Totes NAR Sitch

It’s OK. We’ve all seen the headlines. We know that thanks to a fistful of class action lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors (NAR) it’s going to be cheaper to buy and sell real estate in the Brave New World. As a 20+ year member of the NAR, however, I’m a little disappointed that the largest trade organization in the US wasn’t able to put down these suits without wrecking my flow. But I’m not a defendant and you’re probably not a plaintiff—so no big whoop...

At its essence, Friday’s $418M settlement is about transparency in compensation. But there’s a lot of space between price fixing and simply employing a system that has worked to the mutual benefit of both buyers and sellers for almost 30 years. And one of the unintended consequences of this legal pantsing will be a back-to-the-future stripping of protections for buyers moving forward.

Prior to 1996, real estate brokers—almost always men—represented only sellers and composed 3-page contracts with golf pencils on the hoods of luxury sedans. They’d write buyers' names in the blanks and give them the phone number of the title company. But they weren’t helping them schedule or navigate a home inspection. They weren’t working closely with lenders to make sure the best financing terms were applied. They weren’t steeping in the comps to make sure buyers understood the true value (not merely price) of a home. They weren’t representing them. This era is fondly recalled by the old guard as ‘buyer beware.’

With the rise in popularity of buyer agency in the early part of this century, buyers realized all the afore-mentioned benefits and more-- thanks to brokers who were representing their interests exclusively. And I just don’t see how we haven’t litigated ourselves back to the stone age with this settlement.

There is much still to be clarified between now and July. But what’s super clear right now is that it will no longer be legal for a seller to advertise a buyer’s agent’s commission. Seller may indeed still be willing to pay one-- but how that information is conveyed to a buyer via their representation is still a tall mystery. If the Missouri jury who decided this case thought there was selective exposure to listings because some offered 3% and others offered 2.5%, imagine how surprised we’ll all be by the difference in 2% and zero.

The NAR and individual brokerages have little choice than to apply as positive a spin as possible to this dizzying development. Think of all the opportunities for innovation! The adages are really flowing now. “Change is the only constant.” “If you can’t beat em, join em.” And of course, “Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.”

Rather than learn all the new handshakes, a lot of older agents will simply run out the clock on their licenses and retire. Likewise, a lot of newer agents-- who historically work almost exclusively with buyers-- will surely do a career re-select. I like to think of myself as middle-aged despite what my abacus says. My plan is to not only hang around but in fact dig in. I for one welcome our new Overlords!

But it’s going to be different. The retail travel industry was pretty much choked out in the early days of the internet. So far, despite some peripheral degradation, the real estate industry has withstood similar sacking. But the same faceless internet-only remote contract generation firms will certainly emerge to provide clerical assistance to buyers in this new landscape, the same way the flat-fee MLS brokerages have for FSbOs on the selling side. Probably aided in some sinister way by a eye. It’s just another step in the pajamafication of our once-proud culture.

I’m happy to get together to talk more about this if anyone is still reading or even remotely interested. If you’re thinking about making a real estate move, or if your parents or grown children are, or your friends. Even your enemies. I don’t much care.

Call me!

KISS, November 21 1979

We interrupt the regularly-scheduled coverage of the collapse of civilization to bring you this Extreme TBT: Forty years ago tonight: KISS at the Seattle Center Coliseum...

Not surprisingly, this concert was the first for a lot of dudes I’ve known. Like for so many white middle-aged men of middle-class upbringing, KISS was my introduction to rock music and my dominant social and artistic reference until I got to college and discovered how much more there was.

I’d barely missed them on the ‘77 tour. But the subsequent years’ biding, while agonizing, had given me a chance to immerse in the band-- to really go to school. By November 1979, I not only knew every song and lyric, but all the members’ birthdays & birthnames, favorite foods, musical influences and accent colors. I could draw pictures of KISS all day and often did. I could forge their autographs and I practiced drawing what they’d look like without their makeup.

There was no way for me to have known that the band was already well beyond its creative peak by the time I arrived at the party. I didn’t have a crystal ball, get off my fucking back already. It is amusing to consider now, however, that this Dynasty tour was billed at the time as The Return of KISS. It was still the ‘70s! No way could I have been expected to know the band would spend most of the next four decades returning. I did recognize-- in my own soft, pink heart late at night in the solitude of my own bed-- that this new record wasn’t as good as Love Gun. But I wore it out just the same…

In a creative outburst considered productive even by the busy standards of the day, KISS had produced seven studio records, two live double records, a sprawling greatest hits collection and the ambitious set of four coordinated solo albums between 1974 and the turn of the decade. Add to this the made-for-TV movie, the Marvel comic book and all the lunchboxes and action figures, model kits, wastebaskets, sleeping bags, transistor radios and pinball machines—and this was one hard-working, high-grossing act. Rock bands these days (whatever that term even means in the modern entertainment economy) aren’t usually allowed to make even two records in six years. This was a different era. The vinyl only weighed 90 grams and it cost $6. The concert tickets were only 8.

We were just kids, we didn’t know how it was supposed to work. Dennis Gregory (not a flying toy) and I camped out overnight at Mervyn’s in Burien to buy tickets to a festival seating show that would never even sell out. Then we waited, listening to Dressed to Kill as summer slouched away unnoticed.

At last the day of the show arrived. Instead of driving us to school in the station wagon, Dennis’ mom (with my own parents’ reluctant blessing) dropped us off at Seattle Center, near the Jetsonesque arena originally constructed for the 1962 World’s Fair (what is now Key Arena was less than 20 years old at the time).

The crowd we encountered once reaching the Coliseum was a bit unsettling. Dennis & I were reasonably sheltered suburban orchestra geeks in the very early stages of exploring any semblance of independence. We weren’t tripping balls and weren’t even drinking vodka and orrrange juice. What I remember about this particularly sunny late-autumn morning is that most of the other kids milling around were.

We got in line. There were only about 50 people in front of us, but by the time the doors opened a couple of hours after dark, we were several hundred deep-- back closer to the fountain. Some of our line-mates didn’t start moving once the traffic finally did, sprawled out in puddles of barf in the mulch beneath the great Elms. Those guys will have their own versions of the day’s events, surely posting on social media tonight as well, in observance of this important anniversary.

Again—we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. No one had briefed us. Once inside the arena, we ran directly to the stage which as it turns out WAS the exact correct thing to do. We were two rows from the fence. But being so green, we quickly second-guessed our position. Maybe we should get a killer seat instead. We just didn’t know! Eventually we began ebbing backward against the fierce tide rushing in from the front doors, the vomitty Southern Comfort breath of the each new wave washing over us until eventually we were standing in the middle of the main floor, out of the thick and closer to the sound board. We went to the souvenir table.

The Rockets were a band from Detroit. They spent the 1970s serving at the pleasure of a variety of headliners, kind of the equivalent of a career minor league baseball player. I vividly recall during their opener, with the sound up loud, and the stage lights pulsing down that this is what it’s really like. This is how live music looks and sounds. How perfectly shitty it was! The sound was muddy and sightlines were poor and the band looked tired and the whole huge building smelled like burning soap on a rope. I looked at Dennis trying to figure out if he was feeling the same disappointment. I tried asking, but he couldn’t hear me. The Rockets closed with Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and left the stage to deafening indifference, most of the 12,000 kids having come to see something else entirely.

My eyes burned. The houselights between bands were harsh, the air sticky with smoke. We didn’t know what to do in between acts. We’d forfeited our squares of concrete in the pit and all the decent seats were taken by now too. We didn’t smoke or drink and we didn’t know how to pick up chicks. We went back to the souvenirs.

I’d spent the past two years of my life imagining this moment, the moment when I finally would get to not only see and hear the only rock group I liked, but to actually commune with KISS—to wordlessly discourse semi-personally with Ace, Gene, Peter and Paul. I’d spent so much time manifesting what this experience would be like—finally witnessing their movements in three dimensions and actually seeing them see me. I wanted to be more than a spectator-- I wanted to be an acknowledged participant. I had gained admission to the Temple and it was finally time to at least worship, if not partake in an unholy sacrifice at the altar of disposable, self-conscious increasingly commercially processed rock and roll.

The show, of course, was just okay. Gene flew and Paul called us See-a-tal. But Ace looked bored and Peter very tired. Since I knew all the songs, my mind could color in the voids left by a bassy PA booming in a concrete sports arena. Since I knew the faces and the costumes, my mind could sharpen what detail was blurred from a distance of 300’. Since I’d come this far and invested so much, my mind could clean up in post what the actual moment lacked. In all, though, it was a fairly disappointing realization. It’s never as good as you imagine, if you imagine it too much. Romanticism is romantic-- unless you at some point are forced to face down True Reality, in which case a good stiff drink really does come in handy…

But not that night. Not on Wednesday November 21, 1979. That night we settled for a weird setlist and an overpriced program, a handful of confetti and a poignant memory. Patrick McDonald trashed the show in the next day’s Seattle Times and I don’t even remember who came to Thanksgiving dinner. I got better at enjoying rock concerts as I grew older, and in fact got to be something of an expert eventually. I’ve attended hundreds of shows by now, maybe a thousand. I’ve even seen KISS another half-dozen times, although they would never be as authentic as they were that night, with all-original members and five weeks remaining in the 1970s. I was there, of that much I can be certain. The time—where does it go?

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Metal Gateway

Super stoked for my good friend Brian Sibley and his new podcast Metal Gateway. Each week Brian interviews a different used-up rivethead about how they first got into heavy metal. Lots of interesting historical discussions ensue.

Episode III lands today featuring a particularly chafed piece of spent metal trash.

Pass it on!

Listen to METAL GATEWAY here.

Read (& Buy) My Novella

I know we’re not supposed to write novellas. My friend Jeff G has some tips on how to keep a short story from turning into one. I should have paid closer attention.

“This,” he said of ignoring his advice, “is how novellas happen.”

To be fair, I wasn’t in my right mind. I had Covid 19 in the spring of 2022 and was confined to the attic where there’s also a bath and my writing desk. I had a pretty good fever going on day 2 and didn’t want to waste it, because I think unusual art can be wrestled from fever if you’re lucky and don’t expect too much. I started writing a story that had been on my mind for years. It was actually a true story, as told by a friend. I didn’t know many of the details, so I used what I did know and began to apply some shading around the edges to fill in the rest.

By the time my fever broke, I had 20,000 words-- almost none of them true. It had turned fairly unexpectedly to fiction and it kind of wrote itself. I was really only reacting, and was as surprised and offended as anyone by the developments.

The central event of the story, revealed in the first chapter, is truthy. The rest of it is recklessly embellished and in fact outright made up. Likeness to any person living or dead is coincidental. For the most part. You know who you are…

Like a Nepenthe is not really a mystery, though there is some intrigue. It’s definitely not a love story, though there is some affection and also even some actual sex. Amid the despair that permeates most of the story, there is hope—and in the end perhaps even some genuine redemption.

Several of the characters are young adults and as a result it sometimes reads like YA. But there’s also more cursing and bong hits, drunk driving and littering than in conventional YA, so I’m claiming my own genre. I am planting my flag in YFA!

In addition to the unsafe modeling, there’s also some spare use of vocabulary that we no longer use today but which was common in 1977 when the story is set. That’s just how people talked back then. They smoked indoors, too! I should know: I Was There. And though I wasn’t driving with a beer between my knees or smoking in the dentist waiting room when I was 12, I was there-- taking notes. I’m a Boomer after all. By three months. I was born this day in 1964.

If we were together I’d let you pick up lunch. If we’d already eaten, I’d suggest you buy me a drink instead. Not gifts so much as courtesies, issued on one’s birthday.

But we’re not together. So all there is left for you to do for me is read my stupid novella.

Not today though! I wouldn’t ask that. You can read the first chapter today, however. On my birthday, as a courtesy to me.

Register for my SubStack. That’s how I’m going to publish this story. I’m going to post it on SubStack, one chapter at a time. So you don’t have to read it today even though today is my birthday. You can read it tomorrow or the next day if you want.

It’s easy and free to register for by following the link below. I don’t think you’ll get tortured too much by SubStack, if you’re someone who worries about registering for stuff. It’s not the dark web or the deep state or the black sabbath or whatever the fuck it is you call it. It won’t ask for any sensitive information and it won’t ask you for money. It might offer the opportunity to give me money, but please don’t do that. If that option appears, just click on NOT NOW or CONTINUE AS GUEST or DEADBEAT CHICKENLICKER or whatever the opposite of PLEDGE is. You can buy me an ice cream sandwich or a lap dance next time we’re together. For now, I’d be super stoked if you just registered and read the first chapter. It’s 2000 words and should take you less than 10 minutes.

I’ll be in Canada if you need me for anything. With the exchange, I’m only like 52 up there.

--jb

(You can now purchase the whole novella in convenient PDF format, by clicking here.)

Nolan’s Curse

I can't imagine what I was even doing in my seat to begin with, for the first inning of the game in the stadium 30 years ago tonight. We weren't in the habit of arriving at games on-time in those lean years-- rather sauntering into the Kingdome whenever we were drunk enough cheaper elsewhere...

Maybe it was because 46-year-old Nolan Ryan was on the mound for the visiting Texas Rangers.

