GOULASH November 14, 2005 Written by Jay Jacobson The past couple of days have been interesting. No major occurences or events, but rather a collection of small happenings. I have been continuing my exploration of the city and that is going well. Erik will be arriving on Tuesday, so I am looking forward to that. I am also looking forward to being able to really start looking at some specific apartments and finding a "permanent" place to live for the next year. One of the best things about moving to a new city, particularly one filled with "everything" like San Francisco, is that every time I walk down a street, there is something new to discover. Maybe it is a quirky coffee shop, a new restaurant, street performers, interesting architecture, or a closer dry cleaning shop. Exactly "what" does not really matter - it is just so much fun to have something new on every street. This city is also so condensed and dynamic that I get the impression that feeling could last for a while. Almost nobody likes my political views, so I will not get into that. I will say though that San Francisco is unquestionably the most liberal city I have ever experienced. I knew that this area is very liberal, but until you are actually living here, you just can not imagine what that really means. In some ways, but not all, I share some liberal views, so a good deal of the liberal vibe here does not bother me. Still, if there is one area where I do not "fit" in San Francisco, it would have to be political. I mentioned before that there is no "fast food" here. I should clarify by saying that you can get food fast if you are in a hurry - that is no problem. What I meant previously is that there are really no chains; at least not in the city. The food selection here is seemingly endless - one can easily get a nice greasy burger, or foo-foo French food, and everything in between. However, if you want a Big Mac (for whatever reason), you are pretty much out of luck. Speaking of food, I have noticed that it tends to be very authentic. If you go to Bob's Broiler (like I did today), you will actually find Bob working the grill. Likewise, you will find Indian people at the Indian restaurants, French people at the French restaurants, and Greek people at the Greek restaurants. Opa! Another noticable item is that this place is loaded with geeks and entrepreneurship. Yeah, I already knew that, and it was one of the primary factors for coming here. I just find it so cool to walk down the street and constantly hear people talking about developing projects, compiling code, building new businesses, prototyping, and such. I bet you could go up to a random person here, start talking about software development methodologies, and not get the glazed-over stupid look greater than fifty percent of the time. To try and put it into perspective for some of the folks back home, technology discussion here is as common as talk of Real Estate in Phoenix or tourists in Vegas. A couple of days ago, I went down to Union Square one evening to grab a couple of beers. After leaving the bar, I walked around for a little bit and out of nowhere I heard someone playing Jimi Hendrix tunes about a block away. I just figured that it was someone blasting the radio in their car. As I continued walking, I discovered source of the music... Four homeless guys had tossed out a blanket on a street corner, whipped out a couple of old guitars and a beat-up amp, and kicked off an ad-hoc concert. Not only did I find this extremely cool, but amazingly, they were *really* good. In fact, one of the guys almost looked like Jimi! Watching him jam on his guitar while doing a great job of singing "All Along the Watchtower" was almost surreal! They quickly drew a large crowd, which blocked nearly three lanes of traffic. Someone in one of the high-rise apartments about half a block away painted a sign on their bed sheet and hung it out the window, probably ten floors up, draping the side of the building. Appropriately, the sign said, "Rock 'n Roll Still Stops the Traffic!" Now, here is the kicker. After this had been going on for about 20 minutes, the cops show up. The two officers stood there for a minute watching the show, then they went up and put a dollar or two in the guitar case laying on the street, and walked away. The "concert" continued on for at least another half hour, at which point I left. It would not surprise me if they started up again after taking a break. Those guys were quite talented and entertaining, and based on the amount of money they collected in the guitar case during the ~45 minutes I was watching, they will not be homeless for long. The enterprising spirit takes many forms... I love that! More of my Bay Adventures: http://kinetic.org/bay-adventure/ My website: http://kinetic.org/