Ramblings of Jared Karol

I've been thinking a lot about stupidity lately, and not just about the everyday stupid things that go on unrelentlessly - I've gotten used to that; and not just about the stupidy of big business and government and politicians - although one could ramble on for days - weeks - about that; and not just about the stupidity of others - I'm in a more humble mood than that. No, I've been thinking about some of the stupider things I've done, both more recently and in my past.

The first thing that comes to mind is something that happened a few weeks ago when I was in my truck. I was in Oakland heading west on 580, and I was attempting to get over to Fourth Street in Berkeley. It was a Saturday afternoon and traffic was moderate to heavy. As I was approaching the 80 split where you can go to the Bay Bridge or turn off to go to Berkeley I noticed there was the usually heavy, merge-induced slow down. I had to make a split second decision, and I made a stupid one. I reasoned that the Eastshore Freeway is always, for some unkown reason, congested - where are all these people going? Pinole? - so I swerved over a few lanes and just made the exit ramp for San Pablo, nearly missing an accident. Okay, big deal, you might be saying, just take San Pablo down to University and turn left and there you go. It might take a little longer but it' not so stupid, all things considered. But you see, I didn't do that - someone less stupid would have, but not me. I continued down into Emeryville, and rationalized a stop at Office Depot for some trivial items I'm sure I could have gotten anywhere and at any other time. From there - and here is where it gets really stupid - I continued up and over the hill towards. . . IKEA! IKEA!!!??? On a Saturday afternoon? Was I frickin' nuts? N-V-T-S, nuts? I couldn't believe me error and I had plenty of time to think it over. I was stuck in Emeryville trying to get throught the IKEA nonsense and then the Bay Street nonsense for the next twenty minutes. I don't do well in traffic, especially if it's something I could have avoided with a little thought. I also neglected to bring any cd's with me, thinking, not entirely unrationally, that there would be something SOMETHING decent to listen to on the radio, but of course there wasn't - even the jazz station was playing a cheap imitation of Kenny G. But I endured somehow and made it to Fourth Street, only to find that I couldn't find anything worth picking up at Starbuck's trendy music store Hear Music where I had been given a gift card.

On my way home I took an alternate route.

But lest you think that I've done stupid things in my adult years only, let me tell you another story of teenage stupidity, as if those two words aren't tied together permanently like the words presidential dishonesty are. My best friend Matt used to live at the top of a big hill with a long driveway that went down to a fairly busy street. As you went up the driveway from the street about 100 feet you came to the first house where there was a plateau, another 100 feet brought you to the next house and another plateau for their driveway. Then, if you continued on up the hill another 100 feet or so you arrived at Matt's driveway and house. So we're talking about the length of a football field from street to top, and at a decently steep angle, enough to cause us to sweat profusely and be totally out of breath when attempting to ride our bikes up from the bottom. Well, one day we decided it would be fun to pick oranges from Matt's neighbor's tree and roll them down the hill into the street below. Now, while that may not qualify as being all that stupid in the grand scheme of things, if you've ever been even remotely associated with the mind of a teenager, you would know that watching oranges gain speed and burst into the street only to be crushed devilishly by unsuspecting motorists, while entertaining, wold get rather bored after a short time. Of course, it did. A less stupid pair of teenagers perhaps would have stopped there and gone to play video games or shoot some hoops. But not us! No, we had to come up with something else to roll down the hill, something more exciting, something more spectacular, something that if we had had half a brain, or maybe even a tenth of one, an alarm would have gone off in our head telling us not to do it, for the potnential consequences were injurious and possibly deadly. What could we roll down the hill into oncoming traffic, we asked ourselves?. We thought for a minute, but not calcualtingly, I wouldn't say, but casually, undirectedly, as if we werne't really focused on our goal. Then. . .duh! It came to us as the most obvious choice in the whole world. How could we have not thought of this before? How could we have been so stupid? Matt reminded me that only a few weeks ago, when I had a flat tire and was about a mile from his house, that he had advised me illadvisedly to just drive on over to his house on my flat, up his huge hill on my flat, and he would fix my flat, never mind the damage I was doig to my rim. Matt was good at fixing stuff like that, and actually enjoyed it, where I could barely put gas into my tank, let alone have any sort of interest in maintaining or fixing stuff. Sure enough, Matt took my tire off in about two seconds, unfastened my spare from underneath my truck in another two seconds, and in another two seconds put the new tire back on, and I was ready to go. I think he was done before I got back from the bathroom, or possibly from raiding his kitchen, since he always had more food than I did at my house. We put the tire on the side of his house, where it would remain, unknowingly at the time, for only a short while. Oh yeah, I said, the old tire on the side of the house. How could we not have thought of that yet? Questions that less stupid teenagers, assuming they existed somewhere, would have asked might have been something like Is it wise to roll a huge tire down a steep hill gaining speed until it comes blindly from behind a bank and into a busy street with cars travelling at speeds ranging from twney-five to fifty miles an hour and possibly side-swiping them or causing them to swerve off the side of the road or worse yet into oncoming traffic? Thankfully, we never had to answer that question.

