Home of that terrible daytime soap opera from the 1980s
(maybe it's even still going, I don't know), Santa Barbara was perhaps a bit of
a strange choice for us, but I wanted to break the long train trip from Anaheim
to San Francisco up into two days, so Santa Barbara was somewhat randomly
chosen as a stopover destination along the way. I have since remembered that Michael
Jackson’s Neverland Ranch is also nearby, which may have subconsciously
influenced my decision, but unfortunately this thought only struck me once we
were home, so no arrests in Santa Barbara for attempting to scale the fence and
find out if the petting zoo is still there. In a happy coincidence, not only it
was the first night of a week long Mexican fiesta, it was also my birthday
(well, in New Zealand time at least), and therefore an appropriate excuse to
drink margaritas, get covered in confetti and revel in the streets, in what was
originally supposed to have been a low-key, quiet night between major cities. I
hadn't actually been planning on celebrating my birthday till the next day when
it was the 1st of August in
US time, but then I started getting texts and facebook messages from people in
New Zealand, and coupled with the festive street party atmosphere, it seemed
like it would be rude not to celebrate. After dropping our bags off at the
motel in the late afternoon, we bussed back to the heart of the fiesta on State
Street, I bought flowers for my hair from a street stall, we found a cantina
selling two-for-one margaritas, and it was all downhill from there... Wanting
to improve on my abysmal experience with the shrimp cocktail in Vegas, I
decided that I was allowed one last seafood indulgence before writing it off
entirely again (hey, it was my 'sort of' birthday after all), and ordered the
lobster burrito for dinner. This sounds like it would have been the best thing
ever back in the day, but I think I really have lost my taste for seafood after
so many years without it (or perhaps I just empathise with Dr Zoidberg too much
these days), as it just tasted bland and yuck, and I kept sneaking bites of
Sam's much more appeal-a-tising vegetarian meal instead. The jalapeno-cucumber
margaritas on the other hand went down rather nicely, and after a few of these,
we decided to fit in a bit of a drunken shopping mission before the stores
closed at 8pm, having spied the inevitable record places etc on our way to
dinner.
Dia de los Muertos painted skulls in Santa Barbara
Sipping on jalapeno-cucumber margaritas
I happened upon another Bettie Page store (this may have
been the fourth or fifth one on the trip, I lost count), and finally found that
damn blouse I'd sweated all over back in NYC in my size this time, and
triumphantly bought it while ranting at the salesgirl that it was meant to be,
since during my time in the store they had played three of my favourite songs (I believe we had
'Lounge Act,' 'Clash City Rockers' and something Operation Ivy). Since it was
apparently her iPod on shuffle playing said songs, she was most chuffed, and
gave me some recommendations for cool bars to go to in Santa Barbara that I
promptly forgot upon exiting the store. One of the downsides of America is that
public toilets just do not seem to exist anywhere, and most places are way too
strict about you wandering in to use the restroom if you're not a paying
customer, so after shopping, it was straight back to the cantina we'd just left
to buy more drinks in order to be able to pee. Sam got adventurous and ordered
a tropical-looking blue cocktail with a plastic shark in it that spewed some
kind of red liquid into the concoction (the shark was the sole reason he
strayed from beer I think), and I continued the margarita trend. I'd been
really keen to head back to our motel to use the pool and jacuzzi before they
closed at ten, but it soon became apparent that this was not going to happen,
as it was nearing 9.30 and the bus trip back would take about half an hour.
Thus, we surrendered to the street festival. By this time, there were Mariachi
bands out and about in full force, I was covered in confetti, and valiant
attempts were made by stallholders to get Sam to swap his black fedora for a
sombrero or such, but it was time to escape to the familiar comfort of a dive
bar; we managed to find one that fit the bill, even in Santa Barbara. Wednesday
night was their punk rock record night, and the DJ was playing a great
selection, further enhanced by Sam requesting Rancid for me for my birthday. A
lovely evening all round, up until the point we tried to get the bus back to our
motel many hours later and discovered that public transport had stopped running
for the night. After a bit of drunken grumpy walking, Sam made the sensible decision
to hail us a taxi instead, and we made it back to the Sandman Inn unscathed.
