Year: 2006

Oh yeah, we’d just arrived in San Fran…

Now, everyone told us we’d love the city, but we weren’t quite sure. Maybe it was something to do with first impressions, or maybe we were expecting too much, but we never quite got on with San Fran like we thought we might. That’s not to say that the city doesn’t have its charms, and I really enjoyed some of the tourist stuff: Alcatraz is well worth visiting, of course. There’s an excellent atmospheric audio tour that guides you around the old prison buildings, and if you close your eyes you can almost begin to imagine what it might have been like inside there. Unfortunately, to get yourself there you have to catch a ferry from the world of tourist tat that is Fisherman’s Wharf: a world of tacky souvenirs, shabby amusements, and fast-food restaurants (or “San Francisco’s most popular destination” if you like…)

We got out of there as soon as we could.

San Fran did provide one of the highlights of our whole trip, however, when we did this:

“Are you ready to bike the bridge and have some fun?” asked a ridiculously cheery bloke as we approached the bike rental office.
“Um, yeah, I guess so,” I replied, as he handed me a disclaimer form to fill in, on which we waived the right to sue them in the event of our collective untimely demise under the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV. Now, it’s at least six years since I’ve been let loose on two wheels, but he assured me that it comes back to you. It’s “like riding a bike,” he tells me (a joke I’m sure he’s never made before), as he goes off to the back of the shop to locate the biggest framed bike they have, muttering “we got all the tall people today!”

As we wobbled off to locate some flat ground on a quiet street to get used to our new mode of transport, the English couple who had been in front of us in the queue shot past on a tandem, which we thought was rather optimistic. Sufficiently proficient ourselves, we rounded the corner to face the first challenge of the journey up to the bridge: a steep gradient of about 45 degrees. We decided it might be an idea to find a bit of flat ground to get used to our gears, and by the time we’d got back there was the other couple again. On separate bikes.

The bridge is simply stunning. Up at the top, as is often the case, the fog had descended to street level, and you could feel the dampness in the air in spite of the lovely hot late summer day that we’d left down in the town.

Over the other side of the bridge the city gives way to the national parks of Marin County, and when we decided to hire the bikes, we’d entertained thoughts of riding off to the redwood forests and greenery beyond. After 2 1/2 hours on the bikes, however, we decided that we might just stop for lunch in the pretty town of Sausalito, which is just a couple of miles over the other side.

In a very clever move, the bike rental company gives everyone tickets for the ferry back to San Fran from Sausalito (“if you don’t use them, you don’t pay for them…”) Of course it was just too tempting, so we stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Horizons, which offers decidedly average food, but wonderful views, and caught the ferry back.

We sat one table away from the bay area’s grumpiest woman, who had complained about so many aspects of her dining experience that the waitress had begun to show her frustration (and it’s not enough that you see that kind of attitude in service-culture-focussed America). The grumpy customer was not only complaining about her food, but she had also taken exception to the music. She asked if the inoffensive pop could be changed to some “light jazz”, to which the waitress responded (eventually, after initially fobbing her off by telling her she’d have to ask the manager) through gritted, slightly sarcastic teeth: “well, this is a seventies-themed restaurant; it’s been here for quite a while, actually…”

It worked, though. Before the grumpy woman left, the manager popped up and tore up her bill. Hmm, we thought: maybe we should try that one in future…

In case you’ve been wondering why the blogs have been appearing and disappearing quite erratically over the last few weeks, then I’d just like to point out that it is all the fault of my shoddy hosting provider.

The Paste website has been hosted through them F2S for years, and they always used to be extremely reliable, but since they were bought out by Pipex last year, things have rapidly gone down the pan. The most recent problems have been with their database server, which was down for a full 59 hours last weekend, and most recently for the whole of last night. If the database server goes down, then so do the blogs, so that’s why you might have seen this page looking a bit empty recently.

According to some disgruntled fellow customers on the user support forum, the problem can be resolved by typing one command on the server, but as there’s no one in the F2S office outside of normal working hours, if it happens during the weekend or overnight it won’t get fixed until shortly after 9AM on the next working day. Which is pretty poor.

I’d think about changing hosts, but I’m not sure if I can take the hassle. If this goes on for much longer I might have no choice, though. Grr.

Of course if you can read this, then everything is working fine. For now…

UPDATE Monday 9th October: Just for my own future reference, here is a list of some of the database outages so far:
– the evening of Tuesday September 26th, to the morning of Wednesday September 27th
– the evening of Friday September 29th, to the morning of Monday October 2nd (i.e. the entire weekend)
– the evening of Monday October 4th, to the morning of Tuesday October 5th
– the morning of Monday October 9th, until about lunchtime.