Of course history allows a morbid glimpse into that inning. After a bases-loaded RBI single to Jay Buhner, Nolan gives up a grand slam to no-name Dann Howitt before going 2-1 on Mariner's first baseman Dave Magadan. After throwing the last pitch of his absolutely ridiculous career, he glances into the visitor's dugout and the trainers jog to the mound. He leaves the mound for the last time ever without having recorded a single out.

Me and my fathead friends were in the right field cheaps gulping Kingbeers and high-fiving our 5-0 lead as the greatest pitcher of his and many adjacent generations walked briskly off the mound without so much as a cap-tip to the few standing fans in attendance.

Tonight, the current roster of the Mariners team that apologetically roughed up Nolan Ryan 30 years ago had their own rank assholes disrespected by the current version of the Texas Rangers. That's baseball. But there are still scores to settle and shaving cream pies to take. I for one am leaning in to the next 9 games with the optimism of spring-- on the autuamnal equanox...

GO MARINERS

Vietnam 2026

“Saigon. Shit…” — Ben Willard, 1969

A lot has changed here since the Captain’s apocalyptic bender, but there’s probably a lot that aint, too. Ancient cultures can be like that.

We are crazy about the current version of this place. And we’re entitled to that opinion with zero else to compare it to. Tomorrow we leave to begin exploring the rest of Vietnam, but for the moment we are are entirely spun out on Saigon.

Neither Patti nor I have been in Asia before. Maybe it’s all like this, but I guess I kind of doubt it…

I have a weakness for a zoomy, chaotic, dirty city. The hustle, the smells, the commerce great and small. The barking is incessant here— food, body work, counterfeit Addidas. There’s no visible sex or drug trade, but pretty much anything else you want is here, for cheap. But don’t stop walking if you don’t want a shoeshine.

You can read all you want about the motorbike culture in Vietnam, but until you’ve swum in it, it cannot be fully understood. Tens of thousands (millions city-wide, actually) of 150cc scooters zig-zagging through every street, alley and sidewalk. Not only are there no lanes, but there doesn’t always even appear to be an agreed-upon direction. Add the odd bicycle, a few cars and a bunch of equally anarchistic pedestrians and it’s a real dance. Yet somehow it works, like a school of fish. There are plenty of wheezy 150cc horns— but no glares or flip-offs or furious oaths. Maneuvers you’d get shot for in the US happen at every ‘intersection’ but there’s no rage here.

About anything, really— as far as we could tell. The United States government had a prominent role in roughing this city (and country) up pretty bad (during our lifetimes) but there’s certainly no perceptable animosity toward Americans here. Not to mention the Chinese, Japanese or the fucking French.

There are scars. The architecture is a tangle because so much of the older stuff was rubbled by war. The food is a delicious riddle which benefits from the Imperialsim that wrote its recipes. Even ol’ Ma Nature has extracted her pound, unleashing 16 typhoons on the country during the wet season of 2025 alone, causing hellish flooding the likes of which Vietnam has never seen.

But by all accounts, these hardy and hearty people just get up in the morning and light a candle, then get to work cleaning up, again. It’s just what they do. It’s what they’ve always done.

I could go on (and on) but we need to pack for the next leg. The EZ Rider Motorcycle Gus guys pick us up at 8am to start our 6-day bike trip through the Mekong Delta and into the central highlands to DaLat. Talk to you then!

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Vietnam 2026

It did not take long for the chaos and clutter of Central Saigon to give way to the chaos and clutter of the outskirts, suburbs and eventually the agricultural land bounding the great metropolis. There were increasingly more potholes, squat toilets, feral cats, hammock cafes and piles of burning garbage the further out of the core we got. During the hour it took to reach the city limits, the backdrop changed from modern marbled mid-rises to a seemingly unending row of 1-level poured concrete structures with tin roofs and no real front doors. These structures were residential in the back, but with some level of ‘retail’ in front, selling anything from souvenirs to banh mi, coffee to coconuts— all just a few feet from the swarm of motorbikes, literally hundreds of them speeding by per minute.

Our guides from the well-regarded Easy Rider tour company met us on the sidewalk in front of our hotel at 8:30 Friday morning, just like they said they would. Patti and I are not normally big on tours— I especially am more of a ‘get lost and find out’ traveler. But with the limited number of longer-haul transportation options available, we had decided to take a chance on this adventure which would boogie us from Saigon down through the Mekong Delta and then back up north and east to DaLat in the Central Highlands. Neither of us had ever been on a long motorcycle ride and had no idea what to expect.

It would be impossible to say enough about Sonny and Tim, but I’ll make a symbolic effort here. The entire experience was A+ and our guys were warm, articulate, intuitive, informed, hilarious and infinitely skilled at navigating a 150cc Yamaha motorcycle through any traffic, whether it be horn-blaring delivery trucks, packs of other 150cc motorbikes also carrying passengers (often 3 or even 4 of them!) or herds of water buffalo. By the time they’d strapped our gear onto the backs of their bikes, we felt like old friends. With a last glance at our Saigon hotel, we merged into traffic and out of the cocoon of District 1, into Vietnam.

That first day was hard. Neither of us were prepared for the workout 9 hours on the back of a motorcycle would be. Not just the butt, but the quads and lower back too, with the deterioration of the roads once leaving National Route 1 west of the city, on the outskirts of the Delta. We never rode much more than about an hour without stopping for something, be it a coffee, meal, a quick Vong or an educational opportunity. That first day we stopped to talk to some rice farmers and to some eucalyptus twig traders on the canal.

After not one but two ferry rides, we finally reached the hotel in Can Tho at about 7pm and fell immediately into a deep sleep on the cardboard mattress, not to stir until the alarm went off just before 5.

When Anthony Bourdain made the Cai Rang floating market a household bucket list item during his historic first trip to Vietnam in 2002, the markets were still functioning trading posts. Villagers would paddle to the site hours before dawn to position themselves to trade their turmeric, water spinach and jackfruit for seasonal flowers, live snakehead fish, and rice wine. It was the marketplace. But even since Bourdain, there have been four bridges built spanning the river as part of the Central Mekong Delta Connectivity Project. The bridges have made life for the common Delta resident more convenient— but have also diluted the function of the markets. Today the vendors are there with their wares largely for photo opportunities and maybe to offer a bowl of sunrise Pho. It was delicious, and the experience breathtaking even now. But, you know— it aint like before the internet.

This said, the modern food distribution network of Vietnam couldn’t be more different than how things flow in the US. Stuff may now be getting from one side of the river to the other without need of a boat, but it’s still gettting there in small batches— often on the back of a motorcycle. And once it gets to the other side, it’s still sold off a blanket on the sidewalk or a resin table in a tiny storefront. There are no grocery stores, certainly no Cstco or WLmrt. The staggering variety of raw food for sale on any street corner was grown nearby, harvested or slaughtered that morning (when it is not, in fact, still alive). Talk about your farm-to-table. There just aint no middle man.

The second day on the bikes was much shorter, not getting rolling till after our 3-hour floating tour. It felt good to be moving again. It really is a great way to travel in a narrow, colorful place with good weather. Patti rode with the captain Sonny, and they were always the lead bike. So I had the luxury of watching the locals stop, turn and stare as Patti roared by, through the center of the village. It wasn’t like she was naked or glowing or wearing Gene makeup. But we always seemed to be something of a curiosity, as if the locals had never seen another non-Vietnamese person in their lives.

And they certainly have. While it’s a fact that we noticed very few other honkies outside of Can Tho, it is also true that this is a commonly traveled path and that tourists do use it to get in-and-out of the Delta and to the Central Highlands. But there was a lot of smiling and waving and and I was left with the impression that Patti and I are frightfully popular here.

Not with everyone though. Most of the waving and air-guitaring actually came from the very young and the very old. Ages 9 through about mid-70s seemed fairly indifferent to our presence. But the school kids and the ancient? Definitely our target audience. Particularly the ladies. The ladies…

The old Vietnamese ladies— such a force they are! They survived the war and rebuilt this place with their own strong hands because often times their husbands did not survive. And still they work, selling frogs or stirring tapiocah batter over a boiling caldron or hawking daily lottery tickets. They smile easily and ride a bicycle everywhere they go, which isn’t far. Not every 90-year old woman in Vietnam rides a bicycle. But it’s equally true that everyone who does ride a bicycle in Vietnam is a 90-year old woman—usually wearing a conical and often pedaling against traffic. She does not look to the side.

There were more bicycles on the roads as we rid the Delta and began following the Ho Chi Minh Trail east of Phuoc Long. The feral cats turned into stray dogs and there were more brick buildings. Traffic thinned and the green spaces between villages got longer and more pastoral. The rice and rubber of the lowlands began to give way to the money crops of the highlands: cashew, macadamia, cocoa, pepper and— of course— coffee.

Lord, the coffee. It’s true that most things are better with condensed milk and sugar stirred up from the bottom— but it’s more than that. The coffee is rich and strong and fragrant and the milk just makes it that much more delectable. The locals drink it mostly iced, but in an effort to stay off the pot, we’re avoiding ice when possible— so we’re drinking it hot. Whenever we get the chance. It’s everything you’ve heard. Sweet baby Buddha, it is heavenly.

Day 5 was the brochure day, with a long sunny ride through the rice paddies of the M’Drak Valley. Stopping the bikes and dismounting on the side of the road, it occurred to us that it was very quiet here— something we couldn’t have said about anywhere else we’d been. Our drivers said ‘see you up the road’ and without further explanation just rode away, leaving Patti and I standing alone on a farm road in the middle of nowhere. A generator chugged in the distance, but otherwise it was totally quiet. Funny how silence can choke you up when you’re not expecting it.

But our guides knew. They seemed to always know exactly what to do or say— or what not to. Sometimes an explanation of a site seen is useful and appropriate. But knowing when to fade wordlessly into the background and let a traveler steep in a moment that requires no explanation— that’s where the magic happens. That’s the beautiful part. And leaving us on that road without explaining to us why was a great example of this type of presence Sonny & Tim displayed every kilometer of this long journey.

The last night at the Lak Lake hotel was a celebration, re-connecting with another Easy Rider tour whose paths we had crossed on occasion during the previous week. Two young Danes were also seeing Vietnam for the first time and it was lovely to debrief with some other westerners having our same experience in parallel. Dinner consisted of tilapia in tomato sauce, steamed vegetables, spring rolls and of course lots of white rice. The 8 of us hung out at the long table well after dinner, sipping Tiger lagers and toasting shots of banana wine. It was a fitting finale.

The last day on the road was an eventful and emotional one. The inspiring Linh An Pagoda. The silk factory. The weasel coffee roasters and the cricket mart (yum!). But with each progressive stop, my mood grew more and more melancholy, knowing we would be saying goodbye to our easy riding champions very soon. These guys had been so much more than drivers. So much more than tour guides. They’d been our advocates and our translators. Our protectors and teachers. Idiot checkers, constant reminders, porters and drinking buddies. They had become our friends. We will always be friends.

DaLat City, Wednesday

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Vietnam 2026

It felt very cosmopolitan landing in DaLat Rock City on Tuesday at dusk after six days of zooming through one-horse villages and the wide-open foothill frontier of the lower Central Highlands. DaLat felt downright urban with its tile showrooms and HVAC outlets, petrol stations, bars and hillside greenhouses. And honkies. Suddenly there were a lot of people around who weren’t Asian.

Not that there are many Americans. Mostly the whities seem European. You can spot the Russians a mile away, and the Australians are easy to identify too because they’re usually talking super loud about being Australian. There are a lot of Israeli travelers here also, and what I keep forgetting is that just because someone is Asian doesn’t mean they’re Vietnamese. There are tons of Chinese and Korean tourists, but in my tiny self-aware Braimesworld worldview, I still just think we’re the only Americans— which would be fine with me if it were true.

Not that anyone cares. When asked, I do often say we are from Southern Canada. But honestly it seems like Americans are less unpopular than many other tourists. And as far as the grotesquely flawed personality behind US foreign policy goes, it seems many Vietnamese view Trump as anti-China and that is much more positive to them than his domestic developmental disabilities are expensive. They don’t know him like we know him; his character is not their conern. They have much more pressing issues to deal with in China.

And they live in a communist country, after all. The Vietnamese don’t enjoy the sport of being all pissed off that 51% of the fools in their country elected a corrupt imbecile— because the Party tells them who is going to be in charge to begin with. The hammer & sic are everywhere, hanging side-by-side with the gold-star Vietnamese flag— companion pieces for sure. But it doesn’t appear as though there’s all that much muscle or even intent behind the logo. Our bike guides did (kind of) agree that the Party is watching you (some) and they also (sort of) allowed that some businesses (might) raise the flag or donate space in a field or on a building for a propaganda billboard. And maybe the business owner gets some points (a literal gold star!)— it’s not clear. But in general, it doesn’t seem like the Party is breathing down everyone’s neck or taxing them to ribbons. They’re certainly not shooting civilians in the street.

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There’s a lot of French presence throughout Vietnam, but nowhere is the architectural influence on bolder display than in DaLat. The French built what makes DaLat DaLat starting in the very late 19th century and the city retains a strong European flavor, from the buildings themselves to the infrastructure with its stone-lined canals and impossibly narrow, steep, winding backstreets and alleyways. The French got forced out by the Japanese during WWII, but then those guys had to split after surrendering to the Allies in 1945. The French returned for a minute to check on their villas, but eventually were chased for good by Ho and his Viet Minh by 1954. And then of course we all know what happened after that.

