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Wednesday, November 01, 2000
I have recently returned from a fact-finding mission in California. Specifically, I wanted to know why so many people want to live there, while a pretty darn nice place like Pittsburgh is losing population even though it is so much cheaper. (And could I get my employer to subsidize this mission? No. Not even the mud bath I wrote about last week, which was clearly a business expense.)
The first place I checked out was San Francisco. I have to admit, it is awfully hip. Even the homeless there are younger and more energetic than ours. And when you compare Union Square to Market Square, well, I think we need some state grant money to try to attract a better class of weirdo. Our down-and-out show a lack of imagination and flair.
I saw a woman in Union Square who had to have been a stripper at some point in the distant past, like maybe the Renaissance. She was tottering purposefully along in a tiny, tight pink dress, big hair, strappy silver stilettos and -- proving once again that fashion genius lies in the accessorizing -- a white and silver feather boa. I thought she was a little overdressed for a lunchtime stroll, but what do I know?
Maybe the fact that half the U.S. Navy was in town for Fleet Week had something to do with it.
It was also Columbus Day weekend, so I was lucky enough to witness San Francisco's Columbus Day parade. Ironically, the first marching band I spotted was from Pittsburg High School in Pittsburg, Calif., where spelling is obviously not on the curriculum.
That was pretty much your run-of-the-sousaphone band. But it was followed a few minutes later by a motley ensemble called the Community Marching Band. This troupe was a ragtag gaggle of persons of indeterminate and perhaps multiple gender, cavorting freestyle in riotous clothes and wigs.
I have no idea what they were playing. I'm not sure they did either. But they were having a way better time than the kids from Pittsburg.
San Francisco's sanitation department was represented by its precision garbage-can drill team, which I couldn't describe adequately even if I took up the rest of this page. A handful of grown men in coveralls wield rolling heavy metal trash cans about 4 feet tall, and they do it in synchronized choreography.
Every block or two on the parade route they would pause and do their thing to wow the crowds. I happened to catch their act just as the Italian club float behind them was blaring that authentic Old World favorite, "Shaddup You Face." If you've never seen precision can-spinning set to "Shaddup You Face," you've been too long in the provinces.
There were, naturally, many floats of Italian organizations. There was a fire engine full of proud Italian firefighters. Oddly, it was placed behind a handful of Civil War buffs, all older guys in Confederate uniforms, riding on a cart with a cannon in it. The cannon was, for reasons I can't begin to speculate about, pointed toward the fire truck, and every few minutes the Rebs would load it with a blank charge and fire it at the Italian firefighters.
You see what I'm getting at? We're just not offering people enough surrealism.
A geyser up in the Napa Valley features, as a side attraction, fainting goats.
They're sweet-looking little lop-eared goats that have some kind of neurological disorder that makes every muscle in their bodies go stone rigid when they're startled, so they fall over. I didn't actually see them demonstrate, because they were having a little rest in their shed after what I'm sure was a long, tiring morning of being scared stiff repeatedly by shrieking children.
People are also attracted to California by a history of change and opportunity. Every town you stop in claims to have been the state capital for about 20 minutes in 1857. And once you've seen Sacramento, you know why they waffled so long.
Right now, the land of opportunity is Silicon Valley. It has more of everything than we do: More money, more eight-lane freeways, more start-ups, more venture capital, more SUVs. Rush hour never ends; the highways are jammed in both directions any time of the day or evening. You can't get a hotel room on a weeknight. Everything costs twice what it should. Even though Silicon Valley is booming, you couldn't pay me enough to live there.
Of course, I'd like to see someone try.
Samantha Bennett can be reached by e-mail a sbennett@post-gazette.com