I’m over the worst of the pain, recovering from a very robust shoulder operation, listening to my first music in a week. I’ve been putting this operation off for months, so good to be on the uphill side of it. There’s light at the end of this long tunnel.
Going through my old B&W photos, still trying to determine if I have a cohesive book on the ’60s to write. It’s going to take me a week to get through the notes from my 1-month trip.
I’ve been on the road for 26 days now. 6 flights, 5 hotels, 2 airbnb’s, 2 radio interviews, one TV interview, 3 sleepovers at friends’ houses (including Bruno’s boat); taxis, Supershuttle, subway and bus rides, miles and miles of walking, all for the sake of 8 bookstore presentations for Small Homes.
The good part is that it’s good to get out and meet people, to get outside the California bubble, and hopefully to promote sales of the new book. The down side is so much time away from home. I’m homesick.
Following is all pretty obvious to seasoned travelers. (I’m just killing time at the airport here.)
After my presentation at McNally Robinson, a fantastic bookstore in Winnipeg tonight, I went wandering the windy streets in search of food, went down stairs to Johnny G’s Pub, looked a bit sketchy but I was hungry. I ended up with local pilsner on tap plus Thursday night special, steak and fettuccine for 10 I-kid-you-not bucks, and it’s fantastic, perfectly cooked medium rare small steak and very good lightly garlic-flavored pasta and I sit here with one other customer and 2 bartenders watching the Stanley Cup hockey playoff between Ottawa and Pittsburgh which is tied up and now in overtime and there are now 8 more people here plus a guy with guitar singing, talking to friendly locals, reflecting on the richness of serendipity…
I don’t spend nearly as much time on this blog as I used to, because:
-I need to devote time to books
-I’m doing Instagram, which I like a lot, and each Instagram post gets put on the blog (and Twitter) automatically. The trouble is they look a bit weird, with hash tags, and too-large type. For which I apologize.
-I wish I had the time to do blog posts like I did a few years ago, but I need to focus on projects that bring in income. I told Stewart Brand a few months ago that I’d done over 5,000 posts, with no corresponding income and he said, what took you so long to figure that out?
Guess what just came on the radio (playing at this moment)? “I’m so tired, Lord, of bein broke all the time,” by Canned Heat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU209vIy0KI
Cosmic timing, eh?
My “Tour” I’m writing this from Courtenay, a (real) town I like a lot on Vancouver Island. I’m in the early stages of a tour of bookstore appearances with my new book. I just did the Community Hall on Hornby Island; the place was packed — young and old kindred spirits. Before I left, I did Mollusk Surf Shop in San Francisco and started by showing a few old scratchy B&W photos from surfing in Santa Cruz in the’50s, before wet suits and polyurethane foam, it was so much fun! Beer, cider, great music. Standing room only, some people couldn’t get in. A couple of angels made it possible.
Dates:
-Thursday (tomorrow): Russell Books, 734 Fort St, Victoria, 7 PM
-Tuesday, May 23, 7PM, Vancouver Public Library, Main Branch, 350 West Georgia St, Vancouver
-Thursday, May 25, 7:30 PM, McNally Robinson Books, 1120 Grant Ave, Winnipeg
-Saturday, May 27, Toronto: 11 AM, the Public Library at Parkdale; 2 PM, The Public Library, Danforth/Coxwell
-Thursday,June 1, Spoonbill and Sugartown in Brooklyn, 7PM
I’ve booked 6 flights for this sojourn. Sheesh! Booked into AirBnB places in Vancouver and Toronto to avoid high hotel bills.
New book: I’m working on a book on the ’60s. Someone told me a few weeks ago that it’s been 50 years since the “Summer of Love,” and there are a bunch of exhibits, articles, a lot of attention on the era, and most all that I read or see about it doesn’t correlate with what I saw happen. So I’m writing about it from my own perspective, with my own photos. I grew up in San Francisco, went to high school in the Haight Ashbury district, and was 10 years older than the group (baby boomers) that caused it all to happen. I dropped out of the insurance business in 1965, partly because I felt I had more in common with young people than I did with my own generation. I’m not sure if it will come together as a book, but I’m following my modus operandi of: If you don’t know what to do — start. We’ll see.
Other books “The Half Acre Homestead,” a scrapbook on barns, a book on Baja, possibly a wild book on building by a French friend of mine…
Print-on-demand or short run books A lot of things that don’t require a major book. The first one will be a 48-page book: Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture of the California Coast. In past years I put together a bunch of handmade, hand-lettered sort of scrapbooks on trips: roaming through the southwest deserts, LA, NYC (both visually rich), Southeast Asia, the Greek island Lesbos (on a motor scooter)…I’ll see if it makes sense to do limited editions.
