I was in Seattle over the weekend. After an eleven hour roadtrip, hyperactive on Red Bull and aching ears after listening to music almost all the way, I rolled into the city almost an hour late. For you not in the U.S. It was Labor Day here on monday, meaning that a lot of people fled the city friday afternoon for an extended holiday. In that traffic jam I got stuck just out of Portland, holding me back for more than an hour driving around the city.
Looking at the traffic only, you would think millions live in these two cities, but the cities themselves are smaller than Stockholm. It’s just that everyone drive cars.
On Saturday, Emily, my couchsurfing host, took me and some of her friends to Bottle House, a local wineproducer and restaurant.
Emily ordered a cheese and meat platter and got the question if she wanted the “three cheese, two meat experience?”.
It is the sign of the times.
We no longer order cheese and meat for eating. We buy an experience.
Experience or no experience. It was good.
Besides wine, cheese and salami, over the weekend we had quite a few nice beers, board games and I got introduced to the hysterical tv-series of 30 Rock.
Seattle is famous for it’s unpredictable weather, unlike California, but there was actually a few really nice days. The eleven hour drive back to California was rainy though. This time I only had three Red Bulls, så my hands was not shaking as much as on the way up north.
One of the reasons for this trip, was the fact that I started to plan for all the people I wanted to see and spend time with this year and soon realized that six weeks of vacation is a lot, but far from enough for all the people I wanted to meet and all the things I wanted to do.
Since a lot of my closer friends live in different parts of the world to where there are no real reason to go for just a few days, those days of vacation disappear pretty soon. Luckily I usually meet these friends at least once a year somewhere in the world. A group of people, in different ages, on the surface having very little in common, meeting for at least one week, enjoying eachothers company, doing what we do best, thinking and talking too much. The last four years we have met here in Northern California, the same place as this year. Below are some of the pictures from the time we had together before everyone went pack to their part of the world.
San Francisco is famous for being one of the worlds most liberal cities and also the gay capital, despite the fact that I met a guy that had no idea of this. I told him he should do a bit of background check before going on vacation next time.
It is the only city that I know of that twice a year arranges a leather and fetisch festival on the streets. Sure, in a sealed off area of course, but still.
Me, Peter and Sabrina went there together with the entire gay and fetisch community that seem to think that the usual Pride-parade is too boring.
Photo: Sabrina Orth
I don’t remember the name of these two, but it was taken in Dolores Park and I like them and thought they would be better put together as their own post…
I’m listening to Bon Iver, trying to finish off the part of the trip that took place in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I should be sleeping, but there are many things you should do in life. At least that is what we keep telling ourselves.
I was pretty late sending out requests for a couch to sleep on in San Francisco, so most people already hade people staying with them, or were busy. One girl told me she got about five requests every day. So, I had to stay at a hostel.
On wednesday evening I went for the official weekly couchsurfing meeting in town.
Around closing time, I started talking to some people outside the place, and three minutes later I had somewhere to stay for the last four days in the city before heading north.
I ended up with Erik, who lives in the Mission, the neighbourhood that more and more is home to hipsters and well-paid young professionals, a place with lots of restaurants and bars and close to Dolores Park where everyone goes to hang out on a sunny day.
Erik’s roommate had recently moved out, so he had plenty of space for people to stay there. Except for me, Sabrina from Cologne in Germany were also staying there for almost a month. Together with them I got to see more of the local life in the city.
As you might notice, I’m a bit behind putting up all these pictures.
The second day of my Seoul visit I met up with fellow couchsurfers Kate, Jonna and Ben (+ a few others), all living in Seoul teaching English. Kate had made plans to see a show by different martial arts groups and a dance/drummer group from the Ivory Coast. I tagged along and got a few pictures.
I know I wrote the other day that the distinction between good/bad is rather meaningless, but I will make an exception for these pictures, putting them in the category of bad since I was too lazy to stand up. Because of that you can see some dark heads from the audience in most of the pictures 
.
Later in the evening it was too dark to shoot any pictures without flash, so I don’t have any pictures from the later performances…
On my way from Kuala Lumpur to San Francisco I made a stop in Seoul, the South Korean captial.
Except for the old Royal Palace, which was pretty nice, Seoul is probably one of the ugliest cities I have seen. Sure, I didn’t really have the time to see that much during my 48 hours before flying out to San Francaisco, but what I did see didn’t impress.
The only explanation I got for how the city looked like was that they were in too much of a hurry, when the economy exploaded and everyone wanted to move in to the city, to actually think about how things looked. Kind of like Sweden in the 60′s, although in Sweden there was also this fanatical functionalist thought behind everything being built. The general thought seemed to be that beautiful and functional don’t go well together. Kind of like Wall Street.
I have left the big, intensive city of San Francisco now. Tuesday to be more specific. My friend James from London came to the city on sunday and offered to pick me and Peter (who was also in town) up on the way up north. A timely offer to avoid the hassle of Greyhounding in the middle of the night.
So, tuesday morning we got into the car and started to roll out of the city, immediatelly noticing the difference in climate as you cross the Oakland-bridge and entering the rest of California. The climate in San Francisco is probably unique compared to the rest of the state because of it’s position in the bay.
It took us seven hours through the sunbleached meadows of California up to the forest covered hils of northern California and when we saw the snowy peaks of Mount Shasta, we knew we were getting closer.
We turned on the Kid A album by Radiohead on full volume in the car. Suprisingly not breaking the speakers.
Kid A is an album that it takes a while to get into. It’s perfect for long car drives and walks. Occasions where you can really put your entire attention on the music and let the landscape merge with the progression of the music through the 49 minutes and 57 seconds it takes to complete.
It is an album that demands something of you. If you play it in the background while doing something else it’s going to get to you, several of the tracks on the album would just be annoying. It demands of you to invest a part of yourself in it, and the larger the investment, the greater the gain. It is a composition where all the tracks hold together, forming a greater whole.
The only times I really listen to the album since I discovered it a month ago, is when I know that I can listen to it from start to end without getting disturbed. Often I listen to it with headphones so that I don’t miss all the details and the tiny sounds in the background. For example when three people sit in a car in silence, driving north, with a sound system good enough to encapsulate you.
Now I’m in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing. In a landscape that give you the feeling what it must have been like to come riding in on a horse from the east some time in the 1800’s to start a new life. A new future.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that some of the most revolutionary companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google, millions of start-ups and all the crazy venture capitalists was founded here on the west coast. The adventurers had already moved here.