Three years ago i had to move from NY to SF. I did it in my car, over the course of several weeks, just to enjoy the wonderful landscape in between. Recent talk of cars here brought back some memories which I have decided to share here. It’s basically just a stream-of-consciousness account of a cross-country drive, from primarily a (built/natural) geographical perspective. Have some coffee or you won’t make it past Tolleson.

Phoenix to San Francisco

Leaving phoenix in the morning, you’re already hot and tired before the 3^rd exit. Once you trade city for moon, there’s about 1 major service stop before california, and it’s pretty rough. Dodge city rough. You get out of the car and feel like you’re standing in front of a hair dryer (no, i DON’T own a hair dryer). and you feel like you should walk like GWB – strutting like you just got off your horse – in order to make the right impression with the truckers and locals. There’s also some purty hooker women with rough desert complexions and one can only suppose what else. You can take this opportunity to get herpes, or just walk on by and enjoy your mocha soy latte and lite peach yogurt. Trucker favorites. Clean off the windshield too for god’s sake. And that place on the front bumper where the competition between your car and the armadillo ended – badly for him – yeah, right there…just kick that off with your shoes. No, don’t touch it. Continue on to blythe ca.

There’s a little drama there over the colorado. As in a tree or two. And sometimes they stop you to ask what you’re carrying – agricultural products, illegals, herpes, etc. then you’re on your way towards palm springs. It’s around early afternoon now, and it’s hot. You wonder about your coolant, and feel guilty running the AC for both personal and global purposes. You picture a Bangladeshi mother of 18 washing her clothes in the floodplain. Whether she lives or dies comes down to whether you put your AC on medium or medium-high. You’re sweating anyway, so what’s the point. And after that burger and fries in dusty blythe, you’re getting the carb crash and in that afternoon sun you’d love nothing more than to doze off and end your air conditioned life at the hands of a cactus. But you stay the course, accompanied by silly liberal radio programming on NPR like “the WORLD” (beating of african drum) or talk of the nation or performance today. What are they droning on about again? Something in Zimbabwe. Because when they say “the world,” they mean “Africa.” What about those Bangladeshi kids? Next. A scan of the radio waves nets preachers, trucker music and angry suburban emo rock. A hazy mozart string quartet comes in clearer as you approach palm springs. And before you get there, you essentially fall out of the sky – the road grade descent into the valley is harrowing, and the runaway truck ramps are a constant reminder of impending doom.

But you’re there, the beginning of a 3-hour conurbation that is the los angeles area. It starts with palm springs, and continues through one dusty suburban afterthought town after another – indio, banning, redlands, etc. you come through a pass in the mountains with a bunch of old wind turbines (old, because they are still erector set steel structures). The traffic is picking up, but the freeway is up to the task. you have to plan ahead 3 miles if you want to exit, at least if you’re screaming down the left lane. San bernardino is next, home of macdonalds. Plenty of appropriate places to celebrate that distinction, exit after exit. Is the geography of everywhere, and of nowhere, all at once. But it’s all made nicer by a blue late-afternoon sky and the characteristically tall palm trees you see in california. At some point, hard to tell, you’ve transitioned from desert to semi-coastal environment, but you don’t know because it was masked by the urbanization.

Take i-10 through ontario, and you’ll see what drove the inland empire economy for lo those many years in the 80s and 90s. warehousing and industry. Lots of $hit comes in through the port of LA, but land values are too high to store it there. So i-10 is full of trucks running between Long Beach and ontario. And there’s an airport in ontario too, without a very good on-time record. Mainly a southwest spillover airport from LAX that had its heyday after deregulation, when all those little California airlines sprouted up but couldn’t afford gate space at the coastal airports. Keep going, and it gets asian. Fine by me. Especially in the san gabriel river valley. And to me, that means food. You can smell it from your car – general tso beckons. pass through city of industry, and the proposed LA NFL stadium site – likely another failed experiment in suburban sports stadiums. There’s also cal poly pomona, which actually has a nice campus. Take temple road and you’ll go through commodity-stock suburbia and up to this great little school nestled into the hillside there. Again, you ask yourself, “why didn’t in know about this when i was 18?” soon you’re in East LA. Stay on the freeway dammit, and keep the windows up no matter how alluring the smell of fresh tortillas is. As you approach downtown LA, which you’re probably lucky to see looking into the sunset on a typically hazy evening, the freeways lose their newness (comes with being among the first cities to build them). They also get confusing. Lane configurations do all sorts of weird things, and there’s very little warning. If you’re a local, you just know. I’m not.

