Posted on 12/05/2010 4:07:47 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
ON a balmy fall evening in the Mission District of San Francisco, hundreds of people spilled onto Valencia Street, where they chatted happily for a few minutes before pouring back into bookstores, cafes and theaters. ...
....Valencia Street around 20th Street is an excellent place for a visitor to begin. A cluster of shops — 826 Valencia; Borderlands, a science fiction and fantasy bookstore and connected cafe; Modern Times, a bookstore collective; and the used-book store Dog Eared Books — is surrounded by cafes and bars that host regular literary events.....
....John Durham, the owner, sat at a desk surrounded by piles of books. Bearded and a little shaggy, he seemed at one with his cluttered environment. An expert in his narrow field, Mr. Durham is the archetype of the bookstore obsessive. In response to a research need for a book I am working on, he drew my attention to “The Masses,” an early-20th-century radical monthly. He then pointed out a collection of lyric sheets, which featured songs with titles like “Albania, Our Beacon” and “Eternal Glory to JV Stalin.” “If you sing that one,” he said, “you have to make sure everyone knows you’re kidding.”
...I paused for a sip of whiskey and looked out the window, down onto Jack Kerouac Lane,.......
A couple at a table behind me were discussing Neal Cassady’s role as connective tissue between the Beats and the Merry Pranksters. At a small table in the corner, light streaming in the open window next to him, a bearded, bespectacled man sat hunched over a book with the intensity of a monk, an empty glass and a stack of new books beside him.
Looking up, he announced..
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
San Francisco has been a city of a lot of people that like to read books—look at the continued success of the City Lights bookstore in North Beach district in San Francisco.
Remarkable for a place to pride itself on its “literacy” to also simultaneously be one of the most politically conformist and intolerant centers in the United States.
They all read the same books and mags. They read what they’re told to read. If you read the wrong things, or fail to read the right (left) things, they whack your pee pee.
Speaking of Starbucks....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOjQ5RWjsB4
Eternal Glory to JV Stalin - ‘Nuff said.
The Quake can’t come soon enough
That was hysterical!
Thanks!
...“I kind of think she represents the worst of the anti-intellectual current in American politics,” said Tish Stringer. “She’s clearly really, really, really dumb and still immensely popular as a candidate, which I find repulsive.” ...Palin power at River Oaks book store, "intellectual" finds her popularity repulsive
“If you sing that one,” he said, “you have to make sure everyone knows you’re kidding.”
I doubt that you need to make sure of that in San Francisco. And you can be certain that in San Francisco, they won’t think you are kidding.
The neighborhood is not that nice. One block away is Mission Street where the Bart train runs. Seedy. The author can puff it up because most of the readers won’t end up going there-It’s like ‘I’m here and you’re not.’
“Literary events.” I did not know that was what your called such things. I sure won’t let my kid go to one now that I know.
It is exactly tantamount to the confused leftist phenomenon that has consumed America, i.e. I support the most generous of concessions, but it must be with other people's money. Clearly the most confused, immature, and hypocritical society in the modern world, college students, juveniles, women, government bureaucrats, politicians. And the LEFT exploits this confusion intentionally, ala George Soros.
Really really ugly stuff. And let it be clear in this Christmas season it was Christ who saw through this exactly. That's why they had him killed.
(Although how many Christian ministers or priests have you heard declare this?)
Not a surprise from the New York Times.
Johnny Suntrade
Also seems as though all these oh-so-sophisticates have embraced 20th century nihilism as opposed to the earlier, more classical works that celebrate classical values like freedom, spirituality, beauty, truth and the like. They may have the trappings of culture but they are missing the key element which is an understanding of the true human condition.
But then again - it is San Fran-sicko.
Valencia Street is one of the hippest streets in America right now. It is booming. Yes, Mission Street is very different and only one block away. That's San Francisco.
Here is a condo for sale on 22nd St., between Valencia and Mission. $1.55MM. Thatsa lotta burritos:
S.F. has the highest per capita sales of books and booze, according to the article.
It would be interesting to see a Venn diagram and overlaps among books, booze, liberalism, and homosexuality, since we’re talking San Francisco here.
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