We got the tire out and went to the top of the hill and found the best spot with the most direct route down the slightly curvatious driveway, the spot where the tire would avoid any of the enbankment and thus slow its speed, the spot where the tire would not tip over and come skidding to a hault prematurely, the spot where the tire could achieve its - and thus by extension, ours - maximum glory in the street 300 feet below. I don't remember which one of us actually released the tire from our hands, but as the tire was let go it turned out that our calculations, while highly unmathematical or scientific, had proved to be rather accurate. The tire left Matt's driveway and started rolling down the hill. It stayed clear of the enbankment and continued to gain speed. It came to the plateau of the driveway below and got airborne as it continued on to the next slope. We cheered this feet, cheered with doubled-over laughter and amazement. The tire stayed its course, neither running into the enbankment nor turning on its side. As it came to the next plateau, it was going trmendously fast. We feared it would not make it, that it would lose control and crash into the enbankment or fall on its side. But as the tire approached the street, it was rolling as steadily and true as if it were attached to the truck that it had come from. Only when it was a few yards from the street did we contain our laughter and cheerful antics and think - uh oh! What if there's a car coming? Our emotions did a 180, going from pure juilation and exaltation to panic and wonderment. Due to the rate of speed of the rapidly advancing tire, however, these uncomfortable emotions, these unpleasent feelings of personal responsibility, these thoughts of realization, were not allowed to manifest themselves too deeply into the conscious of our being. The tire burst into the street like a running back off tackle and. . .

. . .harmelessly rolled across the street and continued rolling into the big empty dry grass field acorss the street where it finally lost its uprightness and swerved and tumbled, as if drunk, onto its side where it rested unseen from our vantage point. A moment later a car came speeding by the bend in the road down toward the intersection below. Our just recently passed, and only momentarily held onto, aprehension passed like a fart on a windy day, and our uproarious laughter and guffawing once again resumed. Did you see that tire? we asked ourselves. Man, it was going so fast! That was awesome! We could hardly contain ourselves, it was like we were on crank. Our adreneline was raging, Wow! For some reason, we did not go and fetch the tire, but let it rest in the field, basking in its own glory, of which only two souls truly knew the depth of that glory which the tire posessed. For some reason, we left the tire there, and it was probably a good thing. We did not roll another tire down Matt's steep and long driveway, either, or anything else that I remember for that matter.

But, a few weeks later we did go into that dry empty grass field and attempt to light a homemade firecreacker. . .

Fiskadoro is a novel by Denis Johnson that takes place in the Florida Keys immediately after an A-bomb had obliterated all of society and for some unknown reason pardoned the inhabitants of the region allowing them to continue living and leaving them with the unenviable task of figuring out what in the hell to do with themselves in what has become a desolate and empty remnant of the world. Fiskadoro is a young boy of about twelve years of age. He has a clarinet that was spared termination and he is looking for a teacher as he has no idea how to play it, let alone even put the pieces of the instrument together. Several towns away (if they can still be called towns) he finds Mr. Cheung, an eccentric Chinese man who is willing to teach him how to play the clarinet. Fiskadoro begin sandbar hopping regularly for miles at a time to come to Mr. Cheung’s place for lessons. He is not good at first, but with his teacher’s patience and instruction he steadily improves.

Mr. Cheung is the leader of the Miami Symphony Orchestra, a possibly fictitious ragtag group of men posing as musicians. It is never clear what exactly the Miami Symphony Orchestra is, or if it even exists in musical (or any) form. Mr. Cheung’s status as leader of the Miami Symphony Orchestra is equally ambiguous. The Miami Symphony Orchestra and the interaction between Mr. Cheung and Fiskadoro is only one sub-plot of a much more complete and somewhat random and, some might say, dark novel.

