Border Hopping

Right now I’m across the border in Mexico in a city called Tijuana. Tom and Susan dropped me at the Greyhound bus stop in downtown LA and I met the boys without too much hassle. I say ‘boys’ because Jon and I have joined two of his old friends from uni, Paul and Figgis, who are doing the next leg of the journey with us. When I met them there seemed to be a distinct pirate theme going on: Figgis had an outrageous limp worthy of a peg leg and Paul had a giant eye patch (I thought it was a fashion accessory, but after two days discovered it was a cover for an eye infection). I did not feel I was being placed in to very compotent hands – but they are both wonderful guys!

Driving across the border was easy – nothing was checked. It’s the other way that’s the problem. The border is called ‘La Linea’ which literally means ‘The line’. I kind of had this idea that countries fade in to each other – that you get a gradual change that you barely notice. Not so here: you cross over through customs and suddenly you are in another world. First it’s the pollution that hits you, then the noise, the crazy driving, the spanish language. Then you get on a bus with no doors and a crazy driver swinging round corners and untamed vallleys filled with shanty settlements stuffed with people trying to make their final leap across the border. Saw a Mexican guy get arrested by the American police after he ran out on to the motorway and was nearly killed by trying to skip the barriers. The whole of that border area is dominated by ’la linea’; car mechanics earn their money as Americans come over to have their cars fixed by cheap labour, people sell tourist tack to travellers, taxis charge you horrendous prices for distances foreigners don’t understand etc.

Our hostel is a dodgy little place up in Mexican suburbia filled with dirty cute mongrel pups, little kids with lollipops and commuters. The ceiling kinda sags in a bit but I like it. It’s owned by a quite old man and his (seemingly younger) mother who shouts a lot and seems happiest when she is complaining. So far we have spent two nights there and every day has been dominated by going back over the border to try and buy a car (buying one in Mexico means the boys passing a driving test here in Spanish it seems). It’s been REALLY hard work; trecking across the border every morning and catching a million busses around San Ysidero trying to find a cheap car that works. We thought the two requirements might turn out to be mutually exclusive but today we found a gem: a bright red 4 by 4 for $1100. We found it in a dodgy old scrap yard slightly out of town but we’ve checked it over and we’re going in with the money tomorrow after registering it with the DMV. Then we’re importing it to Mexico and we’re AWAY!.

Los Angles Ctd.

I finally got to meet Nancy, and she was the exact opposite of David. We went to a small talk at a nearby library where everyone was dressed in jeans and t-shirts: Nancy was wearing 3 inch black heels with a very designer silver grey dress and a pair of very designer glasses. She had black hair and was possibly the thinnest person I have ever seen. Her skin had obviously become accustomed to loads of incredibly expensive moisturisers and it made me think of rose petals stretched around her frame. She had a beautifully soft voice, a delicate West coast accent and laughed after almost everything. They are an incredibly well off pair, but they loved to go to the cheapest and most ethnic restaraunts that they could find – Nancy still dressed to the hilt. I really liked that about them – they’d go to the areas that stars would never dream of going to and have a great time.     

The next morning I woke up early again in my uncurtained apartment and, after having some water listening to ’What the Hell am I doing drinking in LA?’ caught a bus downtown. Felt like Kilburn Highroad squared – kind of dirty, loads of immigrants and quirky computer repair stores and jewellery shops that I’m sure nobody uses and probably only serve as cover operations for dodgy dealing. Some of the parts got really unnerving quite quickly – in England you get a lot of homeless people but far fewer of them seem to have mental illnessess. Since I’ve been in the US I’ve been shocked by just how many homeless people have some kind of disability. I didn’t even go to the worst parts (Inglewood, Compton etc) which are generally located to the South of the city. Felt very proud of myself simply for finding an internet cafe, some plasters and being able to catch a bus home again. I had meant to find some presents for Nancy and David but you just try buying presents for a minimalist! In the end I just bought David some hiking socks and left them with a card apologising to Nancy that they weren’t Gucci.

