On Friday I got sent off a big box and did that early enough to get back here a bit before 4. I also happened to time it right to meet up with my favorite food truck where I got three things that were either thick fish sticks or small fish "filets", breaded, for $3 and the lady even gave me a 2nd tartar sauce when she saw I was running out (as is required, I ate standing by my bike and using the large box as a table, right by her truck).
Then I gathered up the smaller things and took them with me, donated a bunch of things at the Japantown little free library, dropped off the packages, deposited my pay check, went to Whole Foods and bought things, getting cash back to make it come out to $200 taken out and then $200 will stay in the bank.
I had some hummus and olives and stuff, the ol' Mediterranean thing, then went to a place to do a thing where there was good food and Beatles music and learned of a new electronics place from one guy and told another guy about it, and in general did something that's really, really hard to do here: Socialize.
Then I rode back here. On my way out, I'd gone through San Pedro Square because I like to feel the place out when I can, and there was a guy wandering around with an instrument case in his hand. I guessed a tenor trombone, and he said indeed it was, and he was supposed to meet someone there to do street music with. I said the Old Spaghetti Factory was the traditional place, that I'd had less luck in other spots there so the Old Spag is really the place.
I hope he met up with his friend and played a good set and made good money because buskers are just about extinct here.
Back here, I ate food I'd arranged to not have to cook, drank some wine, watched some historical-interest videos, drank more wine, and went to bed.
I woke up today and kept the damn computer turned off, and read books. One, an absolutely amazing book about racism against Mexicans in the US, written by a guy who, if his mother hadn't had ice cream already in the fridge, would likely have died in the San Ysidro McDonald's shooting. Incredible book. I'm going to be proud to trade that in to the Recycle Book Store for used book trade credit. And a Nabokov book about a guy who's in the future and people have developed "rays" to be able to tell what each other are thinking, or feeling, or all about to some extent, and he doesn't have the ability to do that so they're gonna behead him, except in the end everything's a Potemkin prison and he walks off. And a got a bit more into my book about Miles Davis by Bill Cole.
Come around 6:30 in the evening, and it was possible Ken might come by with tons of stuff for me to deal with. So I oiled the bike chain and got trash together to get rid of and my tip box and the trumpet in its gig bag and got out of here at almost 7.
I dropped off the trash in a can and went over to Whole Foods. I had to eat something and use the loo. The old guy with his table of stuff was there, and a guy leaning against one of the lamp posts who was bothering people for money. He tried bothering me and I said something like, "I'm OK, really; I don't need money - I just got paid. But thanks for asking!". Like he was offering to give *me* money.
I went in and got a dollop of hummus and a bunch of Kalamata olives and feta cheese and ate that. Hummus isn't very "keto" but the olives and cheese are, and I drank some black coffee I'd brewed at home because it runs circles around the stuff from stores and it's a ton cheaper.
Now I wanted to go down to BevMo in Willow Glen because it turns out *no one* sells corkscrews. Not Whole Foods, not H Mart, not HomeGoods, no one. Only a specialized place like BevMo could be counted on to have them. It was now 8 and I figured it would take an hour to ride down, shop, and ride back.
So I rode down, discovered they have the kind of corkscrew I wanted right at the checkout which was neat, and asked about Kosher wine. That, they have, as long as you want Manischewitz. And another one that looked like it might be a bit better. I got that, and the opener, and got out of there.
I got back to Whole Foods and since the place had been buzzing when I'd left, I did my shopping (a cucumber and a jar of herring in dill sauce, which Kenny "let me try" by which he means he made it free) and I set up to play. It was just before 9.
Man I'm rusty! But I played along and there are improvements; a bit more endurance and high notes a bit easier. A guy gave me a $5 right away which was nice and then it was slow because it was most certainly *not* buzzing.
Presently a guy came up and stood close, I mean crammed-onto-a-very-full-bus close. He said he was "witnessing" ... my playing? I was playing Paper Moon and he wanted to know if I could play Blue Skies so I had a try at that and it went pretty well, with this guy crammed close beside me. Then he put his hand on my back by way of emphasizing something he was saying and that was it. I packed up to do and pointed out to him that people who appreciate my playing simply say so, or drop a tip, or both, *not* what he's doing and I packed up. He walked off into the parking lot very disgruntled and I got the bike loaded up and unlocked as quickly as I could without letting my anger slow me down, and got the fuck out of there.
