Strange Things Have Happened

When does the place you live become "home"? It certainly isn't something that happens overnight, regardless of whether you're relocating halfway round the world or just moving into a new house. Instead, it is a change that takes place incrementally. Over time, you become more comfortable with your new surroundings, novel experiences become everyday, the foreign becomes familiar.

And so it has been with me and San Francisco; over the past two years or so, I have been undergoing the steady transformation from outsider to resident. Sure, my accent and immigration status are just two things to remind me that I'm still officially a foreigner in the United States. But that doesn't change the fact that this city now feels a lot like home.

Two events stand out as important markers along the way. The first was election night last November. The announcement that Obama had triumphed would have been a cause for celebration no matter where I was living. But that night as I danced in the streets with friends, it felt like a win for the home side, for my team. Over the course of the election campaign, my stake in the result had increased mentally and even financially (as a resident I may not have been allowed to actually vote, but I was able make campaign contributions). And now, at the end, surrounded by jubilant locals, it wasn't just their guy who had won, but mine too.

The second was more recently on the Fourth of July. My wife and I spent the day with friends in the East Bay so that I could experience a typically American Independence Day parade, and Piedmont's festivities didn't disappoint. At times it seemed as if the whole town was marching past us (even though the whole town was also lining the street). There were jazz bands, bagpipes, cheerleaders, Irish dancers, mop-wielding sailors, people dressed up as Snow White and Uncle Sam, basketball and rugby teams tossing balls around, a samba troupe, half a jet fighter mounted on a trailer, ballet performers, and enough vintage cars to bankrupt the government's cash for clunkers scheme in one fell swoop.

Watching this strange cross-section of cultural contradictions stream past was a reminder that the United States is a country with no single cultural orthodoxy, no shared roots, not even an official language (despite the best efforts of a vocal minority). A place that may not welcome immigrants as readily as it once did, but one where the new arrivals who do make it through the red tape are assimilated faster than almost anywhere else on earth.

Which is why this is my final post here. There are still plenty of things I find remarkable and fascinating about living in America, like finding a "British" section in the ethnic food aisle of supermarkets, or the strange debate that's currently raging over whether or not to provide everyone in the US with affordable health care. And there are some things I may never fully understand, such as baseball. But I'm beginning to see all of these peculiarities as quirks of the place I live, as my weirdness, rather than something to be gazed upon with the safe, insulating distance of an outsider.

And what's the point of writing as an emigrant if I feel like a local?

You can follow my continuing adventures at my website www.keithlaidlaw.com and on my new blog Ludovician.

Dancing in the streets 2

UPDATE: My friend Michael G's video of the celebrations. It sums up the atmosphere of last night brilliantly. And he managed to capture the moment when the cheering hoards closed down Valencia Street, starting a street party that went on for hours.


Celebrating Obama. from Michael on Vimeo.

Dancing in the streets

I'm feeling a little rough this morning, so I'll keep this short. But last night was fun. Lots of fun. We went to a friend's house to watch the results come in and, after Obama's victory speech, we headed out onto the streets. It was like Italy had won the World Cup, only with less mopeds and more high-fiving. People cheered, car horns blared. At 19th and Valencia people started gathering on the street corners and then, suddenly, we were all in the street. People danced, and drank, and shouted quite a lot. The police stood by and watched. It was great.

And we weren't alone. There were other impromptu street parties at 16th and Guerrero, on Divisadero, in the Castro (despite the fact that the Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage looks to have won), in Berkeley, Seattle, New York, Washington, Chicago... To see more, just go to Flickr and search for recent photos tagged with Obama and party. Yes we can? Oh yes we did.

The only thing to fear is failure

Despite nearly every poll showing that Barack Obama is going be elected the 44th president of the United States in just a few days' time, no one I know is taking anything for granted yet. Even here in the Democrat stronghold of San Francisco, where I've only seen only one lonely McCain-Palin bumper sticker in months of looking, my liberal friends are more nervous than confident. After two disputed election losses, the blue half of the country isn't daring to believe that the dark days are over just yet. Instead, the atmosphere is a curious mixture of fear and hope.

And it's easy to understand why people here are scared when you read articles like this one. It quotes a Republican couple from Florida who think Obama may be a Muslim because: "He says he’s not, but we have no way of knowing." They follow this bizarre example of circular logic by suggesting that Obama's middle name was given in tribute to Saddam Hussein (it would be a surprise if this were true, considering Obama was born in 1961, a full 18 years before his middle-namesake come to power in Iraq). These people, and many more just like them, will be bringing the full force of their intellects to bear in voting booths around the country this coming Tuesday.

