March 06, 2003
tourism
When I first moved away from home and went to College, I found out that my hometown was quite a star among my fellow New Jerseyans at Rutgers. At freshman orientation, the first question asked was always "what exit?", which I found quite strange. I found out later they meant what exit on the NJ Turnpike. It seemed that was the way most folks from north Jersey communicated where they were from. And farther south it was the parkway exit. Since I never knew what my exit was, I would just tell them my hometown's name, never expecting anyone to have heard of it. And even though I am from a very small town, they always knew immediately where I lived. Indeed most of them had been there. Their families took them "down the shore" as kids for the summer, their family might have even rented out a bungalow there for the season. Pt. Pleasant is just one of hundreds of seaside resort towns along the NJ coast, but I started liking the fact that people knew where I was from, even though, growing up, I wasn't always happy about the tourists coming down and taking over my town every summer. (The local negative stereotype tourist from NYC/North Jersey was known as a "bennie", people used to have bumper stickers that said such charming things as "bennies go home", although I doubt they still do.) As I got older I realised how much money they brought in, and I knew just how much money by waiting on them in restaurants and bars. It was pretty much the best paying job you could get.
So as I walking on the beach in Sarasota, enjoying a beautiful balmy morning before I had to begin the laborious trip back to London, I wondered why my mother chose to move to such a place, so similar to a town she has just spent over 30 years in, a touristy seaside resort. Why not live someplace quieter and less over run with tourist-based businesses? Well, one of the things I always like to remind myself of when tourism becomes annoying, is that if people want to visit, if must be a nice place. If there's no tourism at all in your town, chances are it's probably a shit hole (sorry!). Hey, it makes you feel a little better when you have to wait for a table at your favourite restaurant. And really, it doesn't seem like there are too many places left that don't have some kind of tourism anyway. Even when I was living in West Virginia, not the most bustling locale, there were little bed and breakfasts and outlet malls that catered to the big city people looking for a quaint county weekend getaway.
But growing up with tourism also means I have a home grown taste of tourist-itis. In San Francisco, they were easy to avoid for the most part (anyone wearing shorts), they stuck to the theme park aspects of the city and rarely strayed. In London it's pretty much the same thing, I don't live in the town center so I'm fairly immune from seeing them everyday. I still manage to run into a family with a cam corder and limited English skills while walking the dog in the park every now and then. I can't say my dog minds being the attraction of the moment. In Amsterdam I hated being mistaken for a tourist, and I tried to learn some Dutch to add a little distance from them, but being that my Dutch was atrocious it didn't work too well.
Its kind of a love/hate relationship most places have with tourism. On the one hand they bring in loads of cash, and keep many industries running. Places all over the world with limited natural resources are beginning to cash-in on eco-tourism. It's very easy to have a cynical view of tourism, because for the most part the majority of people really don't want to travel and experience new cultures and landscapes. They want pictures to take back of them standing in front of landmarks, they want to eat the same food they can get back home, they want to see the sites through the top of an open-air double decker bus. They don't want to have to work too hard while they are on vacation, and there will always be companies that cater to them. But tourism also brings a sense of civic pride, however easily attained, to the citizens of the place visited. The fact that ordinary people want to be driven around your town and see things that you see everyday can be uplifting. People will pay extra money to dine in a crappy restaurant with the same beautiful view that you take in on your morning run can make it all the more beautiful. Maybe that is why my mom is drawn to such places (or maybe the tourism is just a symptom of a beautiful place, as I said earlier), because you only have to live there a short while before you start feeling glad you do. If only there wasn't so many tourists!
I started writing this on my laptop at the airport in Tampa, Fl while enjoying a lovely junk food lunch of taco bell and krispy kreme. I never finished it because when I got home my laptop's hard drive started making loud noises in its final fight for life. Because of that I am now the proud user of a shiny new i-mac*y, as my loving husband couldn't bear to see his beloved go without a pc for less than a millisecond (bless him!). And he also managed to recover almost all of my data from said dead hard drive (bless him yet again! I know there are other reasons I married this man, but right now him being a computer god is coming in quite handy), but since we have decided to "switch" I don't have use of Photoshop (and other software) so I won't be posting any photos until such things are remedied. I didn't take that many photos in Florida anyway, as I was too busy relaxing on the beach getting a nice sunburn.