My birthday in US time was - somewhat predictably - spent
quite hungover, on what we thought would be a leisurely eight hour train trip,
but after two hours on the nice spacious train with sufficient leg room and a
food car, we all got transferred to a much less comfortable bus in San Luis
Obispo (the town whose acronym made all its services seem sub-par: SLO Taxis,
SLO Buses, SLO Senior Citizens’ Home). Instead of a food car, it made one
fifteen minute food stop at a McDonalds’, so it was a box of fries for my
birthday lunch. The bus then got stuck in traffic about twenty miles out of San
Francisco, and was subsequently an hour late arriving at the station. Even
better, when we got there, it became apparent that my suitcase had not joined
us, having been loaded onto the wrong bus when we changed from the train. The
guy at the station told us to wait round for the next bus to arrive, in the
hope that my suitcase had at least been put on to that and wasn't on its way to
Texas instead. There was a mighty sigh of relief when we saw the guy wheeling
my suitcase off the next bus that arrived in from Santa Barbara; it had not
gone off on its own sightseeing tour of the South after all. Still though, by
the time we finally got to our hotel, it was 9.30pm rather than the 7pm we had
planned on, and the also planned 'go out for a special birthday dinner' was
thrown out by the fact that most of the restaurants we looked up online in the
area had already closed their kitchens. Thus, the special birthday dinner took
place at the burger joint in the hotel, which was about our only option by that
stage. At least this was pretty cool though, given that I had blown out the
accommodation budget for two nights in a fancy retro hotel called the
Americania, with mid-century modern furnishings and old rock n' roll playing on
the jukebox. Not quite waitresses on rollerskates, but close. I'm then
disappointed to say that there was no hitting the town on my US birthday;
instead, too tired to do much else, we curled up on our stylish 1950s couch and
watched a movie in the hotel room (‘Mama,’ a thriller starring Jaime Lannister
or whatever his real name is, and a female lead styled so much on Brody Dalle
it was almost painful; some good creepy children in it though and ultimately
quite watchable). And here you all were thinking that I was up to some kind of
glamorous partying...
View from our room into the back alleys of San Francisco
Enjoying the mid-century modern vibe at the Americania hotel
Friday was to be the last night of seeing Rancid (I say ‘was
to be;’ as you’ll see, we managed to slip another gig in, taking the number of Rancid
shows seen on this trip to four, grand total ever of six) and as you all know,
these things start inconveniently early over here, so we decided not to stray
too far from our hotel and the Warfield where the gig was being held and spent
the afternoon on Haight Street. The highlight for me turned out to be lunch at
Love and Haight (best sammitch I've ever eaten! I need to learn how to make
meatless chicken), whereas the vintage stores on the whole proved to be more for
looking rather than buying. I did overhear an interesting conversation with the
owner of one though, who basically said they deliberately overprice because
they mainly get in buyers from LA for movies who have huge budgets to blow, so
they can get away with it (Americans talk way too loudly, I overheard all sorts
of interesting things while over there). Apparently Frances Bean Cobain had
also been shopping in the store earlier that week. Sam went to Amoeba Records
(I think they need to make him an honorary staff member), and then we caught
the bus back to the hotel for a few pre-gig PBRs.
Another excellent Transplants and Rancid show ensued (you
probably don’t need a third review), and afterwards we did our by now familiar
wander-round-the-side-of -the-venue trick and befriended yet another crew
member, this time Rancid’s tourbus driver, a thoroughly nice guy who was very
keen to visit New Zealand with his son some day and thus hung on our every word.
Skinhead Rob, the lead singer for the Transplants, emerged from the venue and was
more amiable than might have been expected for a guy who, as Sam put it “looks
like he wants to stab someone all the time.” We probably should have made more
of an attempt to put our tough faces on in the photo we got with him though…
Entertainingly enough, him and Sam then bonded over a discussion about d-beat
and Sam apparently made quite the impression, as Rob put our names on the guest
list for the show the next night, which we didn't have tickets for. Hey, I
wasn’t going to turn down an unexpected fourth Rancid show for free, so
Saturday night plans were immediately cancelled and one last stalking
opportunity was back on the agenda.
