Miscellaneous Debris – Archive

I have taken a minor vow to spend the rest of my time in San Francisco in a state of intoxication. There are simply too many good beers, too many microbewery pubs, too much good stuff to drink. I can hear my mother now (hi, Mom!) going “Don’t you turn into an alcoholic on me”. […]

I drove a lot today. Initially through the highways of Oregon and northern California, but at long last I arrived in golden San Francisco, which might end up hosting most of the rest of my trip. I also ended up driving quite a bit inside the Bay area – I found myself attending a lecture […]

I have never been a waiter, I must confess. Never had a job at a restaurant or café or anything of the sort. But still, knowing myself, I tend to have a good memory and head for numbers. If someone told me “Take this to table #9”, I would probably know what they meant within […]

Saturday night at the New Orleans bar in downtown Seattle. The Music: A quintagenarian quintet playing JJ Cale, Sonny Rollins and various electric blues.The Beer: Good local brews at a decent price.The Place: A small and narrow bar with the stage near the entrance. Everyone quickly getting up to dance to Mustang Sally. Friendly atmosphere.The […]

I don’t know what it is about markets that appeal so much. The only words that come to mind come off awfully pretentious. Exuberant comes to mind, and lively, and organic and dynamic and then my mind just starts looking for rhymes and alliterations and I should just stop that line of reasoning. The Granville Island […]

A Chinese man, hardly any English to his name, took the bunk I originally confiscated on the flimsy claim that he was, in fact, there first. Above him, a forty-ish man in semi-ragged suits and red trousers spends his time, wearing a lapel pin passed in his family from his great-great-great-great-uncle, an aide to General […]

In Boston, we could smell it coming from street-level apartments, wafting through the windows. In Montreal, where it’s legal for medicinal purposes, you could smell it on the streets of the trendy Latin Quarter. It’s illegal to smoke anything indoors these days, but as long as you’re standing outside the pub, you might as well […]