(In which the Gentle Reader shares snippets of travel down the west coast of the USA from Canada
to Mexico - that is unless they have already hit the DELETE/button – where "Black Lives Matter", the city history is banned in Seattle Public Schools, the dogs go on with their doggy life and where past satire becomes current reality.)
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VANCOUVER:
``STAY OFF THE TRACKS
They are only for TRAINS.
IF YOU CAN READ THIS
YOU`RE NOT A TRAIN``
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5.30am: Pacific Central Station: the Canadian into US Customs and Immigration guy was gruff but efficient as they processed then corralled us into the train-in-a-locked-cage: ``Passport. Four fingers one hand. Four fingers other hand. Thumbs. Photo. What are you doing in Seattle? We`re through. You can go.``
.........................................
Bad Karma #3:
In the zigzag queue to Customs stood an Australian bloke with 6 large bags. On a station seat in the distance sat his wife, completing a swag of customs forms for the family of four, and apparently another family as well, being `assisted` by pre-dawn-grumpy kids. The queue edged forward; wife furiously scribbling with kids whingeing in the pre-dawn hour. Second family shuffled in: late. Wife handed them semi-completed forms and ALL SEVEN of them jammed themselves into the queue to join stoic Dad. Moderate but restrained unhappiness was now evident from those who had been standing for over half an hour behind...
Some minutes later, the push-in families reached the check-in desk. A "professionally friendly but firm" Amtrak conductor pointed out that none of the backs of the forms had not been completed, sent the families out to do them again, and ignored all emotive pleas that they be allowed to push back into the front of the line.
Moderate but restrained celebration ensued from those behind...
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The train was a low-slung European Talgo job with leather seats, lots of glass and a very clubby atmosphere. The comfort helped when the train was let out of its cage to retrace the wandery damp trek back through the burbs and goods yards towards the low iron bridge, where we ground to a halt, reversed, ground to another halt, ambled forward, stopped, and stayed put for nearly two hours because a freight train had distastefully derailed on the other side of the river. We `enjoyed` a creeping watery dawn before restarting for the US border. Here the US Immigration crew wandered the train and played `snap` with faces and passports, ``encouraging`` two women to get off, cross the tracks and climb the dirt embankment to a `drive-through` booth to have their visas confirmed before they scuttled back down the dirt and across rusty tracks to the train. We trundled south into the ``Land of the Free`` (with its particular species of human megafauna overflowing already large train seats) with the rich blue Puget Sound to the west, and snow covered Cascade Mountains to the east and Seattle a couple of hours down the line.
Dee: the dietician from Milwaukee: ``Oh, you are from Australia. Is it really true that you have Health Care there, like Canada and Britain?`` Milwaukee is experiencing slow, rustbelt industrial death and Dee`s job is to plan nutritious middle-school lunch menus on declining budgets. (The measure of socio-economic deprivation of a school is the number of subsidised or free school lunches. The numbers are growing).
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SEATTLE: the city that gave the world Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon.com and grunge. What they don`t publicise is the stunning physical location of the city seen from a ferry on Puget Sound, skyscrapers ringed by snow-clad, knife-edge peaks and deep blue waterways... and the 1962 World`s Fair leaving the city a retro monorail to a Space Needle (if you ever watched `The Jetsons`, it`s their house) and the King`s Inn downtown motel with original 60`s fittings including lampshades, and possibly mattresses. Sadly, the ugly black seafront freeway is a souvenir from the same optimistic era.
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The Boeing factory is massive, impressive and off limits to cameras and recording devices which are confiscated. The-on-the-right-bus-from-the-introductory-PR-movie-off-the-bus-with-the usual-lame-tour-guide-jokes-then-walk-the-corridors-ride-the-industrial-elevator-look-over-the-edge-``Do-not-lift-your-children``-at-massive-assembly-lines-back-down-in-the-elevator-stop-at-the-yellow-line-get-back-on-the-right-bus-repeat-it-all-again-at-the-767-787-assembly-line-get-dropped-at-the-gift-shop-door-as-we-learned-from-Disney`` leaves you feeling more processed than Kraft Cheddar. There is no other way...