Hmm, now that’s some quality service there. If anyone can recommend a reliable alternative host, then I’ll be over there in a shot, but I’m worried that anything else I pick would be just as unreliable (and even if you can find a reliable host, then there’s nothing to stop Pipex popping up and screwing things up again…)

Well, I guess I should start at the beginning, then. We arrived in San Fran after a fairly uneventful flight, that was notable only for the ridiculous security hoops we had to jump through to get on it–the woman in front of us in the security line at Heathrow, for example, was carrying two bags: “Oh you can’t go through with two bags, madam,” said the security lady, before instructing her that she could only take them on if she put the smaller of the two bags inside the other one. That was fine, apparently. Then when we got to our gate Sal and I opted to hang back while everyone else queued up to get on, so by the time we got to go through they seemed to have pretty much given up actually searching people, and they were just asking everyone if they had any “matches, lighters, or liquids”. “Oh. I’ve got some matches,” said the man in front of us. “Oh no, those are safety matches”, said Mr Security. “You’re fine”. It’s nice to know the whole thing isn’t just a pointless charade, then.

The last couple of times we’ve arrived in the States it’s been through a New York airport, and it’s taken us no less than a hour to get through immigration. But San Fran was a breeze. Hardly any waiting at all, and before we knew it there were our bags rolling off the belt and we were off to the train station… where a train pulled in in front of us just as we arrived on the platform. Everything was working out perfectly, and clearly nothing could possibly go wrong.

Now, San Fran’s a big place, but I’d printed out some maps, and I figured that if we jumped off the train at Civic Center we could walk up to our hotel. It didn’t look that far, after all… Perhaps the alarm bells should have started ringing as we headed up the escalator to the sound of “would an officer of the SFPD please come to the main ticket hall… SFPD to the main ticket hall…”, but we set off anyway in the direction of our hotel through what turned out to be one of the more colourful parts of the city, with the kind of streets you might bring a film crew to to illustrate your documentary about the rich/poor divide in America. With each block our hotel seemed further away then ever, as we passed pan-handlers, druggies, and, towards the end, a strange old woman who tried to sell us some trinkets.

As if to reinforce the point, when we finally arrived at the hotel, one of the first things that the awfully cheery man at reception did was produce a map:

“Now here’s the area we don’t we you going in,” he said, drawing hatch marks over the Tenderloin, which we’d just crossed.
“Er, yeah, we just walked through that,” I said. “Interesting part of town.”
“Well,” his equally smiley co-worker pitched in “it doesn’t get much worse than that…”

Perhaps not the best first impression, but we’d arrived. It might have been a typically San Franciscan dismal, grey, foggy day outside, but we were here, at last.

Oh dear. So we’ve been back from our (2 week) holiday for over a week now, and I still haven’t got round to even thinking about blogging about it.

This may take some time.

In the meantime, a quick digression: could someone explain clothes sizes to me? Ok, so I understand the thing with women’s clothes sizings–they are based on some made up numbers like “10” or “14” that don’t actually relate to any underlying measurements of any sort, thus enabling manufacturers to change the size to whatever they like, making women feel better about themselves if they can fit into what purports to be a smaller size, and encouraging them to buy more. Over time, then, the actual dimensions of these hypothetical sizes gradually increase in some kind of clothes-based inflation scenario.

This much I get.

Men’s clothes, on the other hand, tend to be sold in non flexible units, like inches. I’ve always wondered why it’s so difficult to find a pair of jeans that fits me properly: perhaps the fashion industry is suffering from a severe shortage of tape measures, because it’s the only explanation I can think of why two pairs of jeans from different brands both purporting to have a 34 inch waist can in fact be such different sizes. I tried on a pair recently in the States in a shop called Old Navy (which is like a cheaper version of The Gap targeted at obese mid-westerners) that claimed to be a 34 inch waist, and Sal described the effect as looking like I’d just had weight loss surgery but hadn’t replaced my clothes yet.

Yesterday, out shopping in London, I found confirmation of what I’d long suspected: that men’s sizes are just as flexible as women’s, whatever the spurious use of “inches” or “centimetres” might lead you to believe. There’s a shop on Oxford Street where the men’s jeans have both EU/UK sizes and US sizes. Apparently a UK 34 inch waist is equivalent to a US 33 inch waist. Erm…?

We’re off to America tomorrow. Can’t wait.

That is all…

Ok, so I’m spectacularly behind. Where to begin?

Well, Edinburgh was great again this year. Our hotel sadly wasn’t quite as swanky as the Glasshouse, where we stayed last year, but much better located, being just a short walk away from the Underbelly, where we saw the most of our comedy gigs, including Robin Ince’s The Book Club, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would (and must make an effort to catch it when it’s back at the Albany) and the excellent Richard Herring.