I feel like’ I’m just getting rolling.
I love it here in Canada. So many wonderful people + a bunch of true and lifelong friends. I told Michael the other day it feels like a “separated at birth” situation, it’s all so familiar and friendly and tuned into my sensibilities.
Photo by Godfrey Stephens, in Victoria, BC:
I had a radio interview to do yesterday, so hit the Cliff House in SF for an Irish Coffee and popovers to start the day, then got rolling on Hwy One, making the coastal SF/SC journey for maybe the 300th time. By the time I got through Half Moon Bay and it was just brussels sprouts, strawberries and arroyos leading down to beaches, I was sailing, getting that exhilaration that comes from moving smoothly through space.
Got into SC, took right on Swift Street, past Haut’s shop, then to Steamer Lane, which was breaking and surprisingly uncrowded. I SO love Santa Cruz, having lived here on and off in the ’50s. The water’s warmer, the waves better, it’s more tranquillo, like it’s 15% LA (Santa Barbara is 70% LA). Like San Francisco, it’s overcrowded and expensive, but its carefree and playful, with soul intact.
When I discoverd surfing at age 18, I rearranged my classes at Stanford so I had no classes on Friday. I took off at noon every Thursday (either on my Harley 45 or hitchhiking) and spent 3-1/2 days of the week in SC. 4 of us rented a cabin on Ocean Ave. for $20 a month.
I can hardly believe it now, but we surfed without wet suits. So stoked were we. SO cold.
There were maybe 20 surfers in town and for some reason they accepted me, didn’t treat me like I was a college jerk. SC then had a population of 25,000 in winter and 75,000 in summer.
Right now am in v. cool new barista shop, Cat and Cloud, on Portola Ave., soon to head back up the coast for a meeting in our office this afternoon, where we’ll be strategizing tour/marketing/blah blah for the new book.
Ike and Tina Turner, Shake a Tail Feather Baby playing right now. What an incredible band! Their CD “Proud Mary”is a great chronological record of this phenomenal band.
I drove pickup trucks for over 35 years. I finally got tired of hauling a relatively large vehicle over the winding roads that are necessary for us to reach the more civilized world and bought a Honda Fit 3 years ago. Which was a dandy little car. $17K complete (new). 1/3 more storage than similar size cars, 35 mpg, nimble on the curves.
All that ended when a rolling rock that I hit knocked the motor off its mounts a few months ago. It was so expensive to fix that AAA declared it a total and gave me $12K, a fair deal. Which helped a lot because Shelter Pubs was running on empty and it allowed us to pay a printing bill and avoid borrowing to stay afloat. I know, small peanuts in this day and world, but we’re a small peanut company.
I’m going to wait a while to get another car (meanwhile driving my 14-year-old Toyota 4-cylinder, stick shift 4×4, which gets about 20 mpg and is a magnificent vehicle and can go anywhere and pull other cars out of ditches).
In the next 6 or so weeks, I’ll be doing slide shows from the new book, talking about options for young people seeking shelter (and avoiding high rents or bank mortgages), and signing books. In Northern California, Canada, and NYC; then in August in Oregon.
April
April 7 – 7PM
Copperfields
138 North Main Street
Sebastapol, CA 95472
April 11 – 7PM
City Lights
261 Columbus Ave.
San Francisco CA 94133
April 28 – 7 PM
Bookshop Santa Cruz
1520 Pacific Ave.
Santa Cruz CA 95060
May 4- 7:30 PM
Builder’s Booksource
1817 4th
Street
Berkeley CA 94710
This is just north of Steep Ravine. Looks like it will be closed for a while. This is going to make for madness on Panoramic (the mountain road) for cars heading to Stinson from San Francisco this summer.
I’m out in a wonderful thatched-roof domicile about 12 miles east of San José del Cabo; it looks out to the ocean and gets the sea breezes. The surf is up and there was only one surfer out today. Surfing has become too much of a hassle for me lately, crowds and age the main detractors. With skateboarding, there’s no problem getting up, and there are no crowds. The drawbacks are, yes, pavement and cars (and age, que lástima).
So I’ve been swimming. Jeez, if I lived where water was this warm I’d be in it every day. Tonight I bagged it because of the shorebreak – steep beach means you can get handled coming back in – as I did yesterday, rolled around and thoroughly pounded – sand in hair, ears, coating body, I mean I was sanded!