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Downtown graffiti (following several recent police incidents):
`BLACK LIVES MATTER`
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In a surprise move, that local `sacred site`, Starbucks, has introduced something new called a ``flat white``. There`s hope for them yet. I downed one at 7am (midnight, New Year`s Eve, Sydney time) to commemorate.
It seems that Starbucks is on every third corner of American cities, and on every other third corner is Wallgreens: a monster pharmacy. Whether it`s advice, soda, shoe laces, greeting cards, Hershey Bars, red wine, photographic advice or transit tickets, you get it at Wallgreens. They do prescriptions too. Macca`s (or McDicks, if you prefer, and I do) is harder to find, except in more run-down areas or the `burbs.
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Pioneer Square: the original downtown, and also the original ``Skid Row`` where logs were greased and rolled down the hill to the waterfront mill. One block behind the carefully preserved 19th century facades is a small park. At 9am on a cold Sunday two charity food vans are doling out hot meals and soup to the homeless. There are more than 100 patiently queued up in various stages of raggedness and desperation patiently paused in the weak sunlight before moving slowly across to seats and alley ways. The local paper describes this as the "continuing failure of the state`s homeless and mental health policies". The Mayor`s response is to plan three tent cities well away from the downtown tourists, to be run by (yet to be ascertained) charities. No word yet on whether they might be called ``Hooverville``. I guess that even this is better than other cities who have legislated to ban the provision of free food from mission vans to make it all `go away`...
Walking under the black waterfront freeway on the pedestrian bridge to the ferries, I was struck by the neatly lined-up wheelchairs and `walkers` and packed shopping trolleys opposite a fitful line of people struggling on the concrete to wake from a night of sleeping rough. In US cities, you quickly learn to avoid walking under freeways, if you can, because you feel you are trespassing on someone else`s patch.
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`Seattle Underground` is a very hyped walking tour under Pioneer Square which delivers a hilarious ``founders of Seattle`` history lecture in a 19th Century bar, then plunges into the nether regions of downtown.
``Readers` Digest`` version: the founder of Seattle was a timber cutter who chose a tidal swamp at the bottom of a large hill for his mill and for the town. The swamp was reclaimed using the timber waste(!). Due to growing sanitation issues downtown (but not up on the hills where the rich lived) a sewer system of square wooden pipes and Thomas Crapper dunnies was constructed. Apart from unstable, rotten-wooden reclamations, foundations, housing and pipes, incoming tides caused the Crapper toilets to literally explode (rather unfortunately for any sitter at that time) up to 12 metres in the air. In the late 19th century, a large fire destroyed the downtown. Local government determined to rebuild the city on sustainable foundations so the whole place would be lifted 12 feet higher. Businessmen agreed, until they realised that this would take 8 years. They weren`t prepared to wait so they constructed masonry buildings at the original street level. Meanwhile, walls were built from the pavement gutter line by local government workers and filled with reclaimed soil, raising the level of the streets as promised. Pedestrians accessed businesses by climbing down ladders from street corners to reach the dingy sidewalks and store fronts.
Following a few `incidents` caused by rolling street barrels falling off the roads onto shoppers below (dead), drunks falling over the edge as they stepped off the street (dead: a One Step Program?), and other stuff that boring OHS types might call ``foreseeable risk``, business people prevailed upon local government to roof over the pavements to create level sidewalks. In return they provided doors from the first floors onto the streets. I am not exaggerating.
The Underworld Tour walks these buried sidewalks which have now become handy conduits for city service ducts and wiring for cable TV and internet. Read all about it in ``Sons Of Profits`` which was banned in Seattle Public schools when published in the 1960`s. Why? Well, in a timber industry town with ratio of men to women of 9 to 1, a 19th Century census of the downtown area uncovered more than 400 ``seamstresses`` but not a single sewing machine. Rather than stamp out ``seamstressing``, the city government taxed it. The head ``seamstress`` of the city`s largest ``sewing circle`` not only had the political nous to protect her industry (having met many local politicians and worthies, possibly while taking their measure in her line of business?), but on her death, she bequeathed the largest ever donation to the Seattle Public Schools system. This remarkable act of generosity has yet to be officially recognised (as is regularly done for other less generous benefactors) by having a school named after the donor.