The point is that DaLat was largely spared throughout all this historical conflict. Unlike less-fortunate venues like Quang Tri or even Saigon, the City of Flowers was not reduced to rubble because it was just too darned pretty. It’s kind of like Savannah that way, which Sherman spared because he had girlfriends there. Both sides— all sides— agreed informally that they’d work around DaLat, and it functioned as a holiday zone for brass of many different stripes. It still does.

Lots of vacationing going on here. With Tet fast-approaching, there are decorating crews stringing up ornate red lanterns and unpacking great crates of red and yellow flowers. The cherry blossoms are starting to open and there is a lot of dressing up and posing for selfies.

Including by Patti and I. There are some photogenic backdrops here in this colorful tourist playground. Incredibly, three of the most-popular attractions seem to have been built by the same deranged party, if hundreds of years apart and for radically different root purposes. The Hang Nga Crazy House (architectural expressionism) the Linh Phuoc Temple (straight-up Buddhist worship) and the aptly-named Maze Bar (alcohol abuse) share an unnerving architectural flavor, featuring riddlesome melting buildings, secret rooms, and ladder-like staircases climbing high into the forgotten uppermost reaches of the rafters. Borrowing heavily from Parc Guell, Casa Bonita and the Winchester Mystery House, there’s also a bit of Seuss, Dali, Tolkien and Escher tossed in to thicken the respective confounding batters. And to make the experience that much more unsafe. A vertigost’s bad dream, many passages are poorly lit and the patterned textures blend together, further limiting visibility. The ‘handrails’ on bridges several stories above the ground are at thigh-height. And at least at the Maze Bar, you are actually required to consume alcohol. You could never get insurance underwritten to operate attractions like these in the US.

Just another of the many differences between here and home! I will say it was nice to have a hot shower with first-world water pressure in our second hotel here. Our first DaLat flop was a guest suite in the home of some friendly locals on the outskirts of town (think AirB in a 125-year-old French villa with 15’ stacked stone walls and 12’ arched windows). But checking into La Macaron downtown was like being welcomed to the 21st century with its separate stall shower and western threadcounts. After a week’s worth of loose fitting coldwater waterroom baths and lumpy beddings, Le Macaron was a delicious 36 hours of boutique luxury, a splurge at $40USD/night. We slept well, had some underpants washed, and got re-packed to fly into the sky on an airplane to the next town.

See you in Da Nang.

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Vietnam 2026

Chuc Mung Nam Moi means Happy New Year.

Patti has been offering Tet greetings to every waitress, bicycle rental agent, hotelier and Grab driver for a week. Even when they would cock their heads and regard her quizzically because she may errantly have said ‘Happy Gout Year’ or even ‘How many monkey live in you toilet now?’

But she kept wishing them Happy New Year, getting closer to perfect pronunciation with each attempt.

Language is so crazy. We all use it, though how (and how well) varies greatly. American Americans are largely monolingual, but most people in the rest of the world speak at least two languages— usually English and their own. It’s weird over-hearing Germans ordering Vietnamese coffee in English— but it’s definitely the dominant linguistic currency, not only here but in most of developed world.

It is said that learning a foreign language is the best thing you can do for your brain. And the difficulty of mastering a second language cannot be overstated. Mastering, hell— merely wishing someone a Happy New Year is hard enough. I personally am still working on THANK YOU, though I have gotten pretty good at BIA (beer). It’s like these Vietnamese have a different word for EVERYTHING…

I have apologized to our teachers at the Go Vietnamese Language School for the regrettable condition of my dried-out American brain. I am doing some version of My Best, and also breaking out my most earnest smiles, which do count for something in the classroom as well as on the street. I think the teachers believe I am trying and don’t actively dislike me even if they do probably complain to their boyfriends at night about what a dolt I am.

It’s a different story for Patti. To be fair, it is kind of her job. She has been granted a sabbatical from her position of authority at an institution of higher learning, and her calling for the quarter is to study the language and culture of Vietnam. This encompasses more than ordering those delicious seafood pancakes and wishing strangers Happy New Year. She started working on Duolingo months before our departure and is also naturally comfortable in a classroom. She studies in the evenings and is generally much more focused on her goals than I am on mine. Let’s just say she has goals…

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We arrived in Da Nang on the shore of the South China Sea on a Saturday afternoon, having flown from DaLat on an airplane. At first glance, Da Nang looked even more international (white) than DaLat had, after our motorcycle trip through the strikingly Vietnamese Mekong Delta.

And that is definitely the case. Da Nang is Vietnam’s third-largest city and it fancies itself an emerging hub of tech, tourism and finance. There’s a lot of development going on here, with lots of cranes on the skyline and wheelbarrows on the sidewalks. A great example was right on the other side of the wall from our bed at the Livie Hotel, where an elderly couple was building a 4-story apartment building with a hammer and a chisel. The banging began before 8am every morning and on day 4, we told the unimaginably pleasant and accommodating Korean girls at the front desk that if they could not re-room us, we would need to check out at once. They called our bluff with a deep bow, apologizing profusely for not having any rooms available on the opposite side of the building. They promised to refund the unused balance of our pre-paid 2-week reservation. And out the door we went.

As it turned out, it was not particularly difficult to find a replacement flop. Even in a bustling vacation beach town during the week before Tet—which would be like booking a room on a day’s notice for Christmas week in Leavenworth. Or Malibu. I don’t know— I’ve totally lost track. I can’t tell where we are or what time of the year it is. It’s 78 degrees and humid but there are Christmas trees in the hotel lobbies and cumquat tree lots along the roadsides.

Tet is the Vietnamese observance of Lunar New Year. The celebration is much like the western Christmas holiday season in that it lasts a month and involves much gifting, decorating, travel, fireworks and downtime with family. Also food & drink. And karaoke.

On the third night in our second Da Nang hotel (the homey Oasis Apartments further downtown from the bangin’ Livie) Patti heard music coming from the street five stories below. We’d just gotten home from dinner at Alice’s Restaurant and were stuffed and pretty much ready for beddy-go, even though it was before 9pm. We’d been hearing a lot of profoundly bad singing throughout Da Nang all week, including from a locals-only karaoke yard across the street from the Oasis, on the corner by the bus barn. But the sound that caught Patti’s ear this night was novel— it sounded like a saxophone.

There aren’t typically a lot of reeds in Vietnamese music, and this was definitely a tenor sax. Plus it sounded live. We figured we’d better check it out, so we got re-dressed and took the elevator to the street. Circling the block, we found an entrance to the large fenced lot and stepped inside the gate, sidling up to a palm tree to get a discrete look at what was going on. From a distance, the party at the center of the courtyard looked like every other pre-Tet neighborhood gathering we’d been walking past all week. Several oilcloth-covered card tables were pushed together, surrounded by plastic chairs and stools. The tables were piled high with food, drink, candles and incense and at the head of the gathering was an elder (usually male) clutching a wireless microphone in one hand and a glass of beer in the other, eyes closed and singing badly through a gigantic sound system overdriven to ribbons.

It didn’t take long for a representative of this party to notice us lurking the perimeter. He strode directly to us with a wide smile and in excellent English asked our names and invited us in. Before we could say ‘oh, we were merely curious and don’t wish to intrude’ we were seated at the table with a plate of deep-fried liver rolls & barbecued chicken feet and several beers each. As it turns out, we had stumbled onto a year-end company party for a developer planning a 36-story $300M condo tower on the site. The mostly male employees literally lined up to enthusiastically shake our hands and tell us in varying levels of English how happy they were that we had joined their party. It didn’t matter who we were or where we were from— they were simply tickled to have guests, because that’s the mood the Vietnamese are generally in this time of year.

The owner of the company insisted we join him at his table at the very front, and in the worst English of his entire crew told us repeatedly just how stoked out of his fucking mind he was that we were there.

And then of course, it was our turn to sing.

Patti and I had known this moment would arrive eventually and had agreed in advance that the most internationally-known (if not necessarily loved) popular song of all times was of course Hotel California.

The band pulled up the charts and a pair of Italians who had slithered in joined us in front for a pretty serviceable version of the punchline hit. The crowd lost its mind and no one yelled ‘fuck the Eagles’ in any language.

It was the experience we’d been waiting a month for. We’d come close in a few venues with glimpses into the shadowy interior of Vietnam, the mysterious unlit tiled rooms behind the storefronts. But until this banquet we’d only been voyeurs. Now, exchanging farewell hugs, handshakes and high-fives with our new friends for life, we felt like we’d broken through to the other side—arriving as participants. We weren’t exactly naturalized and we sure as heck were not going to be fluent by the time our Vietnamese classes ended. But we’d seen the actual vision and done more than simply entertain it as an agreeable possibility. We’d survived a company Christmas party and were ready to pop the cork on Tet.

It officially starts in the morning, and we are off to Hoi An with the light to dig it to the very fullest.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi…

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Vietnam 2026

I met an Ong from Dong Hoi City and

He was headed for

Marble Mountain and some

Homemade Bun Mam Nem

From Son Doong Cave the Co’s are travelin’ down

To Hoi An’s sunny shores

From Hanoi clear down to Saigon town

The traffic it will slow you down

But there’s no place like home

for Tet…

It has been such a thrilling treat to be in Vietnam for this colorful celebration! Imagine landing in the US on December 10 without understanding why everyone has LED lights on their fences and pine trees on the tops of their cars and why the same songs seem to be playing in all the stores. A couple of bearded dudes keep showing up— one in red and the other is always barefoot and you’re not sure if they’re different spins on the same guy or if they’re rivals or what. Everyone seems busy yet happy and people keep greeting you in a code that doesn’t really translate on Google.

That’s like Tet.

It’s rich & complex, like a lot of stuff in Vietnam. We knew before coming here that Tet is like Christmas and New Years and Easter all rolled into one. We understood it to be the observance of the start of the Lunar New Year and that is lasts a month. We were prepared for a crescendo of celebration and commerce to be followed by a quiet period during which we might not be able to get a ride or a sandwich.

But as it turns out, there’s a lot more to Tet.

To grasp the concept more completely, you need to first understand the religious landscape of Vietnam. If anyone does in fact understand the religious landscape of Vietnam, I would appreciate being filled in!

With temples and pagodas and skyscraping Buddhas everywhere, you’d think that Vietnam is a very religious place. But the fact is that 4 out of 5 Vietnamese identify as atheist or at least non-religious. The Buddhisty icons and imagery (and practice) are everywhere—but the most widely-claimed organized religion is actually Christianity at less than 20% of the population.

It’s awkward. For centuries, Southeast Asia had a perfectly good Buddhist swing going, and then the French and Portuguese showed up with their bro Jesus during the 17th century and now shit’s all fucked up.

Not for the Vietnamese themselves— more just for busybody foreigner bloggers trying to figure out who’s in charge religiously. In the west, we have a very ‘my god can beat up your god’ approach to religion. Not so here. Best I can tell, folks generally worship ancestry, luck, and ceremony for ceremony’s sake. You don’t really need a proper God to burn incense or make a remembrance to your deceased grandparents. You don’t need dogma to pray for prosperity in the coming year. You just need the incense and some candles, a few energy drinks— maybe some cigarettes if grandpa smoked.

And of course he did! Every Vietnamese man over the age of 14 smokes. Not the ladies, at least not in public. But the men, they smoke tough.

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We arrived in Hoi An on Saturday afternoon via Grab ride from Da Nang. We’d heard Hoi An was ‘over-run’ with foreigners, particularly Americans. We were somewhat apprehensive about the leg, despite the fact that every driver or waitress had swooned when we said we would be in Hoi An for peak Tet. Hoi An with its ancient quarter and mad market. Hoi An with its canals and lamplit gondolas. Hoi An with its tailors and cobblers and disco beaches.

And its tourists, sure. Lots of honkies here, and Hoi An might have seemed even whiter had it not been at the climax of Tet when every native resident of Hoi An is also out, hotrodded in traditional red & gold Ao Dai dress, merrily reaching the bottoms of their Tet lists and preparing for as many as nine days off. It was like a swirling, festive holiday turf war, with the tourists staggering around all sweaty while the locals very purposefully navigated the narrow streets and alleys, busily acquiring greens and corn and rice. Herbs and a chicken. Flowers and decorations.

No last-minute trips to Fred Meyer. The Hoi An Central Market is the eye of the storm and you can get everything you need right there. WE didn’t get ANYthing there— partially because we didn’t need anything but also because it felt safer and more respectful to just stay the heck out of the way and let the professionals shred. These professionals are the aged market ladies who know their wares, how to trade with them, and how best to get from one side of the market to the other— sometimes on a motorbike or bicycle going as fast as the seething foot traffic will allow. When (if) you see them coming, you simply step aside. They are beyond reproach—the absolute top of the labor chain and an exquisite marvel to behold.

If you want souvenirs, they’re nearby— stall after stall hawking keychains and t-shirts, coasters and coffee. Beyond those stalls are the leather shops and tailors where things start to get really interesting.

Patti and I had planned on having suits made in Hoi An, known for its tailors and bespoken garments. And we’d actually stricken up a What’sApp conversation with Ms Lan from Shine Tailors, a referral from our Delta Easy Rider guide Sonny. Ms Lan had answered YES to all our questions during the previous week as we asked if her shop would be open during Tet, if she shipped to the US, if she liked music or kept any pets. We were just making conversation. We had no idea what was happening on the other end of the app or what Shine would be like once we arrived.

