techsoldaten

Been nowhere recently – since my last trip to Boston, I’ve been stuck in Annapolis MD. Life got pretty busy and I have been tied up in a bunch of election stuff.

The thing about travelling everywhere then suddenly going nowhere is that your perspectives change on the world. Just at the time things become familiar, you are clamoring for something unfamiliar with which to get acquainted. I don’t know if this is a modern appetite for travel or some form of wanderlust on my part, but I watch planes go by and it wounds my heart with a monotonous langor.

I miss Las Vegas, and Las Vegas appears to miss me. I get calls at 3am EST from people who did not know I moved asking me to come out with them. Headed Nowhere, this really makes me want to head back to the place I just was.

M

Boston, the Hub, my spiritual and intellectual nirvana, perhaps the only place in this world I really feel like I fit in. Have just finished a one week jaunt to the place and find myself wanting to know more about how bad the winters are before packing a car and heading for Harvard yard (seriously, that’s all that is holding me back).

Before I get into things, this is the prism I see things through: I am an Irish Catholic Democrat Red Sox fan Semi-Academic Hacker Geek who reads too much Nietzsche and hates to sleep. I identify strongly with all these groups. It is hard for me to say I like something, because I have to do a belief check all the time to figure out what I really feel. It’s not hard for me to initially take an interest in a place or a people only to drop it / them a week later because it offends me at some level. Boston and the surrounding areas pass all of my checks, from the gut to the brain, and I clicked with the place the moment I got there.

Recently went there to visit my poor brother who just returned injured from Iraq. Found out stories of his injuries have been greatly exaggerated (and the family grapevine continues to amplify every detail past what reality shall bear) and that he is in one of the greatest places on Earth. The people in Massachusetts really, sincerely seem to care, and he is in one of the best environments I have encountered in all my travels.

My brother is staying in Ipswitch, a small town about 40 (maybe 70) miles north of Boston. Stayed with him my first couple of days, got to know the locals and found out that people’s lives really do revolve around the hours of the local Dunkin Donuts. Ate at the Marco Polo restaurant and met a really great bartender who knows everything there is to know about the area. Was still on west coast time and could not find anything to do except talk to a cop at 3 am about what it is like enforcing the law when no good laws are ever broken. The guy had carpal from writing traffic tickets.

Went to Fenway. Cannot think of much to say about it that has not already been said, so I will share a single parent’s eye view of the area. First, the scalpers try to rip off kids and that is not right. I had my daughter check in for prices on seats outside the stadium as a lark, and the guy wanted more money from her than from the teenagers next to her. I sent her back with instructions to tell the guy she knows what he was offering the tickets for to other people, that he is bigoted against young people and that she would not to pay more than $200 for the seats. She came back with change which we used to get sodas and sausages outside the stadium.

Then we actually went into the stadium, old timey feel is still there. The seats we paid all this money for were surrounded by the most spastic group of non-baseball fans ever. It was like they were playing duck duck goose or something, no one would stay in the same seat for more than 5 minutes. I was standing up 95% of the time and my daughter could not see anything. This crazy woman (whose seats were actually in another section) was booted by the rightful ticket holder from the seats she snuck into, splitting up her and her husband. She asked me to move, I told her no way, and she got all righteous about how it was unfair she could not sit next to her husband. I told her, ‘I just flew 3,000 miles and spent $200 to take my daughter to her first game at Fenway. You people won’t sit down long enough to let her see the game. Get lost.’

The woman who would not sit down continued to stand there and complain loudly until I decided to go for a walk to fan services, where I explained the situation and was given new seats 4 rows back right on the field close enough to see the belt buckles of guys on first (!!!!). My daughter got a game ball, we sang Sweet Caroline, we watched the Mets go down and Coco grab that incredible catch. Great experience and worth every penny.

