The Curse

I am in San Francisco. It is fucking beautiful. It is the Curse.

Like all true San Diego natives, I bring the weather with me wherever I go. I went to England in the summer (which is actually a shit time to go, weather-wise) and it only rained once in three weeks: the day I was leaving. So, this morning it is sunny, 65 degrees and warming. My phone’s weather icon shows 53 degrees and cloudy, but it’s wrong: I’m in a bubble of perfect sunshine. Just as I was yesterday. Just as I will be tomorrow.

This is a Curse because it keeps us San Diegans naive about the world. We start thinking we can do things. We start thinking we could live in other places. Yesterday I started thinking I should live here. We walked out of the tenderloin. We walked through the Castro, and Haight Ashbury. We walked through the Farmers Market at the Civic Center where a yellow sign promised its daily presence (rain or shine!) and we bought and ate strawberries the size of apples. Then we went to the Mill, where racks of homemade bread filled up the place with that smell of racks of homemade bread. We went to the Rainbow, for which my only reference for similarity as a San Diegan is Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s also has a community board, but the Rainbow community board is actually used, with letters to and from the staff about BPA in receipts and why fruit ripens faster in bags. I waited for Katie to get out of the bathroom next to a bag of bat guano.

I didn’t think I was the kind of girl who could sit in a park and drink Kombucha, but we sat in Dolores park and I drank my first Kombucha. I thought to myself, this isn’t a bad fucking life. On a sunny Tuesday, parks back home are deserted but here, there wasn’t a person less than 10 feet away no matter where you sit. A man, possibly homeless, played “Three Little Birds,” which could have been irritating because it’s too obvious, but I thought to myself that he is self-regulating, he is getting a needed dose of happiness. He is soaking up this sun and pumping serotonin through his brain, dancing as he sits and singing along and pretending he is connecting with the people around him (they’re ignoring him).

At home we have plenty of crazies. I don’t see them often, because I don’t go downtown ever, but I know they’re there. These SF crazies don’t look at me twice just because I’m holding hands with a pretty girl. They look at me twice (rarely) because I’m a pretty girl, but not because I’m queer. I watch a man hold a fluffy white rose for another man to smell. A girl with buzzed hair smiles gently at me, knowingly.

I remind myself that every day isn’t like this. I remind myself grittiness is tasty in small bites, but I’ve never lived through a whole meal of it. I remind myself that back home I am disturbed by the crazies. San Diego perfect weather is relentless. San Francisco sunshine is just a little bit delirious. I know I can’t live here because in my heart of hearts I know how inconsolable I get on a “blustery” day. I know this, but the Curse tricked me into thinking I can do these things. So I am waiting in Katie’s apartment for her to get back with moleskin for my blistered feet, waiting for these 600 mg of Ibuprofen to kick in so I’ll go numb to my aching legs. It is quite lovely here, but I know it is only a vacation, and that I’m a San Diego princess, and goddamn why did I walk like 5 miles yesterday?

Trivia: n. unimportant details or information

I’m losing my patience for trivia worship. I don’t have a mind for holding facts — at least not facts about popular culture. I’m a goddamn encyclopedia for pet behavior and grammar laws, but I haven’t found my flock of fellow bird & word nerds, yet. If geeks are excited about counterculture, then why do I only ever hear them exchanging social affirmations? Do you know about this? Do you know about that? Do we fall on our knees for the same gods?

I am a bird nerd. I love birds. All of my snapchats are of birds.

Real eggheads study an obscure or challenging subject and revel in the love of knowledge. Media culture geeks are just like any insecure high-schooler who wants to be part of a clique that’s big enough for safety in numbers but exclusive enough to be “cool.”

Yes, we’ve decided that a certain amount of geekitude is cool. But, no poindexter is standing on a table, reciting arcane theorems and getting all the ladies at the parties. People are doing what they’ve always done, and that’s dish news and check that everyone knows the what-what of the happening, socially shaming people who can’t get with the program. What’s changed is that the never-ending internet has given us more what-what to sputter over our red cups. Almost anything goes as long as you have a little tribe of other geeks who are into your geek kink. And you do have a little tribe. You’ve seen them somewhere on Tumblr.

I understand, I really do, that having a common lexicon is a short cut to establishing shared experiences. But if you go on and on about Naruto, and I don’t know jack about Naruto, what am I supposed to do? Pretend I know what you’re talking about so I can skip on the noob history lesson? Change the subject? Point out that you’re a fucking nerd?

In a perfect world, I’d tell you I don’t know jack about whatever-his-face guy-with-a-rune on his headband (at first I thought it was blue-arrow-forehead child. Don’t act shocked, they’re both animated kids shows and I’m not a kid). Don’t give me a history lesson, I’d say. Instead, share an experience or an insight you gained from watching the show.

Do you really need to figure out which episodes we’ve both seen? Why can’t you just tell me what it all means to you? How it compares to your daily life? How it’s improved your relationship with your daughter? Why do I have to partake in this pissing contest that is proving I know enough about your geek fantasy to belong in your geek fantasy?

You just did a lot of reading. I will reward you with another bird picture.

This trivia spouting infects everything with a fandom, music appreciation included. Particularly, I don’t know how to react when a person knows more about my favorite band (Queens of the Stone Age)* than I do. I don’t know all the names of all the band members, though I’m certainly familiar with their discography. I can sketch out a list of songs for most albums with decent accuracy. Not that I care — I’ve just listened to R, Songs for the Deaf, Lullabies & Clockwork enough friggin’ times to know.