But the one thing that everyone seems to be agreed on is that, no matter what the end result, this election will come to be seen as a historic moment for this country, for good or ill. I'm not so sure. I feel as if things won't be quite as bad as some fear should Obama lose, and perhaps more importantly considering the likely result neither will things be as wonderful should he win. After all, I remember the euphoria surrounding Tony Blair's election landslide in 1997, and look what happened after that.

And this is what scares me. If, as he should, Obama wins, and the Democrats maintain control of both houses (with a far more effective majority in the Senate), then expectations are going to be sky-high. But the reality remains that we are in the early stages of a global economic crisis that is going to get much worse before it gets better, which means rising unemployment and falling incomes for some time to come. And the US remains embroiled in two messy wars, neither with any real end in sight. No matter what Obama's stated intentions, extricating America's forces from Iraq isn't going to be easy, nor is it likely to be pretty. And even with the increased military resources at his disposal that would follow any successful pullout from Iraq, bringing meaningful peace or stability to Afghanistan will be as difficult as ever.

In these circumstances, it seems right that people should feel cautious right now. I just hope we all remember to keep our expectations in check after Tuesday, too.

On the eve of a Super Tuesday

It's around 5pm: I am walking down Market Street, the main thoroughfare that runs through the centre of downtown San Francisco, and I hear a crowd approaching. At first I think they are protestors, because of the shouting and placard waving. But I am wrong.

Numbering around 50, they carry homemade signs and placards bearing the name "Obama", and they are all chanting the same phrase, over and over: Yes We Can. The realisation they are shouting in praise rather than anger is strangely intoxicating in the fading light of this beautifully sunny evening.

Political energy is high in San Francisco tonight. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, when supporters of America's two main parties in almost half of the country's states - including California - vote to choose their preferred candidates ahead of the presidential election proper later this year.

In this famously liberal city, the debates and ad campaigns are all focussing on the two remaining Democratic hopefuls: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

I can't vote, but I have been intrigued by the contest, especially because of the passionate debates it has sparked among my friends. Which candidate is best qualified to lead the country? And, perhaps more importantly, who has the best chance of beating the Republicans?

Hillary has the weight of experience and an impressive political pedigree. But Obama offers a heady mixture of youth, excitement and charisma. Sure, few people same able to say how the two differ in terms of policy, but to nitpick over that is to kind of miss the point.

Obama is new, he is fresh and he is exciting. Is that enough to get him into the White House? Should that be enough? Probably no more than the fact that Hillary is a woman, or a Clinton.

Perhaps unfortunately the desire for change here reminds me a little of the wave of optimism that swept Tony Blair to government in the UK in 1997. And that's the thing about change: you can never be sure exactly what you're going to get. But you can hope.

Out of print

Of the many little things I miss about life in the UK, one of the most difficult to come to terms with has been newspapers. Not that I expect to find the Sunday Post on sale at my corner store (the fact I've found a pub willing to show Scottish football matches is miracle enough), but it would be nice, on occasion, to get my hands on a daily with a horizon broader than the one I can see with my own eyes.

Unfortunately, the only newspaper for sale in almost every small store near my house is the local San Francisco Chronicle. Why is it that in a country with around 1,500 different daily newspapers, I am so often offered a choice of just one?

The answer is that the US newspaper market is very localised. The best-selling USA Today is the only truly national title, and its daily circulation of 2.5 million is around 500,000 copies less than that of Britain's biggest tabloid, The Sun.

Indeed, just four US newspapers manage an average circulation of over a million (the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times being the others), which is just one more than the UK's total (the aforementioned Sun, the similarly downmarket Daily Mirror, and the beneath-contempt Daily Mail). This is despite the fact that Britain has a population about a fifth of the size of the States. However, if you lower the circulation threshold to the 200,000-copy mark, US titles outnumber those in the UK by 64 to 12, which is a ratio more in line with what you might expect. (My circulation figures came from here and the Audit Bureau of Circulations.)

But this still doesn't explain why most shops here in San Francisco sell just one or, occasionally, two titles (the Chronicle's most common companion on the shelves being, oddly, the New York Times, which hails from a city 2,500 miles away). The store pictured above, which offers a choice of three, is a treasured find indeed. But where are the Bay Area's San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune? Or the LA Times, Washington Post or even USA Today?