After the game, immediately after leaving the stadium, the daughter had to go potty. I was facing one of the clubs on Landsdowne street and asked one of the guys working the door if I could take her in. Anywhere else, we get turned away and walk 30 minutes. Here, this guy pulls open a velvet rope, escorts her back into the club, gets a matron to take her into the restroom, and waits for her to finish. This is what I mean about nice, the people in Boston do the right thing even if it is an inconvenience.

Random thoughts: Driving through Boston is a trip. Don’t go anywhere near Purchase street, things get very confusing there. The Children’s Museum is located in a neighborhood that is clearly very, very old. There are lots of signs for businesses that haven’t existed for 20 years still hanging. There is an utter lack of cafes and convenience stores (which, I assume, owes to the puritanical nature of the populace). There is inexplicable road construction going on, where massive concrete blocks are being lowered into the ground in amazing fashion. Lots of people with dogs who live in that area.

Ate lunch the next day at the Barking Crab. Clams with bellies. Was seated at a table with a bunch of over achieving yuppie transplants from lesser cities. Was amazed at how they rolled their eyes as the waitress explained the bridge next to the restaurant is one of two rotating bridges remaining in operation.

Drove under the city numerous times in the tunnels beneath Boston. Seem to remember a lot of talk about a Big Dig and how things did not turn out right, 5 minutes to get past an entire Eastern city seemed alright to me. The tunnel system, while intially confusing, permitted rapid transit between points north and south of Boston. Made my day to see how well it all works, being stuck in traffic while travelling is a lot like getting shipwrecked and waiting for rescue.

Spent some time in Yarmouth on the cape, Molly’s is a great place for touristy-type stuff. The bar next door is a great place to talk baseball and meet women. The church just off the 28 is a great parish, the vestibule is placed right between 2 sets of pews and gives a progressive sense to the procession of the Mass.

Did some whale watching while I was there, we sailed out to a place called Skull Cove Hall or something to see massive beasts swim around underwater. Their massive shapes would occassionally emerge from beneath the surface and slide alongside boats. We were in a fairly large boat and just the tails dwarfed the size of the boats. Fascinating to watch.

The one drawback to Boston is the obsession with opening and closing places of business. Everyone there likes to open businesses at a certain hour and close them at a certain hour. There is something ritualistic in the way they do it, when the town shuts down it really shuts down. I was still on west coast time and found myself looking for something to do at 3 am, when the only places open are gas stations and people on the streets are mostly cops.

Anyways, wrapped up our trip by making significant purchases at the many malls on Route 1 for the return trip to my father’s. Returned to DC wishing I could go back to Boston for the rest of the summer. A plus plus visit, could write about this place for another 10 pages.

M

Last night, I offered to take a local developer out to dinner to discuss taking on some projects for my company. He suggested Piero’s, a restaurant I had never been to but heard good things about. While the meal was one of the best I have had in my life, the uniforms and service were incredible.

To start, the waiter had 2 assistants to wait on 2 tables. I made a joke about needing some Tabasco for my Shrimp Cocktail. The bottle was there within 5 seconds. Every time my drink was empty the replacement was there in less than a minute. When they brought the bread, I dropped my knife and someone caught it before it hit the floor. Remarkable.

Every waiter was wearing a uniform. White jacket over a white shirt with some sort of chain holding it all together. Really cool to look at, made you feel like the Navy was preparing your food. The waiters all had accents from Eastern European countries, which made it all seem kind of surreal.

It was clear to me this was some sort of insider’s place. There was a street sign for Tarkanian Way on the ceiling and pictures of sports greats all over the walls. The people at the table next to us were talking about something having to do with transferring a large sum of money somewhere and the value of doing so versus doing something else. I am not an evesdropper, but it was clear this is the kind of place the elite visit when they need to have a serious dinner.

I ate some sort of a veal dish with a side of linguine. I am probably butchering the name, but it was called Sambuca (or something like that) and it was incredble. The waiter told me it was the house specialty for the last 30 years. The guy I was talking to had a steak, it was massive and he claimed it was one of the best he’d ever had.

