Geography blues
◊ I'll just say right up front that San Francisco is the awesomest city in the history of ever. It's got great venues for bands and artists, hilarious graffiti, food that makes your tongue want to curl up and whimper with bliss, kick-ass weather, fantastic museums (Cartoon Art, anyone?) and a naked man dying in a bar fight.
Then again, anything looks good next to San Boring Jose or Cuper-Even-More-Boring-Tino or my town, Comatose Campbell.
Even the train up to SF occasionally has a high entertainment value. The last train I was on came complete with the standard little old man who talks too loud about shit nobody cares about. ("My dad died on the job. He was a chicken farmer. Fell over. Broke some ribs and they splintered and pierced his aorta.") I tuned out his thin, reedy voice right up until I heard, "You know, every black man wants to kill a white man and rape a white woman. For revenge against the white man." The woman sitting next to him — maybe his daughter — loudly and frantically shushed him. He seemed puzzled, but he changed the subject.
I hoped he'd go back to his fascinating and obviously well-researched insight into black culture, but after that he and the woman sitting next to him mostly talked about the cities we passed through. They didn't like any of them, especially not San Jose.
"I don't like San Jose," the little old man said. "It's too flat, and it's full of—"
"Mexicans," the woman said, cutting him off before he could say something worse. "Mexicans."