A Break With Reality

We were in Las Vegas. Never mind where, because the weekend was such a blur of flashing lights, shimmering heat, and synthesized slot-machine noises that I can’t always remember what events took place where. (And I’m not exactly trying to recall something that happened in my childhood. This was less than a month ago.)

I think we were at the Bellagio Casino. It was somewhere between New York, New York, where we’d picked up some theater tickets, and the Mirage, where we wanted to see the tigers. We were attempting to get from the South Strip to the Mid-Strip without taking a cab and without dying of the heat. (The TV news said it was 106 that day, though Pipi talked to a local woman who said that the news lies all the time and that her car thermometer read 115. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a complainer, so I believe it.)

At the probably-Bellagio, we passed through a courtyard full of fanciful plants. Some were clearly real, like the palm trees that shaded the area. Some, like the giant wooden mushrooms labeled “fungus humungous,” were obviously pretend.

But a lot of the shrubbery fell somewhere in between. In the middle of the space, for example, there was a large bed full of what looked like very short sunflowers. Each one was exactly the same shape and barely a foot tall. They were growing (if that’s the right word) through greenery so thick I couldn’t see the ground they were planted in. They looked live enough, but each flower was so uniform, and the roots seemed so deliberately hidden, that I’m still not sure if I was looking at a real field of bonsai sunflowers or an elaborate hoax fashioned from trimmed, store-bought stems.

But Vegas is kind of like that. It strips you of your ability to tell fact from fiction. (Also inside from outside, male from female, and appropriate from inappropriate. It’s perhaps the least binary place I’ve ever been.)

New Passport

I received a puzzling, official-looking envelope in the mail today. In it, to my surprise, was my new passport. I’d renewed it long enough ago that it wasn’t at the front of my mind, but not so long ago that I’d begun to worry about it.

I’ll miss my old passport, which had some really cool stamps (Mongolia!), not to mention a very fresh-looking photo of me taken 10 years ago. But the new passport appears to be made a little more durably, and has some interesting new design features. The frontispiece has a quote from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a facing page reproduces the preamble to the constitution, for the benefit of citizens who didn’t commit it to memory watching Saturday-morning television as children. Later pages have watermarks including patriotic quotes from all the usual suspects and some I didn’t see coming, like the Mohawk Thanksgiving address.

Best of all, the last page notes that, “This document contains sensitive electronics.” I’ve been chipped! Knowing this makes allows me to work up a good head of liberal paranoia while still feeling like I’ve got the latest gadget everyone’s talking about, a real Bay Area perfecta.

My new photo’s not great. I think I look a little haggard (especially compared to my old passport picture). But doesn’t everyone look a little rough after an international flight? I expect to breeze through customs for the next decade.

Why Did the Chicken Cross The Road? Maybe to Get to Kragen.

Have you ever seen a chicken trip over a spark plug? Neither had I until this morning’s walk through the Temescal neighborhood. I was on a residential street and I startled two hens pecking at something on the sidewalk. They got flustered, as chickens will, and went careening into a driveway. That’s where one of them ran right over the car part that someone left lying on the asphalt. She squawked and flailed and seemed to remember in mid-air that she could sort of fly, so she flapped once or twice and tried to look like she’d meant to do that. It was funny, and strange, but just par for the course in this green, gritty city where people practice both animal husbandry and car maintenance in their front yards.

Now That You Mention it, I Am a Little Obsessed With the ’80s

I have always believed that all blogs are equal, but that some are more equal than others. If that doesn’t sound like an entirely original thought on my part, I can’t help it; I just write like George Orwell.

No, I do; it’s official. The website I Write Like told me so. I gave it a couple of hundred words that I wrote for the Dallas Morning News on Mongolia, and it diagnosed me as sounding like the Animal Farm writer. I can live with this. I liked Animal Farm, loved the language in 1984, and have to admire a guy who has been down and out in both Paris and London.

So who do you write like? Try it out and see for yourself.

I’m Not Alone

Here’s an interesting article about another compulsive person walking all the streets in a Bay Area city. This guy walked every street in San Francisco, which has 1,200 miles of road, over the course of seven years.

The mileage of San Francisco’s streets surprised me, because I thought I’d read that Oakland, which covers a much larger geographical area than San Francisco, has only 800 miles of road. Oakland is much less dense than San Francisco, however, with streets less tightly packed together, so that probably explains it.

Interestingly, this man employed a trick I’ve heard from other walkers, which is to tackle bad neighborhoods in bad weather. Apparently thugs don’t like to get wet or cold.

Mission Accomplished

Fueled by a steady diet of Tim Tams and adrenaline (Why did I think June had 31 days? Why did I not realize my mistake until June 30?), I managed to get my article on Alice Springs, Australia submitted to Curve Magazine on time. This is a relief. If all goes well, look for it on a newsstand near you in October of this year.