Posted by shannon at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2002
can't live with it, can't live without it
I haven't been online much lately. It's been quite nice. For me, being online scatters my thoughts, drains my energy, eats up time. I am somehow happier when I don’t waste hours reading about other people's mundane lives or their trite opinions on the state of things. So why should you bother to read mine? Well, really I can't think of a good reason. If you stop right here, good for you! Go do something better. Something you'll really enjoy.
That’s what I did. Today I discovered one of the true joys of owning a laptop: its portability I spent hours in a coffee shop working on a personal project (a flash portfolio for my photography). It is amazing how much work one can get done when there is no internet connection or television. As long as there is plenty of light, a sturdy table, a comfortable chair and maybe a nice frothy cappuccino, it doesn’t really matter what's going on around me. Although I do I like being in a public place surrounded by people, rather than at home in my cramped flat.
Posted by shannon at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2002
Got my brain back.
Today has been a good day. The first good day I've had since moving to London.
My brain arrived today! I feel more like myself now that we have been reunited. It had been sitting in a self-storage facility in Pacifica for months before it was sent to London on a ship that took its time chugging though the Pacific and Atlantic, along with some other personal items. Having seen the condition of the boxes when they were unloaded from the truck, I am forever grateful to the inventor of bubble wrap, because without it my brain and my other precious things would surely have been crushed.
My brain is really just this little piece of coral that I found somewhere, I can't even remember where anymore or even how long I've had it. It just somehow ended up on my desk next to my computer, and I got to calling it my brain because it sort of looks like a brain. I'm not the type of person who has lots of clutter or junk or gobs of paraphernalia scattered all over their work area, but I became attached to the brain. Maybe because its kind of ugly and not really worthy of sitting on a desk, like say, a shiny red stapler or a cute beanie baby or whatever. But now that I have it along with all the other things that sort of make up who I am, like photographs and coffee mugs, it makes me remember who I am, or at least who I was.
I made myself a cup of coffee this morning, something I haven’t gotten around to doing since I got here. Because I am sort of a coffee snob, and I haven't gotten around to buying a coffee grinder yet. But I finally broke down and bought some coffee at Starbucks. I had it ground for French press, even though I have one of those cone-thingies, because back in Amsterdam whenever I got anything ground finer it would always end up in my cup. (French press takes the coarsest setting). So while I was searching through the cup boards for something to boil water in, I found a french press. Seems the people we rent from have good taste. (Well, they do as long as I try to forget about the zebra-print rug in the living room. Which isn’t that easy to do, seeing as it takes up the entire floor, but anyway.) The coffee was great. French roast in a French press, nice and dark and lovely! And coffee really is my drug. I don't think I can live without it. I sometimes forget this.
Posted by shannon at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2002
dog walking
Things I saw while taking the dog out the other day:
•Girl trying to eat a puff of cotton candy in the rain.
•A man peeling a pile of potatoes for frites under an umbrella.
•A woman balancing an electric orange juice squeezer on the seat of her bicycle.
•One great dane, two black labs, and a few other mutt dogs all of which weren’t good enough for misha to play with in the park.
The great thing about taking the dog out is that so many people smile when they see her. If I go out in a bad mood I come back inevitably feeling better, just by seeing someone light up when they pass us on the street. Some people will stop and pet her, others just say "mooi hond" to me or to their company and some don’t even stop or say a word. But they smile. Wonderful, genuine smiles. I know this sounds silly, but smiles really are contagious, at least when you know they are genuine.
Posted by shannon at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2002
home alone
Naughty things I do while my husband is away on business:
•Go to the bathroom with the door open
•Wear his slippers
•Use his sound sticks and listen to MY music
•Eat chips and salsa for dinner
Not what you were expecting? Sorry!
Posted by shannon at 05:52 PM | Comments (2)
May 12, 2002
whats hot, whats not!
