Man, I suck in April. At posting, anyway. And I just started reading Bird By Bird, too (again...and likely I'll drop it, again). Bird By Bird: that Lamott is a crazywoman, full of anxiety. I think I'll take any advice she gives with a handful of salt. Or maybe pretzels. Mmm, the big doughy ones with mustard on them, and those huge salt crystals. Yeah. I love pretzels.
Anyway, there's a lice outbreak at my school. Guh-nasty. I have been having what I sincerely hope are psychosomatic head-itches. My mom used to threaten to shave my head when I'd get lice as a kid. I have a distinct memory, actually, of having lice shampoo on my head when there was a partial solar eclipse going on, and looking up at it. But I could have made that up, too. The worst part of having lice as a kid was having to get all your stuffed animals washed. And those little tiny combs they'd use to scrape out the nits; those tiny little combs are murder for a girl with long, unruly hair.
I've been trying to take a slightly different route home from work every day, to see if I can find more cool-looking old buildings and get a sense of what Oakland was like 100 or so years ago. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I drove past Grover Shafter Park for the first time. Have you ever seen Grove Shafter Park? There is a freeway overpass that plants its feet in this park, and seems also to have named the park after itself. I mean, damn, what a sad park. I tried to look it up on Wikipedia, to see what the deal is with this sad park, but found nothing. Googling: nothing. Nothing interesting anyway I've been really obsessed with Oakland history lately, so this disappointed me. But it leads me to believe that this park has no history, and was probably created in an attempt to de-uglify the terrain under the overpass.
Oakland has some pretty cool history, though. Particularly interesting to me, at the moment, is that there were lots of amusement parks, at one time, all over the Bay Area. There was one on Telegraph between 56th and 58th streets called Idora Park which sounds like it was pretty fucking awesome. And there was one on top of the shellmound in Emeryville, one in Alameda, and, of course, Playland at the Beach at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. My dad remembers that one. How is it that the Santa Cruz Boardwalk still manages to exist happily, after 100 years, while all the others have crumbled under financial duress? Guess I'll have to keep reading. I'm looking for the quintessential book of Oakland history, so if you know what that book is, you should tell me. Right now I'm opting for Wikiworld, but I know that it isn't the most reliable option. I mean, not that something is true just because it's in a book, but, you know. However, the interactivity is bitchin'. The demise of amusement parks is not so bitchin'.
Speaking of the Boardwalk, and pretzels, I was there once with Sayuremy (I think...memories get so skewed with time) and all I wanted was a pretzel, and it just was not happening for me. Every pretzel stand was either closed, or had just run out of pretzels, or they had pretzels but I'd have to wait like half an hour for them to be ready, or whatever. I was so scarred by this incident that I feel the need to buy soft pretzels nearly every time that they are available to me. I have a similar issue with the movie The Squid and the Whale, only I haven't managed to watch that yet. Which is ridiculous since my roommate owns a copy.
I am wondering why, every time I pass the fire alarm by the bathroom at work, I have a nearly overwhelming urge to pull it. Why? It would just cause everyone to evacuate the building, the fire department to come, and the school to be charged some outrageous fee. I don't want any of those things; why would I want to pull the fire alarm?
1 comment:
Playland at the Beach got seedy in the seventies. That's what my parents said. And did you know that Oakland isn't named for oak trees, but because the state of Oklahoma annexed the city it in the thirties, thinking their own homes were ruined by the dust storms? They subsequently changed the spelling from Okland to Oakland so people wouldn't notice as much. At least that's what Wikiworld said.
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