I was meeting my next hosts in Santa Monica which the large black female bus driver informed me was ‘a laaaaaong way’. After sitting on the bus for almost an hour I met a stereotypical LA boy who started talking to me about which celebrities I found ‘hot’ (anybody who knows me knows that I don’t know anything about any celebrity – he was quite disgusted). When he found out I was travelling from Vancouver to Venezuela he said, ‘What’s the point? If you want to get to Venezuela why don’t you just fly there?’ Still, I managed to make it to Santa Monica which is the exact opposite of downtown; all clean pastel shades, walkways, dignified chain shops and those mock Spanish buildings with terracotta rooves. That’s the thing with LA; it’s the city of a thousand cities spread as it is over an incredibly large area with an unbelievable diversity of regions.

I met my new hosts in their gold lexus and inbuilt GPS system that told you the ‘rowt’. Tom and Susan are lovely people – both high quality law academics who love great food, wine and company. They took me to their home in Malibu which is on the Pepperdine campus where they work – great views, swimming pool etc. The campus is so pretty – it looks like one of those model towns that are used to present what a finished settlement is going to look like – the lawns are almost artificially bright green.

Los Angeles

Joel and Susan kindly agreed to drive us to LA where I was dropped off in Los Feliz. I met my next host, a guy called David who grew up in Northumberland. He’d just come back from shopping and I got the impression he was very productive as he simultaneously unpacked, told me about LA, made me feel welcome and made me a drink. He told me that I would be staying in ‘Nancy’s Apartment’ and my God did it need the capitalisation. Nancy is his partner who also happens to be a top artist in LA. She lives in the top floor penthouse of a building that only resides artists, just opposite MacArthur park. Her apartment must have been about the size of a gym and it was totally minimalist – the only thing in it was a table that was so expensive and so arty you couldn’t put anything on it. The floor could not be walked on with shoes – it was a sort of smokey black haematite with a special gloss and wax all over it that you could feel on the soles of your feet when you slipped your flip flops back on. All the walls were white. The whole place echoed. But by far the most incredible thing about it was the view; one incredibly long wall was entirely made of glass and looked out on the whole of LA spread out before you at night with all it’s colours shining. David informed me that this was mine for as long as I was here and promptly left me open mouthed, bags still in hand, staring around this incredible place. The first thing I did was to put my ipod on and dance all around the room. I slept on an invisible fold out black fouton with no pillows and felt very arty. Couldn’t believe I was a squatter on a deck chair a few nights ago.

The next day David took me out for a hike in the Santa Monica mountains. He put an end to my optomistic insistence that I could hike in flip flops by taking me to Walmart to get some $17 hiking boots. Boy was I grateful; the hike took place at over 6000ft (how can there be mountains like this so close to the city?!) and my heart was all a flutter (David said it was because of him but I suspect it was actually the low air pressure and lack of oxygen). I started to feel really weird in the heat and the prospect of rattle snakes and the air pressure so we came back down. Still got quite a long way though – David is a trooper! He’s also a big 80s fan so we winded down the hills blasting Annie Lennox etc.    

Las Vegas

We were picked up from the Greyhound Station by a wonderful man called Joel who is proudly in love with Las Vegas and Whitecastle burgers. Joel is a friend of the family and we went to stay at his house with his wife Susan, a wonderfully kind woman who loves her family and has an acute popsickle addiction. I don’t really understand why people want to retire to Las Vegas (maybe a larger American version of granny bingo players?) but there is massive residential construction going on just off the freeways.

What can I say about Las Vegas? It’s fast – the population in 1900 was 30 – now it’s over 1 million. These casinos in the desert were made possible by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado river which provides virtually all of the city’s flashing lights, air conditioning and neon signs. Most of the cit’s most famous attractions are spread along ‘The Strip’; a huge uncurving road that is lined with hotels, casinos, malls and places where you can get drive through weddings for $99 (I kindly declined Jon’s offer – he told me we’d have to get a drive through divorce the next morning anyway).