Grabs were already getting hard to come by on that Sunday afternoon, so we jumped on hotel bicycles at our groovy flop at the Ancient Garden Homestay a few kilometers outside the core. The traffic was terrific. Motorbikes everywhere, criss-crossing at every conceivable angle—the odd delivery van, horn blaring, forging a path of its own in what we quaintly like to refer to in the US as ‘the oncoming lane.’ The motorbikes just give as much as they need to in order to avoid collision— mere inches separating dozens of speeding projectiles made of steel, fiberglass and rubber. And then here’s me and Patti in the middle of everything, trying to make a left across the flow, ten motorbikes wide. No helmets, no lights, no brakes. It was quite insane. Riding a bicycle in inner Hoi An during Tet was definitely the most-dangerous thing I’ve ever done more than once.

And then dig Ms Lan. I don’t know what we expected. Like she was just going to be alone in her soft, quiet shop— sitting at her sewing machine, watching the door for us to walk in? We naive Americans! We would end up spending a lot of time in Shine over the course of the next three days and I don’t know if she ever connected us to the text thread with Sonny’s friends from America. There wasn’t time. From the minute you enter the shop until you emerge exhausted, it’s high-stepping fast-talking action. The shop is just like all the others on Tran Hung Dao Street, with hairless, faceless, sharp-dressed manikins on the sidewalk and flanking the tiled entrance. The interior of the shop is narrow with a series of long tables running the center and fabric shelves up and down both outer walls. There are half-dressed Swedes and Australians standing at the double-sided mirror at the back of the shop being measured, chalked and pinned by Ms Lan and her daughter. The son is scribbling down the measurements the ladies are furiously dictating in tailor’s Vietnamese. And working the front of the room is the ringmaster Chinh, the gentleman of the household.

Chinh carries on no fewer than five conversations with various groups of customers at any given moment. But when he’s talking with you, sitting sideways, left arm slung languidly over the back of the chair, you get the feeling you’re the only person of importance to him in the shop. In the whole city! There’s no hurry— no problem. He’s asking you where you’re from, what you do there, how long you’ve been in Vietnam, where you’re going next. The usual stuff, but he is such a gifted conversationalist (in his second language) that you don’t realize you’re being measured and chalked. And then seemingly in the middle of a sentence he casually rises and pivots to one the other accounts, all the time greeting new arrivals and handing out bottles of cold water.

We both overpaid for our suits (by Vietnamese economic standards) but it was an extraordinary experience and after all it WAS Tet. The garments were ready for a fitting within 24 hours and alterations were complete in another 24. Basically like on Christmas Eve they were sewing our suits, despite our objections (kind of). The work is great and the suits are in the mail now. It will be interesting to see if they do actually arrive. I don’t expect them before Memorial Day either way.

On the night of the 17th, we pedaled back to the old town around 9pm to wait for the fireworks and experience the turning of the clock on another lunar year. 2026 is the Year of the Horse and there was much optimism and toasting in the streets and along the stone-lined canals. Lots of the shops had closed by now, but there was still plenty of street food for the eating, Hudas for the drinking, and paper lanterns for the launching. We bought one each for the kids’ health and I launched one for prosperity in my business. We used the hearty grinning ba lao’s 10’ bamboo ladle to lower them into the canal and watched them float lazily down the polluted waterway toward the East Vietnam Sea. A striking, slender Vietnamese woman in a gold brocade Ao Dai and conical stepped gently onto the Cam Nam Bridge, the handlebars of a bicycle in one hand and her identically dressed 7-year-old son’s hand in the other. The crowd parted as the two made their way to the other side of the footbridge where the family Tet celebration was already underway. Big magic.

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With considerable regret, we bade farewell to the adoring staff at the Ancient Garden and climbed onto the backs of two Easy Rider motorcycles bound for the Imperial Capitol city of Hue. We would spend some moments fondly recalling our Delta guides Sonny & Tim, as today’s Riders simply were not as Easy. Coarse where our previous guys had been kind; pushy where the others were patient; smoking constantly where Sonny & Tim didn’t smoke— it was a different experience altogether, and we were glad it was only a day trip.

We did get to see the mind-bending City of Ghosts in An Bang, basically a 700-acre cemetery of ADU-sized tombs. Built and owned by individual families, each its own mosaic variation on a very strict theme— front entrance with staircase leading to the open central platform and ultimately to the enclosed altar in the back. Symmetry is the standard in all Vietnamese architecture, including monuments of worship and memorial. But nowhere is it more evident than in the luxury death villas at An Bang.

There was a different kind of Tet energy in Hue. Like Hoi An, there were hoards of locals out Tetting in the downtown area, but this was a much more contemporary scene. A much younger crowd, and instead of traditional dress they were wearing black and ready for clubbing. House music bounced from the larger open-air bars and it was clear that this cycle of Tet was for seeking companionship— at least for the kids in this university town. We had sushi this night and were asked by a pedi-cab driver if we were looking for the cocaine. It felt like Hong Kong.

We did explore the Imperial Palace complex the next day, the walled city the Nguyen Dynasty Emperor commissioned in the 19th century. The grounds were sprawling, and the elegant main palace had been renovated in a sweeping public project during Covid. Bao Dai abdicated in 1945, handing the keys to Vietnam over to Ho and dissolving the Monarchy.

And that was all super interesting and everything else like that, but we had other stuff on our minds. We had to pack for the next morning’s sleeper bus that would take us to Dong Hoi and ultimately to Phong Nha and the world’s greatest caves

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Vietnam 2026

I wouldn’t say I was dreading the cave trek. At least I shouldn’t have. Maybe I did, I don’t remember. But dread is a pretty heavy concept and is probably best reserved for more genuinely dreadful eventualities like— I don’t know— massive chain war, for instance.

Still, I’d be under-disclosing if I didn’t admit I’d been feeling some vague anxiety about the caving leg of our trip pretty much since the moment Patti booked the expedition with Oxalis Adventure Tours back in November. We both had.

Vietnam is home to some of the largest caves in the world and in fact THE largest by volume, the absurd Son Doong Cave which features its own jungle and a 30+ story high passage— a total of nearly 40 million cubic meters. It’s what they refer to in the caving business as a BALLER—a truly all-inclusive adventure which lasts a week.

So, we didn’t choose that one. But even our starter experience of the 3-day Hang Tien stroll had not only me but also our travel agent (Patti) feeling a little goosey. It was rated EASY unlike some of the other packages such as MODERATE, CHALLENGING, WHY DID I AGREE TO THIS and AGONIZING DEATH LIKELY. But we still had to submit a full-body shot of us working out and a detailed description of not only our daily exercise routine but also a list of any medications we take. So we sent them the most truthful lies & doctored images possible— and after some negotiation and extra layers of disclosure, Oxalis agreed to accept our deposit. We still knew we were going to have to swim in an underground river and that it was possible we would be eaten by leeches. We were warned that it was potentially dangerous and that it would be really hard physically.

We were less prepared for the emotional challenge…

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We arrived in Phong Nha Saturday afternoon on the sleeper bus from Dong Hoi. Those buses are a pretty comfortable way to travel, but did you know they don’t have bathrooms on them? Neither did I!

The sprawling Chay Lap Farmstay had an outdoor pool and restaurant/bar and lots of bikes and kayaks for the taking. There wasn’t much to do out there other than spelunk, and our trek didn’t start till Monday. So we opted out of the day caving and spent the two days getting lost on the remote country roads amongst the giant karsts of the Phong Nha Valley.

I still don’t understand the geology of these marvels. The valley is basically sea-level, only 40 flat minute’s drive inland from the beach at Dong Hoi. But very suddenly you are winding through these vine-crusted haystacks that rise like thunder from the valley floor. Hundreds of them, just plopped down seemingly wherever the gods dropped them. Some are modest in size—others colossal, like 3000’ tall. But there’re no foothills or gentle rises. You’re either flat on the floor or rising vertically, like climbing a giant incisor. And then it’s so crazy to think that half of these things are hollow and inside are thousands of caves!

From the minute the Oxalis van picked us up Monday morning until they delivered us back to Dong Hoi Wednesday afternoon, we felt exceptionally well cared for. Our guide Hui was always close by and every aspect of the experience was incredibly well curated—from booking straight through the expedition itself and to the deep parting hugs we shared at drop off.

The Hang Tien tour can accommodate as many as a dozen guests, but our group had only six. In addition to Patti and me there was a woman from Germany, a dude from Poland and two childhood friends from Da Nang— one currently living in Australia and the other outside Paris. With the exception of some asides exchanged between Hui and the local kids, we communicated exclusively in English—but with a real UN menu of accents. The Europeans may have been in their early 40s; all three of the Vietnamese kids were 30. They wondered— at times aloud— if the Americans in their 60s were going to be able to keep up.

Most of the really challenging stretches were on the second day, but the first afternoon did feature the swimming segment. To comprehend the power of this experience, it’s helpful to first understand the interior of the cave itself. You can look at YouTube footage of this trek all you want, but until you’re actually there, you can’t truly understand what it’s like. What I wasn’t prepared for is how clean the cave is. Without light, nothing grows—so there’s no brush or vines or even moss. There are no witches or monsters unless you count the pigeon-sized bats or the crab-sized spiders. There’s mud, but it’s sandy and clean. And the surfaces themselves and the water are super clear. It feels fake, actually— like a theme park. Like how could this ecosystem actually exist naturally?

These welcoming conditions did make it easier to justify slowly descending from the contoured rock surface of the bank down into the underground river, the bottom of which you could eventually no longer feel beneath your feet. The water was not cold— but other than the beam of your own headlamp, it was profoundly dark. Like it’s the most consuming and absolute darkness imaginable. And you’re drifting along in a subtle current in all your clothes including your shoes plus a helmet and life jacket. The walls of the cave wind forward—or is it backward? There’s little telling. The stalactites hang down from the unseeable ceiling and pretty soon the river is narrowing and the walls are only a few feet apart and you’re scraping sideways through a crevice just wide enough to accommodate you. There’s a lot of distance between party members at this point and at times you feel a little alone.

It’s a weird high. Patti thought we might have been in the water an hour, but I don’t think it was half that. And that’s a good illustration of the vacuum effect of the cave. Floor, ceiling, walls— they’re all the same, with distance and even time kind of taking on a different form than we’re accustomed to. Like space I guess. I’ve never been.

We did two caves that first day and after a long, muddy descent we ended up at the riverside camp where our dry clothes, a reasonably dry tent (it had begun raining lightly) and dinner were waiting for us. The food prepared by Ly and his crew was delicious and plentiful throughout— another gold star for Oxalis.

Honestly, there aren’t sufficient gold stars in the review galaxy to adequately spiff Oxalis Adventures. Not only Hui & Ly but also the porters and our personal spotter who ironically went by the English tag of ‘Victory.’ The assignment for this wiley goat of a man was clearly to keep the Americans alive during the trek. And without him we might indeed not have emerged, as there were a few times when his steady hand or shoulder could very literally have been the difference between survival and permanent death.

The group pretty quickly fell into a formation of Hui in front followed by the Europeans and the Vietdudes with Patti and I bringing up the rear. Victory would hover behind us with a stabilizing hand on the dicey parts and a ‘wacho haid wacho haid’ when the tites hung far low. On the last day, during the punishing muddy ascent up the back of the last karst in 90/90 conditions (90 degrees; 90% humidity) Vic was literally fanning us from a step behind. It was a little embarrassing but also incredibly refreshing. When I handed him the half-million dong tip at the end of the trek, I asked him if we could adopt him. He had no idea what I’d said of course, but we both just laughed and laughed and I guess I kind of miss that little dude this morning, recalling him fondly in-writing.

And that second day did feature some pretty hairball moments. We were prepared for styx swimming and we knew the hike out at the end was going to be hard. But we didn’t know about the rappelling or the ladder or about zip-lining across the 40’ chasm or the tightwire walk across the narrow, elevated limestone spine with no handholds in-sight (other than Victory’s). That was the part that made Patti cry. On the way in. And then we had to come back out…

But we did come back out. We made it. We reached the ice-cold shuttle bia that Hui had been promising us since hour 1. We got a wooden medal draped around our necks in an Ozlike roadside ceremony while drinking that bia. We got to convene with our little team in the home of an Oxalis villager that night to enjoy a regionally-significant meal and participate in its traditional preparation. And we got to sleep like rocks in one of the villager’s floating ADUs having faced our fears and vanquished our insecurities. I’d do it again if I had to, but I probably won’t. Have to, that is. My caving days may well be over.

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We pulled in to the Ninh Binh train station after dark on Thursday after a 9-hour train ride from Dong Hoi. Neither of us had ever taken a sleeper train before, and at $12/bunk, we splurged on the other two spots in the 4-bunk compartment so we’d have our own private space. It was a really delightful ride with reasonably comfortable bunks and a vase of plastic flowers. I wouldn’t really call it sleeping, but we ordered some bia’s at sunset and enjoyed the scenery & greenery of the Vietnam countryside.

