P L A C E

Venice Beach, California

Latitude: 33.990 Longitude: -118.459
Beaches come to mind when we hear about Southern California. A very special beach area is Venice, annexed by Los Angeles, and bordered by Santa Monica, and Marina del Rey. My son lives in Venice which took its name obviously from the Italian city. In the 1904 Abbot Kenney hired an apprentice to Frederick Law Olmstead (designer of many parks including New York Central Park) to design the Venice of America Seaside Resort which included main canals and system of lateral canals, along which residences would be built.

The area was a "slum by the sea" by the 50's and early 60's according to Jeffrey Stanton   There was a revival in the 70's, and now most of the places are rather expensive.

Along the waterfront are beaches but also a famous boardwalk with hawkers, homeless, scam artists, and musicians trying to earn money through sweet talk or selling items such as incense, free speech broadsides, sage, hats, t-shirts, and photos. There's some great street art and murals, so you really don't have to spend anything, except for parking.

Fry's Electronics

Latitude: 37.3798  Longitude  -121.909.  Fry's Electronics is almost an institution here in San Jose. Without their daily ads, I think the local paper would shut down. There are six stores in the Bay Area, others in Los Angeles, and Arizona. The coordinates are for the one on Brokaw which uses a Mayan motif in the exterior and interior design.
(photo by Scott Robinson)

The stores are filled with everything related to consumer and nerd electronics at very low prices. It's overwhelming to me, and you can imagine how overwhelmed Internet friends from Latin America and Africa feel when they make a Hadj to one of these temples. If you don't know what you want, the huge number of options makes it rather hard to choose.  The ads I mentioned run from one to four days. You have to read the fine print, and many sale items are not so marked on the shelves. Also beware of marginal quality on some goods, especially from China.  I just bought a memory card reader and the slots are too small for the card I have. However, the staff handling the numerous returns are quick and polite. They are used to it.  It's also the most polyglot staff I have seen outside the United Nations.  I even struck up a conversation with a Sudanese "Lost Boy" who had found a job at the Campbell store. 

The oddest product they have carried is the LG Internet refrigerator.

Tlayacapan, Morelos, Mexico

Latitude 18.9333333  Longitude -98.9833333.  A two hour drive or bus ride from Mexico City, this small town is a great place to relax, do very little, and soak up the local culture and commerce. It's a day trip destination for some Mexico City residents who come to buy pottery, visit the market, and dine at a nice, reasonable restaurant near the town square.

I know there are hotels in town, but I have been lucky enough to stay with good friends who have a very nice place on a quiet street about five minutes walk to the town center. When I began my offline journey in Mexico, it started here, and since it was so comfortalbe, I did not feel like leaving for Oaxaca or other great tourist destinations. This photo of the covered corridor facing the center of the property gives you an idea of how beautiful the place is.

The surrounding countryside is planted to nopal cactus and corn. At the edge of the fields the escarpment rises hundreds of feet above the valley. Every day we would bicycle around the village and into the fields with the dog racing ahead.  This area was used for the filming of "the Magnificent Seven" and Tlayacapan was featured in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Point Lobos State Preserve

Latitude 36 31.68 Longitude -121 57.45 I have been visiting this park since the 1950's when I used to stay at the Highland's Inn. I have hiked beautiful coasts in Bali, Greece, Denmark, Maine, Turkey, Guatemala, the Virgin Islands, and Spain. Point Lobos is the most spectacular. We visited again last week because I never tire of the dramatic scenery and the wildlife only 90 minutes from San Jose. It became part of the California  park system in 1933, and underwater parts offshore were designated part of an ecological preserve in 1975. The land area is about 554 acres.

Entrance fee is $8.50 per car, though some people park for free on coastal Highway 1, just a few hundred yards from the entrance, and they hike in. Cyclists can enter free of charge too. There is a limit of 450 people allowed in the preserve at one time, and scuba divers need a permit to enter the waters in Whalers Cove, the first side road after the ranger station.  Most of the other visitors at the cove were divers, but I had my inflatable kayak and spent about an hour paddling around the kelp beds on which birds perched.  A few harbor seals cruised nearby, and I saw one sea otter resting on its back in the middle of the cove. This is the season for gray whales offshore, but we saw none.

Nancy drove to the other end of the park and took a hike along the water while I was in the kayak, and then both of us drove to the end of the road and walked to  China Beach and Bird Island at the southern end of the park. Beyond this point the large mansions in the Carmel Highlands are visible.

For more photgraphs see the amazing California Coastline project.

King Egg Rolls, San Jose

Latitude: 37.3739 Longitude  -121.873

King Egg Rolls has two locations, one on Storey Avenue, where the sign calls it King Eggroll, and the other at the corner of King and Berryessa, a block from the San Jose Flea Market. The strip malls at this intersection are well worth a visit, but my main destination is always this restaurant.  It has six small tables which are usually surrounded by a long line of customers picking up orders to take home  or wolf down in the parking lot.

In an L-shaped steam table the customer can see the dishes which include spicy sandwiches ($1.50)  various meat and vegetarian dishes plus pork buns, battered shrimp, chicken wings, and a huge tray of egg rolls which only cost 50 cents each. In another rack there are desserts wrapped in banana leaves or in plastic, and some cold hors d'oeuvres are on display. Past the cash register is the BBQ section where you can buy ribs, pork, and duck. Finally, there is a dim sum selection at $1.50 a container.  The activity behind the counter is fast and efficient. I can only imagine the action back in the kitchen.