All this has been a rude culture shock for me after luxuriating in London's daily deluge of newsprint for many years. Corner shops there typically stock more than 10 national titles, in addition to a few local rags (such as the London-wide Evening Standard) and some ethnically focused journals (the Voice or Jewish Chronicle). Also, they almost always throw in a few papers from Ireland, Scotland or non-English speaking countries, perhaps just to show off.

Thankfully, it turns out that there is a very good newsagent just a few blocks from my new house. It's tiny, but has the widest selection of newsprint I've seen since arriving in the US over six months ago. It even has copies of the UK Guardian for sale, albeit a day or two late, and for a rather higher price than I'm used to paying.

Sigh. If only the publishers could invent some electronic version of their newspapers I could read for free via the internet. Eh? Oh...

Me-Haul

Like Hoover in the UK, U-Haul has become a byword for the service it offers. But, as a Brit, my only previous contact with this removal behemoth was in American films and TV shows, where characters who move house never seem to want any generic rental truck: it is always a U-Haul.

The reality, of course, is far less glamorous than such starry introductions led me to expect. Our recent house move was split over two separate days, and the two trucks we hired had over a third of a million miles on the clock between them - and it showed.

They were both Arizona-registered GMC trucks of a characteristically American build: longer, wider and several tons heavier than they needed to be. The exaggerated proportions make you feel like a little kid in comparison. This feeling is magnified when get into the cab and instantly sink deep into the enormous, pillow-soft bench seat. This also causes the far end of the bonnet (and pretty much anything within 50 feet of it) to disappear behind the towering dashboard.

The wheezing engine of the first truck I hired managed to polish off an impressive six gallons of petrol in the space of just 40 miles, all driven at a necessarily pedestrian pace. Meanwhile, the slushy suspension of both trucks caused them to tilt drunkenly into corners, quickly displacing any less-than-perfectly packed cargo in the back. (U-Haul tries to turn this last peculiarity into a selling point, by writing the words “gentle-ride” on the side of the vans in big letters.)

At least the brakes worked, a miracle considering our ridiculously steep street. Or at least they did once I discovered where they were. It turns out that what we call the “hand” brake in Britain is sometimes located on the far left of the foot well here, like an extra foot brake (which probably explains why it’s called the “emergency” brake in America). However, this is not the sort of thing you really want to have to work out while sitting in a fully loaded 3.5-ton truck on a one-in-four gradient.

When I dropped off the first truck in Oakland, I asked one of the workers when (or if) the trucks are ever retired. “Oh, they just go on forever,” she breezed, before insisting that important parts are normally replaced prior to them falling off or failing completely. And these beasts certainly had been worked on: neither of them had a body part that hadn’t been dented or scraped at some point. Major damage is patched and repaired, but minor injuries are left like scars.

Unfortunately, the staff at my second U-Haul location, this time in San Francisco, were rather less friendly. They refused to rent me a truck on account of my weird foreign driving licence, blithely ignoring the fact that I had successfully rented a truck from the same company a few days earlier.

Anyone labouring under the delusion that the States is some utopia of flawless customer service has obviously never suffered the contemptuous indifference of a U-Haul employee doing their very best to be as unhelpful as they possibly can. After our initial “U-Haul requires a US driving licence” / “you didn’t last week” exchanges proved fruitless, the woman serving me offered to consult a higher authority. Confident that right would be done, I agreed, not suspecting for a second that she would begin her telephone call upstairs with a line as brilliantly unhelpful as: “We can’t hire trucks to foreigners, can we?”

So I located a friend with a Californian licence, he hired the truck for me and our stuff was moved. But, just as I began to feel an entirely unexpected wave of fuzzy nostalgia for all the crappy Transit-type vans I hired to shift my belongings around London, I remembered that none of them were ever called upon to drive several thousand miles across the continental United States. Nor, it should be noted, would they be as useful in a game of chicken.

'What the fuck was that?'

The answer to my question, asked just before five o'clock this morning, was a "light" earthquake of magnitude 4.2 on the Richter scale. Not a big one, and certainly not the big one, but it was the first I have ever felt and large enough to wake me with a violent jolt - like a brute kicking my bed so hard it shook the entire house.