So, Seattle downtown remains a city in an earthquake zone, on a foundation of swamp and wood shavings. What could possibly go wrong? At least they are planning to knock down the egregiously ugly black waterfront freeway and bury the freeway underground along the wharves, using the tunnel walls as additional sea walls to strengthen the waterfront area for further development. Locals were hoping it would have collapsed by now as a `seismic solution` like the one in San Francisco.
And the history of the city of Seattle: "Sons of Profits" was banned in the local schools.
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PORTLAND:
There`s a well known bit of graffiti in the liberal and fervently environmentally aware city of Portland, Oregon: ``Keep Portland Weird``.
Here they celebrate diversity and do darkly un-American things like knock down vast freeways to build riverfront parks and outdoor markets and to reintroduce streetcars. All of this is gently satirised in the show: ``Portlandia`` which you might have seen on late night TV during a bout of insomnia...
I was not disappointed. On the tram from Union Station to my hotel, I was joined by two short and immaculately presented Hispanic transexuals who sat on either side of me in a miasma of competing perfumes and five o`clock shadows. Once off the tram, I found myself in mild drizzle and sharing the umbrella of a sculpted pedestrian. He did not assist me with directions.
The local Rep theatre`s production of `Who Killed Irma Vep?`: 16 characters, two actors; a Victorian `Penny Dreadful` reimagined in alternative 1980`s New York, and an audience nearly as interesting. Great production, and the answer, should you care, is in the title... Tommy Emmanuel is a forthcoming attraction to this theatre.
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On local TV, the newscaster reported on the approaching decriminalisation of marijuana quoting current street prices, anticipated official prices, and the difficulty the State would have in taxing the product when there is no sales tax in Oregon. She finished the report with: "And I never thought I`d be reporting retail prices for legal weed in a nightly network newscast." Meanwhile, in California, fire brigades are now regularly called out to house fires caused by dodgy domestic manufacture of cannabis oil for the new markets.
Local TV is also broadcasting state-based ads to apply for Affordable Health Care by Valentine`s Day, while the new Republican dominated Congress seeks ways to overturn the program and cast about 10 million people back out into the plight of the uninsured. Not sure how this fits into "government FOR the people"... Only in America.
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Portland street beggar`s sign:
"NEED
WEED
BEER
BED"
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It came as a shock to realise that the slightly whiny and always desperately sincere tone used to discuss trivialities as deeply serious concerns in satirical `Portlandia` was not really satire.... Not sure how much my companions in the cable car (to look out over the bridges of Portland) realised how much I enjoyed their extensive wittering about the supposed benefits of drinking pureed kale. The cable car delivers you into the Surgical Centre of the local hospital, from which you can enjoy the river views.
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Suburban graffiti: `BLACK LIVES MATTER`
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Portland Art Museum: One huge painting grabs attention: "Homage to Delacroix". In this parody of French revolutionary imagery, Lady Liberty is leading what look like doubting "Black and White Minstrel" style negroes over the barricades to crush a few representatives of white America. Through the adjacent archway is a black sculpted portrait of a cigar-smoking businessman`s head on a spaniel's body, sitting on the floor surrounded by its own sculpted turds, entitled: "Bowee Wowee".
On the way in, I asked directions from a whippet-like blonde `ambassador` and received a rapid-fire scripted welcome and generic directions until the script stopped and so did she. As we had nothing more to say to each other, I did think of Evelyn Waugh`s advice about Americans: "They`re a very decent and generous lot of people out here and they don`t expect you to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It`s the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard." This came to mind every time I was "processed" by an unrelenting tour guide or my dining companions on a train who had said nothing (apart from introductions and an invitation to hold hands in prayer before the meal) then thanked me in non-ironic obsequious terms for the pleasure of my company or conversation over a meal.
I much preferred the less "polite" and more upfront travelling companions who were less parochial and where conversation led into long and reflective exchanges (until we were bundled out of the dining car and back to our allotted places). The black ex-gang member who had Found God and was training in Bible Studies at Dallas before returning to serve his community in the rougher parts of Oakland was particularly good company. He was gobsmacked to learn that in Australia, a Federal government program could actually pay him to work in public schools. He was left reeling, coming as he does from a culture where there is constitutional separation of church and state. (Apparently this applies in the Republican Party too?)