So, anyway, naturally since my band is also fictitious – we don’t ever rehearse, and there is nobody in the band that really knows that he is in a band, let alone my band – I figured that the Miami Symphony Orchestra would be a good name for the band. The fact that we are not a symphony or an orchestra, and do not even come close to sounding like either one just adds to the. . .well, I don’t know what it adds to, but it adds to it, whatever it is. Furthermore, to add to the drastic inanity, anyone who has played one note of music with me to someone who knows all my songs by heart (very much like the housewife who knows all the intimate details of every Nora Roberts novel that she has bought at the supermarket) is considered to be in the band, at least whilst they are playing with me, whether they know it, or like it, or not.

I know you’re asking, Okay, that’s all Sweet and Dandy (Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come, great album!), but what’s any of this nonsense have to do with Kennebunkport or this Kennebunkport Symphony Orchestra you speak of? Did Mr. Cheung and Fiskadoro move from the Florida Keys up to the coast of Maine? No. We (I and some of the more unambiguous members of the band) decided that we liked the ring of the Miami Symphony Orchestra (okay, I liked the ring of the name, and they said, sure, whatever), but we thought it lacked a certain. . .a certain something. It lacked. . . yes, it lacked a patriotic flare. We felt that by changing the name of the ambiguous and heroically fictitious band to the Kennebunkport Symphony Orchestra, we could aptly and sufficiently honor the ambiguous and heroically fictitious leader of the free world, who also, coincidentally and refreshingly for us, happens to (some would say) be the President of the United States of America of the World. What better way to simultaneously play great music and honor our unswerving leader by having the name of his beautiful vacation town be part of our band name?

Thus the Kennebunkport Symphony Orchestra was born. In ongoing honor of our leader, it will continue on like a plague until the musicians no longer have an interest in playing music with me and I’m left alone to die a forlorn and isolated death, or until the entire world is decimated but free of terrorism (and Fiskadoro hops across the Florida Keys to Mr. Cheung’s house for clarinet lessons again), whichever comes first. Until one or the other, or both, of those days come, and that day could very well come sooner rather than later, the Kennebunkport Symphony Orchestra lives on in infamy. Hail to the chief! Ya-hoo for great music! Long live the Kennebunkport Symphony Orchestra!!!

Down in La Jolla, there is an awesome surf break called Little Point. It's a point break, which means it breaks right off of a reef that jutts out from the shore. It breaks only towards the left (northward on the West Coast) which is perfect for a goofy-footed surfer (left foot on the back of the board) like myself. Little Point is directly north of the famous beach and surf break Windansea. Windansea is known for its powerful, steeply pitched, perfectly formed waves that come so regularyly they seem like they were produced from a factory and shipped toward to La Jolla just so the surfers wouldn't have to deal with erratic and inconsistent waves. The beach is picture perfect as well: white, squeaky sand, small rock cliffs behind, and coral reefs to climb on during low tide. There's hardly ever any wind except for the soft ocean breeze that drops the temperature from 73 degrees to 71. Aesethetically, it doesn't get much bettr than Windansea. Unfortunately, however, in the surf culture at Windansea there is an extreme localism and intollerance of outsiders and intermediate surfers that prevails at all times. Even after living five houses up the street from the beach at 303 Westbourne Street for over a year (about as local as you can get without drowning), I did not feel welcome or respected at Windansea even though I was a more than adequate surfer.

For some reason, though, if you walk down to the north end of Windansea beach and walk up on the cliffs directly in front of Simmons Reef and keep going north about fifty yards around the bend, you will find an entirely different world at Little Point. It is simply amazing that this machine-like break (usually even more consistent than Windansea) does not attract as many people as Windansea. And even more amazing is the wonderful fact that it doesn't attract any of the attitude from its southernly neighbor. Never once have I been at Little Point with more than a half dozen surfers, and never once have I ever gotten a bad vibe from anyone there either. This is even more spectacular given the fact that the take off spot where the waves break at Little Point is confined to about a ten yard area. That means that anyone who is out there is right to next to anyone else who is out there. There's simply no escapint it. The waves come so regulary, though, that each surfer just waits his turn for the next wave and has a beautiful, spiritual ride toward shore. When you first observe Little Point from the shore, it can be very deceiving. It looks as if the waves that are breaking are miniscule and it also appears that it is extremely easy to take off on the wave. Nothing can be further from the truth. The way that the reef is shaped and the dirction that the waves are coming in (from the south or southwest in the summertime is the ideal time to surf Little Point) creates a slow developing, flat wave. It does not even appear to be big enough or strong enough to pull you on your board. But suddenly, and as if out of nowhere, the wave hits the reef underwater and it is miraculously standing straight up and rolling down the line fairly rapidly. All that is needed is a few quick paddles and quick jump up on the board and you are gliding effortlessly down the line. If you're too late poppin up, you'll be pitched straight into the water and into the reef underwater; if you try to stand up too early, the waves is too flat and you will not be pushed by it. It takes a careful timing and understanding of the way the wave breaks. Once it is figured out, there is not a better break in all of San Diego County. I have spent hours riding waves at Little Point and been forced to go in only from pure exhuastion or darkness. Pumping down the line, and riding up and down the waves as if I were a dolphin or a seagull gives me a feeling like no other. There are not many things I miss about living in La Jolla, but surfing at Little Point is definitely one of them. Go try it yourself and have a great time!

