Friday, June 01, 2007
Antichrist Television Blues
We rode a taxi downtown then waited for a train – the BART, if you must – to send us whizzing under the Bay and resurfacing on the other side in next to no time.
We emerged from the underground station blinking like moles with suitcases, which we trundled through the scholastic streets until our brows were moist with dampness. We dumped them in our room – the cases, not our brows - then headed straight out again for some serious dawdling about.
Berkeley is the city of a squillion students. Telegraph Avenue is where the bustle is, and where Girlfriend bought some Lego earrings from an enterprising kid with a street corner stall.
We browsed second hand bookshops and second hand clothes shops – the nineties are the new eighties, apparently – and had lunch in the scruffiest cafe we could find.
It was the sort of place where bearded men and women buy one coffee, then sit at a table and read an entire novel, or write one, or as was the case with one particularly unselfconscious young man sat in the window, pull out a bass guitar and a Portastudio, and proceed to lay down some tracks, man.
We meandered around the University campus, eventually wending our way up to the Greek Theatre, the work of one WR Hearst.
Once it was all tear gas and National Guard troops round here, and though the students aren't quite so revolting as their sixties and seventies counterparts, dissenting voices are still making themselves heard. It was day 182 of the protest.
Tattoos & body piercing & politics.
We returned to the Greek Theatre in the evening, where The Arcade Fire put on a farewell show for the last night of our holiday.
It's a brilliant venue and it was a great show. Everybody had a good time. It was a wonderful summer evening – it didn't rain! Phew! - and I can't imagine a more perfect way to have ended the trip.
Tomorrow we have to be up at stupid o'clock for the airport. It's hardly worth going to bed. Tired but happy.
We emerged from the underground station blinking like moles with suitcases, which we trundled through the scholastic streets until our brows were moist with dampness. We dumped them in our room – the cases, not our brows - then headed straight out again for some serious dawdling about.
Berkeley is the city of a squillion students. Telegraph Avenue is where the bustle is, and where Girlfriend bought some Lego earrings from an enterprising kid with a street corner stall.
We browsed second hand bookshops and second hand clothes shops – the nineties are the new eighties, apparently – and had lunch in the scruffiest cafe we could find.
It was the sort of place where bearded men and women buy one coffee, then sit at a table and read an entire novel, or write one, or as was the case with one particularly unselfconscious young man sat in the window, pull out a bass guitar and a Portastudio, and proceed to lay down some tracks, man.
We meandered around the University campus, eventually wending our way up to the Greek Theatre, the work of one WR Hearst.
Once it was all tear gas and National Guard troops round here, and though the students aren't quite so revolting as their sixties and seventies counterparts, dissenting voices are still making themselves heard. It was day 182 of the protest.
Tattoos & body piercing & politics.
We returned to the Greek Theatre in the evening, where The Arcade Fire put on a farewell show for the last night of our holiday.
It's a brilliant venue and it was a great show. Everybody had a good time. It was a wonderful summer evening – it didn't rain! Phew! - and I can't imagine a more perfect way to have ended the trip.
Tomorrow we have to be up at stupid o'clock for the airport. It's hardly worth going to bed. Tired but happy.

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