After a full Saturday of comedy, we spent much of the Sunday daytime hanging around the Pleasance Courtyard, which, although sadly lacking the Hoegaarden/Leffe tent from last year, did instead have a bit at the back with some really comfy leather seats (and an exhibition about ashtrays, I mean what more could you want?) where we sat drinking for most of the day.

And it was from these seats, that we scored two seleb spots:

I dunno his name,
but it’s that bloke off Lovejoy

(not ian mcshane)

“Look!” says Sal, “it’s him.”
Next table, it’s Les Dennis
And! He broke his chair.

[I decided not to (a) ask him to do his Mavis Riley, or (b) tell him about how we had tickets to see him and his comedy partner of the time, Dustin Gee, in panto at the Southport theatre in January 1986, and were very disappointed that they were replaced by, of all people, Jim Bowen, because Dustin had died of a heart attack in the dressing room a few days earlier (and we used to joke at the time that this was because my dad had booked the tickets, because something always seemed to go wrong when he made the arrangements for something; looking back, I’m not sure that was entirely appropriate…)]

The only slight downer of our Edinburgh this year was, unfortunately, our last comedy event of the weekend: I’d taken a punt on some random stand-up by booking to see the BBC’s Stand Up Show Live. And it should have been really good, as this was the last show of the run, and all the compères from the whole month were on the bill together. I very much enjoyed Mark Watson, but much of the rest of the show just wasn’t as good as it could have been.

The bill also featured Phil Nichol, (not so) fresh from winning the Perrier (or whatever it’s called now) the previous evening. We’d seen him before, ages ago, at a Simon Amstell charity thing in London. I didn’t like him then, and I didn’t like him now. He’s supposed to be “outrageous” or something, but I just think he’s not very funny. His “Chinese Proclaimers” version of 500 Miles was particularly jarring: if this was Bernard Manning, I’m sure most of the room would have been rightfully appalled, but instead I found myself surrounded by people my own age laughing at what was essentially lazy 70s-esque racism. I’m not even sure if you could justify it as ironic or post-modern; I just thought it wasn’t very funny.

We returned, as last year, with serious colds, but unfortunately had a big week of stuff lined up: including Alex Lloyd at the Islington Academy, Beck at Shepherd’s Bush, and Ang’s final London Brick Lane curry (where we inadvertently ended up in Café Bangla, overlooked by the giant painting of Princess Diana, 9 years to the day after she died; it’s what she would have wanted, I’m sure).

Having triple-booked ourselves on Saturday night, Sal opted to go to the first of the night’s two birthday events, while I went to Beck with my workmates. That, of course, left me having to shift her ticket on the mean streets of She Bu. It wasn’t that hard: leaving my workmates in the Defector’s Weld I wandered over to the venue to pick up my tickets. Barely half way there, a tout had already offered to take my spare ticket off my hands, and it didn’t take much persuading for me to barter him up to the face value. That in itself tells me that I could have got a lot more for it (and he no doubt sold it on for an awful lot more), but if I needed any more evidence of this fact, then I guess the way that he was prepared to give me the money before I’d even picked up the ticket, walk down to the venue with me, and wait while I collected it, speaks volumes about how much in demand spare tickets were. Ah well.

I really enjoyed the gig, though–all of which was replicated in miniature by a set of puppets at the back of the stage (and I particularly enjoyed the video between the main set and the encore, filmed earlier in the day with the puppets messing about on the green). It was almost worth going just for that.

Oh, and just a quickie addendum: it seems that some kind of newspaper distribution war has broken out on the streets of London as of today: as I came out of Baker Street tonight, there was a guy handing out the Standard Lite standing right next to a very bored looking Evening Standard guy not selling any papers. I’m not sure how smart a business move that is.

Then, around the corner–presumably at whatever designated distance away from the tube they are required to remain–were swarms of thelondonpaper people (at least five different stands on the way back to our flat alone–have they gone for blanket coverage of the whole of central London?) I picked one up, you know, just to have a look, and actually had a guy slightly further down the street try to give me another copy of the same paper…

I mean, I’d love to see the Evening Standard go under as much as the next guy, but does it have to be Murdoch that does it? And with the resources he has to do so, it doesn’t really seem like a fair contest, does it?

Update: (05/09/2006) And today, walking home, I noticed that the Evening Standard guy hadn’t even bothered to turn up–driven out of business after one day by his sister paper. Slightly further down the street I saw a thelondonpaper guy standing on the corner with a stack of papers… and he was clearly so desperate to get rid of them that he’d taken to posting them through the open windows of the passing buses as they waited in traffic next to him.

…and as if to prove my own point, to myself: on Saturday morning Sal and I flew up to Edinburgh for a weekend at the fringe. Rather fortunately, we’d decided to fly from tiny toy airport London City, which meant that we could simply wander up to the security point and head straight through without any of that silly queueing nonsense we might have had to do at Heathrow. Of course we’d already conscientiously checked our explosive hair gel and deodorant into the hold, and we obediently removed our shoes so that they could pass through the X-Ray machine.