A few years ago when my wife and I were looking for a new apartment in San Francisco, we definitely had some clear ideas about where we wanted to live, and more precisely where we didn’t want to live. We wanted some place that was fun and had a little bit going on without being super trendy or overly gentrified, this last characteristic being increasingly more difficult to escape. We narrowed our possibilities down to Noe Valley, Glen Park, Duboce Triangle and Potrero Hill. We settled on Potrero Hill because of the unassuming feel and the sunny weather. It was also easy to get around the city from there, being right next to the Mission, downtown and the bridge. Beside our upstairs neighbor playing the double role of landlord and asshole, our experience on Potrero Hill was wonderful. We were really glad we had found this neighborhood and even thought of possibly buying a house here if we could ever afford anything in the city. There were great coffee shops, music venues, bookstores and restaurants all within walking distance. And of course the Anchor Steam Brewing Company was only two blocks away. What more could you ask for?

One night after we’d been living there for a couple of months, we went to a concert at the Fillmore and met some friends of ours. It was some trendy “jamgrass” band that we weren’t really that interested in seeing, but we had gotten free tickets, and the Fillmore is always a good to place to see a show. We meet our friends and they introduced us to two of their friends, a married couple who used to live in San Francisco, but now live in Reno, Nevada. So my wife gets roped into talking with the guy, who is nice enough, if not a tad bit arrogant. I’m eavesdropping on the conversation as I sip my beer and take in the aura of the Fillmore with its purple glow and nice air conditioned breeze. So why did you guys move to Reno, my wife is asking him. Well, we used to live in Pacific Heights, but we really like the outdoors, you know, skiing and hiking and such. Okay, fair enough. We wanted to live in Tahoe, but we found a house in Reno that we liked and we could afford and blah, blah, blah. The whole time he’s explaining this to her, his tone is mixed with arrogance and embarrassment that he is living in Reno, Nevada. Reno is not a place that I personally would want to live, but if I had bought a house there, I certainly wouldn’t be defending it by showcasing my insecurity and simultaneously displaying an exorbitant level of haughtiness. It was painfully obvious too by the name dropping of neighborhoods and restaurants and other uninteresting things he was rambling on about that he wanted it to be known that he was a big fan of Pacific Heights and the "rest" of the city, which consisted in his mind of a few areas in northeast San Francisco . Nonetheless, without provocation or encouragement he continued ceaselessly with this and that reason why they had moved to Reno and the reasons behind the reasons, and onto infinite etcetera, as my wife stood politely listening.

Finally - and I should have saved my wife from her torture but I was too transfixed as an outside observer to do so - he asked her where we lived. When she spoke, it was as if it was a moment she’d been waiting for all her life, relieved to do anything but listen to this person who was quickly approaching yokel characterization, and in hindsight must have approached it who knows how long before we ever had the misfortune of interacting with him. Potrero Hill, she said. Ah, yes, Potrero Hill, he said, obviously having heard of it, but other than the name recognition, could tell you no more about it than President Bush could tell you about Holden Caulfield. Potrero Hill, isn’t that over by Hunter’s Point, he said derogatorily and ignorantly. Well, I suppose it is, kind of, but not really, my wife said, as she studied this “mountain man from Reno” and wondered half amusingly and half despairingly where this conversation was heading. So Potrero Hill, why do you guys live over there? Do you have cheaper rent? No, not really, it’s the same ridiculous price as the rest of San Francisco. Oh, well do you work over there? No, I work in the Castro and Jared works in Pacific Heights. Oh, well, isn’t that hard to get to work from all the way over there, he said trying to picture where these neighborhoods were in relation to one another, and most likely not being able to do it. No, not really. We take the bus, it’s about fifteen minutes for me and about half an hour for Jared. You guys take the bus! Why do you take the bus? He said this with a disbelieving disaprooving tone of someone who had evidently never taken a bus before, and of someone who would never consider taking one under any circumstances. Why don’t you drive? Well, it’s really difficult to park in the Castro and in Pacific Heights, and the price of one ticket pays for a fast pass for the month, and we like to read on the bus, and check out the scene and see all the different people and cultures and neighborhoods and how they interact with one another. It’s like a little mini adventure every day. Hmmm, he said, apparently unimpressed and unable to relate. Doesn’t it get old? Yeah, sometimes it gets tiring, but for the most part it’s just fine.

