is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Ah, Berkeley.
Tonight Evany Thomas is reading at Black Oak Books, 7:30p, in good old North Berkeley. That�s going to be fun!
Actually, I don�t like North Berkeley so much. Sure, it has wonderful restaurants and shops and such, but unfortunately I spent too much time in my undergraduate college years serving nonfat half-caff lattes to self-righteous aging liberals who felt certain they were saving the world with their prejudices. It�s like a Jane Austen tale, but less funny. When people are sure the they are the most enlightened, that they have all the best views and opinions, and that they are in possession of the truth, they tend to be the least just. Justice comes as much from tolerance, humility and uncertainty as it does from convictions. You have to have all of those. Anyway, I�m sure we all know what I mean when I use the phrase �self-righteous aging liberal.� It�s not that every aging liberal, or every liberal, is self-righteous. There�s just a certain ethos of North Berkeley that drives me NUTS.
There are plenty of things about Berkeley that I appreciate, too. The Bay Area could not be the Bay Area without it.
And anyway I haven�t spent much time in North Berkeley since the late 1980s, so what do I know? But then�
Yesterday I had what I consider to be the Quintessential North Berkeley Experience.
First of all, why was I in North Berkeley? Well, I didn�t know how long it would take me to get my errands done, and I had to meet one of my dissertation advisors at noon for lunch to discuss �my career,� etc., and could not be late for that. But, strangely, my errands all took no time at all (no line at the post office? no wait at the pharmacy?) so I found myself in Berkeley early, trying to think of a place where I could buy a nice gift for the person who has so kindly let me house-sit for him. I realized that there really had to be some place in North Berkeley where I could buy some sort of thing he would like. You know, a bazaar where you can buy a nice overpriced gift for a person you don�t really know. La vie, c�est bizarre, non?
So I pull into a parking space without problem. In fact there were many, many available parking spaces along the street. When I get out of my car, there is a man in a car behind me, with his head leaning out the window, and he is saying, �you know, there is more than one parking space here,� all annoyed-like. At first I don�t know WTF he�s talking about, as if my tiny Chevy Tracker could somehow have taken up more than one parking space. Then I realize he means I should have pulled all the way forward instead of parking where I parked (there were four empty parking spaces ahead of me). Now, he could have simply driven fifteen feet further and pulled into his own space without even having to parallel park. And anyway, in what universe am I supposed to intuit that maybe there is man behind me who is too lazy to drive 15 feet so I better pull forward? This wasn�t an instance of me being a space hog, not at all. So I say, nicely, �I�m sorry; but there are plenty of spaces right there, you wouldn�t even have to parallel park.� He says, �You�re not a very good neighbor.� (Fast forward an hour or so when I am telling this story to my dissertation advisor and she is LAUGHING LOUDLY to think that some poor guy tried to tell me about being a neighbor� because �the neighbor� is a figure in Levinas� philosophy, and it has to do with how to treat people, ethically. Let�s just say that this guy was failing.) I say, �Oh, so you think you�re being my neighbor right now?� For some reason I get in my car and pull forward. I think I was in shock at how sure he was of his position on the matter. In retrospect I should have just put money in the parking meter and walked away. But I moved my car. Anyway, GET THIS, when I get out of my car after having pulled forward, he says to me, noting how annoyed I look, �you must be having a bad day!�, as if this were all somehow my fault. Some bitchy girl who doesn�t know how to park got in the way of this guy, who otherwise could have driven around all day in his hybrid vehicle feeling GREAT for saving the earth. I said, �No, I think you are, sir.� And then he looks to the guy next to him and says, �can you believe this woman?�
My friends, that is North Berkeley.
I walk down the street and buy my thank you gift. Then I go back to my car and get in. By the time I start my vehicle, a woman in a Mercedes has pulled up next to me. At first I can�t tell WTF she�s doing. Then I realize she wants my parking spot. Except that she is sitting there in such a way that I am trapped in my spot. She begins gesturing at me dismissively like I ought to get out of her way. Like �why are you taking so long to get out of that spot!!.� I gesture back at her to try to communicate that I cannot do so unless she backs up. She gestures again. I honk my horn. She snaps to, backs up two feet. Not enough room. I honk again. She backs up, looking very put out.
My friends, that is North Berkeley.
Then I drove to downtown Berkeley to meet JB at a restaurant called Downtown. I found a parking space again without problem. Except there is this new parking system there? You put money (or a credit card!) into a machine, and choose how much time you want, and it issues you this complicated sticker thing, with directions on how to use it. You have to take the sticker off the backing, and then use the sticky part to stick the backing (on which is printed the amount of time you�ve bought and when it expires) to the inside of your driver�s door window, so the meter maid can check it out as she drives by. First of all, it takes a bit of mind-wrapping-around and coordination to understand WTF you are supposed to be doing with the sticker contraption (the first time I stuck the sticker to the wrong side of the backing), but I managed it. Later on, as I was walking toward campus to go to the library (having moved my car to a residential street so as to avoid more paying for parking), I noticed that 6 out of 9 cars I looked at had the sticker thing done incorrectly. Some had placed the thing on the dashboard. Most who did that didn�t even put it on the side of the dashboard closest to where the meter maid would be. One idiot figured out the sticker thing but then stuck it to the window facing the sidewalk! Part of me wanted them all to get tickets. The other part of me did not. Let�s just say that this latest parking system is a very inelegant solution to a problem no one needed to create anyway.
The genius (evil genius) of this system is that if you buy 90 minutes but end up using 30, you don�t get to gift your 60 minutes to anyone else (unless you find someone and give them your crazy sticker contraption). No one gets to pull into a fully loaded parking meter and get that jackpot feeling, ever again. I guess this is Berkeley�s way of getting back at all the geniuses who went around breaking every single digital parking meter for YEARS, such that you really never had to pay for parking. Ah, Berkeley. Power to the PEOPLE.
And, on my way out of the library this evening, I walked by a drum circle thick with incense. Berkeley.
1:21 p.m. - August 02, 2006
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