Raves this weekend:
Things that sucked about this weekend:
Please go away little germs!
Posted by shannon at 08:42 PM | Comments (1)
March 15, 2002
passing the time
I tried to make chicken Pot-au-Feu for the first time from a recipe out of a magazine earlier this evening. It all came out wrong but still somehow managed to be tasty. The dog is now snacking on the remains of the roasted potatoes that took a little bit longer than the 12 minutes that the recipe called for, so I didn’t put them in the dish.
Last week on an early morning run as I passed by these two guys, one heckled me obscenely, so I turned around and gave them the finger and a dirty look. The other man shrieked in horror as I did it, in disbelief, which made me chuckle a bit. I don’t know, what is the correct reaction to a man whistling at you?
I have drunk too much coke this week, it’s the only thing that cheers my up sometimes, just the thought of the ice cold sugary-brown fizzy drink. I even stopped by a soda machine in a Domino's Pizza while walking the dog for a fix. Maybe I am becoming addicted, ya think?
I must have this thing after I saw it in this months Outside magazine. To have power literally in my hands, between my fingers!
I added a list of books I have recently read over to the left there. I spend much of my time reading because its cheap, simple and highly portable entertainment. I can read in the café next to the tabby cat that sleeps on the table sprawled out in the afternoon sun, on a bench in the park on a nice day, in another café with a view of the riverbank, on the couch while flipping between the three music video channels, even in the bath surrounded by fluffy white bubbles. The day can sometimes be just a bike ride in between reading spots. Maybe by changing the scene I am trying to create the feeling of something happening, rather than just reading, which is such a passive activity. And as you can tell by the list, its not like I'm sucking up all sorts of educational non-fiction. Its fiction all the way for me baby!
Also, its a short list of books (that’s what I have read since about December I think). I am a slow reader (and the better the book, the slower even still). I like to savor the pages. I like to have the people and places and ideas seep into my day, invading my perspective of things. (Or maybe that's an excuse for not being a fast reader, I dunno, reading slow is somehow seen as a sign of stupidity. I don't care. I can read fast if I have to, but I don't really enjoy it. And I have all the time in the world at the moment, so I might as well.) Right now I am in the middle of Underworld. The paperback fits neatly into the front pocket of my messenger bag.
Posted by shannon at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2002
here
This isn't about dreaming, it's about waking.
In the morning, or sometimes in the middle of the night, when I'm lying in bed half-awake, I hear the sounds swirling below the window, like a car treading on wet pavement, I sense my husband sleeping beside me, my eyes still closed… it is at this point in waking that I forget where I am. I think I am still in San Francisco, in our small bedroom overlooking the bay, that it’s a rainy winter day and I still have a bit more time to sleep before my alarm goes off. Or maybe it’s a Saturday and I can sleep as late as I want. In the haze of waking I feel as if I am in a familiar bed. Not the one I come to realize I am in, on a much busier street in a different city halfway across the earth. The awareness that I'm not where I think I am develops slowly, and no matter how many times I have awoken in this same bed I forget almost every morning. For just a few moments everyday I awake to a San Francisco morning. Its not that I'm necessarily disappointed when I come to realize where I am, its more like waking from a pleasant dream. I know that SF is in the past and I don’t want to go back. At least not for a long while.
This happens to me every time I move, my mind waking in an old bedroom while my body wakes in the new one, yet this feeling has hung on longer here. In my mind I am still in San Francisco, it still feels like home to me, even though I have left it. I keep running across ghosts of my old city. I go have coffee in the café of a dept store downtown that a guidebook recommends, for the view. And up on the 6th floor it is a pretty nice view; you can see all the rooftops of Amsterdam, the spires of the churches in three directions. But while I'm looking out the window I start to feel like I'm in the rooftop café of another dept store. I used to have lunch at the café on the top floor of Nordstrom's in the SF Center when I worked across the street. The view from up there was of my office building across the street, (quite and ornate number 12 stories high) up the cable car tracks of Powell Street, past Harry Denton's Starlight Room with its tacky neon sign, all the way to the top of the hill at California Street. Sitting in the café I couldn’t help but compare the two, and how similar they felt. Maybe because there aren’t many views in a city with no hills, and just having one reminded me of home. But even the mediocre food and coffee were eerily similar, as was the shape of the windows that held the lofty views.
