Crackhouses - House hunting - Plastikman - Beaujolais Nouveau party - Getting drunk.

It rained for the first time in SF a couple of days ago.  Bugger.  But you can still walk around in short sleeves as soon as the precipitation has cooled off.

What's been taking up most of my time recently has been house-hunting, looking for a room far from the crackhouse I'm currently residing in. Aside from the cockroaches and mice (see previous reports), my crackhead landlady has been stealing my food and not paying any household bills so I think we're getting cut off in a few days' time.  Nice.  The long and short of which means I've been going through my own version of "Shallow Grave" - no, I haven't been hiding dead bodies in the loft, it's just that I've been going through the trials of looking for a room somewhere else.

Now, everyone had told me that getting a room/apartment in SF is hellish, with the vacancy rate at less than one percent.  That's true to some extent, with some rooms I looked at having 150 people a day emailing an interest.  But I'll tell you this - if you're a British journalist looking for somewhere to live in SF then people are falling over emselves to offer you a room.  I've been beating them off with a sh***y stick.  In the space of four days I emailed just nine places who advertised vacancies online (at www.craigslist.org - check it out, it's a great SF community resource dvertising for free vacant rooms, jobs, articles for sale etc - London could really do with something like this).  Seven of those places asked me for interview and four offered me rooms.  At this stage of SF's housing crisis, that's an unheard of success rate - I know (American) people who've responded to over 200 vacancies over, say, four months, and had just two interviews.  Now I hasten to add I'm not saying I'm any better than the next guy/girl, but just the fact that you're British/European carries so much cache in this town - and helps you stand out (hell, they get a hundred replies signed "John from LA" and they get one signed "Brit hack from London" - I stand out a mile).  If any of you guys want to move out here, I guarantee you'll have no accommodation worries.

Anyhow, can you guess where my new place is?  Yep, Haight Ashbury, the epicentre for the '67 and '68 Summers Of Love.  My living room looks out over the intersection which is 20 yards up the road.  You see a procession of tourists all day long taking photos of the "Haight Asbury" road sign. So even though there are lots of young kids and skaters and wannabe drug dealers lining the Haight, my apartment is actually very quiet and very upscale.  Remodelled a year ago, hardwood floors, loft bed in my room (basically a bunk bed with the bottom bunk replaced by a desk space), three bathrooms, cool housemates.  Moving in in a couple of weeks time.  Not a moment too soon.

Of course, I've been having fun too...;)...A couple of weekends ago it was a trip out to Windsor, Ontario (that's in Canada). It's just across the border from Detroit and home to Brit-Canadian techno DJ/producer type Richie Hawtin.  I went there for Muzik to cover a big warehouse party he was putting on - and it turned out to be a mad weekend.  Basically the police clamped down on the party big style, trailing Hawtin and us in unmarked cop cars, bugging his telephones and staking out his parents' house, just to make sure the party didn't go ahead.  I was caught up right in the middle of it and very exciting it was too.  I'm not going to go into detail here - you'll just have to read all about it in the January issue of Muzik (out second week of Dec)!

Went to a Beaujolais Nouveau party on Thursday, to celebrate the arrival of about a hundred cases of the stuff at a friend's house (he's a wine importer).  Always a good sign when you arrive at a gathering and are greeted by a room full of women.  I have resolved to attend more of these sorts of parties in the future.  My friend has an awesome apartment in an area of town called SoMa (South Of MArket), a neo-industrial district full of dodgy clubs, loft conversions and internet start-ups.  Everyone seems to have a good roof terrace too.

I also got drunk on Wednesday.  Now you may be wondering why I'm mentioning that fact.  Well, it's the first time I've had any big beers in over two months, since I left the UK.  People in this town are big on smoking ("jazz" cigarettes) rather than beers so finding a good drinking buddy is hard.  However, I had a friend over from Muzik visiting for a few days so that was cause enough to go down to the local ex-pats bar, The Mad Dog In The Fog, and sink a few pints of Boddingtons.  It ended with us necking short glass-sized measures of tequila and me waking up in a daze at 3pm the next day.  Oh dear.  But it was a therapeutic exercise and did remind me
how much I'm out of practice with this drinking lark.

Monday is shaping up for a three day excursion to Yosemite (pronounced "yo sem ee tea" rather than rhyming with Marmite - speaking of which could someone send me over a jar please?!).  It's a National Park situated a few hours north of SF.  It's full of those huge Californian Redwoods (I think they filmed some of the forest scenes in "Return Of The Jedi" there) and these massive granite cliffs so should make for some cool photography. But it'll be bloody cold.

(BTW, believe it or not, I've actually been working very hard too!  Yes really.  Lots and lots of writing and photography.)

Right, back to the clubbing coalface and remember:

the most simple things/satisfy/the most extraordinary people
 

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.