08/13/2012/1024PDT
World-weariness may well mean tired of life and bored with living as a pure definition this is acceptable. As a mindset and possible marketable product, it may well serve to motivate even the most cynical and pessimistic person convinced that life has nothing else to offer; even as a teenager or washed-up war veteran.
So skipping beyond the everyday name tags placed on words, a thorough examination of "world-weariness" as the makings of a new cheap t-shirt logo campaign was replaced only by the logistics of where and when, and how, the campaign could be launched.
This came in the form of a wedding invitation to San Francisco, home of the original world-weary poets, professors, authors and in general, all the riff-raff, hangers-on and entourage that accompanied them. The epicenter of this movement was North Beach, where in the late Fifties, there was plenty of pessimism to go around for everybody.
Skipping all the background intros and noise necessary to paint the landscape for present day North Beach, and with a wedding invite in hand, I could now pay a visit, officially, to the faraway land known as Beatville, and decide for myself if launching a new cheap t-shirt logo campaign could indeed offset the "I Heart San Francisco" and "Alcatraz" t-shirts currently flooding the market in Chinatown.
JAMES C. L'ANGELLE
https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T10:24:52.756-07:00
08/13/2012/1104PDT
ZERO DARK THIRTY Before the launch defenestration to Beatville, the logistics required would have to be suitable so that the only thing in mind wasn't getting there, it was getting out of there. The journey would begin from North Beach, Lake Tahoe and with the destination in mind of North Beach, San Francisco.
Certainly, the driving option would be the easiest to consider. Go down to the Truckee airport, rent a car from Hertz, drive over to the city...too easy, too expensive and ultimately having the car stolen, stripped or set on fire by Occupy Bay Area anarchists. The Hertz rental was ruled out. Not that multiple reservations, bookings and inquiries by phone weren't initially explored; to the point that it appeared the Hertz rental website may well have blocked my IP address from further accessing the page.
There was Greyhound, and there was AMTRAK, the latter proved to be the most practical. In the end, the schedule required getting on a Thruway bus at Truckee before 9AM on day of departure, to Sacramento, where a Capitol Corridor train would take me to Emeryville and from there, another Thruway bus to the Ferry Building. However, in order to make the first bus at the Truckee train depot, it meant getting on the TART bus on the Tahoe north shore by 7AM in order to make the AMTRAK bus by 8:40AM. Still, the window of connection was very narrow so it meant getting on the 6AM TART bus into Truckee, which meant getting up at 5AM, or "zero dark thirty."
JAMES C. L'ANGELLE
https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T11:04:20.892-07:00
08/13/2012/1218PDT
SOMETHING VERY ASIAN ABOUT CHINATOWN
SAN FRANCISCO--Following all the logistical arrangements, the bus-train connections proved a cinch and arrival in San Francisco on Friday afternoon, August 10, at the Ferry Building, went according to schedule. The one thing I noticed was the reluctance of passengers to sit next to the gorgeous babes on the trains and buses, that didn't stop me. From the way they responded, and the fact that there are far more of them taking public transportation, it is now an added incentive to travel by bus and train.
Next stop was the Cafe Trieste, which turned out to be a big tourist trap and a few hard corps old timers; didn't stay there long and the big redeeming value there is that it's not far from a Bank of the West branch, which was very convenient for funds withdrawal to continue the North Beach exploit.
It was getting dark and I found myself without a viable link to wi-fi, or any form of internet connection outside the hotel, that is until I came across the Happy Donut next door to the hotel. The wi-fi signal from the hotel worked at the Happy Donut and I found myself drinking quarts of coffee, getting caught up on the details of the wedding coming up on Saturday; and watching in amazement as tourists and locals tried to figure out how I managed to access the web from the Happy Donut. It was simple, I was staying at the Hotel North Beach and I had the access key to the wi-fi.
JAMES C. L'ANGELLE
https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T12:18:11.516-07:00
08/13/2012/2157PDT
SF: NORTH BEACH--"THE HAPPY DONUT"
Hipsters crowding into the place, overrun by tourists? Negative, nobody but a few locals and asians, plenty of room and wifi from the hotel, which requires a key.
Excellent coffee and certainly lives up to its name as the "Happy Donut" with a long glass counter full of all kinds of treats, plus breakfast, on Kearny.
JAMES C. L'ANGELLE
https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T09:57:43.885-07:00
THE SEARCH FOR A SHIPPER IN SF OBJECTIVE: (Exactly where this fit into the narrative is unclear, so it is included here)
To cut my travel load in half since, with a clean suit, some of the clothes, extra tapes and other items were no longer necessary. This was begun in Chinatown which was just around the corner from the Hotel North Beach on Kearny, even as the crowd began to pour out onto the streets on Saturday morning.
This was in concert with the ongoing effort to find a wedding present other than the usual gift-card, like Starbucks, which seemed a bit impersonal and I thought I could go one step beyond. The original plan, since the newlyweds planned to travel after the ceremony, was to find something useful, such as a compass. Little did I know that in a city famous for sailing and ships, a compass may be the last item found.
In Chinatown, however, amid all the hanging dead chickens and noodles in the food shops; the cheap t-shirts with "I heart San Francisco" and "Alcatraz" on them, along with thousands of uncategorized and uncatalogued trinkets, a compass was the last thing tourists needed. As one shopkeeper put it, "We have GPS." Right, I replied, until the satellite goes haywire.
No need to explain that while Marine officers were lost in St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy and looking over a map; I walked by with a compass I'd bought on Catalina Island in Southern California and headed for the main bridge over the big canal without even saluting them as I passed. So much for the Chinaman's world travel experience, he was born and raised on Grant Ave.
Instead of a compass, I settled for a pair of field glasses in a camera shop, since time was running out and the wedding hour fast approaching. It was a small Vivitar that the clerk cut the price in half and then tried to get me to buy a bigger ticket item. I declined, bought the field glasses, (he didn't know what I was talkng about until I called them "binoculars").
Next, it was a matter of gift-wrapping the present. I did manage to locate a small compass on a keychain at the Chinese GPS guy's trinket shop and included that in the gifts for the newlyweds.
In another trinket joint, a Chinese gal found a small red box that had yellow silk lining and the presents fit into the box. She included a Chinese wedding card, so that task was complete and the exit from Chinatown was down some steep street past hundreds of tourists with cheap cameras and cheap t-shirts.
The search for the shipper was on in earnest and forget some Far East Trading Company with impressive credentials dare to lower themselves to packing up some extras and shipping them to Lake Tahoe. They were too busy running guns and drugs to be bothered.
Up and down the streets near the Financial District proved useless. Stopping a weekend UPS delivery man near an Oriental bank, he hadn't a clue where a shipper was. Finally, nearing giving up and deciding to toss the items into the trash, I headed back up Kearny toward the hotel. It was there I found a small shipper with all the right labels on his shop window; UPS, FedEx, etc. However, it was only ten thirty and his shop didn't open until eleven. Forget that one.. Then across from the Rainbow Cleaners in little Vietnam, in the biggest building on the street, was the main downtown headquarters for FedEx, and the store was open.
Who knows how many times I'd walked past it without looking to see if it was open on the weekend, and it was.