After talking with the guy I could see he was looking for too much money and we parted ways. The check for the dinner was formidible, this is not the place for a budget conscious individual. But the meal was an example of what a meal could be, all other restaurants should shoot for this level of service.

M

I pass thru Death Valley every time I go to LA. Just drive up highway 190 if you want to see a series of incredible sights.

The only thing to be careful for is flakes. Death Valley attracts a lot of wierd people, I guess because of the name. Without fail, someone is usually standing in the middle of the road without regard for oncoming traffic. Stopping to talk to the natives is probably a bad idea, there I’ve met more people who were just strange enough they could be serial killers than any other place I’ve been. Also, while it’s not profound, they have a hippie problem in Death Valley. Try passing over in a small plane, as you come to the airport you will see what I mean.

M

Just got back from a business trip where I visited Santa Monica. I was there on business and decided to check out the beach during my stay. The Ocean is full of all sorts of wonders, vegetative and man-made.

First off, it should be known that driving to Santa Monica is an ordeal. There was a study done on the LA workforce that showed a good percentage of people employed in the city work somewhere to the West and worked odd hours. I validated this empirically by driving the 5 all the way there, only to discover there is no rush hour on the 5, there is just rush, gridlock traffic exists almost constantly. 2 hours to drive 21 miles, crazed lunatics in every car around you shouting at each other in their cell phones sitting alone in each vehicle.

The traffic was the only bad part of the trip. When I got there, I headed straight to Sony’s building for a meeting about a new project. Unlike many other California towns, the street signs were readable, it was clear someone was responsible for removing obstructing foliage and took his job seriously.

I was telling the person I was with about this awful beach back in New Jersey I used to get shanghai’ed into visiting every summer. Incredibly bad things would wash up there, like medical waste in biohazard bags, and the place smelled like spoilt eggs. When we got to the ocean, what washed up instead were these colorful pieces of seaweed with these bulbuous protrusions sticking out and long, flame-licked leaves. There were some slick, shiny rocks coming up in the surf that hit your ankles as the waves rode in. And that was it, there were no sneakers, cans or anything gross in that water.

More than the water, the beach was really clean. I did not see one piece of trash except in a trash can, and the place was crowded. I did see a Santa Monica lifeguard who was dressed in the same uniform they used in Baywatch, which was really cool. He yelled at some kids for leaving something in the water.

Santa Monica has a pretty cool pier, reminded me of a scaled down version of the Boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland. Spent some time riding rides and was impressed by how the rides themselves worked. The West Coaster is a roller coaster they have that is kind of tiny and goes around really slow. The Ferris Wheel is big and gives you a great view of the Ocean, but goes around really fast. The bumper cars are high performance machines of pugilism and they go fast enough you can target other cars and reasonably expect to catch up with them.

The overwhelming impression I had of the people in Santa Monica was that the women are incredibly attractive. Not trying to be sexist here. I mean, the guy at the restaurant I had lunch at reminded me so much of Jeff Spicoli, and normally that would be enough to qualify as an impression about the town itself. But I hadn’t run into a concentrated bunch of women that attractive and intelligent since college, the girls I talked to were friendly and seemed to be very well educated. I was struck with a chicken and the egg dilemma, does the existance of a clean beach town attract these kinds of women or is this well-organized beach town a product of the fact all these incredible women have chosen to congregate here. This is a question I will ponder for a while.

Overall, getting there was kind of a chore but it was a great place to spend a day. There were all sorts of other little things to notice, like the fact Venice Beach was right down the street and there were lots of ‘interesting’ things happening down there. Going back as soon as I can.

M

Been there, that’s about all I have to say about it. A lot like Vegas except for everything.

M

Got back from a trip to Vancouver in February. I was in town for a technical conference and only had a couple of nights to see the town. Stayed downtown and thought the place was a trip. My main impressions were that the people were really nice and the town was really permissive.