So, when this guy knows some obscure trivia (historical dates, formation of this or that) about my QOTSA and I yawn and pretend I know Josh Homme held this or that concert for his dead friend because I’m a bit embarrassed at my lack of expertise for my self-proclaimed “favorite”… when this guy goes off on some story I frankly don’t care about (don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed he’s retained so much information on his not-favorite-band), I’m realizing I need to just say: “Hey, thanks for teaching me something new, but what does it all really mean to you?”

When he gives me his baffled response, a “what” or a blank stare, I elaborate, “I don’t really care about the trivia. I care about the music. And I care about the music because of the band’s particular influence on my family, the way the shows I’ve attended shaped my understanding of rock and live performance and human appreciation for both. Tell me about an event you went to, how you felt, which beer you drank, how much sweat stained your t-shirt.”

I’ll tell you I first saw them when I was 17, with my dad in Austin, Texas. People there thought maybe he was robbing the cradle, because I dressed a bit too stylish and they didn’t know I was his daughter. I stood on my tiptoes to watch the longest drum solo I’ve ever seen, in a tiny venue called the Rose (it’s a lot like the Casbah, if you’re familiar with that), for “Feel Good Hit of the Summer.” I saw people smoking weed and carefully looked to my dad for an appropriate reaction, as I’d never seen the stuff before.

Don’t recite some band drama you picked up in your readings — some trivia that has nothing to do with you. Make it personal. Make it you. Bands are bands and some are better, but I’m not sitting in a spa with Josh Homme so what do I care if he wrote this or that song in this or that city? Unless, of course, *you* lived in that city.

Look he’s so cute he’s squinting. Don’t you enjoy all these bird pictures? They are like my children. Look at all these pictures of my children? I’m not boring you am I?

What I’m trying to say is, I coasted through my history classes because they weren’t *my* story. I’m much more interested in humans right in front of me than humans that are “popular” enough to make it to the books or the silver screen. I’m more interested in you. Tell me a tale, and make it one I can’t watch on TV. Tell me something I don’t know.

As media expands, these little clusters of allegiance to external narratives (Did you watch the new Game of Thrones? Are you into Attack on Titan?) might just fall apart. Lifespans of trends are shortening as the fire hose of popular media keeps pouring. We can’t keep up with everything. Certainly, established common ground makes us feel less alone. But I hope that the growth of communication technologies connects us such that we don’t need these superficial obsessions to lope along in a conversation. We could download in instants what someone else has already digested (here’s an emotion/dream/experience I had — let me transmit it to you in a microsecond so you know what I mean) and instead of validating that we’re on the same island of thought, examine and compare our reactions in the same moment. Make meaning, not just chase meaning laid out before us for us to follow like helpless human eyes scan a constantly flashing, changing TV screen. Quit worshiping trivia. Create your own legends.

*P.S. I’m going to the show in SF on the 17th! Will I see any other San Diegans there?

This is how you rave, babies

Rave Review

“Enter the Tech” by Rock the Discotek
March 1st

Rating: 3.5 pieces of candy

Negatives:

18+ …still weirds me out no matter how nice the kids are
Some DJs were obviously underprepared
Too much publicity = too crowded
Too crowded = long ass lines
Too crowded = vandalism & early shut down, apparently

Positives:

Several projectors with visuals
Great sound system in both rooms
Most DJs were creative
Being able to dress up to get in for free
2 rooms = less overwhelming
Bathrooms weren’t bad at all, if that matters
Casual atmosphere (e.g. friendly security)

Overall, I’d go again as long as they continue to keep the entry cost low.

I think a lot of us have been hoping for the “rave” scene to expand in SD. I’m no veteran raver but I’ve been tracking underground EDM events around town for the past couple of years and I can speak for everyone when I say we were all bummed when Gage’s warehouse basically shut down.

Since then, there hasn’t been much in the way of conveniently located regular underground events (that aren’t hyper-commercialized trash…No thanks “Somewhere Loud”) so driving to Mira Mesa actually sounded like a cinch. Event page said: “dress like Bruce Lee, get in free” which is a dumb and impossible, but Katelyn confidently put me in a cheongsam-inspired top and a tutu and said it would count.

tutu rave fishnets furry legwarmers

I did NOT know it was an 18+ event, so I was a bit stunned to see so many youngins in the line and probably accidentally gave some of my pre-party Ancient Age to a child. And it was a line. The event was over-publicized, and they invited teenagers, so it was no surprise it took at least an hour to get through. Nevertheless, I ran back to the car to grab my whiskey and made fun out of the time.

Our dedication to dressing up was rewarded when an organizer strafed the queue, shot fingers at us with a big smile and, “You are getting in for free and you are getting in for free.” Pretty much at these things if you look the slightest bit fun say to the gatekeepers “I was told I would get in free because of my costume” and gesture emphatically. It’s worth a shot. There were tons of dudes in gray sweatshirts and jeans without even a speck of adornment, not even Mardi Gras beads, which is beyond disappointing. Again, teenagers.

