I ain't no Kid Chicago

From Liverpool I caught the train to London, then out again to Dover. We drove past some white cliffs, I saw Dover Castle from a distance, but most of the sightseeing was done through the bottom of a pint glass. I was staying with a friend out of town and we spent Friday night drinking with a very nice bunch of her mates. On Saturday afternoon we all had a drink beside a pebble beach, and then went into the nearby village of Deal to drink at a few of the pubs. I sampled various tepid and flat Kentish ales and the day was warm and sunny - perfect for sitting around in beer gardens. I didn't want to leave but had to be back in London for the night, so I caught a train around 7.30, and rode back in an empty carriage drunk on an empty stomach. I fell asleep and woke up dazed and confused at the end of the line, staggered out onto the platform and asked the information lady how I could get to Charing Cross Station. I was pleased to find that I was already at Charing Cross Station. I made it to the hostel at Earl's Court sometime before midnight, fell asleep, and was up again at 6am to catch my flight to San Francisco. Having let the weekend run away with me, I had no accommodation booked when I arrived in San Francisco in the late afternoon. So I bought a guidebook at the airport and made my way into the centre of town - the Union Square district. I came out of the BART station at the bottom of Powell Street, where they manually rotate the trams on a big wooden wheel before sending them back up the hill. Down the intersecting Mission Street were people selling all sorts of rubbish at stalls, and a fair spattering of street crazies and preachers on their various soapboxes. I walked up Powell Street and took a hotel on the first sidestreet that I came to and it happened to be pretty cheap. It was a big rambling place that looked like it was from the '20s. The door to my room had a suspicious two-way peephole, and the door to the shared bathroom was warped so that it wouldn't close. The bed was big and good though, which is what I needed (I don't mind if I was being watched). I went first to the Cartoon Art Museum. It was mostly concerned with single-panel cartoons of the New Yorker variety. You'd hear people laughing as they edged their way around the rooms. There was funny stuff. From there I walked to the Tenderloin, which is a big slum that stretches through the middle of San Francisco. I couldn't believe it. There were so many people on the sidewalk loitering, drinking, panhandling, and generally looking dangerous that I didn't feel safe there - and it's very rare that I feel that way anywhere during daylight hours. I had dinner at Lori's Fabulous '50s Diner (served with a dill pickle the size of a banana), then bought an American Mad Magazine and a can of Budweiser and had quiet one. I had to leave early this morning to fly to Chicago (I'll have some more time in San Francisco later this week). As the plane was landing the pilot announced that it was -13 degrees celsius on the ground. It started snowing as I was on the train from the airport into town, but the streets and buildings were already thickly blanketed. It's a beautiful sight, all of the bare trees and turn-of-the-century houses under snow look just like a Chris Ware drawing. I inadvertantly booked a hostel in Lincoln Park, the suburb where rich white folks live. The train here from the city was absolutely packed (being rush hour) and a local rich white guy befriended me... told me about the hotels his company owns in Sydney, and about his yachts (I don't know how we covered so much ground in such a short train journey). It was about a kilometre to walk from the station to the hostel, in falling snow, and on a sidewalk caked thick in ice. Lots of fun.
And it's an amusingly bad hostel. My mattress has spaceships on it, and my only roommate states he has "been here for a while" - it basically looks like his bedroom.