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After a breath-taking overnight bout of sweated fever/cold shakes/gushing/food poisoning(?) I sat grimly and greenly at Portland Union Station waiting miserably for the Coast Starlight overnight train to Los Angeles, sipping medicinal Sierra Mist soda and just holding down a lone, plain, bagel. It was announced, with regret, that due to the lateness of our train, we would miss the lunch service in the dining car. Was I the only person to inwardly celebrate at the news as other passengers started to swap train trip horror stories? And the first-time-train-travellers (there are always some on every Amtrak train) started wondering if this adventure had been such a good idea. Some hours later, a wine tasting was announced in the club car. I quickly retired to my unsocial budget roomette.
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"Albany is our next stop. It is not a `stepping off` stop. If you decide to get off at Albany, it will be your LAST stop."
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A series of broadcast calls for assistance in the coach cars led our sleeping car attendant to comment wearily: "A couple of crazies on the train tonight. Always happens on a full moon."
I empathised.
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A passably bland grilled-fish dinner was shared with a couple from Tajikistan who met in Iraq during George Bush`s war. ("Yes... something good DID come out of that war...") He was sent as an air conditioning maintenance man for the military (!) and she was already there. After marrying they ran a hotel in Tajikistan for a couple of years ("It`s so hard having to rely on my wife`s relatives for everything to make it work when I don`t speak the language") before she moved to Moscow to continue her Bible Studies. What did she think of Putin? "He`s a good man; a strong man. He unified the country after the corruption and the drunks who were running it." They were in America to visit relatives and to renew a Green Card (for her) and to enrol in an external engineering degree (for him).
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Lunch: waiting for a passing freight or for another drawbridge (we`re kept well informed about every pause on this leisurely coastal meander). My dining companions were a 60-going-on-30 hypermanic LA film producer and a proud grandfather whose daughter was studying entertainment management. Madam Film Producer (after telling me I looked like a severe professor of some kind of professional whose job was to intimidate) proceeded to tell us about her latest project: the Sammy Davis Junior `bio pic` (showing many photos of herself and the Davis widow on her iPhone).
"His estate was such a mess. I put her onto a good probate lawyer and I hope it`s turned out well"... By the end of lunch I`d had a huge lesson in Hollywood self-promotion and networking (following Evelyn Waugh`s sage advice), and Granddad had an appointment for a job interview for his daughter. We left with the film producer`s card for "Marche` Productions". Do feel free to check them out.
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The Amtrak snack-bar attendants all seem to be actors or singers who are `resting` between gigs. The guy on the late train from San Diego serenaded the whole train with a "lovely to be late" impromptu song on the train`s PA system. On The Coast Starlight, as sunset over the Pacific Ocean shoreline approached, Snack Bar Guy did a massive manic pitch: "Hey folks! We have ASTRONOMIC prices for Bud Lights. You just KNOW you want them as we cruise along the Pacific CoastI! I have cocktails in hand: just you and I sipping a Bloody Mary looking out to the sunset. You just KNOW you want to..." It kind of made up for the some of the surly dining car crews.
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SACRAMENTO:
The preserved waterfront `Old Town` is Echuca on Steroids. Monuments commemorate the first Pony Express in 1860 and the town`s role in building the first transcontinental railroad.
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The "Manifest Destiny" of the USA as quoted in the museum:
``That the US are bound finally to absorb all the world and the rest of mankind, every well-regulated American mind is prepared to admit. When the fever is on, our people do not seem to know when and where to stop, but keep on swallowing as long as there is anything in reach. To use a popular Californainism, we ``go for anything that is in sight".
- San Francisco Daily, Alta, California, February 3, 1869
(!)
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Newspaper report: sleeping in a train coach: 1868:
``He endeavored to sleep by putting hs heels on one seat and his head in another. The seat got the best of the bout in ten minutes. He then placed his carpet sack between the seats and sat down on it, with his legs on top of the seat ahead and his head on the seat behind. The seat won this round in 12 seconds. He then took the cushions and stretched them on the frames of the seat parallel with the cars.``
This reminded me so much of my first overland trip to the US in 1979 when I travelled by `dog` ("Go Greyhound and See the Arse End of America"). Stuck for 3 nights in Cheyenne, Wyoming due to blizzards, only the Australians thought to use sleeping bags on the bus floors to get some sleep while the Americans sat bolt upright and awake. When asked why we would do this, our answer was: "Many nights on mail trains..." At the time, just the concept of a `train` for `passengers` seemed a foreign concept to most of them.
