Jan 252012
 
Rainy day driving in SoCal

Who hid the road?

The rain has stopped here in the idyllic Sierra foothills. This is the first rain of the rainy season, nearly two months late. In California if it don’t rain during the winter then it just don’t rain at all because it never rains in the Summer. Down in LA, rain is irrelevant or worse, a damn nuisance because it just floods the gutters and runs into the ocean after washing the oil residue off the roads and causing chaos on the freeways. The water is all imported from elsewhere. It’s a convenient arrangement.

 

California Aqueduct

California Aqeduct

In the hinterlands of Northern California its different. The rivers run all year round and until recently nobody metered water service. It was all you can use for a flat monthly fee. Folks up here are resentful of Southern California who, they think, want to steal their water. (One of the three SoCal aqueducts takes water from the north to the south). More than anything else, water divides California. Periodically proposals surface to divide California into two more homogenous states but they always founder. Northerners want to cut all ties to the south and stop sending precious water south but unfortunately for them Southerners have more population. There are so many more Southerners that a single California state will always provide water to the south no matter what kind of fuss the north puts up.

 

Culturally, the north feels superior with San Francisco as their prime argument. San Francisco is the crown jewel of California culture and a world class tourist mecca. Southern California has beaches and amusement parks but despite having better culture and multiple centers of culture isn’t a real cultural focus. Not that the southerners care. SoCal is liveable, diverse and culture-rich if you can avoid rush hour traffic. NoCal is insular and isolated once you leave the city by the bay. In Southern California, cities have no real meaning. You can drive 100 miles without seeing an open space and everybody listens to LA radio and watches LA TV. In Northern California, the SF influence doesn’t reach 50 miles. I don’t know why. Either SF isn’t interested in the hicks from the hinterlands or the hicks can’t take the smug superiority of SF.

 

Sacramento's Tower Bridge

Sacramento landmark

When I moved from the south to the north, it was culture shock for me. Sacramento was always just a far away place where the legislature gathered to plot against the electorate. Turns out it’s better than that. There is some culture here and no rush hour but you can still go the SF for the day. Sacramento is always your number two choice.

 

Not sure the point of these musings today. The rest of the country is probably fed up with California but after 40 years in the golden state I still can’t forget being drawn here from my earliest childhood fantasies. My grandmother subscribed to Sunset back in the 50’s (and it wasn’t easy to do when you live in Missouri). She adopted California when my grandfather worked in a California factory during WWII. I’d read the magazine and dream about the exotic California lifestyle. There wasn’t a chance that I’d end up anywhere else.

 

By now it seems that California has reached the end of its run and killed the California dream. California may always have been an illusion but 40 years ago, reality didn’t bite so bad. I don’t know that I will ever pull up stakes and relocate to a less-taxing environment but I am over my love-affair with California. It’s full of memories and my sons call it home. It may be time to move on but it is hard. After 40 years making my bed in California, I may just have to spend the rest of my life lying in it.

 

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Nov 132011
 
Mayor of Richmond prefers protest to veterans

I honor Veterans 364 days a year

Calif. Mayor Chooses Occupy Rally Over Veterans Day Memorial

So today I feel like I’m channeling Bob as I bristle with outrage but I don’t know what this country is coming to when an elected city official chooses not to even pretend a respect for our veterans. The Mayor of Richmond California doesn’t even hesitate about choosing a protest rally over a memorial ceremony on Veteran’s Day. Sure Veteran’s Day Memorials are not very exciting events with their patriotic music, lots of old geezers and politicians mouthing platitudes but that’s why we have the holiday. Maybe she just wanted to sleep in.

But she didn’t just stay home and sleep in. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin attended the Occupy Richmond Protest Rally instead. It is no big deal,the mayor says because she honors veterans on the other 364 days a year .She is apparently so worn out honoring veterans that she needs a break . Besides, she points out, the Occupy Richmond Protest will celebrate veteran Scott Olson who was injured at a recent Occupy Oakland Rally. So she is killing two birds with one stone, celebrating veterans and anarchy at the same time.

So where is Richmond California?

Now I don’t know the town of Richmond very well other than being the last stop on BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit) and the place where I leave my car when visiting San Francisco. It seems an unremarkable town in a spectacular locale  but next time I visit I will be looking more closely. Bay area suburbs are difficult to read because housing costs are so high that high income folks will be living in neighborhoods that look more like lower class areas in the rest of the country. Still is looks tidy and clean with none of the ominous atmosphere of nearby Oakland or the raffish, hippie style of even nearer-by Berkeley. Just another ordinary SF suburb trying to stay respectable. Apparently, however, there is more to Richmond than meets the eye.

McLaughlin is similarly hard to read as well. Her record, at least as recorded in her campaign website is fiscally responsible and socially progressive and her political career has been adept. She is the self-proclaimed highest level elected official of the Green Party. But it looks like the wheels have fallen off her bus with this move which reveals that the reasonable, nuanced progressive mayor is a well camouflaged nut job. Take a look at the Facebook page for the Richmond Rally and then check out the profile for Jose Lopez the organizer. Nothing about this Rally suggests community interest. What it reveals is the philosophy of the organizers which most surely includes the mayor.