The neat thing about partying with kids is that it makes you feel like you can reach out and indoctrinate them while they’re still young and impressionable. I felt like I needed to “community build” or some sappy shit so I ran off and collected glow sticks to put on a guy’s crutches and broken foot. It really did help people stop tripping all over him. Then I found some girl who could barely cope with reality and tried to entertain her for awhile, until I realized I was probably over-enthusiastic to the point of being scary and dropped her off with her friends.

The gig did get shut down early at 3am. Yes it was fully permitted and the noise wasn’t an issue (sounded good and loud from the inside, yet barely audible from the street), but some asshole tagged and broke windows of the surrounding businesses. I would say that’s what happens when you invite teenagers to raves, but I suspect it was the 30-something guy I saw trying to sneak in, pissed he couldn’t trick his way into the over-packed venue.

It didn’t occur to me that shutting down was what was happening, so when the music stopped I sat in the middle of the floor and shouted, “MASSAGE CIRCLE.” I was going to save this rave. 2 people joined me. “C’mon babies, this is how you rave,” I yelled. Soon we had about 10 people and next thing I knew we were playing some sort of crowdsurfing leapfrog hybrid.

Katelyn had seen the cops, so she came in and told me it was time to leave. “Do we have to?” I said. Boy, I would have liked to see that thing go til 6am.

How to Crash Parties in PB

Katelyn does whatever the fuck she wants. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when, after we’d spent most of the night at a friend’s house party, instead of letting me make a beeline for Jack in the Box and Disneyland Bed* she told me to turn North on Ingraham: “We’re going to crash parties in PB.”

We drove around the neighborhoods slowly, windows down, listening for the sounds of revelry.

Anyone who attempts this should definitely work in pairs. For optimum crashing teamwork, one person should be hopped-up on energy drinks but otherwise sober (me), and the other should be teetering between well-buzzed and fully drunk (Katelyn). Sober teammate can keep us out of the danger zone, and drunk teammate can manage the brazen introductions that are necessary.

I have to acknowledge the fact that what we’re doing isn’t possible for everyone. It probably helps that we’re two attractive (white? that might help) girls. I think it could be done by guys but they’d face more rejection.

But, my god, getting to wander around the streets at night as a woman is exhilarating. I don’t need to be afraid — the world isn’t always full of predators, I can fend for myself, I can be the intruder for once.

Technically, of course, we made sure to get permission before entering a person’s home. They may or may not have assumed we were invited anyway, but we let them open the front door for us. At party #1 we hovered near the neighbor’s door until they motioned for us to hop on over the back wall. “You’re the neighbors, right?” And that’s the story we stuck to when a new housemate came home from a night on the town and asked us, “Who are you?”

Party #2. She found this hat and had to wear it. Every time she went outside to smoke a cigarette they made her take it off. They were on to us.

I met an incoherent philosopher. He made us give him really long hugs, but they were more drunken than amorous so I was fine with that. Maybe because he shared so many gooey-ooey thoughts about humanity I stole one of Katelyn’s cigarettes and traded it with a stranger who wandered up to the back wall for a high five. I met shitshow-dancing-guy who stood up on a chair and fell ass-first onto an iPad on a glass table. He knocked a taco plate on the ground but miraculously didn’t break anything. I also helped a girl roll a joint because even though I don’t smoke I really wanted to feel skilled at rolling joints for a minute.

Nearly everyone went home or to bed, and we were left with incoherent philosopher and girl with a joint and no desire to help them smoke it. So we exited the same way we came and followed our ears across the street. We found The Jungle.

This group of people all live in close proximity to each other in the same condo complex and share a courtyard. They’ve named the sluttiest guy in the group, “King of the Jungle.” Fucking romantic. I plopped myself in a lawn chair like I belonged there and peered at the attractive strangers through palm fronds. I mostly had to introduce myself, and when they asked how I knew everyone: “Neighbors.”

Later Katelyn and I went into the house. A cluster of people sat on a large L-shape couch around an ottoman and two women sat on the opposite wall on bar-stools like cross-armed sentries. Next to them: a huge In-N-Out wall hanging. I felt very welcomed because Cindy or Cynthia or Kathy or whatever put me in a barstool in the middle of the room and told me I look like a mermaid (my hair was down and I had on green tights).

Katelyn and I had to have a pow-wow in the bathroom because “holy fuck we are crashing a party.” We heard a sharp knock on the door, “Hello, I’m the owner of this house. Do you need help in there? Because I would really like to help you.” That was the only tense moment of the night. After we came out of the bathroom all was forgiven.

I want to say we made new friends, but we really didn’t. I think that’s the side-affect of joining a group of people at the bitter drunken end of their night. I did make the mistake of giving my number to a guy I shouldn’t have given my number. He is in love with me and sang me a song and wants to 3-way kiss with my girlfriend and me. I really want to text him back and say his messages are improving (fewer Ys in his heyyyys, yay!) but I don’t want to give him false hope.

*We have a new bed & new pillows. It is perfect. It is like sleeping in the Disneyland hotel. We’ve spent the last 2 years on a 7-year-old full size mattress so this is a big deal.

What did I snap last night? I will never know…

I am hangover As I am writing this, I am hungover. I am hangover. Hangover is a philosophy, a way of being, in which fears and anxieties are either muffled, too heavy with the poison in your blood to run rampant over you, or they are amplified with the urgency of vomit.

Currently, luckily, it is the former right now.