Tim, early on in the set at the first Rancid show at the Warfield, before I rampaged off down the front
Not being able to afford more than two nights of luxury at
the expensive hotel (by the end of the trip it was debatable if we had even
been able to afford those two nights, and probably should have flagged it all
together, but alas it was all pre-booked, paid for and non-refundable), it was
on to our second San Fran accommodation on the Saturday, a more modest
apartment on Pine Street booked through Airbnb, about ten steps from the main
street of Chinatown. We quickly scouted the area for vegan noms and got back on
the meatless chicken drumsticks at Enjoy vegetarian restaurant on Kearny, then
wandered through North Beach, an area we hadn't been to last time, where we
stumbled upon the famous City Lights Bookstore and a bunch of cool little shops
and galleries. Fleeting stops were also made at Coit Tower and Lombard Street
(the crooked street; too lazy to walk up it and running out of time, we just ‘experienced’
it visually from the bottom) then we walked back to the apartment to get ready
for the Rancid and Transplants finale. This show was notable for a number of
reasons: us arriving early enough to see all three bands (the Harrington Saints
were opening); Matt and Lars bumbling onstage during the Transplants’ ‘Tall
Cans in the Air’ waving tallboy PBRs around; the first of the gigs I actually
managed to get my act together enough to take some photos at; meeting Lars
again (!); and the piece de resistance, the driver guy we hung out with the
night before giving me a snare skin signed by all members of Rancid. This
resulted in many dirty looks from all the fans around me and I was convinced
someone was going to mug me for it, but I managed to get both it and myself
back to New Zealand safely. Since it was the last night of the tour, there was
an after party in a bar nearby, and it was pretty cool hanging out and drinking
in a place where you would just casually catch sight of Lars or Rob walking
past (no Tim, sadly). Also, you know it’s been a good night when you wake up
the next day and upon looking through your camera, find multiple photos of
yourselves with new friends you have no memory of having made…
Hangin out with Lars down on 6th Street (well, 6th Street was a block away, and I did see him again at a bar on 6th later that night)
On Sunday morning I awoke to the discovery that I seemed to
be in a substantial amount of pain when I moved or breathed, its location suggesting
either an injured rib or the start of a stomach ulcer. Either way, there were
owie bits in my mid-section which felt serious enough for me to forgo beer and
start off the night drinking green tea instead. Not ideal when you’re meant to
be seeing the Descendents, Pennywise and Sublime with Rome later on in the
evening… I did calm down a bit though when - thanks once again to the more
reliable memory of my camera – I saw a photo I had taken while right up at the
front at Rancid of an empty wheelchair which the security guys refused to move,
despite there being no-one nearby who needed it, and despite the fact that
every time the crowd moved, whoever was in the vicinity of the wheelchair got
smooshed into it. There were vague recollections of some
handle-of-wheelchair-meets-ribs moments, and so I was able to rule out the
stomach ulcer diagnosis. After a brief detour to Rasputin Records, we had an
early and restorative dinner at the nearby vege restaurant again, and then a
fairly scenic half hour walk to the America’s Cup Pavilion for the show.
Like
Slurms McKenzie, by this stage I was so tired of partying and didn't really
want to drink again, so ended up watching Pennywise and the Descendents sober
and still having a great time (it's apparently possible!) Pennywise were one of
those bands that mostly passed me by in high school; I had one of their albums
and had been known to enjoy a drunken whoa-whoa-oh-oh singalong to ‘Bro Hymn,’
but on the whole I wasn’t overly excited about seeing them, having written them
off as one of the those so-so SoCal skatepunk bands. Surprise, they turned out
to be really friggin good! Probably the best between-song banter, heckling and
hilarity of any band I’ve seen (other than the Blistering Tongues of course), and
a hugely energetic set with some entertaining covers (‘Territorial Pissings,’ ‘Fight
for Your Right’ and a chaotically good version of Sublime’s own ‘Same in the
End’ which fell apart about halfway through). Pennywise, I’m off to get my
hands on your back catalogue… Right before the Descendents played, I decided I
might just be up to partaking of maybe one casual drink, and so put in a
request for Sam to get me a margarita when he went and bought beers. Swigging
it back full tilt proved to be a mistake, as something had gone wrong with the margarita
machine, and it was actually a 24oz cup of straight tequila. Cheap shitty tequila
at that. Any other time, this may have at least made for an inexpensive night,
but in my fragile state there was no way straight tequila was going to happen.
By this stage, the Descendents were playing, and I wasn’t about to go stand in
line for another drink, so saw my second band of the evening sober and
well-behaved. Ah the Descendents, so many good songs, so many good times. I
resolved to get a Milo tattoo the next day. This didn’t quite happen, but it’s
still on the cards… Also, there was the cutest nerdy punk couple standing near
us who looked to be in their forties whose little kids sat on their shoulders
waving ‘We love the Descendents’ signs they’d made. Awww… Children and no
booze, what an unexpectedly wholesome experience. Before Sublime with Rome took
the stage, there was some merch buying (who DOESN’T need a Descendents coozie?),
and we ran into Tim, an Australian guy we’d hung out with at the Rancid shows
for the last two nights. I took my mutant margarita back and they were most
apologetic and gave me two beers as a replacement, so I guess I was back on the
beers after all. Although they didn’t play the song I wanted to hear most,
Sublime with Rome were also better than I had expected. Rome may not be the
world’s most engaging frontman, but his voice is damn near as close to Bradley
Nowell’s as you could get, and they played a varied set which mixed the faster
stuff with the more laidback stoner anthems. Most pleased they included the Bad
Religion cover, and really enjoyed ‘April 29, 1992,’ ‘Badfish’ and ‘Wrong Way.’
