Archives for February 11, 2008

My flight to San Francisco was uneventful, and so was my drive from the airport to Berkeley, thanks to the GPS receiver that Mrs. T gave me for Christmas. It showed me exactly how to get to my hotel, which is located a few hundred yards from San Francisco Bay, and I did exactly what it told me to do. Once I got there, I did as little as possible, save for dining with a friend and taking her to a play that I’ll be reviewing in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. The rest of the time I read, listened to music, worked on Rhythm Man: A Life of Louis Armstrong, caught up with my accumulated e-mail, and slept. I watched the sun set over the bay as I ate dinner on Saturday night, and felt completely content.
Today I fly down to Los Angeles, where I have shows to see, people to meet, and pieces to write. I’ll be busy, but at least I’ll be busy in an exciting and unfamiliar place, and Mrs. T is waiting for me there, which will make everything more fun. Among other things, we’re going to stay in a fancy Hollywood hotel, eat hot dogs at Pink’s, and visit an art-collecting friend of mine who lives in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. What’s not to like?
I’ll let you know how it’s going in due course.

“The place is wide open, but not in the way that New York is wide open–vulgarly, garishly, hoggishly. The business is achieved with an air, almost a grand manner. It is good-humored, engaging, innocent. There is no heavy attitude of raising the Devil. One may guzzle as one will, but one may also drink decently and in order, and shake a leg in the style of Haydn, and lift an eye to a pretty girl without getting knocked in the head or having one’s pocket picked. It is a friendy place, a spacious and tolerant place, a place heavy with strangeness and charm. It is no more American, in the sense that American has come to carry, than a wine festival in Spain or the carnival at Nice.”
H.L. Mencken, “San Francisco: A Memory”