Separated at Birth?

Somebody once told me, or maybe I read it, or maybe I made it up completely, but in any case, I used to believe that Hong Kong had the largest concentration of Rolls Royces in the world.

I visited Hong Kong in 1989, not long after I learned (or imagined) this statistic. I wasn’t there long enough to confirm anything, but I did notice an awful lot of the luxury cars around, far more than I’d ever seen in my life up to that point.

I wouldn’t have guessed that slightly downtrodden North Oakland had anything in common with the capitalist theme park that was Hong Kong back in the day, but it does: The neighborhood also has an anomalous number of Rolls Royces. Last week I saw two in one day, one under a tarp, and one cruising the streets. That’s at least one more Rolls Royce than I had previously ever seen in one day in any part of Oakland.

Coincidence? Well, obviously, but it’s always interesting to discover the odd things that radically different destinations can have in common.

On the Not-So-High Seas

One other interesting thing about North Oakland, which is separated from the San Francisco Bay by the city of Emeryville, is that a large number of residents seem to own boats. I don’t know if there are really more watercraft here than in other parts of the city. It could be that the boats, usually parked in driveways, are just more visible for some reason. In any case this landlocked neighborhood seems to have an unusually strong nautical bent.

Discovering North Oakland

I’m still working on my walking project. I’m in north Oakland right now. Usually when I mention this, the person I’m talking to will ask what the neighborhood is like, although I think what they really want to ask is if I feel safe there.

The safety question is easy enough. The simple answer is yes. If I were part of a gang, or a sex worker, or there to buy drugs, I’d probably feel differently, but my experience so far has reminded me of west Oakland: I leave trouble alone and it ignores me, too. (Of course, I keep my eyes open and my cell phone handy.)

As for what the neighborhood’s like, that’s harder to put into words. It’s not the city’s prettiest enclave. It has a few Victorians but most of the houses are boxy little post-war bungalows. There are some abandoned houses, and for some reason, there’s more litter than in any other part of the city I’ve seen yet.

But it’s far from bleak. There are pocket parks, and community gardens, and chalked hop-scotch courts on the sidewalks—all signs that people aren’t locked in their houses.

So what’s it like? Kind of like this photo, which shows a tiny patch of flowers that someone planted and then made a protective fence around at the base of a no-parking sign: kind of rough and gritty, but not without surprise little slivers of beauty.

R.I.P. Erik Fitzpatrick

Here’s something interesting that I found recently in Oakland, where we’ve raised the impromptu street shrine to an art form. Anyone can put together a soggy collection of flowers and teddy bears for a fallen comrade. In the East Bay, we do it in style. This is one of the more original offerings I’ve ever seen.

This shrine is on MacArthur Boulevard, the commercial strip nearest my house, implying that while I never met Erik, we may have been neighbors. I do feel I know him a little now, judging from the idiosyncratic things mourners have left as offerings, including chalk, vodka, bubble soap, and a dead, flattened turtle.

I don’t know what happened, but I note that he died quite young. (He was, in fact, the same age as my sister, which will probably always seem way too young for bad things, even when I’m 100 and she’s just 95.) My condolences to the family of Mr. Fitzpatrick, and to anyone who cared enough to put together this creative tribute.

NileGuide

Here’s a travel site I found out about recently through a former co-worker of Pipi’s. It’s called NileGuide. The site is more of a travel planning site than a place to book tickets, and it features lots of content. At Travelocity, we used to dream about getting to write about travel without having to worry about selling anything, and NileGuide seems dedicated to doing just that. Best of all, they use a lot of freelance help, and I’ve been talking with the editors about contributing. It looks like I’m going to do some work on spec (publishing-speak for “without any promise of payment”) and if they like it, it may develop into something more regular. (And paid.) We’ll see how this turns out. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

Commissioned!

A few weeks ago, I pitched an article on Alice Springs, Australia, to Curve magazine. Today, I heard back from them and it was good news: They want me to go ahead and write it.

I’m not exactly going to retire on the commission from this piece, but I’m excited about it nonetheless. I really do like Curve, which I’ve been reading since the magazine and I were both new on the scene. The editor also seems to share my general ideas about length, content, and tone, and gave me a generous deadline, so I’ve got a good feeling about the project.

Travel Anxiety Dream

I have travel anxiety dreams a lot, or maybe I should say that when I have anxiety dreams, they usually have to do with travel.

Usually these dreams involve scenarios that start out plausible but quickly compound. In these dreams, I haven’t just forgotten to pack something important; I’ve neglected to pack at all, and I’m not just having trouble getting a ride to the airport; I am, for some reason, attempting to get there on foot. (Good thing I never have any luggage.)

So last night’s dream came as somewhat of a relief, if only because I managed to create an entirely new problem for myself.

