First Download
So I know all of you, my blog faithful, have been anxious for me to spin yarns of my travels so can vicariously live through my adventures. No, I am aware not many people will read this and thats what the internet is truly about. Or if you do read it, it will be when you should be doing real work or going for a walk but can't stop clicking around the web.
So I left in a flash on the 5th of August. So much shit was happening in my final weeks in the Berra, it was fantastic. With little sleep I made my way on a bus to Sydney with my bicycle in tow for a lunch with Damien and Meridith before I flew out.
Arrived in Hawaii and stored my bike before heading to the North Shore. I was unaware that there are not really any waves on note in Hawaii in the summer because there are not storms in the Bering sea but that worked out as the place was quite and a hired a bike and cruised about. Some gangster kids I met on the bus there were kind enough to sell me a 20 so the couple of days I was there were very relaxed. I rode to a great botanic gardens in a volcanic valley and they had tropical plants from every pacific island, each in their own patch and also medicinal plants and pre-historic Polynesian steam baths and feral chickens everywhere. Another plus was that on the second night there an Irish girl who worked in WA arrived as she was here on Holiday. She was nice enough, a little shallow but it transpired that she was a geo-physicist and worked in Nickle mines destroying the Australian land a vegetation while using all our water. I drilled her for information before debating resource mining in Australia with her. I probably didn't change her mind but it was interesting for her to tell me how lax safety was, how all the miners were alcoholics or did meth, how quality ore was dumped in the waste pile to increase vehicle speed and increase miners pay, how the corporate guys falsify information to increase lease holds and how none of the geos (scientists) cared that they were fucking the planet cause they were all shipped in from Europe fresh out of school and who cares about Australia anyway, its an uncultured desert with heaps of trees left.
After that headfuck I arrived in San Fransisco at midnight and no where to sleep. I had assumed that as a big city there would be hostels everywhere but thats not the case in San Fran. I talked with Homeless people for a while. There are 15,000 homeless people in San Fran and 1/3 is a Nam veteran. Good thing they did all that fighting for freedom so that they could end up homeless and hungry on the street. Too fucked from war to hold down a job or relate to their families. One hostel told me I could have a bed at 1:30 if the person who booked it didn't show up. During the 45 minute wait I talked to a Crack Head about the city and how much he liked the crocodile hunter.
I spent the next morning trying to find a hostel bed. I ended up with a bed in a room with 15 other beds and no inhabitants of interest. I then rode a bike around the city, ate exquisite mexican food in the mission, went to a Frida Kahlo exhibition, saw the Haight-Ashbury, went to an Amazing Hip-Hop / Reggae show, hung out in Golden gate park and also went to the port longshoreman's hall the site of the 1935 depression strike agaisnt fink rooms. Capitalists had it great. They would show up with a boat, say "There are 50 jobs, the first 50 guys in here get them" then all the workers would fight between themselves to make it into the room. The idea was that this would get you the most hard working individuals; step on the other guy to better yourself. An Australian member of the industrial workers of the world Harry Bridges helped organise and down by this big tourist district, which is like a junk food theme park (Ice cream, chips, etc) you can see this old hall with two body outlines of strikers the cops shot in the back.
Really enjoyed San Fran, also went to the institute for integral studies after a tripper gave me the heads up. It is a grad school that many psychedelic luminaries worked with in the 80s and still work at today. The mcKennas are both involved and Stanislav Grof and I also went to a great anarchist bookstore and loaded up with survival manuals.
Upon leaving San Fran I was stuck in the Philidelphia airport for hours as my connecting flight was cancelled and I got bumped around trying to reach Rich in upstate New York. I ended up with a flight to a different city and a preppy frat boy who said his friend would give me a ride to Ithica. He had boating shoes on, natica kaki shorts and a lime green Lacoste collared shirt and a leather satchle. He had just been a a 4 day frat conference for alpha kapa phi which consisted of "Doing Coke and making out with hotties" so I guess it was an important conference.
Airport bars are weird places, we met a North Carolinain debutante who bought round after round of jager bombs and me numerous white russians. Drunkenly flew to Elmira, which is a nothing town in middle America and htis frat boy listening to celine dion arrived and drove us 40km to Ithica. In the car they told me how they didn't like mexicans or blacks, however, they turned up the stereo when Nelly came on the satelite radio with "Its getting hot..."