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In a small glass case: the introduction of art deco streamlined trains and a stainless steel award for Burlington`s first ``vista dome car: 1945`` is on display: ``Streamlining replaced Victorian clutter with smooth, simple, ovoid lines. During the Great Depression of the 1930`s, consumer products of all kinds appeared in streamline form, symbolising progress and hope for the future.`` One living monument to this time is in downtown San Francisco where a collection of preserved depression-era streamlined streetcars in pre-war colour schemes from a range of US cities provides daily service. The rush hour crowds aren`t history, they are very authentic...
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The use of cannabis on medical grounds has been implemented in California, and as a public service I thought I`d share with you the fine medical standards outlined in the last half dozen pages of Sacramento`s free newspaper. Sixteen `practices` are listed, offering: `Bring in any competitor`s coupon and we`ll beat if by $5`, `Winter Compassion Special: $49 for New Patients. Must Bring Ad. Limit One Per Patient`, `Voted Best 420 Physician in Sacramento`, Daily Specials on Home Organics`, `Safest Meds In Town`, `$10 cap on hash, $35 cap on all concentrates`, `New patients Receive FREE GIFT`, `Cut Out Coupon and Bring it for Free Cookies`, `Cloud 9: Sacramento`s #1 Source of High CBD Medical Cannabis Products`, `$5 off any purchase when you bring a friend`.
All of these oh-so-ethical offers are supported by the `CAPITAL CANNABIS MAP` of 22 suppliers and 3 `doctors for medical evaluation`.
There was a time when stand-up comics like George Carlin would poke fun at this sort of stuff. The reality has now subsumed the satire.
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Opposite the Capitol Building in downtown Sacramento, among a small avenue of State Memorials is the small but moving Peace Officers` Monument: a woman cradling a small child is impassively observing the bronze sculpted and uniform figures and lists of volunteers who lost their lives under a small inscription: ``In The Line of Duty``
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SAN FRANCISCO:
``Son, Observe the Time and Fly From Evil"
Ecc. IV. 23.
(Grant St church clocktower).
Sadly, `evil` found me: my `trusty` HSBC credit card `declined` to work with no notice from the bloody bank (as they tend to do). Two hours of phone calls, emails and more than two hours with the lovely staff of HSBC Chinatown (where else?) sorted out fraudulent on-line use and a promise that a new card will be waiting for me in Dallas. But I`ll have to phone Australia to initiate my first transaction (at ``the world`s local bank``) because American HSBC do not talk to Australian HSBC.
Fortunately the lovely Chinatown Branch staff have given me the `secret` local call number to their international switchboard. There is no HSBC in Texas: not enough money there, it seems. I`m not optimistic about receiving a card or making the call. We`ll see...
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My pub was on the California cable car line; the one which is not overloaded by tourists, so you can always get on and find a seat. It became the daily commute to take the cable car downtown for breakfast at the Ferry, taking a 19th Century National monument for granted as the best and most efficient option available.
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At the end of Grant St, a daily pair of well dressed Jehovah`s Witnesses is flogging booklets on avoiding government corruption, their backs firmly turned on the homeless and their plastic-covered shopping trolleys on the grubby alley sidewalk behind them. Similar `frocked up` pairs and displays seem to be in many cities. Have they given up on door-knocking suburbia with `Watch Tower` in string bags and thirsty children in tow? Meanwhile the dispossessed watch on, visibly invisible.
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Staying in Chinatown meant walking in the steps of Sun Yat-Sen (plotting the downfall of the Manchu Dynasty), Francis Ford Coppola (writing the first draft of "The Godfather"), possibly Jack Nicholson but certainly Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg. I spent several hours in City Lights Books (made famous as part of the `Beat Movement` but also for it support of alternative literature). I bought Maupin rather than Ginsberg as my own souvenir of San Francisco.
