AMORPHOUS BLOBS

The tourists are back with a vengeance, probably because travel during Easter Break is a wondrous thing. Winter has been cold, let's go somewhere WARM, they think in German or Dutch. Then they head to San Francisco with their shorts and expensive cameras.

Every time I've been in Chinatown this week I've heard people speaking German or Dutch. Clean polite and discretely irritating, as they pause in pedestrian bottle necks to figure out which direction they should go.

Where, undoubtedly they wonder, is the local beer garden?

Meine lieben Germanischen mitmenschen, this is the wrong time of year to visit. There are cold winds and you'll freeze your underdressed privates off. We don't have beer gardens.

For two whole months now I have at times thought that the end of the frigid weather was finally in sight, huzzah, it's Spring! Only to feel my hopes cruelly dashed to icy shards on my face as the freezing wind smacks me around and makes me wonder why I left the house without a fur coat and long johns. I do not have a fur coat, OR long johns! Fur is murder and so are long johns. That's why I came back to California from Europe years ago, where until the end of May people wander around in fur and long johns while wading through the icy streets of their cities or bycicling through sleet and hail amidst golden fields of barley.

They put them on again in October, NOT to celebrate my birthday, which is then, but because they can no longer run around naked, as they do for six months on beaches and public squares soaking up the sun's rays while getting drunk at the local beer garden.



Europeans, as is well-known, drink beer from dawn till after dusk.
It's explains why unlike America they aren't a driving culture.
Their cars are often abandoned in canals or ditches.
Rusting in the golden fields of barley.
Near popular beer gardens.
A mystery


Again, why San Francisco? It's cold here.
We have no furcoats or longjohns.
It's utterly miserable!



Forty eight degrees Fahrenheit yesterday evening.
That's kind of like Summer weather.
Dammit.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================