Why protest on Veteran’s Day?

First look at the decision to hold the Rally on Veteran’s Day. Surely one of the other 364 days would have worked as well for the Rally but the organizers chose Veteran’s Day. Still, the mayor might have split her attention and attended both but she did not. The reasons are not hard to fathom for a proud progressive and Green Party apparatchik. Unfocused and chaotic as the recent swarm of protest rallies are, one of the common demands is the forgiveness of all debt including the debt incurred by student loans for college. This is a sensitive issue for the Mayor who recently declared bankruptcy to eliminate $100,000 in student loans. The trauma for the Mayor no doubt drew her to the Occupy Movement. Perhaps the personal philosophy of Mr. Lopez as listed on his Facebook page attracted her as well. All you need to know about the Rally you can learn from Mr. Lopez philosophy. “fuck the system . si se puede . i’m from Oakland biiiiitch lol “. Clear and concise!

Back on point.

So, now that I’ve gone all Bob over this California politician, let me try to get back on track. I won’t even try humor today. Veteran’s Day always does that for me because my war was Vietnam. The first and I hope the last war to have the population and its lick spittle politicians go south on their warriors. Not only warriors but drafted warriors. I freely admit that I would not have volunteered for the Army and that I was ambivalent about the mission, but dammit, I served my country when it asked me and for 30 years this country has literally spit upon Vietnam veterans and run from our destiny as leaders of the free world.

So Veteran’s Day always leaves me testy and concerned about the future of this country when our warriors are disrespected and misused in unfocused missions. The President has cut and run from victory to appease his supporters the spiritual children of those who spit on me and my brother warriors. I don’t really care about Mayor McLaughlin and her disrespect for our soldiers. What I do care for is our country. I worry about a future where politicians do not even pretend to respect our veterans and our history. Without our veterans, we would have lost our country long ago.  With politicians like Gayle McLaughlin, we won’t have it much longer.

 

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Nov 062011
 

What’s your image of San Francisco?

Forbidden pleasures? Anything goes? The BART tunnel under the bay? Alcatraz?  Hordes of smelly homeless people?

 SF has a well deserved reputation.

It is stunning visually with graceful towers rising out of the bay and a unique cable car experience to get visitors up and down the steep hills. Then there are the great restaurants catering to every budget and taste. It’s also the place were individual liberty is indulged, protected and encouraged from the homeless people clamoring for change on market street to the gay lovers holding hands in the Castro. San Francisco is the place where anything goes without even a pretense of old fashioned conservative values. Los Angeles is often satirized as the home of the fruits and nuts but LA is more like your grandmother while San Francisco is a high priced slut.

San Francisco is a great place to visit because you can pretend that you are crossing the line while remaining perfectly safe. All that tantalizing and questionable living going on right under your nose but you can enjoy it vicariously without risk. When in LA you quickly penetrate the facade of glamor and sin and discover that underneath you find a lifestyle that wouldn’t be out of place in Des Moines. Not so, San Francisco. Wherever you scratch the surface in San Francisco you find life that is bohemian at its best and downright otherworldly at its worst.

The possibilities are limitless!

Everything in San Francisco is geared for possibilities. The City fathers don’t like to inhibit your expression of whatever might be going on in your head. It has never been clear to me whether the motivation is to make a city which is comfortable as an old shoe to weirdos of all types or just a magnificent marketing ploy to attract schlumps with aspirations. Whatever the motive, San Francisco today is a place unlike any other and world renown as a place you want to be.  But look at this.

San Francisco Bans Naked Dining…Here’s Why

So what’s up?

So when I saw this headline about San Francisco banning naked dining I was very confused. For years San Francisco was constantly looking for  limits to push. No barrier was too trivial to break in the search for limitless options and opportunities. And yet, here in the 21st century, instead of breaking down old barriers, San Francisco begins to build new ones. Now, after all the years of freedom from convention, you can’t dine naked in San Francisco. Think about that! Something is actually banned in San Francisco. It is mind blowing. Now two of the three great desires of man cannot be enjoyed together. (The three are food, sex and money, of course .) Now in San Francisco, if you want food and sex, you need to have them separately or remain fully clothed- and what’s the fun with that?.

 It’s the end of the world as we know it!

I think this means the beginning of the end for San Francisco. It marks the weakening of the resolve and clarity of focus that has marked San Francisco over it’s history. Never before has San Francisco buckled before a challenge. Never before has the city by the bay taken back a freedom. When I see that the only reason given is that it endangers public health, I know that the end of San Francisco as we know it is near.

What’s next?  Air freshener in Chinatown?

When public health is considered more important than personal freedom then San Francisco has sunk to the level of Los Angeles or even Des Moines and with that kind of thinking, how long will San Francisco continue to be a tourist mecca. I think it’s all over.

I have to admit that naked dining is not a frequent pastime around our household and it isn’t a calling card at any of the local restaurants we frequent. Still the idea of naked dining does stoke some inner fires and the reality that when San Francisco bans naked dining it makes me wonder what they will be banning next.

So what do you think?

Does this new ban make you think differently about San Francisco. Will you be seeking a different city for that vacation you have been saving for? And what’s your take on naked dining? This may be an opportunity for Des Moines.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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