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The Cartoon Museum on Mission: very good, but one standout was a drawing of Obama being abused by rednecks: "Socialist! Communist!! CANADIAN!!!"
You really do understand what an American-syndicated old childhood we had when you revisit original drawings of Dick Tracy, The Phantom, Blondie, Nancy, Little King, Popeye and so on, with later drawings of Peanuts and Doonesbury. There was also a series of mock public service posters from ``National Lampoon`` such as: "CHEW YOUR FOOD! If you don`t do it, who will?" and a poster of a small man leaping up to wrestle a dragon: "RISE TO ADVERSITY!"
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Graffiti in Balboa Park: "BLACK LIVES MATTER". Beyond the wall, over the monster freeway, were the ridges of Daly City where housing really is the unadorned "little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same" in the 50 shades of beige of Californian suburbia.
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San Francisco Chronicle: "A Federal Judge struck down California`s foie gras ban this week, a decision that delighted gourmands, outraged animal rights activists and reignited a long running feud about whether consumers should be consuming the delicacy."
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Along the Rainbow Honor Walk (of brass faces of a morose Tennissee Williams, Alice B Toklas, Harvey Milk and others) and in amongst the Saturday shoppers was rather good Vietnamese coffee shop opposite ``Hand Job: Nails and Spa`` and a permanent rainbow crosswalk. This presumably is not the `safety hazard` that so scared NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay in Oxford St, Sydney, several years ago.
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``STATE LAW Health and Safety Code requires that you WASH YOUR HANDS`` according to the sign in a French cafe. The dinner check included: "Mandated 4% for Health Care".
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San Fransisco TV news: The house where Mrs Doubtfire was filmed has been subject to two small arson attacks. The owner, a medical specialist, fears these are the actions of a disgruntled patient. The doctor specialises in feminising the faces of transgender people.
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Travelling from Ocean Beach through Haight-Ashbury then down to 3rd Street on local transit was deeply fascinating: not so much for the scenery/hippy history, but for what was happening inside the bus.
At the beach, a wiry bearded bloke travelling with a backpack and large spotty black mongrel clambered on to the back seat. They proceeded to tongue-kiss until leaving the bus at Divisadero. At the same time in the front of the same bus three elderly and "dressed for town" ladies were involved in a deeply precious and detailed discussion of recent classical concerts, the wrought emotional impact of the symphony, and whether or not John Adams is their favourite composer.
A change of bus. A large (we are talking "American large" here..) woman with no front teeth (all the better for blowing competitive gum bubbles with your 12 year old daughter who is obsessed with a screaming video on her phone) is graphically abusing her partner on her cell phone while checking on a 1960`s metal baby-stroller covered with a yellow quilt, grinning semi-toothlessly at the contents. Darling daughter won the gum-bubble contest when her mother`s gum plopped all over her chin. Mom then wiped the residue into her mouth with the back of her hand and reached into the stroller to lift out three very skinny puppies. She placed one in each of the inside pockets of her jacket and gave one to the phone-obsessed daughter who did the same. After buttoning up, daughter and mother got off the bus with their `puppies` squirming in a fairly disconcerting way...
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SAN JOSE
The southern edge of Silicon Valley: apparently I travelled through "downtown" although it`s hard to tell in a California metroplex. There may have been a few high rises in the distance but the lasting impression is of well-greened low-rise office buildings surrounded by tree-lined car parks and names like: Microsoft, NASA, Ebay, Paypal and occasional well kept streets of California bungalows and Spanish Mission housing. It felt a bit like a beige Canberra of well watered business parks. The bland good taste was relieved, somewhat, by an old couple who `ride the LRV` for their day out. Complete strangers when they boarded at Diridion, by Japantown they were loudly and enthusiastically discussing their "urinary incidents" and the fun they had with their family and carers seeing them through their "events".
Is this also what Evelyn Waugh meant when he said that Americans love talking but "no-one expects you to listen"?
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LOS ANGELES:
35 years ago (!!) I found Los Angeles to be an alien and alienating place. (This is apart from the delightful friends who put me up - I will never forget being taken, utterly jet lagged from the airport to the screams in the laser-lit and pitch-dark of Space Mountain in Disneyland). The guide book of the time described LA as "a thousand vapid main streets all heading nowhere." And that is how it felt. This time, it was a lot easier to like.