I was prepared for a lot, but I wasn’t prepared for the *scale* of this place; the classic names like Caesar’s Palace, the Mirage and the Venetian aren’t single buildings but take up entire blocks. I also wasn’t prepared for the tackiness of it (Joel calls is ’schlack’ in Yiddish) – some of the casinos looked more like theme parks than classy institutions – the sphinx next to the Pyramid is about ten times the real thing: it’s a gambler’s Disneyland. Jon and I went out to the stip straight after our two-night-bedless-sleep and I was absolutely phased… As you wonder in to the casinos the first thing that you notice is the wave of airconditioning that smacks you in the face and makes your heart sort of palpatate. Once you’re inside it’s easy to get confused between what’s real and what’s not: the climate is manufactured; you get the odd rainforest in the middle of the building or a set of imported white tigers staring at you; the Venetian has a chlorine set of canals that run through it where you can ride on gondolas; some of the corridors of the malls are designed to look exactly like streets with fake cobbled streets and there are fake skies painted on high ceilings with their own lighting systems that go through sunset, night and day. The exits aren’t well sign posted and you can wonder through these places for miles and miles. You can wonder from malls straight in to huge gamling rooms filled with slot machines that flash, make loud whirring noises and congratulate you as if you’ve won the lottery when you’ve won 0.2% of what you put in. Then you’ve got the ‘crap tables’ where you shoot crap and snigger at the name of the game and the sports gamling halls filled with screens where you can bet on anything from women’s hoops to dog racing and the poker rooms where the sound of chips jangling is just like the continuous furious hum of crickets. Your senses are assaulted from all sides.

The casinos are organised so that different tables have different minimum bets and if you put up enough they even give you a private room. Jon and I wondered in to a room where the minium bet was $5,000 and talked to one of the dealers there. I asked him if he gambled himself and he said, ‘Are you crazy? These places don’t look like this because people win.’ It feels like an epitomy of the States: everyone knows the odds are stacked against them, but people still know that there is a small chance of making it big and that they might just be the one to do it. The problem is, whether you’re trying to win in Las Vegas or succeed in the US in general, that not everyone can win. You see people at the slot machines and I honestly thought it was quite sad – the game involves virtually no skill, it’s addictive and it takes your money. If you thought money brought power and respect in other places it makes you a God here. If you’re well known for placing high bets you can be offered a free 5* room in a hotel, but if you aren’t playing enough money you’ll get a tap on the shoulder to remind you that you should be bidding higher. It’s crazy to see so much money around; I saw single chips that were worth $2500 each and I saw a man loose $20,000 at the roll of a dice.

I think my favourite part was coming out of the casinos. It had got darker since we’d been inside and the hot air was blowing strong – a storm was coming. All the clouds were purple and the palm trees were shaking and forks of lightning were coming down on all sides next to the flashning lights and neon signs.

Santa Barbara

Jon and I arrived here in the evening. The coach journey is beautiful – the Greyhound even leaves Highway 5 for a while and takes the smaller 101 which runs right next to the coast. When we arrived we quickly discovered that we should have booked ahead – everywhere was booked out on Saturday night. Following the tramps, we put our stuff in a nearby trolley and pushed it several miles to the Salvation Army (desperate times call for…). However, even the Sally army was bursting at the seams so we pushed our trolley on a few more miles. I stopped and asked a few motel owners if they had any space and even when they thought I was a single girl travelling on my own there was ‘no room at the inn’. Christian Spirit still going strong it seems. My God it must be horrific to be homeless. With no dinner and no ceiling I was rapidly turning in to psycho bitch – Jon only managed to surpress her by feeding her a bag of cookies for dinner. In the end, we crept on to a hotel’s grounds and curled up on some balcony deck chairs in our sleeping bags. We got a few points and stares in the night, but when we woke up we had the best view over the bay. Used the motel toilet and self righteously told the motel owner that I’d slept very well thank you and luckily hadn’t been murdered the night before.