I have missed this inner peace. My mind is quiet, because the party monster’s reign is now over. I move slowly, I am dim. I no longer rage with the fires of the night and the overwhelming need to make out with women who are probably very straight but like the attention, I can tell, because you are laughing too loud and you keep looking at your friends and you’ve only felt me up like once this last hour.

BUT I am plagued by one thought. And that is, What did I snap last night?

Yeah, I went to Flick’s last night. I only had 3 drinks! 3 very “my bartender missed me and also I am at Flick’s” drinks. Also I think they were running out of orange juice.

This is what you already saw today if you are my snap friend.

Aside: You guys, you guys, you need to make #whatdidisnaplastnight a thing. I am begging you.

I am telling myself that the majority of my snaps looked like this:

Actual snap. Sorry my sweet snapchat bestie, I know I made this just for you, but it is the only evidence I have. Because I clicked the download button. Because I am a narcissist.

But I know in my heart there was at least one like this:

Disclaimer: This is a snapchat re-enactment. That is not my drunk handwriting. I always write that bad.

I am forced to contend with the realities of having Facebook at my drunken fingertips. I am now part of the reality where my work life and my social life intersect in one device. I am an idiot who thought it was a good idea, while drunk, to delete the threads from my boss and my coworker so that I wouldn’t accidentally text them, and now have only black holes rather than hard evidence to appease the anxious feeling that I may have sent one of them something at 3am. I didn’t. I’m just paranoid. So very paranoid.

FYI Handcent SMS has a privacy box that forces you to enter a passcode before you can view texts by specific people, and I DEFINITELY had the time to get around setting that up TODAY.

The hangover is not my only consequence. What happens in my Vegas doesn’t stay in my Vegas when I always have an internet-connected camera in my pocket.

I have also chosen to put my real name on my writing. I have to hope this choice will make sense when I reflect back on my life, that I am right that society will continue to grow toward more honesty as privacy becomes harder to protect and more and more people add to the digital scrapbooks of their lives. Privilege check here (femme, financially secure, white, thin, etc.): it’s easy for me to be ok with decreasing privacy because I have the luxury of being able to live life openly — I have support networks and quite a lot of societal approval for my lifestyle, even with me being gay. Not everyone is so lucky.

I teeter between the reality that my personal experience is lost enough in the fire hose that is social media that I am safely invisible, with the fantasy that I’ll be so famous my “wild” behavior will be permissible. I have to balance the assumption that my boss doesn’t have the spare time to Google my name with the belief that she wouldn’t care if she did anyway. She was young once. She knows.

I used to think (and still kind of do) that my “hangover anxiety” comes from all the dopamine and serotonin and other fun brain chemicals I “used up” the night previous. I am worn out so I am too weak to fight off the anxiety. I also realize I am worried about what I may have done, how I may have bulldozed over someone else’s feelings because I desired the drunken spotlight. “You have no regrets if you never remember,” might be true, but I have a vivid imagination. I know myself, what I can do. So, I chase after the tails that squirrel away from me in the darkness, that disappear into the void like snapchats.

I have to admit, though, a smartphone can be very helpful for my lifestyle.

If this seems particularly lazy, please know that I meant to say freezer, but under the pressure of having to talk continuously into the mic thingy or else it cuts you off I slipped up and said fridge.

In my new tradition, here is your Flower the Skunk moment of the week:

Flower the Skunk Wish He Said (but Didn’t)….

No, your friend is right. You do not get to say the N word. You do not get to say it in a joke, you do not get to say it with a “z” at the end. Nope. You are a white girl and I am a white girl and neither of us get to say it. This is not a freedom of speech issue, this is a you are making yourself look fucking ignorant issue. No one is commenting on your post because you have made us all feel uncomfortable.

1 year of SDSurvivalGuide

This Saturday will mark the 1 year anniversary of SD Survival Guide.

I’ve worn a few 2-dimensional identities in my life — the kind people use when they’re trying to describe you to a friend. They’ve varied from “Anthony’s girlfriend,” to “redheaded lesbian” and at least one unpublishable moniker in-between. Slowly, over the past year, “writer” has been taking over.

For that, I am calling this a success. The encouragement and feedback I receive make my fucking day, ya’ll, because I constantly think about how happy I would be if I had an audience for a book, and if I could write one that is worthy of them.

Many of you lament that you’ve gotten behind in my posts, so this week I hope you enjoy an excerpt from each one. And pretty, pretty please write me a comment, text me, or send me a snapchat with any thoughts about my writing.

Simulation

Cutesy post introducing SD relationship with the weather: Hypo-manic with fear, we discuss rain and sun and fog in a tone that is easy to confuse with eagerness. Oh, we’re not pleasant or easily amused; we’re terrified.

Nausea-filled regret at first post + epic tale of misogyny: Trapped in a bar stool between smokers, a railing, and his body, I felt like a cornered animal. Even as I chewed him out for what must have been at least 20 minutes, he stood alternatively with his face so close to mine I could feel his breath or with his crotch against my leg.

Attempt to draw in San Diego Googlers using keywords: There’s sort of an ennui in happiness and stability, and this is not the best town in which to forage for chaos. In this heaven, we’re a bit oblivious to evil and all the fun it brings.

Party story about violence against inanimate objects: The bear arm results from the potent combination of three things. Me, alcohol, and unrequited lust.

Examining appropriation of LGBT culture: I thought of the trendiness of swinging, straight couples hunting for that perfect bisexual woman who will love both of them in a harmonious triad, and 1-dick-per-relationship policies. I thought of dudes who ask me to sleep with their girlfriends, but insist that they at least be allowed to watch.