The sound was oddly quiet, but maybe that was just compared to the bands that
preceded them? Sam, Tim and I then wandered in search of a bar and found
ourselves in Mr Bing’s Cocktail Lounge, a small dive bar bordering Chinatown
and North Beach. What was meant to be one drink for the walk home turned into
several, and suddenly the infomercials advertising cat toys that were playing
on the tv screens were the best things we’d ever watched. Sam lost 50 cents to
a machine in the men’s room that proclaimed to dispense ‘shocking erotic photos’
in alluring little matchbox sized casings, but were neither shocking nor
particularly erotic. To be fair, the bartender had warned him against wasting
his money…
Drinks with Tim at Mr Bing's Cocktail Lounge
Monday dawned (can I say ‘dawned’ if we didn’t actually wake
up until the afternoon?), and I would have been content to give in to my
accumulated three day hangover and do not much of anything apart from rest, but
Sam convinced me that I’d regret it once we were home, and ultimately I think
he was right, so I allowed myself to be talked into an excursion to Oakland.
I’m not sure how we took the BART so many times on our last trip without this
occurring to me, but about halfway to Oakland, I realised we were indeed
travelling in a train under the bay, and that this might not be the ideal place
to find oneself should an earthquake strike. The rest of the journey was thus
spent trying to ward off hangover-induced panic attack. Which was probably why
I didn’t really mind too much when we discovered we had boarded the wrong train
(after some well-intentioned but misguided directions from a random person we
asked), and had to get off at the next stop and then walk for twenty minutes to
get to Oakland – I was just happy to be above ground again.
The Tribune Building in Oakland
One of the many cool haunted mansion looking places we wandered past in Koreatown Northgate district of Oakland
We stopped at Rosamunde's Sausage Grill in Old Oakland for gourmet vegan
sausage hot dogs, then set off on an hour-long walk to a local gig that was due
to start at 6.30pm, checking out some shops along the way. I found plastic
hairclip paradise in a weird beauty store selling all manner of wigs and weaves,
and was blown away when I asked how much they were per packet of 20 and the
answer was 99 cents. I now have a supermarket bag full of plastic hairclips (or
‘barrettes,’ if you will) in every colour imaginable and should probably unload
some of them on trademe. We also discovered the standout record store of the
trip, 1 2 3 4 Records, which had not only the cheapest and best selection of
records (I bought 'Milo Goes to College' again for $11 after it was left at JFK
airport, and Mudhoney album I was after), but two incredibly cute little dogs
who looked like Fizzgig from the Dark Crystal and were really friendly. I’ve finally
found a breed of dog I am not scared of or grossed out by; the guy in the store
informed me they were pomeranians, and a drunken Google image search later on
that night confirmed that they are the raddest dogs ever, looking like a cross
between a miniature bear and a happy baby seal. It was then about another
twenty minute walk from the record store to the gig, through a neighbourhood
that gave off vibes of the look-at-someone-wrong-and-you-might-get-knifed sort,
but we survived okay and found Eli's Mile High Club, possibly the dive-iest of
all the dive bars we've been to. PBR on tap, punk on the stereo and the most
facially tattooed guy I've ever seen working behind the bar. Apparently he must
not get tipped much, because later on in the night, after I'd been consistently
tipping him a dollar per beer (the done thing in the US), he poured us free
shots as a thank you for being 'so good to us all night.' Perhaps everyone else
there was just shooting up in the bathrooms rather than actually paying for
drinks? Whatever the case, we got double shots of Fireball and had befriended
the most intimidating looking guy in the bar (Eric, I believe his name was,
which somehow counteracted the facial tatts). The bands were thrashy and
actually more listenable than I'd been expecting, and hailed from LA, North
Carolina, and Austria, my favourite of the night being the wonderfully named
Speedboozer. If I ever get a pomeranian dog, I'm calling it Speedboozer...
One of my many blurred photos which captures the atmosphere of the gig at Eli's Mile High Club...