Go through downtown LA, and you get the impression that this has the smallest downtown size to total population ratio of any city in history. It really looks no more impressive than atlanta, a city ¼ the size. But get thee up to dodger stadium, just beyond chinatown. In fact, park in DT LA and have a walk. Go ahead! It’s not that dangerous anymore. Park near Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and sachet past the gehry-designed Disney hall, which looks like an airplane crash. Then down the hill to little tokyo. The japanese american museum is highly recommended. Lots of sad stories about the internment camps. Then celebrate japanese culture with some unagi rolls and an asahi. Back up the hill to the (newish) catholic cathedral, which – in keeping with the theory that the church is open to all – usually has its gates open and you can walk right inside. I wait for the lightning. Beautiful place, though. Go down to pershing square, via hill street. Almost as gritty as market st. sf. But warmer. Wedding gown shops, a fantastic farmers market, and more blathering derelicts than you’d see at a Crimson Tide championship celebration. The square is also popular with the leisured indigent, right next to the biltmore hotel. Recommended, if someone else is paying. If you go down figueroa st. you pass the staples center, part of a huge convention center complex. Further, you see USC. I have to say it’s a nice campus, and for the tuition they charge, i’d expect nothing less. I was an inch away from going there for grad school, but even net of their tuition remission and stipend, living in LA would have been too expensive. Grad student housing was $900/mo. For a shared room in a 4-person apartment. Extortion. But none of that stops you from going around the campus. Tommy trojan statue, the hall of Lame where the heisman trophies used to be, etc. it’s all pretty cool i guess because you know it’s all gonna get yanked back by the NCAA someday. The LA coliseum is a pathetic dump of a facility, but the new basketball arena is pretty nice.

Head out to westwood to compare facilities with the rival. UCLA really is beautifully situated, and who wouldn’t want to hang out in westwood. Pauley pavilion, despite its history, is really nothing that special. And they have the beginnings of an on-campus football stadium, if they add some seats to their track stadium. Won’t happen, i guess. But there’s a great perch from which to view campus from right in front of the library. I can’t help but think what life would have been like here. Probably “expensive.” Enough wasting time in LA though, head out to the 405 and go north, after a stop in santa monica and the 3^rd street promenade. A collection of little oddities that’s a sliver of what you find on Las Ramblas but good for the US, anyway. Head north through pr0n valley and up the mountains. San clemete is a very nice little mountain village, and good thing because it’s the last “nice” thing you see until SF. You come out of the mountains and you immediately know what you’re in for – hot, flat, and hot. Pass around baskersfield and it’s just farm after farm. And lots of sunshine. I stop at one to get some grapes and almonds and other california food. Not too much cheaper here than whole foods NY. Disappointment. But it’s still nice to eat in the car during such a boring drive. I spend most of it on my cellphone, for which good reception is about the only redeeming quality of this flat interior wasteland. As you come towards SF, 3 hours later, if gets hillier and you pass by a positively rancid pig farm. I swear off pork...for a week. When you get to tracey, a very distant suburb of SF, you have to turn “inwards” and cross the mountains. Just before you do, you come to an exit for “Altamont Raceway.” Seems innocent enough, a little hick track stuck into the side of the hills.

Until you remember what happened there in 1969. it was the end of the hippie era. Do you know what i’m talking about? The Altamont Free Concert, the final concert of the Rolling Stones’ ill-fated 1969 fall tour. They wanted to give a free concert in SF at Kezar Stadium, but it was being used for a raiders game (??). Then they wanted to go to sears point, but that didn’t work out. 2 days before the concert, they announced altamont. They prepared for 100,000. they got 400,000. and only 399,996 left the concert. 4 died, including one person murdered by a Hell’s Angels biker. They had been hired to be security detail, and basically sat around drinking and wailing on people with pool cues. But then this idiot came up to the stage with a gun – you have to remember that everyone’s totally baked now – and looked like he was going to shoot mick jaggar. Well, he was stabbed in the back instantly (youtube it) and that was the end of his day at the concert. Jaggar’s video staff caught everything. It was the most pathetic site when you watch it – jaggar is up there in some kind of crazy-azz outfit, looking all, well, whatever he looks like. You could hear the Hells angels saying rather unflattering things about his sexuality. And then the crowd just goes berserk, in a bad way, the kind of way you go when you have a bad trip. And that was the end of the 60’s. don maclean’s song “american pie” refers to jaggar in that concert as satan/devil. The day the music died (besides the plane crash). A very spooky event for such an unassuming little plot of land on the windswept grass hills outside of SF. And there’s no mention or commemoration of the event at all. I think they still do their tractor pulls there or whatever they do. So that’s your introduction to SF from the very outset. Appropriately so.

Drive further in and you wonder what other kind of madness will jog your memory. Come through oakland, and your first thought, when you see the coliseum, is the a’s and raiders of the 70;s – because it’s the same damn building! You are also reminded of the oakland riots, the oakland fires of 1991, and the 1989 earthquake. Poor city. Literally and figuratively. It was once great. Shining jewel of the east bay. Lots of hard industry, good wealth, the promise of what california was all about. Now it’s a post-apocalyptic war zone with some pockets of attempted renewal that really aren’t going well at this point. Cross the bridge into SF, and you expect more. But do you get it? Well, not really. Aside from the striking skyline view from the bay bridge, especially as you emerge from treasure island, when you get down to the surface level of the streets, you realize that this is a city with big social problems. Perhaps the most homeless people i’ve ever seen, and not the friendly kind that talk about jesus. The hostile kind jesus forgot, the bitter ones with LOTS to complain about, starting with their own health and not ending until they can destroy yours. The infrastructure – BART, bridges, etc have the look of something that was once fantastic, but now just in desperate need of more attention. But the city is forgivable, on account of its fantastic food, beautiful natural environment and cultural relevance. And world series champion baseball team. That ends my 3-part account of a cross-country trip. I hope you enjoyed it. Goodbye.