Had a really good day in the end. Santa Barbara wasn’t as pretty as I thought it was going to be though. It’s a small place that has a lot of money – used to be LA’s playground. The basic town is a ‘T’; the ’stalk’ being the pretty red-tiled State Street, filled with shops, restaraunts and cafes which hits the coast at a right angle along a sandy coastline. We were lucky enough to be there on a Sunday so we got to see the weekly craft fair that’s held there. We also went swimming twice to avoid the heat and hung out in some cheap Mexican restaraunts that surpassed the Taco Bell.

Perhaps the thing that moved me most in the place was a weekly memorial held in the white sands of the coast. The sand is covered with white crosses, over 2500 in total, each one representing a death of a troop in Iraq. I’m not very good at conceptualising figures but seeing rows and rows of these crosses, each one decorated with photos, stickers and messages from the troops’ families was unbelievably moving. Seeing them in the sand like that also made you think of the deserts of Iraq. The people organising the demonstration were portraying their message as apolitical; it doesn’t matter if you are for or against the war in Iraq, the number of deaths there is simply horrific.

Our coach was due to leave at 4:30am so we went to a late night cinema showing of an “inconvenient Truth”; an ecological lecture given by Al Gore on how we should all be panicking about global warming. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good lecture, and things are clearly (and very simply) explained. There was however a few graph axis that are left unlabelled and a few scenes that are simply there to boost Gore’s political reputation. Needless to stay I was sucked in – I think he should stand again for President.

With a few more hours to kill we slept on the beach (apparantly Santa Barbara is the most expensive city in the US – for us it’s been the cheapest!) but got turfed off by a policeman at 2:30am. Padded our way hysterical with tierdeness to the Greyhound Station and took up our positions in our sleeping bags next to the other homeless until our bus came to take us to Las Vegas.

Taco Bell

Don’t ever go here.
As Jon aptly put it, ‘Dog food in a damp sanitary napkin’

Santa Cruz

Caught a Greyhound to go and meet Jon who was staying in Santa Cruz with some old uni friends. Full of liberal relaxed people, similar to Brighton, where everyone smokes a lot of pot. We went down the ‘Boardwalk’ which is an over commercialised pier with loads of fun fair rides, games and food. Went on a rollarcoaster which (I’d never admit to Jon) was actually really cool. On the way home Jon picked me up to carry me across the road and we got stopped by some kind of robo-cop, “Do you know J-walking is AGAINST the LAW?” Jon was convinced he had a 4 foot scaffolding bar wedged up his sphincter. I replied in my best British accent, ‘I’m sorry Sir, the sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t see the traffic light.’ He paused as his cyborg brain computed the information, his dark glasses shining. Terminator style he replied, ‘The sun is THAT way’ his metallic arm pointing out that the sun could have been nowhere near my eyes on that side of the road. There was a pause as my brain blue screened, 3 years of Oxford education unable to find a response. His eyes locked he wedged himself back on to his bike and rode off in to the flames, ‘Just be sure not to do it again.’

San Francisco Ctd

Anyone who has seen me in the last year knows that my hair has died and gone to hell (NEVER dye your hair black). With precisely $3, I walked out of the house and pledged not to come back without one. I walked in to the classiest hairdressers in to Pacific Heights in jeans with a jar of peanut butter under my arm. There were three plastic receptionists who I approached, asking them to take pity on me. I said I’d sweep their floors for a day if anyone would do anything to my hair. They sat me down, gave me a variety of free beverages and an appointment with their top consultant who trained with Vidal Sassoon. I was then given a free haircut with two stylists working at the same time for 3 and a half hours. One problem: when I sat on the chair and they started discussing my hair I suddenly realised that, if you don’t pay, you have 0 say over the finsished product. When it comes to my hair however, I think this may have been a good thing. I walked out feeling, not for the first time, very jammy, the peanut butter under my arm now feeling like a cool accessory rather than a cheap practical necessity.

