Philosophies

About a month ago I met up with an old high school friend in Berkeley. She started talking to me about how her political views had shifted. Once she considered herself a fairly far-left leaning liberal, but after attending college at Berkeley and being around students and residents, she just became a regular liberal.

When I talk to my best friend on the phone, I tell her that I now know that the hippies up here differ from the hippies down in Los Angeles. Actually, I don't even think Angeleno "hippies" can be classified as hippies.

After hanging out with some classmates tonight, I felt like I was the most conservative person there, even though I know I'm not. I guess my "materialistic" outlook on Birckenstock's (I associated these shoes with lazy, and poorly dressed people) gave it away that I was not a "Nor Cal" resident. Birkenstock's are just okay, and are not terribly comfortable.

I miss Los Angeles, and I miss Patrick. I just want to go home already.

President's day weekend

While riding the Flyaway bus back to Westwood, I couldn't help but over a conversation between two male strangers.

Sacramento Guy: So why do we celebrate President's Day weekend anyway?
Phoenix Guy: I don't know. That's a good question.
Sacramento Guy: Why President's Day, why not Vice President's day?
My thought bubble: He didn't just say that. We celebrate it FOR LINCOLN'S AND WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAYS.

Angeleno

I never left Los Angeles until now, and I lived in Los Angeles the longest out of all my siblings. I stayed in L.A. for college. For a long time, up until I graduated from UCLA, I always complained about Los Angeles, saying that one day I would leave.

I left.

However, now that I am in the Bay Area, I realized how much I miss home, how much I miss the it. I honestly am not that excited about San Francisco (nor am I impressed by San Franciscans attitudes towards their southern counterpart). Don't get me wrong, I think San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area communities are nice and pleasant, but it just is not home to me. I prefer the warmer weather. I miss the older ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles. I miss the hiking trails. I miss biking around Santa Monica. I admit the transit is terrible in Los Angeles, but despite the traffic, I still prefer it down there.

Most of all, I actually miss the socio-economic and political issues in the city.

As my professor said, when he found out I was from LA, "Don't tell anyone from the Bay Area that you ACTUALLY like Southern California."

I figured that out last semester already.

Adventures in the Bay

It has almost been two months since I moved up to San Jose, and in all honesty I haven't done a lot. The first two weeks of my stay in the third largest city in California led me to a wine tasting adventure with my sister, Ray and their friends in Napa. The following weekend I headed out to Yosemite with the usual crew, and the usual excess amount of people on our campsite. I miss camping because I can eat as much as I want and still not feel bad about my food consumption because of all the activity I do. But as usual, I digress.

Things up here have been fairly mellow. I have been going to classes, and I kept up with the reading for the first four weeks. Now I have fallen a little behind. There is one class in particular that I do not care for, but I won't mention which one it is. It requires writing "Reflective Memos" after each assignment. I find these "short memos" (in which case, they are never truly short) to be somewhat helpful, but mostly it annoying and a waste of time. Reflective memos I feel work better as an in class assignment, but that's my opinion.

I met up with an old roommate of mine from UCLA. We lived together our first year when we transferred to UCLA, and then had an unmentioned falling out. Over the years I felt bad for how things went between us, and for a while I thought our rift and differences were enhanced by another roommate, whom shall remain anonymous. Anyway, I met up with her and some mutual friends in the City. That was fun because I don't know San Francisco very well and I got to see some old college friends. We actually met up again last weekend, playing Outburst and Transamerica. It ended up being a double date on accident at a Stanford graduate recreation room. That was a lot of fun too. And yes, Patrick came up to visit me last weekend. I had gone down to Los Angeles the previous weekend.

Patrick and I doing well considering the fact that we had never been separated for a long extended period of time. We see each other about twice a month, whenever possible. We also talk on the phone every night. I miss him a lot. I miss our conversations at night, and watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report together. I miss our evening walks. Despite our separation, we're managing. Luckily for us, we only live a few hours away by driving or an hour flight's time. It isn't the worst case scenario, but it certainly isn't a great one either way.

When I went back to Los Angeles, I saw Patrick, my family, and my friend Sonya. I went to to the UCLA vs. Fresno State game and met up with my friends Kim and Dan and proceeded with a tailgate. Fresno beat UCLA, but not by much. That is a vast improvement over the last few games UCLA played. I didn't get to see a lot of people when I went down to LA, but at least I saw some of my good friends. Always a plus.