Now, as is pretty obvious, this was a white guy. And "witnessing" is something Christian white guys say. As if I couldn't hate white Christians any more.
I rode up Santa Clara street, hoping the weirdo hadn't gotten in his car and was now hunting me down. I got on down the road, and cut across and dove into San Pedro Square and set up in front of the Old Spag very quickly. There were quite a few people around, so it might turn out OK.
Well, I got tips. Even the flower seller put in a tip, and of a couple of pretty "hip" looking Black guys, one gave me a tip which I took as a real compliment. And I had a tall young guy come up and drop in a $5 I think, and talked about how he's played sax so he knows how hard it is, and we got talking about saxes, and I raved about the baritone sax solo in Simon & Garfunkel's Why Don't You Write Me, and I told him about Cafe Stritch and its history and what they're up to lately. It was a great little bit of camaraderie and the guy didn't know it but he really made my night.
I had a family stop by because I was playing Haktivah, and the little old lady of the group said "It's the national anthem" and I said, "Of Israel, yes!" and she said "There's another one....." and I played a bit of Hava Nagila which is another song I'm working on. The little old lady was going to tip but saw one of the guys was getting money out so she let him do it - $2 I think. Another of the guys - standing close beside me although not as bad as that one guy, said, "Are you Jewish?" and I said, "I don't know!" and tried to come up with something sensible about Lithuania and everyone who could give me an answer being gone. "I admire 'the Jewish people'" or "I support" some rot like that, said the guy. O ... K ...
I was going to play another 10 minutes, I figured, when a short, smelly, white guy came up and gushed over my "beautiful bugle" and seemed like he was going to hang around, a thing I did *not* need so I said something about how I had to go, had to go play a set at Cafe Stritch, and this while practically throwing the trumpet into the gig bag and the mouthpiece into its little pouch and into the top pocket on the gig bag. The bum walked off. I'd had enough - fuck this.
Needless to say I didn't count the money; just folded up the tip box with the money in it and stuffed that into a bike saddlebag. I can set up quick and pack up even quicker.
I rode home and stopped at what used to be the TAK Market for a bottle of non-Kosher wine, and got back here. Ken had not been by and there was not a mountain of stuff to deal with - whew!
I wrote things down in my busking diary and counted up. I'd made $5 at Whole Foods and $20 at the Old Spag. So $25 for a bit less than an hour's playing, with less than ideal conditions due to it being late, lots of weirdos, etc. I think I made more than I spent today so that's pretty good.
And I had my shiny new wine opener. Turns out the "Barefoot" wine I got is screw-top, and the fancy Kosher wine was too. And tastes like essence of sweet. I have some research to do...
In other news, Joe Biden has .... decided to install a port on the shore of Gaza. This is so aid can be delivered by ship and is a pretty interesting and amazing development. Since Israel decided to let Gaza be it's own country, they can't say boo about it. I see this as a good thing because Hamas will happily let Gazans starve to death by the hundreds of thousands, and when Israel tries to send aid, it's used as cover to get terrorists through for more attacks.
Other Arab nations should be pitching in to help their fellow Arabs but we all know how empty their words are. So the Americans will help and I see this as a good thing because we don't get Gazans starving in hundreds of thousands, and also I'm hoping it means lots of contact between Americans and Gazans. This means a lot of Gazans will decide Screw Hamas telling me to stay here, here's a country full of some pretty nice people that's pretty open to immigration, and they're pretty happy to help me go to their country, or at least *some* other country, so now there are lots of possibilities; it's not just the Hamas way or death.
People who squawk about stuff like this area idiots. The US uses up this much energy and time doing their regular training. Older supplies including munitions have to get "cycled out" no matter what, which is why it's cheaper than cheap for us to give stuff to the Ukrainians. It's cheaper than cheap to give lots of MRE's to the Gazans because they'll have to be cycled out anyway in 1-5 years.
Somehow the squawkers won't say a peep about the Berlin Airlift because that was helping Germans, a certain percentage of whom were unreconstructed Nazis. That was all well and fine.
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