I've been in San Francisco for almost
two weeks now, and find I've arrived in that sweet spot where you
feel as though you know enough of the city to feel comfortable moving
around it but still not too familiar so as to eliminate its potential
to put a smile on your face. San Francisco feels like the end of the
line for travellers making their way out west to find whatever it is
they're looking for. I should make clear that for the most part these
travellers are American kids who've come from the Midwest,
Pennsylvania and South Carolina to California. The hostel I share
with them does have the obligatory sprinkling of Aussies, Dutch and
Germans but they're in the minority and in general they are somewhere
in the midst of their travels rather than their end.
Life here when I'm not out wandering
the streets and parks or visiting a co-op centres around the stoop
next to the hostel. Here the day to day happening of the hostel's
inhabitants are discussed and dreams shared. The inhabitants of the
stoop include: Turtle Smasher, a young guy from South Carolina who
skates and paints cubist art, Sean from Wisconsin, who's setting up a
dispensary business, Benji from Philadelphia a young man who's lived
more in his 20 years than most have in a life time - he's here to
find work (anything will do) and add to his life experiences, and
there's Eva from New York who's here to get away from the insanity of
Gotham and work in PR. All seem to come from entirely different
worlds yet find themselves here in San Francisco united in their
desire to build a new reality for themselves. As you can imagine such
a diverse cast of characters leads to many interesting tales of love,
loss and life. Between the trips to eat a slice of pizza, writing in
the quiet room or reading up on the next coop I'm due to visit I've
sat and listened and learned a little more about how life in America.
I think the single biggest thing I've learned is just how willing
people are here to up sticks and move to another part of the country.
The kids around me who are doing it now, simply mark the latest in a
long line who have chased opportunity here, wherever it may be. This
willingness to move around harks back to the founding of this country
and its vast scale where settlers only finished claiming “new
territories” at the very end of the 19th century –
which is really only around four or five generations ago. I
appreciate that this “settlement' of the interior and west of the
States was in many ways barbaric and I don't think people here
appreciate just how savage these times were. However, the urge to
chase the latest boom whether its the California gold rush or the
more recent flight to Silicon Valley remains intact and in this day
and age much more humane...
Today I'm going to meet up with Oddy
and Vanessa who moved here from New York around the same sort of time
I arrived. We met at Burning Man thanks once again to Alex and his
happy knack of introducing me to wonderful people from all around the
globe. We're going to visit an Urban Adamah, which as far as I can
tell is a Jewish Harvest festival where with luck wine and pickled
feeds will flow – and goats!
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