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Hollywood and Vine. (Yep, the Walk of Fame). It`s not too seedy at 8am on a Monday and surrounded by Chicago-style 1920`s high rise (for the accountants and other bureaucrats who supported the growth of Hollywood as an industry). There are great murals adorning desperate car parks and a large sign: "Showgirls!! 1000`s of beautiful girls and 3 ugly ones". Compared with the down-at-heel streets, downstairs the new(ish) subway station is a Hollywood fantasy cavern of green and yellow tiled palm trees supporting a deep blue-ceramic roof where the "stars" are actually tiny ceramic movie-reel tiles.
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He stopped at the train door and asked if this was the subway to `NoHo` (that is “North Hollywood” to we non-residents), made a joke of what might happen if it was not, sat at the doorway and commenced a gaunt seated dance of squirming pain. "Ah`me hangin` out for my morphine, you know?" Between twinges and arcing back and the driven circling of feet, he explained to the carriage that he`d inherited cancer and hoped he would not pass it on to his son. "You wanna see?"
I`m not sure that we did.
He was not for stopping: dark black lesions spread on lighter black skin from shoeline to raised jean-leg hemline.He was peeling an orange (and the concentration stilled the seated squirming dance, somewhat). He staggered off (with much of the rest of the train) at my stop. Another bloke and I lifted him on and off the escalators to the street. He greeted the security guards: "They all know me," and twitched at the crosswalk, making a swift circuitous path along the sidewalk to wife, child, home and "Ma nighttime morphine".
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Further down Hollywood Boulevard are miles of street posters for `Dame Edna`s Gorgeous Goodbye` mixed in with posters Angela Lansbury in "Blythe Spirit"... which was a great performance with the thunderous applause every time she appeared and an immediate standing ovation at curtain call. In the foyer of the theatre was a rolling promotional video of Dame Edna, greeting her California Possums and so looking forward to "visiting Los Angeles (Gateway to Saaan Diego!)".
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After teaching Evelyn Waugh`s "The Loved One" to generations of fogged Year 11 students, it was a real pleasure to wander Forest Lawn in Glendale (the model for Whispering Glades in the novel). I followed Waugh’s advice to look for "the country seat of an Edwardian Financier" and located the main offices and flower shop. From the "Builder`s Creed" to the faux European architecture and replica artworks (and the rampant control and grasping of money from families at their lowest ebb), it was evident that Waugh hadn`t really satirised it that much... The backlit, improved, Da Vinci “Last Supper” (with lines of plastic chairs for contemplation) completed a very satisfying walk. Further down the hill from the extensive mausoleum was the remnant of the original cemetery before it was bought and "improved" by "The Builder". The original gravestones, including the grave of a Civil War Soldier were far more moving than what has replaced them, including the vast paper mache cartoon characters on recent children`s graves, and a mausoleum epitaph for an elderly man of: "Baby Darling Forever".
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Los Angeles downtown used to be a bit of a desperate no-go area following the middle class flight to the suburbs in the 50`s and 60`s. With the rebuilding of city railed transit, downtown apartment and loft developments have led to a bit of a downtown renaissance… up to a point. Opposite Union Station is the original Los Angeles area with restored Spanish-style Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles of 1781 surrounded by similar architecture, memorials and a pan piper playing Burt Bacharach. Further downtown, is the gleaming white art deco City Hall (Think: Daily Planet building if your misspent childhood included Superman on TV) the stunning `Alfoil` Gehry concert hall, and Chicago-style high rise masonry office buildings and hotels from the early 20th century undergoing restoration after years of neglect amid the surrounding 1960`s demolition which replaced inhabited or derelict buildings with bleak carparks and bleaker local markets.
Past 4th St, and circumstances become a tad desperate with vagrants and the homeless sheltering in vacant lots or the doorways of abandoned buildings, but with some stunning alleyway murals including: "Decolonise and Keep Calm" with a painted First Nations warrior captioned: "We Are Still Here". Past 6th St, entering "Toy Town" and across from a large police station it`s Third World in appearance, desperation and odour. Four men in whellchairs play cards and share a crack pipe at the parking garage Entrance. Sidewalks are subsumed by plastic humpies, prone bodies, abandoned shopping trolleys and parked wheelchairs. A large local Catholic Mission does what it can for these citizens of one of the richest nations on the planet. One doubts if they are registered to vote???