Now I am back in San Jose, going to classes, wishing I was back on the quarter system. The semester goes by so slowly, and it is extremely painful to sit through a class when you dislike it. I'm already on week five of school, and I think to myself, my God if this were UCLA I'd be half way done with this hellish course. Of course, I am not so fortunate. Oh yes, and I brought my bike back with me. Riding around San Jose is like riding around Nebraska. Flat. Whatever strength I had climbing hills quickly diminished when I left my bike in Los Angeles. Now, I feel it is non-existant. Ah well. That's my life in a nutshell.

Please save me.

Moving

Last night, while I was lying in bed, I thought about how I was going to move to San Jose in roughly about a month. And I thought about all the experiences I had gone through in Los Angeles, reflecting back on my childhood along with all the momentous events that occurred when I was growing up. These thoughts didn't keep my up for long, but I just kept looking back at my life and what I had done.

Before I leave Los Angeles for school I want to chronicle the time I spent as a kid. Return to my memories, or what memories I have left. Whether or not you know this, I spent a lot of time helping my parents out at their restaurants. My parents were (and still are technically) immigrants who owned a small family business that was handed down to them by my grandfather. For the first portion of my childhood I could have been found on West Adams and Crenshaw serving coffee and eating mashed potatoes in an old 1940's coffee shop. That was J&R Cafe. There isn't anything left of that place since it burned down in the Los Angeles Riots. I never went with my family to visit the smoldering site, sifting through the ashes looking for anything that may have survived. I just remember my parents finding scorched quarters at the site, and nothing else. A photo I remember to this day was lost in Riots. It was of me and my mother standing side by side while I held a coffee pot. Oh yes, I am certain that helping out my parents probably violated some sort of child labor law but it happens.

Sometimes I go through the packed boxes in our garage and still find a menu from J&R. I tried to picture in my head last night what the coffee shop looked like, and what the lay out was. Orange chairs lined the diner, with about four tables that were perpendicular to the side wall. The swinging doors leading to the kitchen and the hallway that led to the back entrance and restrooms. I remember growing up listening to music on a juke box in that store. But mostly, I remember the customers, our family friends, that came like clockwork to our restaurant. Many of them were African American who were most likely involved with the Civil Rights movement. I remember them, and I wish I could go back and ask all these questions about their lives, about changing times... historical oral accounts. But they are all gone now. I remember all their nicknames, and names. Family friends. And we lost contact with most of them once my parents moved to the present work location.

So my journey will be to photograph (as an amateur of course) the changing direction my life has taken throughout the years. I am trying to document the way I have seen Los Angeles through my personal memory and present day evidence. On occasion I do drive past our old coffee shop. All that is left is the parking lot. The corner lot is still empty from what I recall, and the corner gas station, which used to be a 76, is now different. The burger joint across the street is gone, and on the south-east corner stands a bbq place. Our neighbors, who were sandwiched between the old run down theater and the gas station were small business shop keepers who sold African garments and other miscellaneous things. Our direct business neighbors were the Diamond family who ran a furniture store. And in 1979 we bought their house in North Hollywood, the house I spent my entire childhood in.

Leaving Los Angeles

Sometimes when I think about home, I do think about Los Angeles. There is this stereotype that, most likely based on some truth, Angelenos hate living in their own city, fueled by negative press, events, and traffic. I have spent my entire life here in Los Angeles. At some point in my life, I did resent living in L.A. because I never cared much for the night life, the glamor of Hollywood, the suburbs that fill every crevice here. I was much too cynical to have the desire to go out and party. To this day I still haven't really been to a club, and I prefer dive bars any time over a fancy bar like... well see this is the problem, I don't know any of the fancy bars. But I love the City, despite the awful traffic congestion. I run into former residents who complain about the lack of trails here, the lack of cycling opportunities. Those two complaints can be easily rebuffed.