Party Monster Kill Switch + I freaking love Sour Cream: “Fluffy bear got me through a lot of hard times, too.”

Thrift shopping primer for San Diegans: I still thrift primarily to impress people at parties. I try to be selective, but having a conversation starter is more valuable to me than closet space.

My embarrassing familiarity with hangovers: But then everything is too loud so I sit in a dark room. Everything is too dark so I move to a dimly lit room. My blood is uncomfortable.

The “Gay Gambit” + map I found: “Gossip Gril is Vagina Stronghold?” I said, unimpressed. “More like where I go to remember I hate lesbians and cigarettes.”

I wanted to remember how bad I am at math and make it about alcohol: Ok, I lied, sometimes we feel poor and we drink piss water. Can I find a drink that doesn’t cost more than my student loans?

Blaming orange juice for my problems: I’ve been living off gatorades and cheese-foods since Monday. Cheese comforts me. Katelyn, I said, I want something like chicken fingers or macaroni n’ cheese. Something little kids eat.

Carpe diem for stupid people: I just want to know, how is throwing on a trucker hatt, getting smammered, and drooling on a young woman while she gyrates against your crotch seizing the day?

Reviewing a little SD rave: It felt like being in a kindergarten where you’re allowed to eat the crayons.

What is our civil duty to interfere in bad situations?: Pro-tip: pretending to be my “boyfriend” in order to “rescue” me from some asshat is going to annoy me almost as much as the dude telling me I’ve got pretty teeth 10 times in one night.

I fell in love with a stripper: “No,” I said in her ear, “I don’t care if he gets off. I want you and he has the money.”

Lame short post b/c I procrastinated getting ready for SCA War: Each fight could represent their last day on earth, so at night we party.

Katelyn told me to blog about pocket cheese: . After getting off work at 7 and taking your pre-party nap and laboring over your costume, there is no time for food. You can’t chop a salad, you can’t toast a sandwich and juice a carrot. You have to eat on the go. So we have this thing called “Pocket Cheese.”

Saga of my christian-phase closeted love-triangle: I hadn’t had an orgasm since I found Jesus.

Some 35-year-old said something I didn’t like, so I blogged about it: Ah crap. I’m that stubborn young woman who doesn’t like to be told what to do with her life and doesn’t have respect for people’s personal beliefs.

I got the slut strep: How do you tell your doctor that you may be responsible for spreading a nasty disease with a Jameson fueled make-out binge? (Forgive me, for there was a dimly lit bounce house on premises.)

An ex-boyfriend said something I didn’t like, so I blogged about it: An expired apology is one that is so old in respect to its crime that it’s completely missed its window and should stay in a deep basement to rot with the rest of your baggage.

I got the slut strep AGAIN: I can barely stay awake, and when I do manage, I’m confused and vaguely nauseous.

Artsy thing I wrote about a warehouse party: She liked me. I shouldn’t have been surprised; wives always like me, come on to me, kiss me. Yet, she focused on me so quickly, when my irises were just starting to quicken again.

I missed Pride because I was sick and I examined my coping strategies for FOMO: Do you realize how many strains of new and exotic viruses are flying in from around the country, world even? No thank you, spawn of swine flu.

Audio interview (I procrastinated so I never transcribed it): For my very first local celebrity profile interview, I’m featuring a very close friend and source of my inspiration, Xanadu Rocketship.

Buncha theme ideas for parties: I have been throwing theme parties since I was 7. I would plan for my next birthday just as soon as the last one passed, brainstorming ideas in my journal.

Almost missed a deadline for a post, but my brother called and I was inspired: Other people don’t sound like themselves on the phone, but I just hear my brother in the hot piece of plastic against my ear. He mentions how the Illuminati or maybe the overlord lizard-brains are monitoring our call, trying to intercept it, how he’s been really into conspiracy theories…

I attempt to forgive myself for not knowing enough about pop culture: Due to my delusional escapades as an alien princess, a Christian, a heterosexual… my connection to reality is a bit flimsy.

I learned that Sprint has tricksy awful sales-hobbits: Katelyn needs a new phone as well, because it never seems to work when I need her immediate attention and dammit why doesn’t she ever text me back?

I spent 3 hours making an OkCupid manifesto: You are meeting a stranger. Off the internet. You do not need to invest heavily in this date.

Benefit of being a writer, life lessons are now blog fodder: But when I checked my bank account Monday and discovered my wallet was stolen I wasn’t sure if I felt more like a victim of crime or a victim of my hangover.

6 monthiversary is an excuse to analyze keywords!: I know there’s plenty to do, I know there’s stunning and quirky and intelligent and sexy people in this city. I am making it my mission to connect these people together.

Delirious with new technology: I’m relentless. I won’t stop. The smartphone eats my dreams. I don’t need to sleep. I have 7 years of technology to absorb.

Sometimes I kick people in the butt and I have to leave the party: Now I’m no stranger to butts in my face, but I don’t like stranger butts in my face, and this guy didn’t even know my name.

Boobs: There are basically two ways to be a feminist at a party. One is to stand up for your beliefs and counter any bullshit the best you can, whether through reasoned quips or belligerent screaming, as is necessary. The other is to realize you are outnumbered, down another drink, and to instead store up your dismay and upset for an angry blog rant.

