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On San Francisco
There is always something going on in San Francisco, but the last few weekends has offered some events I could not say no to.
Due to the relative small size of the actual city (it only has around 800.000 citizens) it actually gets quite crammed when the inhabitants of the bay area (approx 7,5 million people) transcends upon it. This was the case last weekend, where the city housed three major events; LovEvolution, Oktoberfest and the Bluegrass festival. I attended the LovEvolution which was a parade down Market street from 4th street to town hall, where the various floats formed a semicircle and started competing for the attention of the roughly 500.000 dancing guests. I met a few friends in the city and we danced our shoes thin until we could barely walk…
Navigating the streets are not easy during LovEvolution!
Participants were regular San Franciscans and bay areans, although with an emphasis on the younger audience. This was reflected in the music which was electronic through and through.
Only in San Francisco!
Compared to the Folsom Street Leather Fair, LovEvolution was very toned down with regards to the gay-movement, but American Apparel (who makes the shorts) does make a nice point, though.
A view of City Hall across the crowd. The dome, incidentally is the fifth largest in the world.
The parade ended around 8 p.m. after DJ Deadmau5 finished his set. The after party had him headlining along with Groove Armada and many others. I was too cold and worn down to continue – As my sensible dad (and Benny) would have said: Go’ nu nat og gå nu lige hjem, mens du stadig er ved dine fulde fem!
On Stanford
So, through my work I spend a lot of time at Stanford, and I recently started my supplementary course – Model driven innovation and Invention – which means that Thursday evenings are spent at the lively university as well.
The course is fantastic. Besides from the teacher taking me several levels above the level I’m used to at Århus Uni, I have classmates from all the cool departments (RnD, innovation) at all the cool companies (Apple, Facebook, HP, Nokia, Cisco) in Silicon Valley. I’m doing a graded paper so I’ll get to measure up to some cool guys!
This Friday I visited SCANCOR, which is the center at Stanford where the Garbage Can Model was developed. They have a “social wine” event where Scandinavians affiliated with Stanford meet and network with each other.
I spent this Saturday at Stanford Stadium where the huskies from Washington state university visited and got a thorough beating: 34-14 and Cal lost 42-3 same evening so the mood was good after the match. The stadium is only 500 meters from downtown Palo Alto, so University Avenue is where everybody goes to celebrate.
Players and students from Stanford celebrating their victory over the Huskies.
Incidentally, walking down University Avenue you’ll pass the first Apple store ever, and if you sit down for lunch at a restaurant,you might find yourself back to back with Steve Jobs as one of the guys from ICDK did the other day. 200 meters east is the headquarters of Facebook, and close by: The HQ of TechCrunch. This really is the place to be if you are into technology!
The first ever Apple Store in Palo Alto
Next post will probably deal with experiences from San Francisco – don’t go away!
Daily stuff
So what do I do over here/there?
I live in a largely asian neighbourhood close to highway 101. Living close to a hwy is not necessarily all bad – everything is quicker transportationwise. I share a three room appartment wit a lovely woman called Jessica. She sells real estate (or at least tries to…) and has a cat that hates everybody – including Jessica. The apartment shares a pool with the adjourning residences and I make good use of it. I actually start most of my mornings in it. It’s around 12 meters long, which lets me do around 25 lengths in 10 minutes
I bought a car. Not for commuting like everyone else, but for adventure and travels, which some might say are two sides of the same thing. The car is a 2002 Ford Focus (police-car blue) and a very basic version it is. No power windows, – locks or that kind of luxury. But it runs and drives like it should, and I get e good milage which is important. I can strap my surfbard to the roof with a converter rack, and head anywhere I want.
I tested the board this Saturday north of the Golden Gate Bridge in a pretty big “late summer” swell, and it didn’t go as planned. I got beat up a few times and eventually had the board (fins) cut my wetsuit and myself pretty badly. I believe that the wetsuit actually saved me a much worse fate: Both the suit and my rashguard were cut before me, so the wound would have been deeper and bigger without the suit…
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- Ford Focus med et NSP 7’6 board på taget og en stolt ejer!
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- Checking conditions at Rodeo Beach and getting ready to get wet!
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- Time to dive or get a beating!
Roundtrip part 3
Life passes by while you try to keep up with it. This blog suffers from that fact. What I’ll do is (quickly) try to catch up on the stuff that has been happening the past month, and thereby try to get a status quo on project Live in California.
After visiting Mammoth Lakes for a few days we headed north through the Sierras going through Yosemite from east to west, stopping in Yosemite Village for a quick hike: From stop 16 we headed up to Nevada falls and back down – a trip estimated at 5 hours, and completed in 3 hours
A quick note on Yosemite: Go there! The drive through Yosemite is absolutely fantastic, no matter what time of year you visit or how many tourists are clogging the road. This 1200-yard deep cut in the earths skin might just also be the most beautiful places on earth – as someone wise said: “God himself seems to have done his best here” (John Muir).
The valley is essentially just that – a valley, but what makes this place special, is the sheer scale of everything. Towering around you are 1000 meter cliff faces combined with soft fir- and birch woods and meadows.
El Capitan and Halfdome from hwy 120
Next, our route took us towards wine country. Two valleys in California are optimal for great wine: Napa (the famous one) and Sonoma (the ‘secret’ one) and they are right next to each other. What makes wine growing optimal in these valleys is the soil and the weather. Every evening the valley cools down due to the proximity of the ocean. The huge amounts of sun helps the grapes ripe faster and produce larger amounts of sugar which means higher amounts of alcohol in the finished product. The valley is host to many variants of grapes but I want to emphasise Zinfandel, which is a grape that almost only is grown in California. It makes for great and cheap wine, so check it out. We visited a number of wineries, most prominent in Napa was the Mondavi winery, where we got a tour and a few tastings – a great introduction to wine culture in California. The next day we visited Sonoma, which is less touristy, less “grand” and so on. It’s still frowned upon to charge people for a tasting in Sonoma county. We found a jewel in the Buena Vista winery, where 10 dollars bought us almost two hours of wine stories, facts and so on along with several cheeses and nine great tastings of wine – the crown jewel being a 85$ bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon (probably retails around 200$ and around $4-500 at restaurants). Quinn was our guide, and he was great – I really recommend asking for him if visiting.