When I move to San Jose I will miss hiking in the chaparral environment, I will miss the towering San Gabriel Mountains and the close proximity to the beach. It will be strange to move back to suburban America since I have spent the last four years fixated in the West Los Angeles region. I might be closer to the ski slopes, but I will miss the proximity of going to a good hiking trail that will challenge me. I will miss going to the Farmers market in Brentwood and Santa Monica every Sunday. Most of all, I will miss cycling along the Pacific Coast Highway and conquering the Pepperdine hill in Malibu. There will be new and numerous recreational opportunities for me in San Jose. I just wanted it to be known that I don't hate L.A. and that I actually love the sprawling city. I call L.A. home, despite everything I have witnessed first hand, studied, and been affected by. And I've met some of the most wonderful and amazing people in my life because of this city. Those are the most cherished memories for me. Not to mention that I went to the best damn University in California: UCLA ;)

The Return

Despite all the complaints I had about my job, I realized that I actually grew from my experience here. For the life of me I never felt compelled to work in the public sector, yet here I am, working for "The Man" doing a public service by providing communities the opportunity to enjoy parkland space, whether it was a traditional recreational facility or open space for hiking, horseback riding or trail riding.

It hasn't quite sunken in that I will be returning to school for my Master's. My Master's... I never would have thought that I would actually be obtaining (or at least trying to) that degree. Most of my friends are already in graduate school, doing either research or in a professional setting. A great majority of my friends are in the Health Sciences field (off the top of my head J, D, P, K and K). There are a few law students here and there... but again, many of the people I keep in contact with are furthering their educational career.

I'm a bit apprehensive about returning to school as I have not written any sort of paper in depth or at a great length in a long time. Nor have I researched a topic of interest. The last academic book I read was about Los Angeles and planning. Hopefully this won't be too much of a problem, but again, I am a little apprehensive and scared. And yes, I will have to submit a thesis, defending my dissertation. There have been a few topics I have been toying with, such as urban revival and gentrification. In there comes the biggest issue we still continue to face today: affordable housing for the working class people. Who knows what I end up doing. Let's hope I know soon so I can finish the program in two years.

Fiasco

Yesterday I ran into a few complications at the Philadelphia airport: my connecting flight in Chicago was canceled. Now, my friend Kim (who so kindly housed me during my trip) told me that Philadelphia was notoriously known for bad customer service. I must admit that this is true, and was perhaps the only thing that I disliked regarding the city's people.

Anyway, I actually received decent help from the woman at the counter of Southwest airlines. She wanted to try to find me a "direct" flight from Philly to Los Angeles, with one stop either at Phoenix or Las Vegas. But due to inclement weather (and the few direct flights from Philly to LA), all the flights were either booked full or had to go through Chicago. See the problem was that a snow/ice storm came through the mid-west, delaying or canceling all the flights in and out of Chicago. Fine, there's nothing I can do to control the weather. After about five minutes of the woman trying to help me, I started stressing out a lot. I honestly didn't care about having two connecting flights because I wanted to get out of Philly as soon as possible, especially when the weather reports stated that there would be possible snow fall later in the day (and having more flights delayed). Yet the woman at the check-in counter kept trying to insist that I have a direct out of Philly at 2:00 pm. I politely declined. First, I know that Southwest is notorious for being late. Second, I was not going to stay an additional five and a half hours to get a direct flight home. Third, seeing how the flight was leaving at 2:00 in the afternoon, I did not want to end up with the possibility of being stuck in Philly. So finally after twenty minutes, she found a flight for me to go into Houston, and from Houston to Los Angeles. Of course, with my luck so far yesterday, Houston was experiencing delays as well due to Thunderstorms. Just my luck right? Right.

Here was the list of my alternative flights:
Philadelphia to Orlando, Orlando to Los Angeles.
Philadelphia to Nashville, Nashville to Kansas City, Kansas City to Los Angeles
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to Los Angeles

The departure times ranged everywhere and anywhere between 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. It just didn't matter at that point because I was just going to have to face the awful weather sweeping the midwest and southwest and even the gulf coast states. And I didn't want to "arrive" in Los Angeles at 7:00 p.m. (this is if there were no delays what-so-ever). In the end I opted to fly into Texas because my "arrival time" was at 4:00 pm. I figured that I could give myself about 2.5 - 3 hours worth of delay time, and still be back in the City of Angels for a decent dinner hour.

And so my trip to Philly ended up stressful the very last day, but I am alive and well, albeit a bit tired.