Oh no, our last day of the trip! Time to head to Walgreens
to stock up on super cheap American make-up, drink the rest of the PBRs and
start fretting over flying again. Paranoid about missing our flight after the
New York debacle, and not really wanting to wander round with luggage after
leaving our accommodation at 3pm, we sat in St Mary's park for a while with the
PBRs and then decided to get the BART to the airport around 4, even though our
flight wasn't until 9.30. Never before have I been so early for something; the
check-in desk wasn't even open yet. I had time to catch up on some blog
writing, indulge in one final Mexican meal, scope out the duty-free shop for
Fireball (they didn't have it sorry New Zealanders, so you don't get to sample the
glorious drop. Edit: Sam stumbled upon some at Henry’s in Dunedin the other day!
It was 2.5 times the price for a smaller bottle than in the US, but I’m
currently sipping on some as I type) and play on the travelators.
Our flights were smooth and uneventful, just the way I like
them, and as a nice bookend to being stoked on seeing my friend Girl Sam in the
Air NZ magazine on the way over, on the way back I found that one of the movie
options was 'The Weight of Elephants,' directed by my friend Daniel Borgman,
which I'd been keen to see. Very atmospheric and touching NZ film, great stuff
Dan! It was then a bit of a comedown getting on the domestic flight at Auckland
and the pilot announcing that the current temperature in Dunedin was -2
degrees. Sigh… And as a fitting end to a
blog with the URL 'threequartersfilleul,' I'm finishing writing this having
watched our Filleul Street flat get demolished on my lunchbreak last week.
Welcome back to Dunedin Andy...
To make myself feel better about being home, I will now list
my top five gripes with America/things NZ does better. Please note that these
are few and far between, and given the chance, I would easily ditch you all and
go back there in a heartbeat:
1) No more freaking tipping and one cent coins and
adding tax to the price of everything and a weird lack of PIN numbers and just
general money oddness! For a nation of supposed convenience, America is real
big on forcing you to do spontaneous maths constantly throughout the course of
a regular day in order to pay for things. If most Americans had any inkling of
how much simpler paying for things is in NZ, there would likely be rioting in
the streets…
2) Op shops! Dunedin you rule for op shops, vintage
clothing, thrift stores, secondhand, whatever we’re calling it… Although there
were plenty in the US that had cool stuff, there was nowhere I could find a
decent skirt/top/anything-you-could-name for $4 like you can in Dunedin. It was
more like $40 if you were lucky. Actually it’s not just the US that’s made me
appreciate this though, every time I go to Auckland and Wellington too, I come
back home with a new respect for the awesomeness, affordability and lack of
pretentiousness of Dunedin op shops. DCC, can we somehow market this as a thing
to encourage people to move here?
3) Guns. This isn’t number one because to be
honest, I didn’t see a single gun when I was in the US, but every time you hear
some slightly unhinged person screaming obscenities in the street, or witness a
fight break out, or even have an unsavoury character look at you in a shifty
way, the gun thing is always in the back of your mind. Possibly this is why
Americans on the whole do seem to be politer than NZers on the whole though; so
many “excuse me”s and “I’m sorry”s, and that’s usually when I’ve accidentally
bumped into them rather than the other way round. And although the concept of
police with guns makes them way scarier than ours, I still can’t bring myself
to address them as Sir or Ma’am…
4) The American phenomenon of not being able to be
in a public space without either a TV being on, or talking loudly about nothing
on a cellphone, or a particularly annoying blend of the two. Perhaps it’s a
good thing NZ has prohibitively high costs for cellphone usage; if we ever get
the same unlimited calling minutes as Americans for such a low price, we too
may find ourselves surgically attached to our phones with no apparent regard
for the general public within earshot. Oh, the unfortunate number of
conversations I overheard where people discussed their emotions and
relationship dramas loudly in public with absolutely no shame whatsoever…I’m
sorry, called me uptight, call me a New Zealander, but I like the Kiwi penchant
for restricting that kind of stuff to the privacy of our own homes…
5) The yellow line! The damn yellow line!
Everywhere you go, there is a yellow line you must comply with, and shouty,
self-important enforcers making you “GET BEHIND THE YELLOW LINE!” Ostensibly
this relates to public safety (they don’t want you to fall onto the train
tracks, for instance, so there is a helpful yellow line which indicates that
there are train tracks in front of you, because apparently this is more of a
deterrent than actually seeing the tracks and observing trains pass by on them),
but really I think it’s just a way of decreasing their unemployment stats by
giving otherwise unemployable yelly people a token job. Oddly enough, it seems
to be optional to wear a bike helmet though, so health and safety be damned in
many other ways…
And with that, we reach the end of the (yellow) line for this installment of the blog... Back to entering the greencard lottery and attempting another casino win so I can go back for round three
