Friday was much more of an interesting day than the others. I started out by harassing the guy at the Apple Store, then moved on to poke around EVB which is really a neat place - the developers have their own little lofted area and there's a basketball net and all that stuff. I proceeded from there towards the coast taking the 71 bus. I met an old Greek man who kept on asking "are we at 45th street? I can't talk to the driver that man is in the way. 45th Street. Where are we?" A couple of girls were standing next to me and wanted to know if they were on the right bus for Haight Ashbury. When the bus started up hill one of her feet would kick me.
"Sorry I'm kicking you," she says, and then kicks my sandal. "Kick! See? I'm kicking you."
Knowing what I know now, they were off to get high and might have already been high. I just took them for tourists.
So I continue on the bus to where it turns and I can see the ocean and figure I must only be a few blocks away and get off and start walking. There's a little oriental grocery and I get an orange for forty-one cents and it's absolutely delicious and I'm thinking of a bit about how the candy consortium manufactures these oranges, which are actually candy, and has used its evil influence to get people to pretend that they're actually fruit. My hands are sticky but I figure I'll find a restaurant along the way to wash my hands.
It ends up, however, that I'm several miles from the shore and it's primarily a residential street. I need to pee but there are no restaurants or anything but I keep on walking. I presume that when I'm near the coast there'll be all kinds of businesses but after a long whiles there's still no restaurants. There is however a surf shop so I head in there to ask for help.
"Hey, is there any kind of restaurant or something around here? I've been walking for forever and I haven't seen anything."
"Yeah, if you go one street over there's a lot of restaurants and a 7-Eleven."
D'oh! So it ends up I'd been walking parallel to relief the whole way. So I find a place to pee and have some lentil soup and a diet coke and then walk the rest of the way to the beach. There's a fireman, two policemen, and some kind of civic worker standing at the corner of the last street. I've finished my cigarette and I can feel their eyes on me. I drop the butt in the trash.
"Smart," the policeman says. There's some kind of highways to cross and then I'm walking, gingerly, across the sand towards the shore. A girl is there dressed in some kind of moon alpha unit clothes, loose cottons and silks or polyesters, shifting rocks and shells with her foot. I have her take a couple of pictures of me against the ocean and then head back towards this coffee shop nearby to post some pictures.
"Do you have 'the wireless internet' here?"
"Yes."
"Can I have a medium coffee please."
[ pause ]
"Will that train take me to Haight Assberry?"
"Yeah, if you take that train it'll take you to Hit. Get off at Cole and you can walk to Hit."
"I want to go to Haight Assberry."
"The train'll take you to Hit."
"Oh... are you Australian or something? You're saying 'hit'."
"I'm Irish. You say tomato, I say tomato."
A rather raw looking dude comes in with a backpack and a guitar. If he were in a movie he'd be played by Nick Nolte. He goes into the men's restroom and stays in there. Guys come by, jiggle the handle, then use the women's restroom. He was still in there when I left after twenty minutes, maybe taking a sponge bath.
There's a postman putting his cart away near the train turnaround. I ask him where to board the train and he points. He's from the Phillipines. I tell him I'm from Chicago and he tells me he has a friend from the Phillipines who lives there. "He uses his brain instead of his body," he says. "A lot easier." This he says is one of the worst routes in town but I'm guessing they're all pretty bad. He says one minute you're freezing the next burning. He had another route once in the hills, that's when his knee started hurting.
So that was the day up until about 3:30.
