Stunned in San Francisco
Clark July 17th, 2007
The photo accompanying the last post was done by a friend (Mick!) in good fun. Thanks to those who jumped to my defense, but in reality I have no shame, and plus it’s true.
This website is about sailing and I’m not doing any sailing. However I will be sailing in about ten days when I fly to Honolulu to bring a Transpac boat back to California. That trip should take a few weeks. In the interim I am trying to adjust to life in the urban world, here in my borrowed apartment in San Francisco. Here are some of my impressions of the Brave New World after sailing the hinterlands for so long.
1. Everyone is really busy. Time is allocated and compartmentalized in fifteen minute increments. There is little time to just hang out and see what happens.
2. There seems to be an inordinate number of people wandering around muttering. There are wandering mutterers all over the world, and I’ve done my own share of wandering and muttering, but there seem to be more of them here. At first there really seemed to be a lot, but then I learned to weed out all the people who were talking on mobile phones with hands free headsets. Still, the disenfranchised and the slightly nuts are on the streets in force. Avoid Haight street after 10PM.
3. Computerized dating is OK. During my last visit to California it was still somewhat stigmatized. Now couples openly declare that they met on match.com, eharmony.com, jdate, you name it.
4. You’re in trouble without a customer loyalty card. What ever happened to just handing over money in exchange for goods and services? It’s all very fair that they reward you for your information, as this helps them manage their inventory by tracking consumer behavior, but they really make you pay through the nose and feel like a schmuck if you haven’t got the card, even at the drugstore.
5. People are pretty polite. When I’m away I tend to think of Californians as angry people stuck in traffic. By world standards people here are quite considerate and friendly. On the road there is very little horn blowing and screaming of obscenities, and most drivers will let you into a line of traffic if you’re the one pinched out. Clerks and attendants, even the ones who aren’t pandering for fat, American-style tips, tend to greet people with a smile and send them off with ‘have a nice day.’
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