Haircut achieved, my next host, a guy called John, came and picked me up. He lives one block over from Haight Street in a cute little apartment that actuually has a *turret*. He also graduated in 1997, works at Microsoft and seems to be living a student lifestyle in a highly professional job (I mean that as a compliment rather than an insult). He has a wonderful way of doing things for you in a silent and invsible manner so you never feel bad about taking things from him. I met his wonderful political freeriding flatmate and his curly haired work mate over an Indian in Haight Street. Why don’t Americans eat more Indian? It’s sooo good. Typical PPEist I embarassed myself by ensuring the entire conversation was dictated by debates on democracy, trade unions and human nature….I think I may have scared my hosts in to going to bed early that night and, come to think of it, the next day they promptly moved out leaving me to have the apartment for myself for another night!

The next morning I headed down Haight Street to the Golden Gate Park. Haight Street is really cool – left over from the Beat poets and the summer of love it’s full of crazy hippy shops selling weird and wacky things to weird and wacky people. Felt a bit like a less commercialised version of Camden. California State has legalised cannabis for medicinal purposes (although this is against federal law and highly controversial) and Haight Street is full of clinics where you can pick it up on prescription. Well, I say clinics, but they are stuffed full of bongs, posters etc – looks more like Amsterdam than a health service. Interviewed one of the ‘doctors’ who invited me in for a joint to discuss the issue at some length…(of course I disscussed the issue and declined the joint).

Golden Gate park was pretty cool – feels really refreshing because its being sprinkled the whole time. Evil personified guards the gates to the Japanese tea garden though – watch out if you go there.

Pacific Heights

I’m now staying in Pacific Heights – a very classy district in the North West of San Fran. As I caught bus number 45 from downtown I got my first taste of the people here by being adopted by a polished-to-the-point-of-greasy guy who was wearing a blue and white striped shirt and had alarmingly white teeth. Is ‘yuppie’ a word that is used in the US? It wouldn’t surprise me if it was invented here. Anyhow, got a text from a random number that said ‘running late’ and assumed it must be from my next host (who, the Wolfs had told me, was a bit of a radical character). A local restaurant owner took me in, fed me copious cookies and talked to me until my host came and picked me up. The first thing that you notice about Julian is his huge size; he is very tall and muscular and spends a lot of time swimming around the bay in a very hard-core manner. The second thing you notice is his lively sense of humour that instantly puts you at ease. He is very good at accents and it is great to stay with someone who does not think that there is a generic ‘British accent’. He loaded me up with guidebooks and, after a few jokes about how Row-the-veggie ought to eat a jar of peanut butter before dinner to keep her strength up he took me to a lovely Vietnamese restaurant. We spent most of the evening comparing the flexibility of our faces: he was very impressed with my Mexican wave eyebrow trick but I was less impressed with his ear waggling. Aaah the intellectual interaction that occurs between Oxford graduates… We came back to his apartment, which is a lovely little place that has been beautifully decorated (remind me to do a Julian and get an interior designer as a room mate). The view here is incredible too – really high up!

Because Julian has to work (apparently it takes money to rent a flat like his ) I amused myself for a day by walking about 1000 miles. Pacific Heights is a beautiful area to dawdle round – little boutique shops with frilly dresses for the girls, sports shops for the guys selling signed rugby balls, oars and stripy ’sweaters’ that are more for decoration than practicality. There are also loads of little roadside cafes and restaraunts where you can sit and admire the restored Victorian houses. Little parks perch on top of steep hills where the affluent walk their dogs during sun set after work. I sat in Lafayette Park reading and taking it all in. Earlier I’d walked up to the Golden Gate bridge (not a pedestrian thing to do here it seems as I walked under motorways etc.) through the Presido and right up the hill to the point where the bridge starts. Couldn’t get that 7/8 people commit suicide a month figure out of my head – they’d posted phone booths with counseling numbers around but no fences had been put up to stop people jumping (spoil the view don’t you know). As soon as you walk on to the bridge you’re hit with the roaring of the traffic hurtling past and then by the Pacific wind that slaps you in the face whilst electrocuting your hair. Despite California’s sunny reputation it gets cold and windy on the edge of San Fran’s exposed peninsula. Fantastic experience though – the bridge takes an hour to walk across and back and the view is mind blowing. You can see the whole of San Francisco spread out before you; the Bay Bridge leading in to it and Alcatraz swimming in the middle of this deep blue green water like a mine. You’re incredibly high up and the bridge shakes a little when something heavy goes by. Far below you can see the huge tanker ships coming in under the bridge from East Asia loaded with goods, ‘H Y U N D A I’ often printed on the side.