I struggle with coming up with something so you get to read my diary: If only, if only, I can become such a celebrity that people will want to read my diary.

Cutesy post about tourists: This weekend I met a woman from Chicago who awed at the mountains, and yes they were very effective at blocking my cell reception but I stopped cursing T-mobile and also spun in a slow circle. Ok, yes, I’m looking at them. Wow.

Lame last-minute blog post about Halloween costumes: I’m down to 15 minutes before I need to start assembling my own costume, and I realized if I really do want to provide a service through this blog, I can at least share some last-minute, cheap and lazy, DIY Halloween Costumes that I found / imagined.

I’m so full of myself I ask people to tell me something I don’t know when they say I’m beautiful: Make yourself memorable with a fraction more thought given to the compliments you choose…

I often leave parties without saying goodbye and why you should do it too: Immediately a man I didn’t know put his arm around me, people were dancing barefoot in the backyard to no music at all, and worst of all, I realized, everyone was dry as paper. Sober.

An introvert said something I didn’t like so I wrote a blog post about it: Yes, the Eysenck test divides emotional instability by introversion/extroversion. But I won’t accept cherry-picking the emotional problems you identify with as a valid “diagnosis” of introversion. Perhaps, like I did, you have a secret extrovert inside of you who is trapped by feelings of moodiness and pessimism.

I played a game of Cards Against Humanity and I was bored so I wrote a blog post about it: In general, just realize that nobody is paying attention to you because this game is designed for narcissists.

Got lost. Doesn’t matter, had waffles: As you probably already heard, I scooped chicken and waffle alike with my hand shovels into my mouth bucket, and then wiped all with individually packaged moist towelettes, and felt sated and warm.

Too much upworthy pissed me off: If I don’t know the person too well, such breaches have me reaching for the “hide” or even “unfriend” buttons. Facebook only lets me see you in one-dimension, and the one you’re giving me is ugly.

I whine about not wanting to go to work: I know that when I have to go back to work, the night previous I will be a restless mess of reluctance. I will do something pathetic with my time, like watching cable television and playing solitaire on my iPad. I don’t know why, but I waste every moment that is my last, simultaneously berating myself for not doing something more valuable with what I still have.

Bar story about a guy being nice to me: The “wrong” bar and my general lowered expectations for birthdays should have set me at unease, but maybe I just feel like I can do anything in a pair of Jeffrey Cambell’s and 1000 square inches of electric-grape leather. Maybe I could even accept free drinks from strangers.

Mean Girls don’t actually exist: I find it immensely rewarding to get people to come out of their shells, even if it is a shell made out of gender shenanigans.

Cigarettes are like little puke torpedos: Luckily drunk-sami became a smartphone photographer so I’ve managed to reconstruct memories of Jenga and flogging.

Don’t read this when you’re drunk; trust me I’ve tried: I’m beginning to identify two major structures in which a party group can operate. I’ll call them the Creatives and the Nostalgics.

Another attempt at Google traffic, but it’s actually a decent read if you ask me: Those kinds of conversations, about how SD is so nice and the weather is fucking rad, are immensely boring to me.

Thank you again for reading (I fucking mean it) and please tell me in the comments below which posts are the SD Survival Guide “must reads.”

Why San Diego is Awesome

Ok, so, this video is not why I think San Diego is awesome, but it’s so spot on that I had moments where I forgot that it’s a parody. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to that Rigoberto’s…

And I don’t even need to write a comment because Michael here had the same thought:

Obviously, as a gay female feminist, ‘bro culture’ is not my most favorite thing. When bros are going on bragging about taking advantage of women (or trying to score blow jobs) I tend to get kicky. Otherwise, I’m usually amused by the way they talk and their gentle sort of simplemindedness. Oh, and I love when a brah grasps for those profound thoughts, I really do. Have you ever noticed how their faces soften, their mouths start to form the o-shaped awe of their childlike wonder?

Also, turns out the ridiculously blissful weather is not why SD is particularly awesome, though of course I admit I’m completely dependent on it and I would be utterly lost if it actually snowed ever. I would be embarrassed for myself, except I really don’t care that some people out there are proud of themselves for being “rugged” and “weather-wise” — if I move and need to deal with the realities which come from a variety of precipitation falling from the sky, then fine, I’ll learn. Otherwise I’m busy focusing on weighing my ambitions with my social survival needs — not fantasizing about some zombie apocalypse where my ability to light a fire with a shoelace is going to be important.

All the flowering fruitless plums? That’s “snowy” enough for me.

Anyway, the weather is not my “big deal” here. I don’t see a lot of daylight anyway. Not only because my schedule keeps me inside on a computer most of the time but I’ve also kind of elected to avoid the sun and outdoor activities. For example, of course I have surfed (has any local never surfed? Tell me in the comments) but I didn’t really get into it because 1) my glorious princess hair turns to ratty straw with all that sea water 2) I sunburn in 13 minutes when the $4-per-ounce 110 SPF sunscreen is finally battered off my skin by waves & sand and 3) I’m not really a meditative person so I don’t get “totally stoked” to sit on a buoyant piece of foam covered in fiberglass for hours not talking to anyone and collecting skin cancer.

And before the 5th person gives a “helpful suggestion” I *do* own a rash guard.