Then, as if he had heard none of the conversation, he blurted out in desperation, Why do you guys live over there? Still staying outwardly calm, but inwardly wanting to punch this idiot in the face, my wife stated the reasons why we liked to live over there – the nice weather, the feel of the neighborhood, the unpretentiousness, being close to thing we liked to do, etcetera. Then, again, as if he hadn’t heard any of that, and was a Pacific Heights real estate agent trying to sell a house and laying out all the features of the house and the surrounding neighborhood, he said, why don’t you guys move to Pacific Heights or The Marina or somewhere over there?

Is this guy serious? Well, we don’t really like the scene over there. It’s pretty much all white and rich and pretentious and etcetera. . . Oh, really, you really think so, we loved it over there, he said with an air of surprise as if he had never heard “his” neighborhood described this way. He continued, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I would rather live. My wife didn’t bother to say that the reason he couldn’t think of any other place that he would rather live is that he didn’t know any places out of north east San Francisco. It wouldn’t have done her any good anyhow. Mercifully, the conversation fizzled, and he returned to his wife and others while my wife came running back to me as if she had been away at war for a couple years. We laughed and I said I was sorry that I didn’t save her from that painful situation, but I had to see it through to its conclusion. I wanted to prove my point of the mentality of the northeastsanfranciscocentric mindset.

Newsflash, folks! The city of San Francisco is roughly a seven mile by seven mile square, of which the “cool, hip” neighborhoods of Pacific Heights, The Marina, Cow Hollow and Russian Hill comprise but merely a fraction of that space. The unofficial dividing line, which is by no means definitive or absolute, of the real city and what north east San Franciscans call the real city is Geary Blvd. Noe Valley, which is considered by most in the “cool, hip” neighborhoods to be “way out there” is actually the geographical center of the city. Get out of your rich, white frat boy neighborhoods every once in a while and experience the real culture of the city. Try going south of Geary. I dare you!

So I'm down in San Diego a few months ago visiting some friends and we happen to hear John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the United States of America of the World, on the television blabbing on about how the terror alert is going from yellow to orange because US intelligence has gathered credible and specified evidence that "terrorists" are planning an attack on American soil. There's no reason to be alarmed, he says, and we should continue on with our daily routine, just be a little more vigilant and aware. Oh, and he can't tell us anything more specific than that because he doesn't want to frighten us. So, naturally, my reaction is to laugh and make a joke about how it's painfully obvious that the terror alert color coded system is simply a way to keep people in fear of the "enemy" and also to keep these same people from acting sensibly and reasonably when interacting with persons who might be considered an "enemy" based solely on the color of their skin or how they dress. Apparently, as my friend pointed out to me, it's not that obvious to everyone like I thought it was. She says calmly, with the tone of a credentialed FBI agent, that what this means is that our intelligence has intercepted a wiretapped phone call or decoded an email or otherwise found out about specific communications between "enemies" that have mentioned specific targets for planned attacks. Well, then, shouldn't they be able to tell us, and especially the people that might be directly effected by these attacks, where and when these attacks are allegedly supposed to occur? But they can't do that, she says, because they don't want to spread fear in the American public. So, naturally, again, I said it was a bunch of crap, and it's just another way to keep American Imperialistic propaganda propagated. By way of examples to my assertion of American Imperialism I mention military, CIA and US Government-backed coups in Guatemala, Chile and Iran all under the alleged banner of democracy and homeland security. To that comment was the reply that I read too much. I read too much? I DO read a lot and I have read "1984" by George Orwell and I know what happened to persons who read too much in those, which are becoming dangerously similar to these, circumstances. But, hey, she's still my friend and I don't want to get into it too much with her, and I remember that we're in San Diego not San Francisco, and I try to be the open-minded, liberal, progressive, tolerant person that I claim to be, and I let it go. Then we go out to lunch and grab a burger and some fries. I order French fries with my burger, and she orders freedom fries. .