Suburbian Wolfs

I didn’t know what the ‘BART’ (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system was, but I knew I had to get on it to meet my next hosts. It turned out that it’s a tube line (not just what Homer says to his son when he’s angry). For all my ranting about shit public transport system in the US the BART seems clean, safe and reliable. This might be because it is designed to take rich suburbanites to and from the city centre – for once people are using public transport not because they can’t afford/use private transport, but because it is more conventient to go public. Anyhow, turned out there is a difference between ‘North Berkeley’ and ‘Berkeley’ so I went to the wrong place. Managed to find my hosts in the end though – and what a pair! George and Patty Wolf are a wonderful couple. George graduated from Balliol in 1944 and his wife graduated from St Hildas and remembers when teh only form of heating in Oxford was a lit fire in every room. George is a quiet intelligent man with a sparkle in his eye that lets you know he’s got your joke. His wife Patty is a wonderfully dressed eccentric woman who reminded me of my art teacher. She is also quite outspoken, the first thing she said to me being, ‘Your internet photo is most unflattering’. They have converted their garage in to a full scale flat which they gave to me for several nights! Can’t get over these American beds: I starfished over twice and still didn’t fall off. Patty had made a wonderful home cooked meal and, since I had been stupid and not informed them I was vegetarian, I decided to eat the chicken rather than cause a fuss (BAD vegetarian). Damn good though (Dad: this does not mean I’m coming back over to the carnivorous side).

In the morning I was presented with an amazing breakfast: home made lemon marmalades with homegrown fruit from their incredible garden, freshly baked bread, home made muesli etc. It seems that not all Americans eats manufactured bull shit. I then confused my hosts by requesting to walk around the area: ‘Walk?! Around the AREA?!’ It was fascinating for me though – sububia in the US seems to be suburbia squared. Away from the coast, Berkeley Suburbia is hot and homogenous – it is purely residential, perfect gardens and well off people. I did pass one black woman, but the fact that I noticed her skin colour cannot be a good sign.

Patty told me that a group of residents had come together to restore and maintain a local fountain at the centre of Berkeley. It reminded me of the Palace of Fine Arts where private contributions (particularly from Levis) and rich civil society groups are filling the role normally played by the state in the UK.

Also checked out California State University, one of the few state funded universities in the US that can compete with the big leagues (Californian exceptionalism?). CSU was the site of major anti-war protests in the past – Vietnam in particular – and I think it is now a hotbed of anti-Bush anti-Iraq action. How many Americans have died in Iraq now? 1/9 of those that died in Vietnam?

After another delicious homemade lunch the Wolf’s drove me to a place called Tiburon. I hated it although no one could deny it was beautiful – it was full of over expensive little shops on Ark Row selling overly expensive things – tack posing as art. The streets look like car shows everyone is so rich. I bought the Wolfs’ a coffee and some kind of expensive baked good with a pretentious name and then we came back. The best thing about the whole trip was seeing the clouds roll in low over the mountain valleys and obscuring the Golden Gate Bridge. George says its where the cold air of the Pacific meets the warm urban heat island and condenses in to cloud. I thought that was a plausible explanation but Patty told me not to believe a word of it.