On the other side of security at City, as in most airports around the world, you are immediately confronted with the world of tat, cheap perfume, fags, and booze that is the duty free shop. There, anyone who wants them can find row upon row of glass bottles of alcohol, each with a little tag around the neck bearing the legend: “wherever you are flying today, you can take me on board”.

It’s slightly reassuring to note, I suppose, that in age when, as we are continually being reminded, we must all make compromises, capitalism bends for no man.

It’s a flawless system, obviously. I can’t think of anything dangerous that you could possibly do on a plane with a collection of glass bottles. Can you?

It’s been interesting following the reactions to Thursday’s “foiled” “terrorist attacks”. Of course, it’s easy to be cynical about all this: this, after all is the same police force that previously foiled a plot by a Brazilian electrician to use the tube to get to work (and then lied about it afterwards), as well as a couple of chaps in Forest Gate who plotted to spend the night sleeping in their homes. This, also, is brought to us by a government that’s previously told us, on the basis of some evidence they copied off of the internets, that Saddam Hussein was 45 minutes away from launching attacks, and that’s happy to roll a couple of tanks into Heathrow if it’s politically expedient to do so. I don’t want to be sceptical, but when faced with the government that cried terrorists, it’s hard not to be, just a little.

I’m curious about the new carry on baggage restrictions. It all seems, well, rather flawed. There’s a common reaction to terrorist atrocities, or attempted ones, that says that you shouldn’t change your plans or your life, otherwise (to use a crass, overused term) the terrorists have won. Sal and I certainly have no plans to cancel our trip to the US next month, assuming that our (BA) flight actually leaves and that we can physically be on it. I wonder, though, if by implementing the new carry on restrictions, and making travel that bit more of a hassle for all involved, we are, in effect, letting the terrorists win. After all, it’s not as if it would be difficult for anyone determined enough to find ways around the new restrictions. The only real losers are ordinary travellers (and light-fingered baggage handlers, the big winners…)

For a start, the carry on restrictions only apply to flights originating from the UK. So what’s to stop a potential terrorist from simply purchasing a return ticket and exploding their fizzy drinks on the way back? Do we plan to ban hand luggage on flights everywhere in the world? I can’t see that happening, somehow, especially considering that there are already glaring inconsistencies in the existing rules: on our flight from London to Australia in February this year, for example, we ate our in-flight meals between London and Singapore with plastic cutlery; on the Singapore to Melbourne leg, you get a metal fork. Both the concept that someone might instigate an attack with cutlery, and the idea that they are only likely to do so in certain parts of the world, make no sense whatsoever.

Another gaping hole in the new rules is that, once you are through security, you can buy whatever you like from the air-side shops. Although you still can’t take toothpaste and liquids on flights to America, everything else is fair game. So what’s to stop our terrorist groups from simply planting a few staff members in key positions at the airport and getting whatever they want to get onto the plane that way. Should we attempt to eliminate risk further by stopping serving food and drinks on planes? Should we close all the airport shops at Heathrow? Somehow I can’t see BAA agreeing to that one.

Maybe you can think of some loopholes of your own; I’m sure there are many. If this incident (which was apparently an attempt to circumvent the existing security procedures simply by using materials they couldn’t detect) proves anything, it’s that for any security system one person cares to devise, there will always be another person prepared to go to whatever lengths it takes to defeat it. Perhaps rather than introducing ever more restrictive rules on what you can and cannot take on a plane, we should try to address the root cause, by looking at what drives people to want to indiscriminately murder people by blowing up a commercial airliner.

I’ll close with some figures I found on the interwebs.

– Approximate seating capacity of 10 jumbo jets: 3,000 – 4,000
– Approximate civilian deaths in Afghanistan, October – December 2001: 3,800 (source: BBC News)
– Approximate civilian casualties in the Iraq war to date: 40,000 (source: Iraq Body Count)
– Approximate civilian casualties in Lebanon – Israel conflict: 1,120 (source BBC News)

See, there I was, just innocently trying to pay off my credit card, when I entered a bizarre world of circular logic:

So I try to email them to let them know that there may be a teeny weeny bug in the error-checking logic here. The web form that they give you for typing messages to them is about 1 inch square, but I write a detailed summary of the problem anyway, knowing this will more than likely be read by an idiot somewhere who won’t actually understand me (and/or care). I click send. Gah! For some ridiculous reason they are limiting the number of characters your are allowed to type in the message to 255. (Why? How can you say anything in 255 characters?) At this point I have already written 4 times as much as this, and consequently end up spending the next 10 minutes editing this down into increasingly incomprehensible txt spk. I click send again and despair. I’m still waiting for them to respond with a form response addressing some entirely different issue. I dunno why I bother.