Daneomatic

As soon as it gets dark everyone who drives down my street suddenly has a motorcycle.

Walgreens believes that because I live in a city I am either rich, stupid or both. Seriously, $7 for a bottle of shampoo? $10 for a thimble of Tide? At that price I should definitely not need to deal with the panhandler blocking my exit from your store.

A favorite pastime in San Francisco seems to be crossing a street while shouting and swearing at no one in particular. Or just walking around and shouting at yourself. Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of that.

Every sound associated with a moving BART train is unpleasant. If you want to encourage mass transit use on a larger scale, you’re going to have to make it sound better than a chorus of shrieking lost souls.

Outrageous. You mean I can get kelp chips at Rainbow Grocery but I can’t get curry leaves? Well then, I’ll just take my Obama Bucks^® elsewhere.

Berkeley bookstores are more fun than regular bookstores. I got lost in one for an hour today, browsing Popular Mechanics drafting manuals from 1912, books on national park architecture, trademarks of the 20s and 30s, and 20th century U.S. travel brochures. It’s like someone crystallized all of my obsessions of the hour and planted them right at the corner of Shattuck and Durant.

Pedestrians in Berkeley do not observe traffic lights and cannot be trusted. I almost got hit by a car because I absentmindedly joined a large group of people who were crossing the street, without checking to make sure the light was green beforehand. That said, the jerk in the red Jeep Cherokee actually sped up and swerved to get as close to me as possible. Way to teach me a lesson.

Today I saw a Dixieland band that championed itself as “Old jazz music for the new Depression.” So at least we have that going for us.

On a similar note, I bought some great shirts at the Volcom store on Telegraph Avenue. The fellow working there told me I was their first sale of the day. It was 2:15 in the afternoon. Ouch.