First off, everyone is really friendly. When I got into town, the people at the airport helped me find a shuttle to the hotel, the shuttle driver gave me the tour of the town, the hotel manager told me where all the good restaurants are, the convenience store dude explained the exchange rate and was honest about it, and the bartenders all gave me double shots for the regular price because I didn’t vote for Bush. I must have met 20 people before I made it to the conference and every single one of them was laid back and had a good attitude.

Then I figured out why. On the second day of my trip, was walking towards UBC and started smelling pot. I looked into a store window and saw a uniformed cop and thought I was about to see someone get busted. Instead, I watched a cop smoking pot right there in public, then pass along the joint. That’s when I knew I was in another country and things just ain’t the same as they are back home. Turns out pot has been decriminalized up there and prostitution is protected (I think by the constitution).

Went to the conference and talked to someone about it, seeing the cop like that was traumatizing. Found out about all sorts of other things that we don’t do in America but that they do do up there. They have some sort of censorship board and ban records all the time. They eat something called smoked meat instead of corned beef. And everyone really does love hockey, I got invited to a pickup game but will have to go back for that.

On the way back, my tickets got screwed up by the travel agent and my return trip was set for a month in the future. I went to the United desk and they told me it was going to be $600 for a ticket home. I went to the Air Canada desk, and they traded in the ticket for nothing. That’s the real difference, the people up there do not appear to know what a chisler is or how to act like one.

Can’t wait to go back, this time I am bringing my skates.

M

I actually grew up just outside DC, in a small suburb close to Annapolis. My take on DC as a kid was, wow, what big building you have. For about 10 years as an adult, I had the chance to work in some of those big buildings, and let me tell you: germ and bacterial heaven.

Point in fact: working at the Department of Commerce in the Hubert C. Humphrey Building (next to the White House), I watched remodelling happen time and time again. Once, while I was discussing what was going to happen with a conference room, some workmen tore out some innoculous looking drywall to reveal this massive patch of matted green and brown stuff that had obviously been growing there for decades. No wonder the only time I ever had colds in my adult life was working there.

Anyways, now I go there on business and have built a new relationship with the city. Getting around on the metro is more annoying than I remember it having been several years ago, and the cost of parking has actually gone up (costs about $20 a day to park on Vermont Ave downtown with no ins and outs). Now I take a cab wherever I go, and it makes life a lot simpler and less expensive.

Was on Capitol Hill at a Starbucks on 3rd and Penn. Love the wireless access, hate the caterers who hog the place while I am trying to work. Sat outside on a relatively mild day recently and was photographed by a member of the Danish press. She went around to get some more pictures of the city from a median strip and quickly encountered some brave members of the Capitol Hill police force, who questioned her for about half an hour before taking her away in a police car (she did not appear to be under arrest).

Got down to Chinatown for the first time in a long time. Don’t remember the names of the places I went, but an intrepid soul could find them without much problem. There’s now a high-end bowling alley set back in one of the buildings there. You have to make reservations to bowl, it costs like $45 an hour to rent a lane, and the food sucks. We went to some fancy schmancy cafe instead and had crabcakes, which were fairly good.

Had to find an address on Military Road while I was out there, near the zoo. Sometimes the residential areas of DC come across as dense and formidible, with endless rows of identical rowhouses stretching on for miles on one way streets. This was the first time in my life I pushed past the rowhouses into the real houses on Military Road, they looked a lot like the place I grew up in near Annapolis.

No description of the city can be complete without a State of the Vagrants report. I have a wierd relationship with vagrants in DC, because for years I have been giving them handouts in exchange for their story of how they got here and how life is on the streets. Has gotten me mugged and beaten more than once, but also has let me meet some pretty fascinating people. Like once, I ran into this dude who was formerly a producer for a major news network and became dysfunctional after getting hooked on crack. Dude was Ivy League, went to Dartmouth, and formerly lead a life of meaning. Got all screwed up after some investigative journalism and his parents disowned him. Now, he hung out on 8th street near the marine barracks and sometimes fought other guys for food in trash bins.