Finally met my long suffering parents and cruised around the small town where my dad went to uni. There was a lot of "And thats where we occupied this building, and thats where the marxists hung out". We went on a bunch of nice walks in gorges, I got grifted by townies while trying to score, went to a rad noise gig, and sat on a front porch out of every movie you've ever seen from this country.
Got the bus to NYC and spent 5 nights there. I was amazing. So many people, dfferent people, different things etc. I met old family, my irish and italian roots. They were all quirky but what was I really expecting. I ended up getting myself invited to 2 brooklyn house parties, saw Manuel Gottenberg, one of the founders of dance music at the lincon center, saw Battles and Sharon Jones (not on the same bill), closed down a couple of city streets during a roving street party (google pandamonium, brooklyn), talked with locals and watched break dancing in union square and generally had a rad time. New York is weird cuase it has all this culture about itself that no longer exists cause the city has gentrified and all that is left is a wierd museum of itself. Was still amazing.
Now I'm in Albuquerque, the New Mexican city that I lived in when I was younger. The city is like a big strip mall. In the south west people are bigger, the cars are bigger, everything is a stripmall. After getting all the "and thats where you went to school, and thats where you went on your bike" shit done today I'm looking forward to escaping the city for a few days and hiking, sitting in mineral springs and heading to the pueblos. Met some Nuclear activists. Apparently they are going to re-open alot of the closed uranium mines in the sate. Not surprising. McCain has been on the TV crapping on about Nuclear power to save America from itself.
Not much more to say. This country is surprisingly similar to Australia. I guess its all that american TV/music and globalization I've heard so much about. People are wierd about the flag but after 11yrs of Howard, it seems the same at home. I'm off to Denver on Saturday to see many Rap luminaries of my youth and help the food not bombs crew feed the democracy activists. Then I'm back to San Fran for the slow food conference and then I'm goign to head to Yosemite national park and the redwood forests of California before I start my job in Hawaii on the 7th of September. I'll try to write again soon so the post is less dense and I can also philosophise about how wierd the first world is rather than telling you what I did.
PAZ
So I left in a flash on the 5th of August. So much shit was happening in my final weeks in the Berra, it was fantastic. With little sleep I made my way on a bus to Sydney with my bicycle in tow for a lunch with Damien and Meridith before I flew out.
Arrived in Hawaii and stored my bike before heading to the North Shore. I was unaware that there are not really any waves on note in Hawaii in the summer because there are not storms in the Bering sea but that worked out as the place was quite and a hired a bike and cruised about. Some gangster kids I met on the bus there were kind enough to sell me a 20 so the couple of days I was there were very relaxed. I rode to a great botanic gardens in a volcanic valley and they had tropical plants from every pacific island, each in their own patch and also medicinal plants and pre-historic Polynesian steam baths and feral chickens everywhere. Another plus was that on the second night there an Irish girl who worked in WA arrived as she was here on Holiday. She was nice enough, a little shallow but it transpired that she was a geo-physicist and worked in Nickle mines destroying the Australian land a vegetation while using all our water. I drilled her for information before debating resource mining in Australia with her. I probably didn't change her mind but it was interesting for her to tell me how lax safety was, how all the miners were alcoholics or did meth, how quality ore was dumped in the waste pile to increase vehicle speed and increase miners pay, how the corporate guys falsify information to increase lease holds and how none of the geos (scientists) cared that they were fucking the planet cause they were all shipped in from Europe fresh out of school and who cares about Australia anyway, its an uncultured desert with heaps of trees left.
After that headfuck I arrived in San Fransisco at midnight and no where to sleep. I had assumed that as a big city there would be hostels everywhere but thats not the case in San Fran. I talked with Homeless people for a while. There are 15,000 homeless people in San Fran and 1/3 is a Nam veteran. Good thing they did all that fighting for freedom so that they could end up homeless and hungry on the street. Too fucked from war to hold down a job or relate to their families. One hostel told me I could have a bed at 1:30 if the person who booked it didn't show up. During the 45 minute wait I talked to a Crack Head about the city and how much he liked the crocodile hunter.
