garage. He was a nice guy.
I returned to the 16th floor, to find a housekeeping cart by my door, and a terrible smell in the hallway. Luckily, nothing in my room had summoned a cleaning lady, but the room across the hall from me was in some sort of tragic state. I’m not positive, but my bet is that they just found a dead call girl, and she’s haunting my television, preventing me from watching Cops.
Speaking of my television, holy shit is there a lot of gay porn available to me for $12.99. And bisexual porn, too. Since upscale nicey-nicey Westin has decided to go ultra-stingy on their TV offerings (no movie channels, no Comedy Central, etc.), I thought I’d peruse the Pay Per View options, only to be greeted by a cornucopia of porn.
I didn’t buy any porn.
Speaking of looking at someone else’s breasts, it appears that a new fashion trend here is to go sans-bra. The women also seem to like skirts, dresses, and these weird ballet-shoe-looking flats. It’s a nice departure from Michigan fashion, which I mostly disapprove of.
Don’t think I was just checking out women. The men seem to dress one of two ways:
1) “Look at me, I am a raging homosexual and/or want to look like one.”
2) “I am a worthless hippie.”
Of course, that excludes the homeless and tourists, neither of which are actual people in this city.
Well, that’s it for now. I need to finish packing, because I’m terrible at remembering things in the morning.