Another 20 minutes by car got us to the Ninh Binh Valley Homestay that had looked so sexy in the photographs. Don’t they all. In true reality, the facilities at NBVH were pretty spartan, with stone floors, bamboo walls and thatch roofs. But the setting couldn’t hardly be beat, literally at the end of a long network of narrowing roads, winding amongst the karsts of Ninh Binh. These monoliths seemed to have a slightly different geological composition than their cousins in Phung Nha, 300 miles to the south. These stacks were just as dramatic, but seemed craggier. Maybe it was merely that they were covered in less vegetation, I’m not sure. But these looked rockier, and caving aint a big deal up there so maybe they haven’t been hollowed out by water and calcium and time like the ones in Phong Nha.

The Valley Homestay was a great place to decompress after the wiggy excitement of the caves. We actually lounged by the pool a little and swung gently in the hammocks on the porch of our bungalow, listening to the frogs and gazing up at the quiet giants looming on all sides of the private grounds. Pedaling home from dinner in town on the last night, the full moon was peeking out from behind the clouds as the fireflies danced above the fields next to one of the village’s many pop-up cemeteries. The karsts were silhouetted against the moonlit sky and we stopped on the dirt road and just took in the consuming nothingness of it all. I wished I could bottle it and save a taste for later, when I could use the peace of it. But that’s not how it works. You can’t take it with you. There is only the moment.

The next afternoon, we would be back in the chaos of the city, ready to rock Hanoi.

* Note: no leeches! The Oxalis website is pretty frank about the likelihood of unknowingly picking up a few of these blood-sucking hitchhikers, and we met a young couple from the Bay Area on our Saigon streetfood tour who had taken this same trek only a month earlier, and they definitely got attached. But Hui said it wasn’t peak leech season, and we were also successful in avoiding poisonous snakes and Dengue mosquitos also. For the win!

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Vietnam 2026

Patti and I hadn’t planned on spending a week in Hanoi. It was always our intention to take a side-trip further north and break Hanoi into two meals. But as it turned out, we ate the whole damn thing in one uninterrupted bacchanalian sitting.

It’s a rich and filling meal, Hanoi. The capitol, the home of Uncle Ho, the spiritual center of Vietnam— a hustling, noisy, colorful, wonderful mad blast of a city.

We arrived on the very comfortable 12-passenger limousine van from Ninh Binh, reasonably rested and ready to fight. From our first moments on the crooked pavers, it was evident that the Old Quarter of Hanoi was a special place with lots of secrets and that we would become good friends. With its narrow streets lined with decaying French buildings seemingly holding each other up, it reminded me immediately of San Francisco’s Chinatown except it was flat and there were no Chinese characters on the signs. Oh, there were characters alright—just not on the signs. The smell of fresh fish hung in the air, and lanterns swung gently in the afternoon breeze. Wicker bins of herbs, fruits and trinkets spilled out of storefronts on both sides of the street as tourists and residents alike squeezed by, narrowly avoiding being struck by the motorbikes speeding up and down, honking

Patti and I would both be clipped by vehicles in Hanoi, actually. She by a motorbike; me by a car. No injuries of course, and neither driver even glanced let alone stopped. But it’s still unsettling to be brushed by a moving motor vehicle. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen much more, honestly—the way the traffic works. The scooters go as fast as the congestion will allow. And although that it isn’t usually very fast, they are constantly zigging for an advantage, even when that’s zagging on a sidewalk—pedestrians be damned. In reality, neither pedestrians nor scooters can use the sidewalks much, as they’re too stacked with postcard racks, Banh Mi carts, spa sandwich boards, tiny stools with low stainless steel tables and hundreds of parked motorbikes for anyone to really use them for passage. Mostly all traffic is forced to share the narrow street, which makes for some very artful dodging.

I don’t know how she did it, but Patti discovered Bia Hoi that first evening. We’d been walking around holding hands in the dying light, browsing the Sunday market and a few shops— really excited to be in a new venue. We were thinking about chasing some dinner, but figured on a beer first. I was watching for something that looked like a bar, but Patti spotted this elevated platform on the corner with a few blue resin tables inside and some Vietdudes drinking beer from plastic pint glasses. It might have been this novelty that caught her eye initially. We hadn’t been served a beer not in a bottle or can in six weeks, but these guys were drinking draft beer. It didn’t look like a bar. There was no counter or cooler, no kitchen or cash register. It was just a tiled rostrum, open to the street on two sides—more like a drinking platform.

“Let’s go in here,” Patti said without looking at me.

We stepped up into the space and approached the only empty table. Looking around we saw a girl with a tray of pints and we pointed at the table, raising an eyebrow and two fingers in the universal sign of ‘this table for two’? She shook her head no, and after setting the glasses down on one of the tables, motioned for us to follow her across the street to a smaller storefront with some chairs out on the sidewalk. She pointed to two empty ones and we sat down. There was an older man sitting on a stool pouring beers out of plastic spigot like the ones you see on Garden Street. He looked at us and I said ‘hai bia.’ He poured them and the girl brought them over.

We noticed that the 3rd corner of the 4-way intersection was also being served by this same keg. The girl and a young man were running beers in both directions, dodging motorbike traffic with trays of pints. Purely bananas. But our corner was headquarters— the source and the soul. It was an older crowd (all male, of course) and we felt honored to have been seated there. We didn’t understand why and never did learn. We visited this particular Bia Hoi (which translates to ‘fresh beer’ literally brewed that morning) two more times and were seated in one of the other two spaces by the same kids both times. The last time there, she seated us at the table we’d asked about originally, even though this time we pointed to our first seats on the hot corner. Just another of the great mysteries of Vietnam.

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There’s plenty to do in Hanoi. We went to the Temple of Literature. We spent an afternoon at the Hanoi Fine Arts Museum. We took a coffee-making workshop. We went to the Women’s Museum. We went to Train Street and Beer Street both.

But in between cultural attractions, Hanoi was a lot of eating, drinking and shopping.

Not that it was all pho and bia hoi. You can’t have Vietnamese food every night, and we did have some very good Indian (twice), sushi, and a pretty serviceable pizza in Hanoi. We enjoyed a cocktail at the historic Metropol Hotel and frequented more than one sky bar—the first of which also featured Alice & Edlin! We shopped for pottery at the remote village of Bat Trang where you can watch the artisans throwing in large and small studios alike.

But yes— there were a few Banh Mi’s and quite a few bia hois.

Also a lot of walking. All three of our hotels were in the Old Quarter, so there were very few cars taken. Most everything we did was on-foot. One of the few things that remained un-crossed off on our list of things to do in Vietnam was to take a pedi-cab. And it’s ironic that we did not take one in Hanoi since we did walk so much and since the drivers there are so persistent. Patti thinks they targeted us because we look old, but I think it was because we looked light. Those guys are super fun and we made a game out of flashing them the international sign of ‘we’re going to walk it’ which is the first two fingers of the right hand facing down and wagging in a walking motion.

And sure: the shopping. Good Hell, the shopping. The Quarter is built on shopping, offering everything from revolting plastic souvenirs (presumably made in China) to regionally-produced incense, coffee, pottery, silk, silver, communist propaganda and bamboo bongs. It’s set up like in Latin America where all the like vendors are clustered together. So not only is there a silk street and a silver street, but also a paper street, a porcelain street, a Tet decoration street, a hat street, a scissors & knives street and a brass figurine street. Plus much more. It’s wild.

Very little of the merchandise is priced. You’re forced to ask ‘bao nhieu’ (how much?) and the shopkeep looks you over, deciding where you’re from and gives you the price for your country of origin—usually more than twice what she’ll actually accept. And then I usually say a price that’s two-thirds of what she said initially and then of course we split it again. Sometimes I just gave her the first money—and this was a genuine surprise on more than one occasion. Negotiating is kind of fun with the right vendor and I think the locals do genuinely enjoy the game. And I wouldn’t want to deprive them of that, nor did I want them to disrespect me for over-paying like a chump. But it’s also exhausting, and sometimes it felt lame trying to get something for $1.45 instead of $2.10 when I would buy it at Penny Lane for $18 at Christmas without a second thought—certainly without haggling. I don’t even know how someone can manufacture, transport and retail this thing for $2. And I’m going to walk out of the shop over sixty-five cents when she knows I pay $9 for a bagel at home and then tip two bucks on top? She has the internet, she knows how fucking rich I am.

It’s part of the whole thing, and I don’t think we ever shook the invader traveler complex entirely. Especially in a place like Vietnam that has such a regrettable history with the US. The people are very warm and it does seem like they are glad to see well-behaved American tourists because we have money. But it still feels exploitive because everything is so cheap to begin with. A beer is 90 cents. The best coffees I’ve ever had are a dollar. The banh mi is $3. Nice hotel rooms are $55 (though you can get a crummy one for $15) and a ride across town in hideous traffic is $2.75. THEN tipping is discouraged. And I’m supposed to offer them half of what they tell me the already low price is? Gross!

One thing I do love about the economics of Vietnam is that it is a cash culture. I don’t think we charged 5 transactions in 6 weeks. Even some of the hotels required cash payment. It took a while to figure the money out since there are so many zeros in the equation. Like a USD is equal to 25,000 Vietnamese dong. And there are no coins of any demonination. Just paper. The thousand dong note is four cents.

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You can meet some people in nine days. Our instructor Alex from the coffee class was funny. Lan let us pet her cat. We did give some money to the old man on the corner whose panhandle tag was simply ‘money.’ (The only real asking we encountered the whole time we were in the country). But by far the best friends we made in Hanoi were at the Saturday night karaoke party. Duh.

We were strolling around the Quarter trying to decide between a nightcap and an early turn in. It might have been 10pm. We walked by a shop that had music coming from inside, and we peered in the plate glass window. There were maybe a dozen people inside— one older gent standing on a small stage with a mic in his hand a few others dancing. I thought it was a club at first and opened the door a crack. The singer smiled and motioned us in.

It was a private party of some sort in a space that may have been like a dance studio. There was no bar but there was plenty of bia and our sponsor brought three over immediately and showed us to a table. His name was Ha which means river in Vietnamese. He (Ha) was very happy we had joined the party and told us so repeatedly, almost constantly. He was definitely the karaoke host, and performed frequently including backing me up on a shredding version of Hotel California (of course) which ended in a pretty respectable air guitar jam with me in the middle flanked by River and Minh, age 73. Unlike the dapper Philip Seymour Hoffman lady’s man who danced with all the gals, Minh was more of a free-style soloist and could not be undersold when he felt like cutting. He did take time out from his interpretive jazz movement odyssey to spin Patti for a couple of numbers, however. There was also the lady in black who was a bit more serious about her karaoke than the fellas, who seemed like they were there mostly to drink and dance. She looked like maybe she was hoping to get discovered. And she did have a lovely voice…

We drank and sang and danced and laughed with these kooks for an hour, not really exchanging many details other than our names. But we just laughed and laughed. Riv told us how happy he was and Minh reminded us he was 73. It was a wonderful way to top off a Saturday night and we wouldn’t make such good friends again until we got to Tokyo a week later.

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Tokyo 2026

After two months in Vietnam, we were a little concerned about the whiplash culture shock of returning to the US. So what we did was, we booked a few nights in Tokyo-- thinking it would soften the transition.

This did not end up working out so hot. As it happens, we could have gone from Vietnam to about anywhere else in the universe and it would have been less of a shock than Tokyo was. Talk about your whiplash!

There are a lot of Asian people in Tokyo, but that’s about where the similarities end.

We arrived at midnight Monday on a flight from Hanoi. Customs was a breeze and we were able to make one of the last trains leaving Haneda, bound for the Shimokitazawa neighborhood via the Yamonote line. A couple of transfers got us to Higashi Station, and we stepped off the platform feeling pretty buff. We had successfully navigated the first leg of our visit on the busiest public transportation system in the world.

Strapping into our packs and walking out into Tokyo, we braced for the pulsing neon and seething humanity we’d seen on TripAdvisor. Instead, we were greeted with darkness, cold and an eerie silence.

We wondered if we’d taken a wrong turn at Hong Kong. Surely this could not be Tokyo, Japan—the world’s largest city which vibrates with movement, electricity and sublime chaos at all hours. But it was absolutely deserted. The buildings were modest, the streets spotless, and there were no vehicles or pedestrians in sight. It looked like a movie set after the best boy had gone home and turned out the lights.

We looked at each other and shrugged, starting down the empty street toward our first flop, just a few blocks away. The Mustard Hotel was tidy and quiet. A desk clerk emerged from the curtained back room rubbing his eyes and let us in to the lobby where he checked us in. The room at the Mustard felt like a community college dormitory or like a really super nice prison, with bunkbeds and a tiny high window. The room was spare, with no artwork or décor of any kind. The only things in it were two pair of gray linen pajamas and a turntable.

We thought about slipping into the jammies and borrowing a record from the bins in the lobby, but instead we searched SIGNS OF LIFE NEAR ME. Google Maps shyly suggested that Never Never Land was open just around the corner, pouring alcohols and cooking the food until 2am. We doubted it, but re-shoed and headed in that direction just to be sure.

And this is where the whole tour changed. NNL was like a different Tokyo altogether, with its dark wood furnishings, vivid art, disco ball and black lacquered piano. A jazz record played courteously on the turntable. And standing behind the bar-- like he’d been waiting for us all month-- was Ken the boy bartender.