There are party trays at very fair prices. I witnessed a man picking up a large aluminum tray of shrimp. During the hand-off from employee to customer it fell, and after a frozen moment or two, the tray was replaced at no cost, even though it might have been the customer's fault that it was dropped.

The other location is two years old, seats 90, has more selections, and the surroundings feel more like a place you want to linger. I was told by an employee that the first shop opened twenty years ago and the Tran family still runs the whole enterprise.  Most of the time these places are very busy, and the clientele reflects the diverse nature of San Jose. A councilman from San Jose, Terry Gregory, was censured this week, and one of his transgressions was receiving free food from this restaurant!

Sawtooth National Recreation Area, Idaho

Latitude: 44.33 Longitude: -114.86 (Stanley, Idaho)

We approached from the north,  and it was a dramatic entrance. This range is spectacular, everything a mountain range should be, and the drive from Boise was wonderful too.

There were several hot springs along the way, just off highway 21. Kirkham Hot Springs(Latitude. 44.072. Longitude. -115.543) had a waterfall where each flow progressed from warm to hot. At restaurants and gas stations you can pick up a free tabloid newspaper that lists every attraction by miles and tenths of a mile. It was in such detail that I could not read the entries out loud before we had left one and passed another.

Sawtooth would probably be a national park if there were less private ownership of property. Nevertheless, there are many places to camp, hike, and picnic in addition to the commercial outfitters, small towns like Ketchum and Stanley. There is no admission charge, but you may have to pay a parking fee. The lakes in July were warm enough to swim, though we usually stayed in our inflatable kayaks. Redfish is pictured here.

San Jose Flea Market

Latitude: 37.601 Longitude -121.8906

I'm convinced that people choose a shopping area by its ambiance as much as for the products it has. This huge (120 acre) flea market attracts a lot of people without as much money as those who go to the malls and grocery chains. Other people may avoid it for that reason, but I love it. It is open Wednesday through Sunday. Admission is free to buyers.

I usually only shop for fruits and vegetables, and parking is $1.00 on Fridays rather than $5.00 on weekends. Sometimes I bicycle to the market, but that limits how much I can carry back. As you enter there are stands selling popcorn, hot dogs and churros. The crowds here are polyglot but mainly Latino. However, you'll see Arabs selling mini motorbikes, Vietnamese selling fresh baked goods, Filipinos selling dried fish, and an old Afghan man hangs out in a pet store. Some of the stores are permanent while other vendors come in just for the day, usually with a loaded van full of used gear/junk or cheap imports from Mexico and China. There's a Peruvian who sells crafts from Cuzco. You can buy pirated video games, war surplus clothes, cheap rugs and comforters, and even rooms of furniture or used cars.

I usually wander down the fruit and vegetable aisle, checking the selection and prices to begin and then buy on my return. This usually takes half an hour. There are fast food stands and vendors selling sliced fruit sprinkled with chili powder, and at the center of the complex there are places for more substantial but informal meals. Mariachi and other Mexican bands usually entertain if the weather is good on Saturday and Sunday.  The official web site has info for vendors.

Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico

Latitude: 19.4 N :Longitude: 102.05 W.    Most tourists have never heard of this town, the self-proclaimed avocado capital of the world. I took the bus from Pátzcuaro and wound through the hills, passing by avocado nurseries, and into this bustling town that boasts the only national park in Mexico that lies inside of city limits. The park has a small admission charge, and there are paved paths that follow the river past trout ponds and intimate overlooks. The banks are lined with palms, lianas, and datura plants. Uruapan is also the place where Old Tarasco, a cane-based liquor is produced. A bottle of this costs about $3.00 and is nowhere near as popular as tequila or even mescal, its country cousin. However, it's not a bad drink.

A tradition that lives on in Mexico and many other places around the world  is the public scribe. At a municipal building next to the public library a row of young women sat at manual typewriters to help people fill in documents or write letters. In spite of the spread of computers, there is still a good business in selling and maintaining typewriters. Most of them are Olympia, no longer made in Germany but in Asia.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. San Jose, California

Latitude 37.3359 Longitude -121.8859  This place is a unique institution because it combines a public library and a university library in one building. There was some faculty resistance to this during the planning stages, but it seems to have worked out. It is eight stories and has areas and resources for everybody, including hundreds of computers, ethernet drops where you can hook up your own laptop, and San Jose State University students can even check out a laptop if they don't own one.

The library offers interlibrary loan services that draw on local libraries as well as many academic institutions, a benefit not usually available to those outside the university. It has served me well, and at no cost other than the taxes I pay.

I'm sitting on the sixth floor plugged into the shared DSL line and am making my first post on this typepad web log which I have courtesy of Steve Crandall.

There are wonderful examples of public art in this building (required in public construction projects here in California). They are seeded throughout the library, and in one elevator I watched a little boy grab his mother's hand and shout, "look mom, there's a little door" and at the back corner of the elevator was a small door, large enough for an elf to exit or enter.