Internet radio station - College Football game - Bible-bashing coackroach exterminator.

Well, another interesting few days burying into the depths of the psyche of the American Experience (TM). Internet gurus, pill-munching rave kids, bible-bashing rodent killers...read on. It's all true. Almost.

Thursday evening was spent hanging out in the cool warehouse space of this internet radio crew called BetaLounge (www.betalounge.com). They broadcast once a week, getting in local dance DJs and visiting superjocks to spin their underground dance sounds (their website archives all the broadcasts too so you don't need to get up at 4am GMT to hear it you'll be glad to know...). The space is right on the east side of the San Francisco peninsula, a no-man's land of industrial units, harbour warehouses and sketchy geezers hanging out on street corners - although like most areas of SF it's being gentrified and internet start-ups and the like are encroaching. They have a large, two-level space (at least as big as the big room at Borough High Street, for those of you who attended either of the two enormo-raves there), painted in funky colours and kitted out with high-end, f**k-off computers, uploading the DJ's set (in sound and vision) onto the Web. People drop by with six-packs to read the latest imported Euro mags, talk music and network. A couple start evangelising to me about their visions for some sort of hi-tech revolutionary internet gizmo thing which I don't quite understand but I still nod in all the right places. Maybe I'm talking to the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates?  Who knows?

Friday is a quiet one, catching DJ Mike Bee dropping liquid drum&bass at an art gallery-cum-clubspace called 111 Minna (San Franciscans aren't very imaginative when it comes to venue names) in downtown. There are these unusual surrealist paintings on the walls - I don't know much about visual art but they look like a cross between Escher and Dali. If that makes any sort of sense.

Saturday was a big big day when I fulfilled one of my life goals - to see a bona fide proper American Football match, my fave sport since I can remember. Okay, it was a college match but you've got to remember that college matches are big business here - sixty thousand (yes, that's right) in attendance (ninety thousand on a good day). That's more than Manchester United manage and rather puts to shame the five men and a dog who used to watch the Birmingham University 1st XV Rugby team. The game pits USF Berkeley (the Bears) versus Washington State (the Huskies) - the Berkeley Bowl is ginormous and basking in 75 degree plus sunshine and short sleeve shirts. Not only are here housands of students in attendance but also loads of alumni (former graduates) - people seem to have a much greater tie to their universities than in the UK. We sit in the student section (only ten bucks in) where you stand for most of the game, whipped into a frenzy by a couple of mic-hugging bozos who get us to chant things like "Goooooo Bears!", "Hit Squad! Hit Squad!" (in honour of the Bears' tough defence squad) and "Block That Kick!". (At one point Bozo 2 yells "You know what we're gonna do?! We're gonna win this goddamm game and then go and get smashed!" Cue frenzied whoops and applause.) There's also a full-on, 200-piece marching band who put on baton-twirling displays at the start and halftime and parp, toot and beat their drums throughout to stoke up the players. It might sound like a load of cheesy American guff but when you're right in the middle of it it's a real trip. And of course, the posse of cheerleaders got everyone going too and we made sure we had good seats for that...;)...It's like living in the middle of a tacky US teen high school film. The Huskies had about five or ten thousand fans with them too, complete with their gymnastic display team and raucous band. (Uni band members get free board, lodging and tuition so there's great competition to be a part of the band.) The match is exciting, the Huskies winning it with a last-minute score (don't worry I won't bore you non-gridiron fans with a play-by-play analysis). Three and a half hours and one jumbo hotdog later, we're knackered.

After some rest and recuperation, it's onto a night called Stompy, an apt name if there ever was one. It's held at 550 Barneveld (there we go again), in another insalubrious warehouse district (is this Groundhog Day or what?). The crowd are well mixed (black, white, straight, gay etc), bizarrely dressed (massive loonpants, Stone Roses-style hats, beads and flashing toys) and most of them pilled up to the eyeballs. There are some real choice gurners in there, some who'd put Albert Steptoe to shame. But they rock all night long, frugging on the dancefloor with a sort of primal energy. It's the usual tribal house on the main floor, chillcore in the upstairs red velvet lounge area and more trippy jungle in the third room. I'll see if I can email out a few pix from the night. I also meet two girls who both work for Wired and who are both gibbering like fools (indeed, everyone I meet from Wired is usually off his/her head...hmmm).

So the next couple of days are spent on the recovery tip and continuing to fix up my flat. Now, there's a bit of a coackroach problem here (something my flatmates had neglected to mention before I moved in...) - in fact the kitchen is swarming in them. Everytime you fire up the cooker, a few of the little critters come scuttling out. Not nice. Anyhows, my flatmate hassles the flat's management and they send round The Exterminator. He wades into the kitchen, complete with gas mask, and smokes the buggers. Apparently they had a huge hive thing (think "Aliens") in the motor of the freezer which is the sort of place where roaches like to congregate apparently. The problem is sorted but it's as he's packing up that things start to get interesting. I'm stood there with flatmate Tina making idle chit chat with the guy. The conversation went something like this...

"Of course, I got into this because of the Scriptures."
"You what mate?"
"The Scriptures. Matthew, chapter XX, talks about a huge plague of locusts that will descend on mankind. I see it as my job to rid the Earth of this filth."

Now as you can imagine, the alarm bells are ringing in my tiny brain. GOD SQUAD! GOD SQUAD! LET ME OUT OF HERE! So I make my excuses ("I'm expecting a call from the Earl of Peckham.") and leave Tina to it. Over the next hour, she gets the full evangelical going-over. It turns out he's a pest control guy by trade and a pastor in his spare time ("I kill by day and save souls by night. I'm an exterminator for The Church."). As I'm sat hidden away in my room I hear him in the hallway in full flow, the mystical mumbo jumbo spewing forth like he has a bad case of the verbal squits. Tina's one of those kindly souls who won't tell him to shut the f**k up and just resigns herself to a sixty minute sermon. Still, as long as he invoked the Holy Spirit onto those bloody roaches, I don't give a monkeys.

Did someone say "Only in America"?

Peace and flowers,

Kieran

Work like you don't need the money.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Live life like there's no tomorrow.
Love like you've never been hurt.

or should it be...

Love like you don't need the money
Work like no-one's watching you
Dance like you've never hurt yourself