Ken said his kitchen was cold for the night, but he poured us a glass of wine and practiced his English on us for an hour even though he told us several times he was getting ready to close up. There was no one else around. It was after 1am, to be fair. But he was incredibly sweet. We felt way welcomed and would actually pop in to the bar each of the three nights we spent in the neighborhood (the last of which even featured a quick jam with the Loudness Guy. Everyone knows Honkey Tonk Woman…).

The brilliant March sunshine showed us a different Kitazawa the next morning. Students, families and hipsters alike roamed the pedestrian-only lanes of the lower neighborhood, pausing to browse in any one of the seemingly hundreds of mouthwatering vintage clothing shops. Each boutique seemed to have its own theme and specialty: denim in this one, leather across the street-- suits, shoes, sweats, shades, scarves. Every collection was impeccably-curated and displayed: no crowded racks or clothing-by-the-pound here. It was a pageant of the retail arts. Quite unbelievable, honestly.

Tokyo was that way in general of course: alphabetized, organized, evenly spaced. It was sound, sane and sensible. Everything was clearly priced, the seats heated, and all the light switches worked. Never was it unsafe, out of order or covered in rust, grime, ten thousand motor-scooters or garbage. It was not like Vietnam very much at all.

Not that it wasn’t TOO safe and orderly. Surely it was. After being a pedestrian in the anarchy of Vietnam for two months, it was a positively surreal experience to wait in a crowd of 200 people perched on a curb all watching for the WALK sign to light up when there was not an automobile in-sight in either direction. There are no WALK signs in Vietnam-- very few traffic lights of any kind as a matter of fact.

Nor are there ‘unwritten rules’ like the ones that keep Japan functioning as smoothly as it does. Vietnam is not big on rules—it’s more of an honor system. The Vietnamese subscribe to the Viv Savage law of nature, that being ‘have a good time ALL the time.’ In Japan it’s more like ‘feel free to have a good time as long as no one else sees you doing it.’

No public exercising. No public affection. No smoking. No eating or drinking (unless it is in the approved eating or drinking area). No sitting. No talking. It was incredible to be on a crowded train where no one was talking. So quiet. As someone who likes to talk and often does, I had trouble keeping my mouth shut in these situations, almost to a tourette-like extent. I couldn’t hardly stand it.

Of course it’s great when stuff works and it’s nice when you know how much things cost without having to ask and of course it’s a relief not to worry about getting a hematoma every time you step off a curb. But there are costs to order. The social pressure is palpable and the isolation is hard to watch at times. The suicide rate in Japan is the highest in the developed world, especially among the young. And that’s a problem when you don’t have enough young people to begin with. Tokyo looks like a hard place to grow up.

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My 40-year college buddy Mark lives half the year in Tokyo with his wife Yoko and we got to see those guys a couple of times. Mark came to visit me in NYC when I was there for the summer of 1986, so we have been in some wiggy towns together. Yoko is a native of Tokyo and we had a chance to visit her family’s 100-year old soba restaurant in Setagaya and meet her 90+ year old aunt who is the matriarch of the family and the boss of the business. Yoko was born next door and her cousins still live in the building. It was so cool to see that piece of her history and meet her family. Everyone was very kind and the noodles were delicious too!

Mark & Yoko were not the only acquaintances we ran down in that bottomless city. We were sitting in a tiny 2nd story bar called Kinema one night when a text landed from Crider suggesting we visit the Teengenerate bar, Poor Cow. Conveniently it was RIGHT NEXT DOOR and of course Fifi was sitting behind the flier-plastered bar when we walked in. Fink was at 3rd base and it didn’t take long to get our point across that Dave Crider had sent us and that Patti was in fact Josie P. Cat, at which point all jigoku broke loose. Much air-guitaring ensued and we were subjected to a ‘personality test’ that required us to write our ten favorite records on one side of the paper and our ten favorite songs on the other. There were no grades per se, but Fifi did put on the first Pretenders album since it appeared on both our lists. It was extremely rock and roll.

Poor Cow is like the size of the Old Spaghetti Factory compared to some of the bars in Kitazawa and Shinjuku, which we also haunted. The maniacal Golden Gai neighborhood in particular features some of the world’s smallest rooms of any kind—let alone the smallest bars. Some have only three stools and maybe a tiny table in the corner. They’re all dark and themed and unreasonably cool. If you could ever make your way through all of them I should think you’d end up alcoholic.

Of course the best of all them—the mother of all rock bars—was Mother Rock Bar. We sought it out on Matt’s recommendation-- never would have found the narrow, dank basement space on our own. It’s a little larger than some—6 stools, 2 small booths and a bench running the length of the wall opposite the bar. The mistress greets you by shining a penlight on the seat in which she recommends you sit. Or she holds up the ancient laminated sign that reads NO SEATS RIGHT NOW IS STAND OK? Meanwhile she is pouring drinks, making change, and switching the music AFTER EVERY SONG. When you order a round, she hands you a penlight and the catalog which is kind of a like a karaoke binder, but with only the bands listed. She brings you your drinks and you yell ALICE COOPER and she goes to the shelf and pulls out the whole catalog and puts the 7 CDs on the bar. When she comes back by, you point at track 2 of side 2 of Killer and pretty soon Yeah Yeah Yeah is playing at a punishing volume.

We shared a couple of tequila shots with her, and when she learned we were from Seattle, she made a space for us right up at the bar and put on some of her own Seattle selections. Between our Mudhoney & Soundgarden and her Nirvana & Pearl Jam, we had a pretty good little grunge plunge going on. The other patrons did not seem to mind. I gave her my Rock City hat on the way out and yelled that MATT SAYS HI. I’m sure she neither heard nor understood a word I said, but I think she’d have done a backflip if there’d been enough room.

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In the middle of our visit, we overnighted at a traditional Japanese Inn in the Asakusa neighborhood, near Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple, Senso-ji. Despite the heavily-touristed location, the atmosphere inside the ryokan was serene. Our room featured the opaque papered sliding screens & tatami mats and of course the visit included a soak in the traditional ofuro communal bath. The hospitality was humbling and the experience is highly-recommended—a luxurious escape from the hustle of Tokyo.

But after that, it was totally time to hoof up to the redlight district and check in to a skanky love hotel.

Patti had served as our travel agent for this entire trip. She spent months studying the geographies, hawking for competitive airfares, researching the visa requirements, booking the excursions and perhaps most grueling of all—securing the lodging. By the time we left the ryokan on Sunday morning, we had slept in 26 rented beds over the course of the previous 8 weeks. And Patti was about out of gas.

“I think I’m burning out on travel agent,” she had said wearily. “You’re going to have to take over.”

So, after all the other rooms, and the busses, trains, shuttles and taxis plus the expeditions and workshops and tours and attractions and flights and meals, all of it—I stepped heroically in to book one final hotel room. Here I come to save the day…

There were clues that the Hotel BaliAn was in fact a love hotel. One of those clues was the repeated reference in the reviews to the place being a total love hotel. But those reviews usually also had the word ‘but’ in them and by all accounts the BaliAn was a snappy, clean, conveniently-located property with lots of free lotions and also a Suntory Whisky dispenser. What could go wrong?

I hoped nothing. A lot was riding on this selection. Patti had given me one assignment amongst the sea of her achievements and I was loathe to fuck it up. I scoured Agoda for something with style in a good location that wasn’t too expensive, and I kept coming back to the BaliAn with its Malaysian rattan motif and rose-petal bath. We lugged our bags into the lobby and looked around.

And of course it was totally a love hotel! Hourly rates and Japanese prostitutes as far as the eye could see. In fairness, however, it was also in fact clean, stylish and not too expensive. The Hotel BaliAn was the best place we stayed in Tokyo and among the best of the entire trip, seriously.

But for sure: that Kabukicho district is pretty red, as in red light. With all of the general social repression going on, we found it fascinating that these love leases were being so flagrantly settled and executed, at all hours of the day. I guess it’s only sex. And all other facets of the transactions appeared very Japanese—the girls were clean, the johns well-mannered. No one was intoxicated or loud (of course) or scuffed in any visible way. It was very civilized and we didn’t have any second thoughts about being there at all. I had booked us a killer accommodation and lifted my fist in triumph.

But it was our very last room. After two nights at the BaliAn we’d be zipping our packs up and boarding the Narita Express, saying goodbye not only to Tokyo but to our entire thrilling, immersive, perplexing, humid, fabulous Oriental adventure.

But there was still a little time. Time for yet another dizzyingly delicious sushi dinner. Time for the just plain dizzying digital teamLab Borderless exhibit in Toyosu. There was an entire afternoon for strolling the paths of the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden looking for the signature cherry blossoms (they were shy yet—we missed them by maybe a week…). The last Tower Records store on Earth. The whiteglove shopping experience of Isetan Shinjuku and the corresponding white knuckle experience of Don Quijote. The 45th floor of the Metropolitan Government Building from which you can see for miles in all directions, with Seattle-sized neighborhoods scattered out every window.

It’s so vast. You can’t fully appreciate it from the ground. It’s not until you get up over it that you realize just how massive Tokyo is. We thought we’d had a productive and representative few days, but when you look out and see how much you didn’t see, you realize you didn’t see shit. I can’t wait to get back for some all-you-can-Tokyo, because it’s a wonder—its own unique sprawling biosphere.

I never thought I was all that interested in visiting Asia. There’s a lot of places I’ve always wanted to go, but the far east wasn’t necessarily one of them. But dang. I guess you really don’t know what you don’t know. Plus now that I’m fluent in both Vietnamese and Japanese, it will make it easier to go back.

We’re home now of course. SeaTac seemed empty and the cars on I5 looked really dirty. The armored cop outside the customs gate was holding a bazooka. And all the people on the shuttle were yelling into their cellphones on speaker. But otherwise, it didn’t feel as weird being home as we’d expected. The house was clean and warm. Lauren had the mail stacked neatly and the plants looked great. We set our bags down and slowly walked from room-to-room re-acquainting with our little place on Earth. It aint bad. But there are some pretty affordable December flights to Sri Lanka right now…

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Oh, no. Not again…

Groundhog Day. Shit, I almost forgot about that.

As if every day isn’t already so impossibly like the last. As if pasty whites in ill-fitting clothes and bad hair don’t already have too much to say. As if we need another six weeks of this nonsense, let alone four years.

Groundhog Day. That’s all we need right now…

No one really understands Groundhog Day, and I don’t see any good reason to start now. Yes, of course everyone knows that on February 2, an anointed Groundhog somewhere on the east coast emerges from his or her den and if he/she sees its shadow, then there’s six more weeks of winter. This much we all ‘know’ the same way we ‘learned’ the Gettysburg Address and the Preamble.

But—you know—what does it mean?

First of all, what even is a groundhog? I doubt most people not from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania could tell one apart from a Prarie Dog, Hedgehog or a common rat’sass Gopher. And why Punxsutawney (pronounced Punxsutawney) anyway? How did it come to pass that a stillwater no-doc ‘town’ of 6,000 in the middle of Pennsylvania (read: nowhere) got to be in-charge of the weather? After all, spring is important! There’s a lot of fucking that goes on in spring that’s of genuinely high consequence. Delaying or accelerating its arrival could mess with the natural rhythm of the season and throw us into a chaos we haven’t seen since December 2000. I’m saying now that there’ll be heck to pay come June if there’s no kittens to euthanize or if the clematis doesn’t bloom by Father’s Day. Merely sayin’.

I’ve researched it and still don’t hardly understand it. Near as I can tell, the six-week swing was a compromise between the Germans and the Scots because they favored different equinoxes– the Vernal or the Imbolc. So someone suggested they let a rodent decide. It is no less simpleheaded than a cointoss, but more civilized than a bloody Dark Ages war, when you think about it. Plus we got a good movie out of it, so at least we got that goin’ for us. Gunga la Gunga…

The calendar. The seasons. The Court. What’s any of it matter? March. Put a candle in the window at 7pm. Leave a voicemail for your legislator. The monied Christians are going to do what they’ve always done– what they want. It’s the year 2017. Does that mean the world has only been alive for 2017 years? Of course not! It just means that the Christians set the clock like they set everything else. Everyone plays by this rule, even the majority of the world that doesn’t believe in Jesus. It’s 2017– it’s not worth disputing. Can’t hardly blame folks for picking a battle.

So we’ll see what Punxsutawney Phil says tomorrow. I’m told he’s a hell of a Groundhog. Tremendous Groundhog.

Def Leppard, Halloween 1981— I Was There

Our poker games are frequently put on pause when someone starts talking about music—everyone sitting there with a handful of cards blabbing on all drunk about the first Dio album or some Day on the Green. Inevitably, someone says “you were at that show?! I was there, too!”

One of these times, I suggested to the publisher of the local music paper sitting next to me that his rag should have a column called I Was There about shows of historical significance that (older) readers might relate to. Brent Cole agreed—and he reminded me of my idea on Monday morning with an assignment of 500-700 words on the historically significant show of my choosing. I’d forgotten the conversation, of course– but suddenly I was a columnist.

This review appeared in the WhatsUp Magazine in 2002. I’ll make it clear in this italicized introduction that there are few bands of any genre that I despise more than Def Leppard. I don’t imagine they are all that much worse than any number of others, but my disdain for them lies in the fact that they were once my favorite band. The importance of High ‘N’ Dry to my musical development cannot be overstated. And the first time I heard the follow-up Pyromania my heart was broken. They’ve only gotten shittier since then.