San Francisco felt like my home not only because I lived there for a long time (long by my standards - 5 years or so) but because I choose to live there. So many other places that I have lived in my life I just sort of ended up in. I wanted to live there, and I grew to like it more every year. But in the end I also grew very weary of it. Maybe that means that I loved it all the more that I started to become so critical of its many flaws. Maybe I just can't stay in once place for very long.
My last home in San Francisco was a tall, creaking house in Bernal Heights. I lived there for 2 years, which is the longest I have lived in the same building (apart from my childhood home). It was also the first house I ever owned (well, sort of owned). But I didn't even like the house that much; I liked the location much more. (It was close to both downtown and the funkier parts of town, it was a quick freeway hop to the beach. Plus the neighborhood had a good mix of people, was relatively safe and quiet, and had an independent health-food supermarket a block away.) So here I am now, in another place where location is more important that anything else. If I had my way, I would live by the sea. Any sea really, that is the only location that really matters to me. Everyplace else is just the same.
Posted by shannon at 11:09 PM | Comments (3)
February 27, 2002
tomorrow there will be music
This is a rather random list of all the bands I have ever seen that I can remember seeing, and that are famous enough to list. Its not a big list, but there is is. I made it a while ago, but I have only seen one act since then (songs ohia). That will soon change in April, when I will go to the UK location of all tomorrow's parties. Looking at their list, there will be a few repeats. It will be nice to spend an entire weekend relaxing and hearing bands play. I haven’t done that since CMJ. Although running around Manhattan trying to figure out which shows you can see and which ones you can afford to miss, and then being so tired of the end of it that you skip a bunch of good acts wasn’t always that much fun. This should be WAY better.
Posted by shannon at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2002
cruisin
There is a saying in running: "speed is lust; distance is love." I think that also sums up the personalities of each type of runner. At the track tonight I was side-swiped by a sprinter at top speed. I guess once you get going, you can’t stop very well. There was some kind of argument with the sprinter's coach and our coach, the sprinter's coach was really pissed off. Apparently we weren’t keeping out of their way to his satisfaction. I couldn't really understand what they were saying, but while the sprinter was getting angrier and angrier, our coach just kind of brushed him off. It was rather amusing.
I've come to realize that if I want to complete a marathon, I'm going to have to run it slow. This is kind of sucks because I don't really run all that fast to begin with. But sometimes you have to take it easy if you’re in for the long haul. And now I have a trainer to push me when I need it. Today was the first really hard track workout I have had, and there is no way I would have done it on my own. I ran 3 X 1000 meter repeats at peak speed. I feel tired, but proud that I pushed as hard as I did. Tomorrow I can relax!
Posted by shannon at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2002
god bless the USA
One of the interesting things about living in a foreign country is being able to see how your own country is perceived from the outside. This becomes evident by watching European TV coverage of the Olympics.
I know that part of the Olympics is expressing some sort of national pride, why else would they have athletes represent their countries? But the Olympics should be about celebrating the finest athletes in the world; finding joy and (and amazement!) in the pinnacle of the human body, mind and spirit. It should also be able to bring countries together, something that these games have been struggling to do, with all the whining and complaining about the officiating and judging.
The Olympic coverage varies from the 3 stations that carry it here. The BBC is relentless in showing mostly Brit athletes and Brit-dominated sports (which means showing ALL of the curling competitions, live). I hardly watch their coverage even though its in English, cause its pretty boring, and the announcers tend to talk just a bit too much. The German public TV station just shows this main shared-feed, doesn’t have any commentary or interviews. I watch this when I just want a sort of bare-bones experience. Then there are the Dutch channels.
