Travels in the USA

What a country of great extremes, from the politics - Tea Partiers to liberal Democrats to the locales and people you meet along the way. The US has such opulence. Still. But there is also a decay around the edges that is unmistakable. Maybe it hits me in the face a bit more having been away. A lot of it is the kind of gradual thing that occurs over time - the weeds creep upward, the trash collects under the freeway overpass, the concrete crumbles.

The two gateway points to the Pacific are Los Angeles and San Francisco. I spent some time walking, and driving, around these two cities, on my last two visits. Instead of giving you a pic of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica building, let's talk about what it really looks like. We flew into Oakland and caught transport to SF. The view out from the freeway, pretty much all the way to the bay bridge, was an eye-popping display of urban blight. The odd burned out building looms beside the freeway, windows are barred, fences high and barb wired.

I can't speak for the full extent of it, but this part of California is no yellow brick road through a field of daisies. To someone coming from a smaller, greener world, it's an assault upon the senses. One wonders if the locals notice it, see that nature, though not an attractive version of it, is taking the city back. In San Fran, I stayed mostly around Golden Gate Park, in the Richmond and Sunset districts. It's hard to believe that some of these shabby dwellings, without a patch of grass and in semi-disrepair, command prices in the neighborhood of $1.5M. Now that's real estate gone mad.

I picked that photo to make a point, but now I'll go for a random drop down into Google maps

This one pretty much sums up the balance. Nice pine trees. Interspersed with ever present tagging, chain fencing and a mix of scrub weed and brown, dying fauna. I know, it's a drought. Just walk through SF to Japantown. You'll know when you get there because suddenly the public spaces are well tended, even if it's zeroscape and rock garden.

And this mix of beauty and the beast pretty much follows on our drive up the coast. The fabulous redwood forests, so grand and ancient, give way to a small town where we spend the night, Garberville, CA. The local paper describes the current happening: citizens are gathering for a town meeting to discuss no access to law enforcement, and deteriorating sense of public safety. Folks don't feel secure, and they want the sheriff! One imagines reading similar headlines a hundred or more years ago. I believe this link is discussing the matter: Garberville petition

At dusk I walk to the local grocery to pick up dinner, glad that I've come alone. Clusters of people along the way, hanging out on the sidewalk or park areas. I am mostly not threatened by this scene, but I'm a 200 lb guy, and I can see where a person might be.  One has the sense that a giant sequoia, a thousand years old already, has been around long before the area's current travails, and it may well be around long after. I promise in my next post to give a more upbeat account, as there was much to like on the trip, as well as to discuss AirBnB which we used to handle lodging during some of this trip.

Mariposa Grove, Yosemite