First of all, I was on a flight to Australia (it’s always Australia!) that included a stop in Iceland. That was stressful enough. But then, to make things more interesting (it was a very long flight, after all), I took it upon myself to clean all the ovens in the galley. They were all self-cleaning, and almost as soon as I turned them on, they started to smoke badly, which really upset my ungrateful fellow passengers. I decided that the only way to deflect suspicion of my involvement was to fake sleep, so I did, and interestingly, that’s when I finally woke up.

L.A. Times

In the spirit of “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I just sent an article on Australia to the Los Angeles Times. They are notoriously picky and selective, but the worst that can happen is rejection, which is not the end of the world. In my experience, rejection, Times-style, comes mercifully quickly, and it puts you in excellent company. We’ll see what happens.

Happy Mothers Day…

….Or “Moters Day,” as we call it in the 510, where everything is just a little bit grittier. Here’s wishing all the moms out there breakfast in bed, a nice bouquet of fresh flowers, and a big, new can of 10W-40.

Another Way of Counting

Speaking of country counts, here’s an interesting (and by “interesting,” I mean “borderline crackpot”) web site for a travel club based in southern California. It’s called the Travelers’ Century Club, and it is for people who can say they’ve been to 100 countries. That sounds like a lot, but the way they count countries, you probably went through two or three on your way to work today.

For the TCC, the U.N.’s official list of 192 countries is just a starting point. According to the TCC, if a region is separated by geography or culture from its official country, then it counts as a separate place. Alaska and the continental United States, for example, are counted as two different countries.

According to the TCC, there are six countries in North America, seven in Antarctica, 51 in Asia, and 67 in Europe. Worldwide, they reckon 320 total countries. By this count, you have probably traveled abroad without even knowing it. According to this group, I have been to 28 countries, which isn’t so much more than my U.N. tally, but does include accounting irregularities that would not have occurred to me, such as separating Russia from Siberia, and calling St. Barths a sovereign nation.

How Many Countries Have You Been To?

It sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t always. The answer really depends on the definition of a country, and that’s not always straightforward. My personal rule of thumb is that if a region produces its own stamps and coins, then it’s a country, but obviously not every person would agree with me. (I’m not even sure every coin and stamp collector would agree with me.)

Things get complicated when countries split up or reunite. If I’d been to Bonn in the 1980s, for example, I could say I’d been to West Germany, but could I say I’ve been to Germany? I’ve never been to Bonn, so that’s purely hypothetical in my case, but consider Hong Kong. I was there in 1989, and it felt like a country to me. But it was an English colony then, and now of course it’s a Chinese city, so I’m not sure how to count that. (Taiwan’s problematic, too. I feel like I’ve been to three separate Chinese-speaking countries, but there are those who would argue that bitterly.)

Then there are countries that attain their independence (or something akin to it), such as is about to happen to several islands in the Caribbean.

All five of the islands (or parts of islands, in the case of Sint Maarten) that make up the Netherlands Antilles have recently voted on the issue of independence. Two islands voted for “status aparte,” which as I understand it is something just short of complete independence from Holland. Two voted to move closer to the mother country, and one, little Sint Eustatius, decided it likes things just the way they were and doesn’t want to break up the Antilles.

This causes all kinds of problems for country counters. Were the Netherlands Antilles a country before? Do the separate islands count as sovereign nations now? It’s confusing, and I think you could probably check with several different authorities and get several different answers.

The only thing I know for sure is that if someone asks me how many countries I’ve been to, all I can say is, “Not enough yet.”

Pitching to Curve

In addition to pestering the Chronicle, I also pitched an article on Alice Springs, Australia, to Curve magazine. Curve is a lesbian publication, and Alice Springs is, for some reason, a lesbian magnet, so I think it’s a good fit. We’ll see. I haven’t heard back yet, but that might be good news. The last time I pitched to Curve, I got a rejection back within the hour, so I’m going to hope they take their time on this one.

Keeping up the Barrage

Undaunted, I’m sending more stuff the Chronicle’s way. You know how they say you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take? Well, then I’m just going to keep booting articles at the Chronicle. Eventually, one will get by.

I just sent a long article on Australia, specifically on the Indian Pacific Train. Let’s hope my timing’s better on this one.

Shanghai Surprise

I got an email from the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle rejecting an article I’d submitted about Shanghai. Two things lessened the sting, though. The first was that it was a very nice note. I’m used to not hearing anything from editors at all, so to get a note that is not just polite, but in fact mildly encouraging, seemed remarkable.

The other thing that made it easier to take is that I knew it was coming. Just a few days after I sent the article to the Chronicle, the paper ran another piece about Shanghai. When I saw that, I knew they wouldn’t feature the city again any time soon. So the printed article was effectively a rejection notice, even though it was of course intended in no such way—I doubt the editor had even seen my article yet.