By the way…
…as you guys probably figured out, this blog is not in sync with my actual life. I think it is delayed around ten days, but I’ll catch up soon
Roundtrip part 2
A common misconception amongst tourists is, that it’s wise to drive through Death Valley during summertime. That is wrong. Death Valley is the hottest place on Earth and should not be underestimated. Blazing hot winds makes the skin burn in a valley, that actually lies below sea level in several places. Our Corolla Sport (with spoiler, sports kit and red “S” in the grille) did fine through the valley but struggled going through the pass towards the cooler Mt. Whitney massif and Lone Pine where we slept at a campground next to a lake full of bullfrogs. They make A LOT of noise! So did the USAF that was doing dog-fight-exercises and adding to the impressive display of stars.
Mt Whitney Massif
We did som more driving and ended up in the most beautiful area called “Mammoth Lakes” where we stayed for two nights. The entire area has bears, and sure enough, a good-sized one decided to show itself to the entire roadtrip-party on our second day at Mammoth. He (I think he was a he) strolled around Lake George looking for fish caught by the many sportsfishers, who were watching him going through the hastily left bags empty worm-boxes. Unfortunately, nobody had caught anything and he disappeared into the woods wit a tail of tourists following him tentatively. I might add, that having been assured that there were bears everywhere, made the (normally dull) experience of going to the toilet in the middle of the night a very exiting thing to do. The tent was maybe 70 meters from the toilet, and I found myself covering the distance in a good pace both nights…
On Trout fishing in America
Going through Death Valley I was reading (or trying to get started on) “Trout fishing in America” by Mr. Brautigan. This phrase suddenly appears:
“The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said, “Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper, ” and put the coin in my hand, but never came back.”
It was 49 degrees Celcius in the shade, and the ice cream I bought melted before I could finish it, even though I ate at top speed. There are few things that are as sad as a half-eaten ice cream that decides to suicide on the pavement….
Roadtrip part 1
My sister has gotten better at burping. I am convinced that this is partly due to me and my brother’s indiscriminate way of behaving when we’re together, but I suspect she enjoys it a little bit anyway.
The past ten days are already a blur of colours, smells, sounds and other sense impressions, but I will in the following lines try to convey a little bit of the magnificence that is contained in California.
In a rather impressive sounding sport edition of Toyotas Corolla (Red, spoiler, low rims and so on) I set out south on Highway one with Scorpions blasting out of the (also) impressive stereo. Highway 1 is really beautiful most of the way, sliding along the pacific coastline but for a few hours I was really blown away. Through Big Sur, where the road cuts into forest and the coast gets even more jagged, you get the impression that the guys who made the road were artists rivalling Bernini, Michelangelo…
Santa Barbera is an incredible upscale city full of movie stars and rich guys in BMW 750i’s mixed with a ton of poor surfers living in relative harmony. The epicenter is State street (and the superseding wharf) filled with galleries, surf shops and seafood restaurants.
Monday took the Corolla through Hollywood towards Las Vegas with an overnight stay at the Stardust Inn motel in Barstow (I reccomend it for the price: 45$ for two king beds and free wifi). On another occasion I ran into a Nam-Vet, Chuck, who, after getting married in Vegas, spent the wedding night at a motel in Barstow. When asked why they chose Barstow of all places, he said “We just didn’t get any further”. I should mention what makes Barstow fantastic: Nothing, really. It is basically a huge truck-stop in a highway-intersection on the edge of the Mojave desert. BUT, it is mentioned in Hunter S. Thompson’s insane and absolutely terrifying novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, where the first few lines goes like this:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to
take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…”
I had the destinct feeling that Vegas was going to be overwhelming, and I was right. The brightest spot on Earth by far when observed from space is simply too much, unless you focus on one thing. Whether it be food, gambling, partying or sweating you can handle Vegas much better if you avoid considering all the craziness going on around you.
On food and drink: I recommend the Baccarat Lounge in the Bellagio for drinks (The Bartender makes a killer Tom Collins. Get it with Hendricks Gin) and the Lobster place along the Big Sur. Their Lobster Sandwich ($22) is amazing.
Pictures here
On food and drinks…
A few recommendations: If you crave Indian/Pakistani food in the Tendernob area, I can totally recommend “Chutney” (on the corner of Jones and O’farrel). It’ busy, noisy and authentic – and the food is fantastic. Don’t take a date, but go alone or with friends. I had Lamb Tikka Masala – creamy, rich and hot. The kitchen is ‘in’ the restaurant (cool), which adds a dimension of cooking smoke making you your clothes smell after you are done (not-so-cool), but thats the only downside I can think of.
I had drinks upstairs at The Owl Tree afterwards. The upstairs bar i new and has a sort of cool/frosty quality to it. Don’t you just love it, when you run into a bartender that is so good, you have to try another and another and…? A Tom Collins, Cucumber Gimlet and a shot later (thanks to the off-duty bartender for the shot and questionable advice on what to do in LA) I turned in a bit light headed but happy. Not to self: Get a bottle of really good tequila, like Patron or Siete Leguas. And shoot it clean. None of that fruit or salt. Check this months edition of Esquire for more tequila
Today I’m leaving for a trip towards LA (Hwy 1), so there might not be that many updates in the coming days.