The vagrants in DC have been being hassled by the cops around some of the federal buildings, which is a real problem for people who have no recourse in the winter other than sleeping on steamgrates near the IRS building. There was a time you could drive down 9th street at night and see hundreds of people balled up in the middle of those steam grates, but I only saw one on a recent trip out there in January (it was like 20 degrees). Talked about this with a volunteer at the D.C. Food Bank, who told me the cops have been cracking down on homelessness and forcing people away from the government buildings. She said she saw a guy come in with a cracked jaw who told her he had been beaten by cops.

I was just passing through on business and not really interested in fighting the good fight. But fortress DC now seems to be secure against poverty, privation and homelessness. Makes me happy I live in Vegas, where the vagrants can at least get a good half drunk drink leftover at a casino 24 hours a day.

M

Went to Anaheim to visit Disneyland and see a Red Sox game.

Disneyland is a trip, the place is an assault on your senses every moment you are in the park. They play music all the time, even in the bathrooms, and you cannot escape it. Every square foot of the place has been engineered to emmerse you in the details of whatever fantasy you are currently standing in. The costumed characters are menacing enough, marching around the place with fixed expressions while collecting hordes of children and gawkers with cameras. It’s hard to walk 20 yards without running into a shop.

The other thing that’s wierd about the place is how it encourages people to wear wierd hats. The hats they sell in the park are (obivously) tied in with the Disney merchandise. Anyone seeing something with Goofy on it is naturally going to assume that it belongs on his or her head, no questions asked. I’ve seen people wearing what look like barrels on their head for the sake of doing it while they are in that place.

I do not mean to diminish how happy the place is with these accounts. My impressions of the park are based solely on empirical observations and cannot get across how really, really happy all the people are walking around the place. I saw one kid cry in 5 days there, and he was being manhandled by a Donald at the time. There was so much happiness it was daunting to those of us who are not necessarily happy all the time, and I did feel like I did not belong there more than once.

Anyways, there was also the California Adventure, which was much cooler. They had an animation studio where you could see works in progress, the parades were more frequent but also more subdued, and the people in the park seemed to be more like ordinary Californians. They had a great roller coaster and ferris wheel, and there were a number of serene spots in the park.

After spending some time in Disneyland, I explored Anaheim itself. The Benihana in Anaheim features Sonny Chibo’s Sushi Bar, which was pretty cool. There were a lot of photos of Sonny Chibo hanging with other stars of every caliber. We sat at a cooking table next to a bunch of engineers, one of whom was retiring. The Disney Magic was still at work, because even when this guy got up and cussed out his boss for taking away the prime years of his life, there was little sense of animosity and the boss seemed to feel genuinely bad about employing the man for 30 years.

Anaheim is also the home to the Angels of Los Angeles, which is the nearest I come to actually getting to Fenway now that I am based in Vegas. Went to an Angels game and it was a lot more like a Red Sox game – the fans chanted ‘Yankees Suck’, Manny got standing o’s and the home team did not seem to have much representation in terms of hats and jerseys. We were surrounded by other Red Sox fans, some of whom came down from Vancouver just to see the game.

Now, something I don’t like about baseball away from the East Coast is the prodigious number of nacho vendors in every ballpark. Angels Stadium is no exception, and you buy a platter of nachos for $8 and it comes with chili and cheese. The problem with it is everyone buys a plate of nachos with chili and cheese and you have a sea of cheese spreading beneath your feet the whole time you are there. I had field seats to the game and was positioned almost exactly beneath another tier of seats. About halfway through the 4th inning, the cheese started dripping from up above. It did not get me, but it got the people a couple of rows behind me. One of the spectators was this really cute brunette, and watching her get sauced was like watching Double Dare as a kid. It was gross, it was funny, and it was quite a spectacle. It was also sad watching her cry, and it made me wonder what people’s problem is with just eating peanuts in the stands.

About the park: you walk in through the brim of a giant baseball cap. The way the place is laid out, you don’t have much sense of being in a city, because the outfield extends into some sort of a mountainous frontier setting (engineered by the Disney people). Lots of fireworks in the stadium. Did not see the Rally Monkey, but saw people carrying stuffed animals made to look like dead monkeys.

