Tag Archives: Oakland

The Metro: Transportation for the Soul

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I’m sort of in love with metros. Is that weird? I think it’s weird. 

Not the smell of over-heated metals rubbing through windy sub-urban tunnels. Not the awkward and illicit encounters late night rides usually provide. And especially not the whole disease ridden, modern-medicine fail, where the zombie-apocalypse starts aspect of the metropolitan transit systems.

London the Tube

Those scare me. What I love is the spider-web. You know, that physical trace of lines we dig like war trenches into the ground, publicly cementing the makeup of our society. It is the connection, the shuffling of hundreds and thousands into straight lines and round bends, all shuttling together and forward towards something. 

Uniformity in the dense complex of human society. Mmm.

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Land’s End: Escape From the City of Noise

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The hum of a city can creep into your skin. The endless flow of wheels on pavement, of six-second car alarms, of cops hooting and pedestrians blocking your every move. The simple act of parking your car, if you have a car, can turn into the ultimate test (and in my case, fail) of patience.

In Oakland, the city sure creeps. But in San Francisco, that golden dream across a bridge, there is no end to the level of mental and soul-sucking interfusion that can occur. I love these places, I really do, but sometimes you need quiet. You need peace. You need a strong gale of wind stretched into a wide expanse of land or sea and the calm loss of all that hulking metal.

In search of such invigorating peace I reached to the very edge of San Francisco: Land’s End. Yes, it’s a clothing brand, but in S.F. it’s the most northern, far reaching point the city has to offer.

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