Most people will tell you SD is awesome because it’s relaxing, “nice,” friendly… They laud the small town atmosphere and remark that it seems like everyone knows each other (they don’t, but it’s okay, we like pretending). Also, most importantly, it’s “better than LA.” Which it’s really not, and anyone who says so probably lived there and submitted to the soul-crushing forces and insecurity that comes from being surrounded by beautiful, successful people. I’m honestly not sure how well I’d fare in our city’s big sister but I will say it’s lovely to feel like a big fish in a little lake (or a whale’s vagina).

Those kinds of conversations, about how SD is so nice and the weather is fucking rad, are immensely boring to me. I’m too young to be grateful for a pleasant atmosphere to the point of making it my perpetual focus of small-talk. (I’d rather just take it for granted.) In fact I willfully throw myself into the chaotic fires of the night. Turns out, this is not a bad place to do that.

The underground scenes in SD are cushioned from the watchful eye of the media and/or your catholic grandparents because everyone is too busy defending how “pleasant” this place is. They call our city a “town” and drink in the big clear skies and hum the word “quaint” as a daily mantra. The fact that the only problems with this town are First World Problems (although the crumbling sidewalks are fucking shameful) gives us a kind of cushion that allows us to build hidden lairs of resistance. Or just, you know, dens of sin.

Slowly we will start to face the kind of scruple laid on places like NY and LA, but for now, expectations are low or nonexistent. It’s quite easy to squirm your way out of conversations where you’ve said too much about what happened last night since the imagination factor for the “normals” out here is quite scant.

I think many a creative mind lashes out against the ennui here, and we make our own fun out of thin air. We build playgrounds in the desert, we have subterranean punk shows, we put tails on and dance in warehouses. After two years (I was less cool in college) of paying attention, I finally know where to look. I’ve found something awesome in San Diego.

“What did I do last night?” A Detective Story

by Sami

My little brother — cosmic-cowboy hole-in-the-brain child of the same kooks that made me — was in town last week. I’d been hesitant to take him out since the last time I’d had drinks with him in public our parents found me sleep-standing against a wall and him shouting fuck tha’ po-lice.

But Katelyn makes a good drunk wrangler (we call her The Handler) and I figured if things started going to shit I’d make use of the zipties I inexplicably had in my purse.

I took him on a test run to a beach shindig where I didn’t know anyone (seriously, no one — the host found me on Facebook and just invited me, like some sort of party talent recruiter). His standby favorite, Steele Reserve, was only available in a three pack so we were playing with fire, so-to-speak. Indeed, with a literal flaming blade he did burn his hair. Yet, he struck down the beach with such furious precision that I was sure he had the beast, his party-monster, tamed. (I can’t speak for mine, however…)

The next night I took him to Fashion Whore, where two of our mutual friends were modeling. My brother asked if he was dressed well enough, and yes the holes in his pants look less like trendy distressing and more like he’s been living in a Berkeley co-op for the past 3-4 years (he has), but his screen-printed and studded leather jacket is a masterpiece. It should be placed on the shoulders of a little girl, photographed back-stalwartly-turned to the camera, and used as his next album cover for Butch Nasty and the Blackout Kids.

Brother + friend dropping Magnums.

I’m not sure if the designers are geniuses or just sewing seashells to women’s clothing they got at the thrift store, but the event felt larger than the artsy-craftsy charm of its pieces. May Star is not short of brilliant for organizing this one; the U-31 crowd was thicker than the usual ~~Ruby Room~~ Merrow group and I’m not the only one who enjoyed watching my friends strutting (and dipping, and gliding, and dancing, and vamping) on the runway. Good show.

I think because my brother spent most of our bar excursion outside to smoke — out of sight, out of mind — I felt comfortable enough to quit monitoring his alcohol intake. And mine. By the end of the fashion show I’d made it through the better part of the third iteration of my “whiskey coke” (Pro Tip: A plastic flask extends the life of an $8 drink). I left it unattended with at least a finger left of pure Evan Williams, so when the busboy swiped it I felt like the universe owed me a drink. A friend of mine was completely neglecting some sort of Red Bull poison, and by the time he left I was basically obligated to finish it. The universe decided to teach me to watch what I ask for, and also provided a full vodka soda. I mumbled something about being a garbage disposal and downed both.

We made it back to a friend’s house, and I don’t remember much there. Luckily drunk-sami became a smartphone photographer so I’ve managed to reconstruct memories of Jenga and flogging.

What no one remembers is if I knocked over all of the Jenga pieces on accident or on purpose.

The rest of the evening I pieced together by various clues. “Babe, why was there a towel by my head on the floor where I slept?” I was apparently making spit noises and giggling, like a giant frothy baby. Solution: towel. I also found a pillow in the bathroom and glimpsed a memory of a puke-filled toilet bowl through the camera-shutter flashback that is my recollection of traumatic happenings. I’m not much of a ‘vommer,’ be the urge from alcohol-intake or flu, always choosing to bunker down with my suffering over the violence of becoming a projectile-mechanism for my own stomach soup. I’ll do anything not to succumb to the porcelain gods’ demands for sacrifice.

Cigarettes, however, are a poison that my body won’t accept. My accusatory finger began pointing like a dowsing rod. Clearly I had an accomplice, since I know full well what cigarettes do to me. I wouldn’t stick another of those emetic sticks in my mouth after half a clove produced an embarrassing wet arc on the Brass Rail smoking patio. I wouldn’t…

Oh, right. I totally would.