Every earthquake feels different I'm told, and this one seemed more severe as it happened very close by. The epicentre was just a mile away from where I was trying to sleep in Oakland and, when the real focal point of the action (the hypocentre) is about four miles underground, that short distance on the surface doesn't mean much at all.

(The best comparison I can make is the difference between hearing the low rumble of thunder at a distance of a few miles, and the sound of lightning ripping the air apart just a couple of hundred feet away from you.)

This wasn't a good time to leap out of bed and realise that my dressing gown was still out of action due to an earlier biohazard incident (the dog's fault, not mine). Just a reminder then that I'm living here in unstable times, or at the very least on shaky ground, and that I really need to sort out a disaster kit.

Of course, what's truly terrifying is that the recent 6.8 earthquake in Japan was more than a hundred times stronger than the one I felt this morning. The comforting fact is even that one didn't cause a major disaster.

Shop local

Wandering home the other day, I decided to take a closer look at one of the small shops just round the corner from my new flat: High Bridge Arms Inc. Actually, I only intended to have a nosey peek in from the outside but, as I cupped my hand to the glass to try to see what lay behind the rather dusty camouflage netting in the window, the door buzzed to let me in. At that point it seemed rude to stay standing outside - and it's probably best to be as polite as you can be with your neighbourhood arms dealer.

Of course, not every street corner in SF has a gun shop - far from it. A quick search of the local Yellow Pages lists only one other gunsmith in the city, and slightly confusingly that one appears to also sell cosmetics and fragrances. (Now there's a great retail combination: "Come on down to Betty's Bullets'n'Beauty Supplies - everything you need to knock him dead or take him out".)

Inside High Bridge, glass cabinets display rows of square-edged handguns lying on top of the kind of plastic cases that - in my experience, at least - usually hold power tools. There are also all sorts of bullets, knives, handcuffs and T-shaped batons on offer, while a rack behind the counter holds a selection of shotguns with a uniformly urban rather than country gent aesthetic - all utilitarian plastic in place of the polished walnut I'm more used to seeing on the one type of firearm still legal in the UK. In fact, almost everything for sale here seems to be matt black.

It was a surprise to see guns being sold without reference - no matter how spurious - to sport, in the shape of either hunting animals or target shooting. But, as the "law enforcement supplies" sign outside implies, these guns aren't being sold for fun. The posters and catalogues for gun manufacturers such as SigArms and Glock remain pointedly neutral, while others for the likes of BlackHawk tactical nylons (a company which disappointingly doesn't supply tights to the special forces) use images of black-clad figures in ski masks waving their laser sights through smoke-filled rooms to full effect.

I suppose at least there is an honesty to this, but not one that is particularly comforting.

Seek and ye shall find

One activity I've enjoyed a lot since arriving here in San Francisco is shopping. Suddenly, the experience of going to the corner shop for a pint of milk has been transformed thanks to all the unfamiliar brands, weird products and surprising... er, surprises I find there. I used to buy semi-skimmed milk in the UK, for example, but here I have to work out if I want skim, 1% fat, 2% fat or even "half & half" (which it turns out is actually half cream, half milk and therefore nothing like semi-skimmed at all).

And all this is before you hit the big chain stores. I went to a branch of the general-purpose chain Target the other day. Alongside the normal escalators in the middle of the shop it had extra ones designed to carry your shopping trolley up and down between floors for you. Escalators! For trolleys! You just can't buy entertainment like that.

Added to these mundane thrills, the Bay Area is home to a whole heap of genuinely quirky and downright weird shops. There's one just round the corner on 17th Street that sells only door knobs. And then there's the McSweeney's-related pirate supplies store over on Valencia Street. In fact, Valencia seems to be almost exclusively filled with intriguing shops touting quirky second-hand books, furniture, curios and clothes.

There are also some incredible bargains to be had (especially for me, thanks to the exchange rate). But here I have run into a problem. I recently bought a pack of riculously cheap blank CDs (100 TDK 80-minute CD-Rs at Circuit City for $10.99 - get 'em while they're hot). So what's the problem? Well, although I am now the proud owner of a towering pack of very budget discs, I need to find some sort of cases for them, and I just can't bring myself to pay more for a thin plastic sleeve than I did for the CD it's supposed to be protecting.

So yesterday I spent the day touring SF's electronics and stationery shops in search of these elusive cheap prophylactics for my unprotected shiny discs. And, as I toured shops such as CompUSA, Best Buy, and OfficeMax, I was struck by two things.

