DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here’s a San Francisco traffic quiz: On a five-lane, one-way city street, which lane offers the fastest, least-impeded route?

Answer: none of them. Lanes 1 and 5 are blocked by (illegally) parked cars. Lanes 2 and 4 are blocked by (illegally) double-parked cars. And lane 3 is blocked by the crazy man doing a jig in the crosswalk. San Francisco is a wonderful place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to drive there.

Even so, I do miss the City. I spent a night there last weekend, with some friends who recently finished a zillion-dollar remodel on a Victorian near the panhandle. We walked through the Haight and through Cole Valley to a fancy breakfast cafe on Sunday morning. It was a perfect day in the City, the weather ideal for a hung-over, post-feeding stroll through historic neighborhoods, past strung-out dopers cowering suspiciously in (architecturally fascinating) doorways. We don’t get this kind of color out in the enological farmlands — the only culture we get is viticulture.

More recently I spent a day at two Internet cafes in SF, interviewing candidates for a coveted open position on my web development team. The staffs at these cafes were uniformly cheery, helpful, and uplifting — attitudes belied by the large number of tattoos and piercings in evidence, I thought, not that alternative cosmetics necessarily indicate gang affiliations and evil dispositions. They all seemed really friendly and sincere, much more than I’d be able to manage if I were pulling lattes for minimum wage. But then I was never cut out for that variety of service. Maybe I ought to get a tattoo and a few more piercings.

I think I’ll make an effort to visit the City more often.