Lost in Hollywood

A friend posted a link in the ol’ newsfeed to Google’s Location History to appraise Droid users of just how intimately your phone knows where you were last night. A privacy concern, for some.

My first thought was: Haha, yeah! I can show my friends exactly how lost I got in Hollywood last week.

I’ve been feeling lately that to truly get to the meat of what San Diego is like, I need to juxtapose it with other places. So when Katelyn needed to make a trip to Los Angeles to pick up something she won on eBay, I happily joined her do research, and, you know, to make sure she didn’t go into some creepy millionaire’s basement and get murdered.

She went into some ~~creepy~~ french millionaire’s basement and did not get murdered, so afterward we went to Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles to celebrate. As you probably already heard, I scooped chicken and waffle alike with my hand shovels into my mouth bucket, and then wiped all with individually packaged moist towelettes, and felt sated and warm.

Afterwards we decided to go to the Frolic Room, which promised via Yelp to be the best dive bar in town. Based on the reviews and my limited understanding of Hollywood, I guessed it was the best simulation of a dive bar in town, with well dressed white people, new furniture, and an unusually kind bartender. Basically, the perfect spot for a San Diegan in an unfamiliar city.

First, we returned to our car to drop off unfinished chicken and waffles. We had parked on Carlton Way, which is flanked on both sides by towering palm trees in symmetrical rows – probably a street that has shown up in a movie somewhere – the height and precision of which isn’t seen in comparably modest San D. I think that is where we started to go wrong; we started to imagine ourselves sauntering down this aisle of palms like Californian rockstars and went absolutely the wrong way down Carlton.

Here’s our goal:

Approximate actual route:

That’s only Part One of our misadventures, and it doesn’t show you the brief moment we started to walk the wrong way down Sunset Blvd. We stopped to consult my smart phone, and exactly as I feared, some “helpful” citizen off the recently departed bus started talking to us, in a creepy old man talking to two young women kind of way. I whipped around, “We’re fine. Bye,” and kept walking, determined not to look as lost as I felt.

We made it to the Frolic Room. It was an enjoyable approximation of a dive bar…. hipsters, new furniture, and an nice bartender. Besides realizing that LA is much bigger than SD, I’d also noticed that fewer (guy) people talk to me, though Katelyn assured me we had no lack of gawkers with long white beards reminiscent of our friend at the bus stop.

I’d also noticed that drivers in town sort of make up their own rules — running red lights, meandering around stopped cars — in a peaceful sort of way. I’d seen two cars pirouette easily around each other in a parking lot, where back home I’d have seen frustrated 5-point turns, impatient glaring, even honking. San Diegans have a certain, anxious rigidity about traffic law, and a certain insecurity about parking situations.

We walked along the streets again, and I saw a woman with skunked hair on tall, heel-less platforms, surrounded by jackals, her entourage of sharply scruffy men. There’s a different sort of confidence in Hollywood. Maybe it’s all an act, but she seemed to know she was indefatigably interesting, stylish, that she knew where she was going…. Which, apparently, 10 blocks ago, I did not. We had planned to get just one more drink on the way back to the car, at some tavern or another, but-

Let me remind you of our goal:

Now let me show you an animation of just how lost we got in Hollywood that night:

Last-Minute Halloween Costumes … & a last minute blog post

(Costume ideas below the picture.)

Hey San Diegans,

I spent my prime blog writing time at Disneyland! I learned that Blue Bayou really does have “the best” Monte Cristo, it’s not an overstatement, and at California Adventure I learned that the silly swings are seriously fucked up. I will never go on those again. I only ever want to feel that sideways if I earned it through copious alcohol consumption, not a undulating suspension ride.

disneyland arthur stone sword

I’m down to 15 minutes before I need to start assembling my own costume, and I realized if I really do want to provide a service through this blog, I can at least share some last-minute, cheap and lazy, DIY Halloween Costumes that I found / imagined. Enjoy, and see you out at the bars tonight!

Movie Theater Floor
Wear black and stick on popcorn and empty candy wrappers.

Road to Nowhere
All black + white tape dotted line, then make an attachment or sign for your belt or hat that says “nowhere”

Fork in the Road
Road costume from above and dangle a fork on a necklace

Deviled egg
White shirt + yellow circle + devil horns

Error 404 costume not found
(print this and tape it to your clothes)

Aircraft carrier
Carry around a toy airplane

Operation (board game)
Use a thick red marker to draw the outlines of “adam’s apple,” “wishbone,” “funny bone,” etc. on white paper. Cut just outside the red lines and tape all the pieces on to yellow or nude colored clothing (or your naked body if it’s that kind of party). Wear a red clown nose or paint your nose red, or find one of those light-up Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer noses (I happen to have one..somewhere….)

Blackmail
All black clothes + print out oversized postage stamps and affix to the left side of your chest. (Google image search stamps and put on a “large” size filter)

Cactus
Green clothes dotted with those page markers/stickies from office supply store or stolen from work

(Can you tell I’m just looking around my desk at this point?)

Any of the rage comics
Print out one of the rage faces as a mask, use black tape on white clothes to make a stick figure body.

Happy Halloween!

San Diego Survival Guide

Sami navigates and examines being young, gay, and weird in San Diego. Updates (every other) Taco Tuesday. Now with more activism.

Tag Archives: San Diego