Next day I took the train to San Bernadino for some fresh air, and the best hamburger in the sleaziest Hispanic roadside cafe: John`s Burger, opposite the largely closed shopping mall across from the huge but largely uninhabited Santa Fe station house.
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Out front of LAPD Headquarters (in Hill St) is an onging protest about police shooting of black citizens. Along with placards of "Black Lives Matter" were women standing quietly wearing "We Are Human" labels, behind signs to "Fire Cops who killed Ezdell Ford". It was 6 days to Martin Luther King Jr Day ... "which isn`t really commemorated by many of us", as I was informed by a Jewish school administrative cancer survivor on the train to San Diego.
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SAN DIEGO:
This is very much a `company town`, the company being the US Navy. Local hairdressers offer `regulation haircuts` and the US Seventh Fleet surrounds the bay with shipyards, wharves and support services. On the cruise boats you are actively encouraged to aim cameras anywhere you like at aircraft carriers, Hornet aircraft, strategic bridges, dolphin training facilities and so on (the Chinese tourists loved it). Later in the morning I was stopped from taking a photo of a streetcar by a humourless Transit Officer ..."because it looks suspicious in these heightened times".
Of course it does. I would not like to be held responsible for the downfall of the American Empire with a landscape photo. Especially when the helpful station attendant was packing a large firearm, pepper spray and whatever else is needed for a quiet streetcar ride. On Martin Luther King Day, the ticket checks were frequent, obsessive and officious before passengers could enjoy the peaceful march and brass bands along the waterfront.
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San Diego Zoo has renamed its Australian exhibit: `Koalafornia`. The plantation eucalyptus trees (imported for railway sleepers, for which they were not suited... So the Santa Fe company used them to landscape for land sales) make you feel quite at home. Local tour guides talk in hushed tones about the wonderful medicinal qualities of these non-native trees.
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I didn't get to the New Zealand restaurant, unfortunately named "Bare Back
Grill: New Zealand Burgers and Sammies". The menu features Kal Maori (say it slowly), Gnarly Big Burgers, Cluck n' Squeal, Hogs and Heifers, Bare Li'l Lamb, Got Greens and Happy N' Ding. Tempting, non?
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I ordered a "traditional sandwich and root beer" lunch in Old Town, overlooking San Diego Chihuahua Rescue, Dogs On Deployment Military Reunions and a saleswoman training her audience on how to use their chakra to relax their pets. Lunch arrived: "root beer" was Bundaberg ginger beer. I was returned to Santa Fe station, past the Westfield, by Eritrean Cab Co.
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The trolley terminus at the Mexican border town of San Ysidro is as scruffy and full of lurk merchants as these places tend to be. The "MacDonalds Trolley Terminus" is a lovely little Welcome to the USA touch...
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TIJUANA:
There`s no checking of documents as you drive out of the US, just a cursory glower from the armed Mexican Marines. Clustering around the border is a swarm of pharmacies (catering for US citizens desperate to avoid inflated drug prices at home with the option of generics at Mexican prices: they even have tame doctors available to provide legal prescriptions...). The neon lit sign for UROLOGO and the mannequin nurse waving heart shaped signs for VIAGRA were a nice touch. The long queue of dodgy divorce attorneys` offices near the walk-in border have gone, but the seedy clubs and touts remain. What is new is the massive growth in factories and population following the NAFTA trade agreement which effectively exported assembly-line jobs from Canada and the US into the low wage economic climate of Mexico.
The US border is now a huge metal fence constructed, we were told, from recycled sections of scrapped aircraft carriers and floodlit, Berlin Wall style. At Playa Tijuana our little day-trip group was taken to enjoy a stunning sunset. Through the bars of the fence, San Diego appeared as a distant glimmering high-rise Nirvana reflected through the dust and smog in the still ocean. On the border fence itself, angry and ironic murals of "EMPATHY" and about the US taking ..."poor and huddled masses yearning for freedom". The fence itself sliced across the pristine beach and continued its rusty way into the orange-sunset ocean.