I spent the next morning trying to find a hostel bed. I ended up with a bed in a room with 15 other beds and no inhabitants of interest. I then rode a bike around the city, ate exquisite mexican food in the mission, went to a Frida Kahlo exhibition, saw the Haight-Ashbury, went to an Amazing Hip-Hop / Reggae show, hung out in Golden gate park and also went to the port longshoreman's hall the site of the 1935 depression strike agaisnt fink rooms. Capitalists had it great. They would show up with a boat, say "There are 50 jobs, the first 50 guys in here get them" then all the workers would fight between themselves to make it into the room. The idea was that this would get you the most hard working individuals; step on the other guy to better yourself. An Australian member of the industrial workers of the world Harry Bridges helped organise and down by this big tourist district, which is like a junk food theme park (Ice cream, chips, etc) you can see this old hall with two body outlines of strikers the cops shot in the back.
Really enjoyed San Fran, also went to the institute for integral studies after a tripper gave me the heads up. It is a grad school that many psychedelic luminaries worked with in the 80s and still work at today. The mcKennas are both involved and Stanislav Grof and I also went to a great anarchist bookstore and loaded up with survival manuals.
Upon leaving San Fran I was stuck in the Philidelphia airport for hours as my connecting flight was cancelled and I got bumped around trying to reach Rich in upstate New York. I ended up with a flight to a different city and a preppy frat boy who said his friend would give me a ride to Ithica. He had boating shoes on, natica kaki shorts and a lime green Lacoste collared shirt and a leather satchle. He had just been a a 4 day frat conference for alpha kapa phi which consisted of "Doing Coke and making out with hotties" so I guess it was an important conference.
Airport bars are weird places, we met a North Carolinain debutante who bought round after round of jager bombs and me numerous white russians. Drunkenly flew to Elmira, which is a nothing town in middle America and htis frat boy listening to celine dion arrived and drove us 40km to Ithica. In the car they told me how they didn't like mexicans or blacks, however, they turned up the stereo when Nelly came on the satelite radio with "Its getting hot..."
Finally met my long suffering parents and cruised around the small town where my dad went to uni. There was a lot of "And thats where we occupied this building, and thats where the marxists hung out". We went on a bunch of nice walks in gorges, I got grifted by townies while trying to score, went to a rad noise gig, and sat on a front porch out of every movie you've ever seen from this country.
Got the bus to NYC and spent 5 nights there. I was amazing. So many people, dfferent people, different things etc. I met old family, my irish and italian roots. They were all quirky but what was I really expecting. I ended up getting myself invited to 2 brooklyn house parties, saw Manuel Gottenberg, one of the founders of dance music at the lincon center, saw Battles and Sharon Jones (not on the same bill), closed down a couple of city streets during a roving street party (google pandamonium, brooklyn), talked with locals and watched break dancing in union square and generally had a rad time. New York is weird cuase it has all this culture about itself that no longer exists cause the city has gentrified and all that is left is a wierd museum of itself. Was still amazing.
Now I'm in Albuquerque, the New Mexican city that I lived in when I was younger. The city is like a big strip mall. In the south west people are bigger, the cars are bigger, everything is a stripmall. After getting all the "and thats where you went to school, and thats where you went on your bike" shit done today I'm looking forward to escaping the city for a few days and hiking, sitting in mineral springs and heading to the pueblos. Met some Nuclear activists. Apparently they are going to re-open alot of the closed uranium mines in the sate. Not surprising. McCain has been on the TV crapping on about Nuclear power to save America from itself.
Not much more to say. This country is surprisingly similar to Australia. I guess its all that american TV/music and globalization I've heard so much about. People are wierd about the flag but after 11yrs of Howard, it seems the same at home. I'm off to Denver on Saturday to see many Rap luminaries of my youth and help the food not bombs crew feed the democracy activists. Then I'm back to San Fran for the slow food conference and then I'm goign to head to Yosemite national park and the redwood forests of California before I start my job in Hawaii on the 7th of September. I'll try to write again soon so the post is less dense and I can also philosophise about how wierd the first world is rather than telling you what I did.
PAZ
posted by Angel Ironhead at 3:09 pm
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