coffee is good. All it needs is a French beignet to go with it. I’ve got some, but I can’t be bothered going downstairs to get one. I just came back from Trader Joes. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a food store that sells sometimes off beat and interesting products from around the world, as well as fruits, vegetables, and especially San Francisco sour dough bread. I lived in SF for years and saw Trader Joes all over the place, but it took about three years to actually go into one. I had always thought that it was a place that sold, oh, I dunno, woven baskets from Somalia or something. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they sell really nice food products. Trader Joes is a west coast thing, so it was a while before they started opening up stores out east here. There’s a couple in NYC, and one or two in Connecticut, one of which I just visited. I like their frozen tamales, and some of their salsas and bread products. I used to go there for the SF sourdough, but every time I bought it, I ate about two slices and it just went moldy.
This is all very interesting, I’m sure. The most unpleasant part of this excursion was the ten mile traffic jam, which was fortunately going in the opposite direction. It’s the longest traffic jam I’ve ever seen. It just kept going and going. It’s weird because it didn’t look like anything major where it started. I don’t know. I’m glad I was going west and not east. I did have a Trader Joe tamale when I got home. It wasn’t bad. Back in San Francisco in the Mission, they made the best ones. The lady who lived downstairs sold them outside the Casa Lucas supermarket. I never did try one, but her son came up the stairs one afternoon and was selling cooked corn on the cob. It was smothered in mayonnaise. Not bad. We called him Jorge (pronounced Horhey) Mesa, because he was kind of large, but short. Then again when you live right next door to a burrito joint, you don’t have far to go for everything Mexican. I could happily live in Mexico, I love the food.
My old neighborhood- I lived on the top floor of the building on the right with the tree on front of it.
The parking in the Mission was crap, but it was a lively place. I was taking a nap one afternoon when I was awoken to the sound of what sounded like heavenly singing. I thought for a minute that I had died and gone to heaven. I got up and looked out the window and there was a church procession going past. It was one of the coolest places I’ve ever lived in, and I was sorry to leave in a way. It’s all changed and gentrified now. Since the silicon valley weasels took over everything and made it unaffordable, probably a lot of the character has gone. I wrote a couple of albums while I was there. I’ll post one of the songs from one of them below, complete with street sounds at the end. It’s a true story, if you can call it a story. Let’s just say it’s an observation of what happened one afternoon. You had to be there.That’s all for now.