Still, 1981 was a very good year. I was there…

Halloween 1981 was a big night for me. I’d been to plenty of arena shows in the city, but usually in Greg Dumbshield’s mom’s station wagon. This night, I was drivin’ myself. In my ’71 Impala.   To a “theater” in Belltown, far away from the touristy comfort and landmarks of Seattle Center. Dressed as Angus Young.

I had been listening to High ‘N’ Dry all summer. Every day I listened to it and wondered how a record could be so perfect. From the springy opening riff of “Let it Go” to the last ringing chords of “No No No” Def Leppard’s second record was a masterpiece of lite metal.  Produced by Mutt Lange, it had all of the buzzy bluster of Highway to Hell, but also a sultry sense of dynamic seemingly beyond the chronological ages of its creators, none of them over 20– some allegedly as young as 16. How, I wondered to no one in particular, sitting in my room with headphones on as summer slouched away unnoticed, could any album be better than Highway to Hell?

And now they were coming. Inconcert, as they used to say. Steve Slaton was just starting to get hip, playing “Let it Go” and the title track on his MetalShop radio show, and at the last minute KISW pulled through with a Rising Star endorsement. I scoffed at the panicky marketing. “I was inta these dudes afore anybody,” I bragged to my parents before adding “bring my heel down on the toe and break the bone…”

Halloween was on a fucking Friday. I had such a stiffy as I pinned enameled AC/DC buttons all over the lapels of my navy blue suit coat and put it on over a white dress shirt, striped necktie and cut-off shorts. Horns and a tail finished the outfit, then I revved up the Impala and drove straight to Northgate, missing Belltown by six miles. Goddamnit. Not having yet matured into man, however, it was easy for me to stop and ask directions at the 76 station, and before I knew it I had actually parallel parked the Impala and was standing in line waiting to get into the Moore.

I immediately sensed something different in the crowd. They were dressed the same and used the same vulgar slang & poor grammar as the kids at the arena shows. But they seemed somehow more hip to the subtleties of the music and its implications. The Moore Theater held only 1200 people– these were the 1200 most informed and discriminating rivetheads in the Puget Sound region! These kids were students. They were my people…

The show itself was unbelievable, naturally. I had a third row seat, and jumped gleefully onto the armrests of it as soon as everyone else did, at the dimming of the houselights. The band clearly was experiencing that intoxicating and fleeting rush that floats an act in the midst of their break. They were young, playing the States for the first time to appreciative audiences. Reporters wanted to talk to them. Kids wearing their shirts were hanging around the alleys behind venues. And headlining bands (this night it was Blackfoot) were shunning them. They were on the way up.

There was something very sexual about Def Leppard in this period, before they turned into one of the lame, established bands they once frightened. And that sexuality was derived at least partially from their youth. The shirtless photos on the sleeve of High ‘N’ Dry– pasty white British skin and stringy hair (what’s wrong with being sexy?) bordered on child pornography. They were also all very fucking short. Pete Willis in particular was only about 18″ tall. He was great, though, playing this huge black Hamer Destroyer-style guitar that looked like it must have belonged to his uncle.

And the rest is history. Little Pete Willis wouldn’t see the next U.S. tour, because he drank too much. The other guitarist Steve Clark wouldn’t see the year 2000 because he drank too much. And the drummer Rick Allen couldn’t drink as much as he used to, because he lost one of his arms in a drunk driving accident. And everyone knows two fists are better than one when it comes to drinkin’.

As for myself, I sped the Impala back to the burbs and drank too much at Scott Fisher’s Halloween party with my regular friends. But my heart was back at the Moore with all of my new friends, the ones that I hadn’t actually met yet.  Handfulls of Halloween candy disagreed with kegcups of beer, and I barfed near the 10th hole of the golf course, still wearing my tail, though I’d lost my horns by that time. Trick or treat—Let it Go…

Do Peeves make good Pets?

How many peeves are we allowed to keep as pets before they’re just peeves? And what’s the difference, anyway? Do Pet Peeves get to sleep on the bed with us while the general population shivers outside or in the garage? Are some peeves domesticated and others feral?

Pets of any variety are comforting. They love us unconditionally and are generally free of the bullshit hang-ups that render the relationships with our upright companions so frequently intolerable. Whether we keep dogs or cats or snakes or goats, many of us are more invested in our pets than we are in the seemingly more primary relationships in our lives including the ones we flog with our spouses, children and parents.

But where is the line? How much is too much—how many too many?

Every neighborhood has a “crazy cat lady.” No one visits her because her furniture & cutlery is coated in a film of silky dander and the whole place smells hard of piss. Cat lady’s house is usually too warm inside. The mewing is unnerving.

Robert Stroud was known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, despite the fact that he was not allowed to keep birds on The Rock. And although he did raise hundreds of canaries and author several well-respected books on Orthonology during a prior sentence at Leavenworth, the dude was evil & insane.  A poor model.

Plenty of dog owners not only dress their best friends in garish sweaters & hats, but often don complimentary or even matching outfits themselves. This is not OK. Not OK. 

So who is to say how many peeves I can reasonably keep as pets? Is the peeve police going to come to my door? Are my neighbors going to turn me in? Should I be more careful about the kind of loose assertions I make on social media?

I don’t much give a damn. We’ve all got our hangups, and sometimes it feels good to vent. So whether I have room in the kennel for all these peeves or not, I’m not sure. But here are a few of my favorite peeves, otherwise known as the kind of shit that just drives me crazy.

• stuff all over the floor. Not too many things that aren’t always on the floor belong there. Furniture and rugs go on the floor, and shoes can too. Towels, coats, pencils, guitar picks, cereal bowls, cellular telephones and eyeglasses do not

• motorists yielding to jaywalkers. Stopping your car in traffic and encouraging someone to step off a curb is not the responsible or compassionate thing to do. It is the stupid-head thing to do. It puts you both in danger

• when people don’t talk good. Our language is deteriorating before our very ears. While the low expectations of the internet are certainly contributing to this regrettable trend, mis-use of words like irony & literally has been going on for years as well as any use of conversate, supposably or irregardless 

• plus when people write bad. There/their/they’re; too/to/two; your/you’re; then/than; could have/could of; alot/a lot; than/then etc etc etc

• “everything happens for a reason.” This heavyweight challenger of all copouts is second in its numbing lameness only to the milky-eyed reference to “God’s will.” It’s true that things happen for reasons. But those reasons are that someone drove drunk, got cancer, or didn’t pay their taxes– not that a divine entity threw a lightening bolt like a javelin in order to facilitate hard personal growth or otherwise “test” someone to whom an unthinkable tragedy has occurred. Shit happens by cause-and-effect and raw chance, not because we have lessons to learn. We may learn them– but that’s not why shit happens in the first place

• cat turds in the houseplants

• LOL

• broken bottle of Michelob

That’s about it. Pretty much everything else is fine with me.

Playing Cards

I collect stuff, always have. I come from a long line of lovers of stuff: pottery, cufflinks, Foo Dogs, Fiestaware—if it’s collectable, an ancestor of mine probably hoarded it. I most certainly have what Bob Ridgley & Terri Krantz referred to in their 2008 documentary American Collectors as “the collector’s gene”—an uncontrollable (or at least uncontrolled) urge to gather quantities of the same thing up in piles. Some collections are made to stack, like records or plates. Others—like tractors or cadavers—aren’t as easy.

Patti thinks I have a problem. Matchbooks, inkwells, KISS memorabilia and brass bug silent butlers are bad enough. But when I realized I was actually clipping the corrections out of the daily paper and putting them into an envelope labeled CORRECTION COLLECTION, I realized that maybe it was time I got some help.

The dark danger with most collections is that they’re open-ended: they can never be completed. You just keep on adding and adding– presumably until you die– at which point your kids have to come in and agonize over what to do with Dad’s prized collection autographed 8×10 black & white promotional photos of bald celebrities.

But I do have one collection that doesn’t take up much space, is easy to stack, and which has a definite end. Part of me hopes I never complete it…

I found the Nine of Diamonds today. I found it around the corner from my house, in the gutter– face up. I was on my way to catch the bus to work, and I jolted spastically in my path like I always do when I see a playing card on the ground. I bent swiftly to pick it up, as if someone else were also vying for it– like it was a dollar. It was weathered— muddy and mottled by gravel. Probably the most trashed card I have other than my Jack of Spades. That card, in addition to being mottled and faded and bubbled by moisture, is torn mostly in half. And burnt. It’s a card that someone clearly tortured for sport before tossing it out their car window, speeding away into the night, laughing and cussing.

I’ve often thought that by the time my lost & found deck is complete, I’ll be about ready to play a goodamned game of cards with it. But I don’t really enjoy solitaire, and doubt I’ll find an opponent for any face-down games. Most of the cards in my deck are marked in some incidental way or another.

Jack of Spades: drowned, burned, torn in half. Three of Diamonds: Lassie

I started building this deck several years ago, in the late 1980s. I’d been having a stupid conversation with a smart girl– my roommate Mark Sterne’s sister Susan. Just smarter than snot she was– still whenever she visited and Mark was at work, she & I would descend into just the stupidest conversations. I never knew if she was doing experiments on me or what. The idea of collecting a deck of cards entirely from cards found on the street (or in a bush, in the bowling alley, or at the dentist—basically just found) came up after I mentioned I’d found this Jack of Clubs on the sidewalk earlier that afternoon. I took it out of my shirt pocket and offered it to her. She made absolutely no move whatsoever to take the card or even touch it. She looked at it with her eyes but otherwise didn’t move a muscle in her entire body, and instead just said without hesitation why don’t you start your own deck? She might just as well have said why don’t you suck your own dick or even why won’t you just kill yourself right now– either of which would have seemed no more absurd than suggesting I build a deck of found playing cards. I think she was kind of bored with doing her mind-control research experiments on me by that time.

Susan lived in the Mission District of San Francisco where the frequency of finding cards on the street might have been higher than where I lived in Seattle. But she seemed to think that if one simply put one’s mind to it and kept one’s eyes open, one could complete a deck within months. I couldn’t remember ever having seen a playing card on the street, and thought to myself that I’d actually have a better chance of sucking my own dick– something I’d of course already been trying for most of my life. But I’d never thought about collecting stray playing cards.

I figured I’d have to live in Reno or outside the Hoyle factory to collect an entire deck of cards, but I’ll be damned if once I’d committed to the project if I didn’t start finding cards! My old sociology professor Ted Smith used to call this an “axis of the earth” where you would create your own reality based on your perception. There are plenty of theories that basically say this same thing– theories of consciousness and manifestation. I got off putting this theory to the action test, keeping my eyes literally in the gutter.

The problem with this exercise, of course, is doubles. If you need the Seven of Spades to complete your deck, how many Ten of Spades and Seven of Hearts do you think you’ll find first? It’s like when we collected the KISS bubble gum cards in the late ‘70s. There were 100 in the series, and each pack of eight cards was 50 cents. The cards were numbered and came with a rectangular tile of that chalky punk bubble gum that you needed ten pieces of to even work up one modest bubble. Each card featured a rad picture of a band member in action, usually live shots from the ’77-’78 tours. The reverse of the cards made up a huge KISS puzzle, of course, and you had to collect every card in the series to complete the puzzle. I must have spent a hundred thousand dollars on KISS cards in 1979 alone, fifty cents at a time. And I never did get card #87.

I was pitted against a shrewd adversary in Gene Simmons, of course. I’m sure he never printed #87, knowing 13-year-old fatheads like me would just keep buying pack after pack after pack of cards, desperately trying to suck our own dicks.

At least I’m not paying for these playing cards…

1991

Happy Father’s Day, Mom

I used to send my mother a Father’s Day card when I was in my 20s. I was between fathers at the time. And though the notion that Mama Tried implies that Mama failed– a greeting card seemed appropriate. It was.

Mom didn’t fail to be as good a father to me as she could. But she was pretty busy also being my mother, so it couldn’t have been easy. Single-parenting in the 1960s, can you imagine? There were no apps for that kind of thing.

What mom failed at historically was picking husbands. Some of those men were perfectly fathery figures to me, and in fact one of them was my actual father. But their primary roles should have been being mom’s husband, and in these roles they fell short of the household expectations. Huh.

My father father was not ‘cut out’ for the domestic life, something that might have been obvious to anyone other than a glamour-blind girl in her early 20s discovering the intoxicating nocturnal playground of North Beach in the late 1950s. Danny Braimes was ten years her senior, and one hell of a bartender in a golden age of pouring. They both wore white in their wedding at the Presidio, then drove to Ensenada back when you could still just do stuff like that. I was born 18 months later. By the time my sister arrived two years after that Daddy was well out of there.

To be fair, he came back one weekend a month to pick us up and take us to the zoo or museum or to the Sizzler. I don’t remember if it was every month, but mom never bitched about him being a deadbeat or anything. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t one, it’s just that mom didn’t want us to suspect as much, which is the highest possible road available to any single parent.

