So I'll be home for Christmas; I'm coming in on Friday and leaving on Thursday. Jendell has dibs on me for Friday night and I need to chill with Sarah, but the rest of my time is pretty open. Hit me up if you wanna chill.



Nichole just left this afternoon, she's been here for a couple of days during her trip to Sacramento to visit her momma. It was good to have one of my truly good friends here in the city with me. It's kind of lonely now, I'll be glad to be back East and see you all again.



Talk about hectic... Not only has Nichole just left and I'm spending the night packing for my flight tomorrow but I have to move a day after I come back from the East Coast. Double packing duty is rough. I also have to go for a ten-block walk in the rain in a couple of minutes to return these movies from last night. In other words, I have no time to waste....



Peace!

When I some day leave this city, this spot will signify my time here more than any other. The beatniks had North Beach, the hippies had Haight/Ashbury. For my generation, our spot is 24th & 3rd.



In the middle of the industrial ghetto of San Francisco lies a vacant lot littered by trash and graffiti. Every weekend, a different group of ravers transforms this blight upon the city into a wonderland of sounds. It reinvigorated my faith in the scene and my love of the music. It's the one thing I've found here that I wasn't able to find out East: people throwing free events for the love of the music and the scene.

San Francisco 2005.

I surround myself with sages and madmen.

Is there a difference?

My house is full of dizzy broads and cold queens.

Which to choose?

Why is it that the path of most resistance give the largest pay out,

while my religion teaches me to follow the path with the least?

Too Many Pictures!!!



For those of you who don't know, Love Parade ran in Berlin for 15 years and became the biggest party in the world with tens of thousands of people mobbing the streets and raving their brains out while world class DJs throwing it down on a dozen floats. I found out a few months ago that San Francisco launched their own Love Parade and Berlin has since stopped, making SF the new home of the event.



Saturday was Love Parade 2005, and I got pretty sick last week. I did my best to nurse myself back to health during the week in anticipation of a day of hard core partying. I got to the parade, followed it to the end of the route, hung out at the civic center where all the floats form a massive party for an hour and then left to help some friends set up for an after party.



By the time I was done cleaning and hauling equipment around I was exhausted and seriously ill. I ended up going home at midnight and wasn't really able to reap the benefits of my labor. Maybe next year...

Tonight as I was on my way home from a friend's house, I figured I'd stop at this cafe a few blocks from me, drink a beer and dig on some Kerouac for a little while before going home. As I'm sitting there reading, a woman comes in off the street and asks the guy on the couch across from for some change. After he says no and she goes over to ask someone else, he makes comments to his wife along the lines of "some people".



I began thinking that this man has no idea of the way that this woman is living. I had seen him through the window of a posh vegan restaurant earlier in the day and I'm sure that when he left there he had a nice home to go back to in his beautiful car. This woman had probably been out begging for change all day so that she can get another hit off the crack pipe. Easy for him to judge while he sits on his pedestal...



After I left and walked the few blocks home, I saw the same woman sitting in a bus stop being questioned by a cop while his partner was talking to the owner of the corner store. It reminded me of the time after I had first moved here and saw a cop writing a homeless guy a ticket. This lack of compassion and understanding is troubling and it hurts to see, but the worst part is that I see it in myself.



Even when I have a pocket full of change, I don't have anything to give to the beggar on the corner. This city drains you. You're surrounded by so much desperation and poverty that you have to turn your head and make up rationalizations for letting it continue to help yourself live with your helplessness about the situation. We all begin looking down from our ivory towers while the crackheads and homeless scowl back at us. The alienation abounds.



The biggest thing that's lacking in this city is any kind of community. People turn their eyes from this and it gets to the point where they turn their eyes from everyone for fear that whoever they talk to may want something from them, or worse, take something from them. I'm afraid that the city is taking away my soul...