I have gotten into the habit of watching "Olympic Breakfast" on Dutch TV, which recaps the previous day's events. It’s a very polished show, with lots of highlights, interviews and clips. The core of the show features the main host and guests seated around a large breakfast table piled with breads, orange juice and coffee, and the day's newspapers. There is even a chef off in the wings shown every so often preparing an omelet or strawberry parfait. It's all very cozy. Of course I can't understand a word (ok, maybe a few words) of it unless they are interviewing an American, but I still find it an enjoyable show. Although they cover speed skating heavily, they also include all other sports. They even delight when another country wins a gold, even in speed skating!
The other day they visit downtown Salt Lake City and do a man-on-the-street type segment, to see how the townies feel about the games. A man in a Dutch accent off camera interviews some jolly Salt Lake City natives, all saying how wonderful it is to be host. During an interview one woman joyfully boasts: "God Bless America!" as her friends behind her selling star-spangled t-shirts yip and cheer with delight, while without missing a beat, the Dutch broadcaster asks: "and why should God bless America?" as if this is just a normal question. And, well, it is a normal question, why should God bless those 50 little states and not the rest of the world? It's not something you would get from an American broadcast, and it is rather refreshing to hear. The woman seemed a bit flustered at the question, and she barked back some more song lyrics, half-heartedly at first, but stronger towards the last: "because…its…uh, the home of the free and the land of the brave??"
Sure, sure it is.
Posted by shannon at 11:06 PM | Comments (1)
February 13, 2002
On your mark, get set, GO!
I have put off going to the Van Gogh Museum until the new exhibit "Van Gogh – Gauguin" gets here (so I will be going soon!). It seems like an interesting way to look at art, by seeing the direct influence of contemporaries on each other.
I know that as for me, competition is an important element in creativity (or rather, creative productivity.) I went through a period in 11th grade when I wrote a poem for every one my friend Lynn wrote. And she wrote at least one a day. It was somehow important for me to keep up, and after reading something she wrote I always felt that I could do something better. Somehow reading published, established, well-known, well-studied and well-respected poets didn't inspire me nearly as much as my friend did. With her I was in the realm of what was possible; we were on the same level. Pushing myself to do more wasn’t a chore, it was just a fun challenge.
Also, I think that in order to work well with someone, although you have to share certain things its not necessary to want to be their best friend, or to even like them. Lynn and I were close friends at various times throughout high school, but she was different than me in many important ways, and we didn't stay close after we graduated. Something about being too similar or too good of friends kills my competitive drive. Maybe Van Gogh lost an ear because the differences between him and Gauguin were too great (or, as historians say, maybe Van Gogh was simply insane). I wish I had someone to compete with with my photography. I think between doing nothing and losing an ear would be a good place to be. For now I'll just have to look at glossy magazines and feel inferior.
Posted by shannon at 07:02 PM | Comments (5)
February 09, 2002
you are an imperfect being, created by an imperfect being
I am so tired. Taking the dog out 3 times a day, plus running, plus cleaning the house, and giving the dog a bath maybe has worn me out a bit. There is more I want to do. But I am too tired. And the cleaning is still not finished. Well yeah, it's never finished!
I watched what was on tv tonight, which happened to be the Star Trek movie "First Contact" with the scary BORG! Eek!
The movie is actually pretty good, as long as you can take the time-travel premise. I never understand why people have to go back in time to fix the future, why can't they just go back further in time until things are normal? Of course then you could just go on and on to infinity, further and further back. Why is time travel a popular device for stories? I guess it's a common human craving, to go back and do something over again, with full knowledge of how your actions will affect the future, to fix mistakes of the past. Or maybe it's just having that knowledge, of being able to see the future. Isn't that what time travel is all about? (Other than enabling well known TV and movie characters to dress in different costumes.)
I dunno, its too much for my puny brain to handle. I've been feeling rather foggy lately. My head hasn’t been getting enough activity. Now Total Recall is on. Great. A movie about memories, time travel all in your own head!
Posted by shannon at 10:22 PM | Comments (1)
January 29, 2002
I tried to make that
I tried to make that last entry thick with hyperlinks, but I gave up. I need to get me some sleep!
enjoy.
Posted by shannon at 01:29 AM