M

Visited San Francisco last August. First off, the city was much too balmy for an August evening, it was like 69 degrees and I had to buy a sweater later in the evening.

My first impression of the city was that everyone there was cooler than me. I took the CalTran up and got off somewhere short of downtown. The sidewalks, literally for blocks, were covered with poetry. Some vagrant walked up and asked me a question, completely out of the blue, about Biographia Literaria (which I happen to be well acquainted with). Was unprepared for the well-educated homeless, but I pressed on nonetheless.

Ended up in a cafe decorated with posters of shows gone by. Got a root beer and looked at the crowd. First off, everyone in there was in a band, young, and good looking. At the time, I had on a pressed shirt and tie, which earned me more than a few looks from the people inside. Had a decent but very expensive sandwich, then moved on.

Went to the business offices of a non-profit I work with, which really set the tone for the city. All the walls were colored in pastels, the surfaces of cublicles were rounded instead of square, and everyone there had a Mac. People were smiling and carrying on conversations about various electic subjects in regards to technology, open source, and other stuff. While I was impressed by the casual atmosphere, I was wondering how anyone got anything done.

Later, took a walk down some important street whose name I cannot remember. Ended up at some thrift store looking for a restroom. While I was in there, I started noticing what passes for second hand out here passes for high end lounge wear in Vegas. Bought a few shirts and headed out.

Ended up going to Berkeley, expecting to see a politicial hotbed community and some interesting people. Ran into a couple of businessmen working in the same community as I do, talked about various other businesses and came to the conclusion there were too many entrepeneurs in the room. Headed for a music store near the BART station, turned out it was closing and bands didn’t come in there anymore. The nearest record store was far enough away I would have needed a car to get there. I haggled the owner of the store down to $300 for a new Pearl drum kit and some sticks, then thought better of the deal (having to haul that back to Vegas would be a pain).

Ended up at an Athletics game. The stadiums I used to go to are Camden Yards and Fenway Park, and this stadium was lacking in a few key areas. First off, there were not nearly enough drunks and loose women for this to be a real ballpark. I saw very few people with jerseys or team caps on, and I was surrounded by people on cell phones bragging to friends and relatives about being at the game. The majority of people around me were not drinking, which was really wierd. The only cool thing that happened in the stands was a pair of people who sneaked down from the bleachers got bounced from the seats next to me, but only after arguing with an usher that the other people’s ticket’s were fake. There was almost a fight, but, as with all things San Francisco, coolness prevailed and everyone walked away smiling.

Secondly, getting into the stadium was a pain. After I had walked from the BART station over to the Stadium across some big bridge, they closed that bridge after the game and sent buses to take people where they needed to go. The buses were obnoxiously parked, there was no order to how people got on them, and it took almost 2 hours to get a lift. When the game had ended, they let people onto the field to walk around. Those people had left the stadium before I could get to the metro, and it was a wicked pisser to be caught in the middle of like 10,000 fans.

At that point, I was in Oakland, and thought it would be less of an overwhelmingly positive environment. Like, I wanted to go by the headquarters of the Black Panthers, find some gangsters and drink 40s or something, but it was not meant to be. Headed back to downtown (in the middle of the world’s largest shopping district no less) and ended up eating sushi with business acquaintances. Found a copy of the Onion being distributed for free on the street. Everything was really expensive, the same meal I could have had in Vegas was about 3 times as much in San Fran and no where near as good.

I am not saying the place was bad, mind you, but I could have done without the sunshiny goodness of the entire city. Everyone was upbeat the whole time, in an almost scary kind of way. Vagrants on the street were happy (using the term relatively) and well educated. Walking around at night, I had no sense someone might come after me or try something, which was totally opposite what I have come to expect of major metropolitan areas. Will have to go back and find more action, this obviously wasn’t the hotbed of liberal politics, punk rock and activism I had been lead to believe.

M