The first was that they all had lots of aisles filled with single products. I've noticed this phenomenon in the UK too, particularly at similar barn-like branches of chains such as Currys. My local one in London had an entire row stocked with just one type of scart cable. They were all exactly the same price, colour, size, price and brand, row upon row of identical blister-packs. What is the point in having thousands of the same product on offer? Why not offer a variety of brands, some cheaper, some gold-plated and expensive? Y'know, choice?

Yesterday, besides browsing for CD sleeves, it was USB extension leads I kept finding displayed like this (I know, I know - the glamour! the excitement! the geek!). Every store was selling exactly the same $20 Belkin cables, and each had hundreds in stock, but no alternatives. So I went home and bought an unbranded one from eBay for four dollars instead.

The second, and slightly less nerdy, thing that struck me was that my browsing was essentially pointless. I had been to all these shops before, and pretty much knew they didn't have what I wanted. So why did I go back? Because there was something weirdly comforting about the experience. Sure, they stock some different products, but in the end barn-like shops here are essentially the same as barn-like shops at home - and now these were shops I was revisiting, so they felt like they were mine somehow, they were part of my territory here in San Francisco. And even the strange products are becoming comforting and, well, familiar.

Fresh off the boat

Things I have learnt during my first fortnight in America...

San Francisco isn't as warm as you think
You know when you're told about something over and over again, but it never quite sinks in until you experience it for myself? Well, welcome to the Bay Area's weather. Granted, it has been almost constantly sunny since I got here - beautiful, clear-blue-sky, smiley face sunny. But as soon as the sun disappears - and sometimes before - it can get pretty cold, with sea breezes giving the chill an extra bite. I kind of like it, perhaps because it reminds me of the weather in Edinburgh. In July. During a heatwave.

Not everything in American is bigger or better
Tissues, for example, are tiny. You'd think the idea of large "man-sized" Kleenex would go down a bomb here, but I'm yet to find any. (Note to self: Possible business opportunity? Aim for porn industry endorsement, work from there.) And, for a country so in thrall to the over-consumption of energy, the electrics here really could do with some work. Lights dim when the fridge turns on, plugs spark when you connect them, there are electric sockets in the bathroom - all of which is doubly disturbing when you notice the absence of an earth pin on most appliances.

Some surprising things are both bigger and better
Coming back into town from Oakland yesterday evening, we were stuck in a big traffic jam approaching the Bay Bridge. With the low sun shining in my eyes, and the hazy white light reflecting off the sea and the polished bodywork of all the enormous SUVs and cars, I realised it was probably the coolest traffic jam I'd ever seen. Kim just thought it was a bitch though.

Brick turns to dust in an earthquake
Apparently wood or reinforced concrete are much better in the event of shaky-ground moments, as traditional red bricks just crumble. There is a garage round the corner from where I'm staying that has a sign stuck to its brick outer wall saying that it may be unsafe in the event of an earthquake. I'm not sure who this sign helps, however, other than the weirdly prescient.

US cuisine isn't all McDonald's and Taco Bell
Well, actually I knew this already. But, having been impressed by lots of the terrific food last time I was in California (particularly the cheeses and beers), this time it's the turn of ice cream. The Bi-Rite Creamery round the corner is home to some killer vanilla (surely the yardstick by which to measure any ice cream maker), but it also offers such unique delights as roasted banana, chai spiced milk chocolate and salted caramel.

Service culture is great - but not all of the time
People who work in shops here are astonishingly helpful. They just can't help you enough. Sometimes they are helpful as if their lives depended on it. All of which is very handy indeed for the casually clueless shopper (me, for example). But not if I am hungover; turns out then that all those questions and all that chatter is just plain annoying. Same goes for mornings.

I'm famous
After years of patiently spelling out my name to people in England who thought my surname was "Laidlow", "Leadlaw", or - on one memorable occasion - "Ladylord", I have travelled halfway round the world to find that everyone here can spell my name no problem. Why? Because a company called Laidlaw is (by its own estimation) "the largest private contractor of student transportation services in North America", and therefore has its name written on the side of most of the yellow school buses here. Fame at last!

Ameoba Records is amazing
I think this warehouse-sized music store on Haight Street may soon become my favourite record shop in the world. And probably the only reason it isn't my favourite already is that I'm slightly scared to visit again too soon, lest I run out of money in my first month here.