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.