I didn’t know him well. I was just a kid and he was one of those strong mid-century men who probably didn’t know what to say to kids. We went fishing. And although we never went hunting, we did go shooting. Once on an overnight at Lake Berryessa I hit a couple of tin cans in a row with the Ruger Mark II, and Daddy said if hit one more I could have the gun. Like a lot of things, he probably hadn’t really thought this through, and he must have been pretty relieved when I missed the next can, because dropping me off on Sunday night with a handgun wouldn’t have set well with mom and I don’t think he’d have bothered welching on his deal with me. I can still smell the sweet underbrush & olive trees of the Napa woods, the acrid garnish of gunpowder floating on top. In the modern era, of course, the boy would have been given an open-ended series of second chances sufficient to knock the can off the stump and claim the prize. But this was the early 1970s, and instead my father just shrugged and zipped the pistol back in its holster, lighting a Marlboro.

I called him Daddy and still refer to him as such. Little kids often call their fathers Daddy, and if the relationship doesn’t mature, neither does the tag. I don’t know what his other offspring referred to him as. There were others after and maybe before me, but I believe my relationship with him was more developed than any of the others, such as it was. Just lucky I guess! I was in college when he died, sick & alone at a group home for the sick & alone outside Santa Rosa. By that time I already had a second ex-father.

Mom met Bill Murray (not that one) in 1975 and, after a year’s vetting, married him at the Mormon church on Ludeman Lane in San Bruno. I wore a green tuxedo like the rest of the males in the wedding party and I gave mom away. There was a reception in Aunt Susie’s backyard on Linden Avenue afterward with foamy champagne punch. From this vantage, Bill looked like a good fit– father and husband-wise. But springtime perspectives can be deceiving. After uprooting and migrating to someplace called Federal Way, Washington, it was learned that Bill and mom were not all that compatible after all. They divorced in 1983 after a couple of painful separations. Bill wasn’t great with money.

He was a very good “father” however. He coached my sports teams. He took me to see Maynard Ferguson. He told me he loved me. He did love me, and I loved him, too! Though there was never any talk of legal “adoption,” I did eventually begin to call him Dad. Not Daddy, just Dad. Bill was 6’4” and probably ran 230lbs in those days. He was terribly handsome with a flap of skin that drooped over the outside corner of his left eye which made him look like he was always listening to you very intently. After the divorce, I didn’t see him much, and when I did I called him Bill. I left for college.

Bill gave me my sex talk in August 1977, when I was still calling him Dad. He used the tits on my Farrah Fawcett poster to make his point(s) that to be interested in TV stars’ tits was perfectly natural. I didn’t really learn much about sex during the conversation, but did come away with a vague sense of relief that the furious masturbating I was doing in the direction of that poster was a dance every boy on the block was doing and that it was OK with Dad (Bill) and my Mom.

Bill liked big band jazz and would have a scotch & water with mom when he got home from work, but I don’t think usually more than one or a short two. He usually had a Kent between the massive fingers of his left hand, though—he was the first left-handed person I ever knew, or at least the first left-handed person I ever knew was left-handed. The last time I ever saw him was at my wedding, which was kind of weird because my next “father” was there, too.

Mom met Art Bender in the early 90s at a piano bar on Brown’s Point. He’d recently separated from his wife– the mother of his two biological and three adopted children– and was taking what seems in retrospect like a well-deserved breather. What he was doing in a piano bar in Northeast Tacoma I’ll never know. He couldn’t hear or sing a lick, even then. But there he was…

Mom introduced us not long after. By a cruel twist of scheduling fate it happened to be Father’s Day weekend, which was awkward for everyone since no one present was the father of anyone else present. I might actually have realized sooner than Art that I would soon be referring to him as my mother’s husband (not really my father). In any event, he divorced his wife soon after and married my mother on Independence Day 1992 in Aunt Susie’s backyard, this time in Reno. I sang “The Rose” at the bridal party’s request and then we all went downtown to play cards and get wasted.

Unlike Mom’s first two husbands, Art liked to drink. He could drink a bathtub full of bourbon and often did. I never observed it affecting him, and I don’t think it bothered Mom at first either. Eventually, however, pretty much everything Art did bothered Mom. They drove to Arkansas after the wedding and stayed there for about five years before Art was offered a transfer back to Federal Way. He took it so they could both be nearer their grown children (ahem) and they bought the house on Steel Lake in 1996. They proceeded to wait patiently for grandchildren which arrived presently in the form of mine and my sister’s kids. Mom died in the house on the lake 15 years later, married but not what you’d call happily.

That morning Art stood crying in the hallway outside the bedroom as the undertaker and his assistant zipped my Mother’s body into a black vinyl bag. Art wasn’t much of a cryer or a revealer of much any emotion, which was one of the things that had driven my Mom crazy while she was still alive. I’d only ever seen him cry once before, on the night of his adopted daughter’s death. It was as if he saved up all his emotion in between these momentous events and all the accumulated tears sprayed out like in a cartoon.

Art is an old widower now, living quite contentedly with hundreds of channels. We see him regularly, the only grandfather my kids have ever known, though he is not my father. I call him Art, always have. My sister used to sometimes call him “Pops” but I think that was mostly for Mom’s benefit. Now she mostly just calls him Art also. He’s a very good person. He was always good to Mom and he’s always been good to me and my family. Like a father you might say.

My mother was like a father to me, too, for much of my life. She always tried to do what was best for everyone, not just for herself. Whether being more selfish would have worked out better for everyone is hard to say from here. She tried, though—and in the end that’s all anyone can ask.

Happy Father’s Day, Mom…

July 4, 1976

July 4, 1976. Our nation’s bicentennial. On the shoulder of I5, signing a speeding ticket. This is my first memory of living in Washington State.

My stepfather was in a hurry to get to Federal Way before dark and was pressing a bit outside Centralia. This was the first moment of the 2nd stage of my life.

It was dark by the time we got to our new house, but I still knew our new neighborhood was different than the one we’d left day before yesterday. Though I could not see it, I knew it was different. It sounded different. It smelled different. It was only 800 miles geographically removed, but it felt like a different world altogether.

It was different. We were rich!

What other explanation was there? On July 2nd, we’d left the only neighborhood we’d ever known – a narrow grid of greasy streets literally on the wrong side of the BNSF tracks, sandwiched between the Bayshore Freeway and San Francisco International. The view from my 2nd floor bedroom of the 2+ bedroom 1-bath postwar bungalow I shared with my mother & sister was of the UNITED AIRLINES sign at SFO. The jets roared up and down the terminal night and day as did the trains on the tracks and the cars on the freeway. All night and day.

And then (almost) literally overnight, we were reborn. There was no fence in the new yard—only a giant hedge ( Stepfather proudly told us it was called Rhodonendron ) and a cropped green lawn stretching as far as the eye could see. Like the streets, the yards twisted in impossible angles with wide sidewalks and curbs baring such ridiculous addresses as 33519 327th Court SW. This was our address, after coming from 527 4th Avenue. How the fuck were were supposed to find our way around? There were no telephone poles…

My sister and I didn’t know what was going on. Our previous neighborhood was 70% Mexican, but everyone on our new street was white. Still, they all played soccer. No one in our old neighborhood played soccer! All the houses had garages, so there were no cars parked on the street. There were airplanes, but they seemed far up in the sky. We didn’t know where the closest store was.

We understood the bicentennial was a big deal. We’d heard about it on TV and they’d made a special 25-cent piece for it at the mint. There was a lot of flag waving at a time when flag waving wasn’t an every-day passtime, not like today. These days you have to wave a flag so people don’t think you’re a socialist. This was the mid-1970s…

Soozy Bridges vs. Seal Rock

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

I had a dream last night that starred my friend Soozy. We were sitting at a round table, outside. Patti & Evan were there, which made sense. Even George’s wife Sue wasn’t completely out-of-place. But the fact that Diana was there was a clear sign from my subconscious that this was indeed a dream and not a half-memory or some pre-sleep notion. Weird how our subconscious minds play those little practical jokes on us…

I don’t remember anything else about the dream except that we were all in real-time (our current ages) except for Soozy who was represented as a younger version of herself—the version I first came to know in the very early 1990s.

We met in Seattle. I was the singer in a heavy metal band and she was freelancing variously in management & booking, freshly graduated from the Art Institute. Soozy is a highly-intuitive person, and has always had a very keen ear for talent—talent that isn’t always apparent to everyone else. As a result, she would often take on projects. Considering the nature of the inventory, many of these projects were tortured & unreliable at best. Deeply talented, sure– there may even have been a bonafide genius or two in the flock. At their worst, however, they were startlingly self-destructive. Some of us made it through. Others didn’t.

Trashed again, NYC 1991

Soozy was fifteen years older than us back then. To be clear, she’s still fifteen years older than we are. At the time, though, in our mid-20s, the fifteen years seemed more significant than now. Among Soozy’s favorite roles was that of spiritual mentor. Some of us were more skilled than others at absorbing the less-linear elements of her coaching– but in the end much of what she was doing was herding cats. We actually were quite a bit like kittens or puppies in those days– clumsy & playful: mischievous yet adorable. We often fell down in big piles, rolling around on the floor panting and drooling, unable to get up. Soozy might have wished we weren’t such a complete collective mess all the time, but she loved us anyway and saw in each of us a superpower that in many instances we ourselves had no inkling we possessed. I often said Soozy was like a rock and roll den mother. She liked to party at night, but perhaps her greatest gift was recovery. I’m not talking about longterm recovery; but rather the daily kind.

“Take these,” she’d say, “and drink two beers as fast as you can.” And though a beer might not have been exactly what you’d had in-mind right then, I’ll be damned if by the middle of the second one you weren’t feeling pretty much better and actually considering a third.

I still didn’t know Soozy that well when we found ourselves in California in the summer of 1993 trying to promote Panic’s largely unpromotable second record. We had squandered a better previous record deal and a much more muscular previous management deal, and Soozy was doing what she could to keep the band afloat. But it was getting late and it was clear that the ship was taking on water. I remember getting on a plane the morning after the last show of that shameful California tour– while the rest of the band was still asleep in heaps on the floor at the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin– knowing in my heart that the bitchin’ disaster we’d been humping furiously for most of the previous ten years was winding down.

My Mom picked me up at the airport in Little Rock and drove me back to her & her husband’s house in Hot Springs where I fell asleep on the couch watching the Allstar Game. In the morning, I got to work picking the weeds out of the cracks in the driveway with a screwdriver. It was 102 degrees and 97% humidity, but this job had to be done because the house was going on the market the following week. I finished the driveway and a few other tasks in-time for my mom to take me back to the airport to catch a short flight to Norfolk where I served as Best Man in a high school friend’s wedding (jumping into the fountain in a rented tuxedo w/ the marriage certificate in back pocket). My only other friend from high school (coincidentally not friends with the newlywed friend) picked me up the next day and we drove to Washington DC where we saw the last song of the Sister Double Happiness set at the Bayou in Georgetown. We didn’t even know they’d be playing—we were just hanging out at the Bayou! We then stole a half-night’s sleep at the Ramada before catching a train into Manhattan where we walked around the Village rationing what little money we had left. We caught a late train back to DC, got in the car, and drove without sleeping to friend’s house in Eastern Tennessee where we did sleep. After a few days, Andy put me on a midnight Greyhound across Tennessee and Arkansas, back to Hot Springs where by this time Mom & Art had moved into their new house. This house had a beautiful, cylindrical copper fireplace in the middle of the living room, like a Lyon’s Restaurant. It also had a smooth, modern driveway. So instead of soul-smashing driveway torture labor, we tooled around Lake Hamilton in their party barge drinking bourbon and pretending to fish for bass. After a few days, Mom took me back to the Little Rock airport. I flew back to Seattle and we broke up the band.

The afternoon before fleeing California, though, was a beautiful summer San Franciscan day. I’d had something else to do that afternoon, and the plan was for me to meet the band at soundcheck. I arrived in a red minivan, rented to the band (probably on Soozy’s credit card). We were playing at the historic I-Beam on Haight Street. It wasn’t called the I-Beam at the time, but it was the same room. I knew immediately upon walking in the door that something was not right. The club wasn’t open yet, and there was no house music playing. The only noise came from the sound crew setting up mic stands and the bar staff filling the ice bins in preparation for the evening. Normally, I’d walk into a setting like this to find the band & crew crowded in a booth laughing and smoking and killing a pitcher. But today, everyone was scattered in different corners of the club. George was slumped in a corner booth, his back to the stage. Jack was upstairs losing a game of pool to himself. Pinky was curled up in the fetal position on a roadcase backstage. And Marty was tucked up onto a high shelf above a coatrack in a service corridor between the kitchen and bar, sound asleep. I found Soozy.

“Um,” I said, tentatively. “What’s going on?”

“Shhhh!” she hissed, looking around as if someone were listening. “They’re on the cookie!

The author drinking in bed           with Sheila Rene, 1993

Soozy had been promising this experience the whole time we’d been in California, though it had largely fallen on ringing, deaf ears. Soozy was our mentor; and she in-turn had her own mentor—also the source of the mythical cookie. Sheila Rene was a publicist by trade, but definitely a fully-vested member of the Old Guard Bay Area Rock and Roll Aristocracy. She had a flat in Pacific Heights stacked with all manner of rock memorabilia, including a framed picture of herself with everyone from Duane Allman to Frank Zappa. Sheila always had a silver tobacco box on her coffee table stocked with what she liked to call ‘Left Wing Luckys’ and we smoked pot with Sheila any time we went calling there. We smoked pot with everyone in those days—all day every day, we smoked pot. It’s just what we did. Our tolerance was high and I sure as hell was not going to be intimidated by a 2” diameter home-made molasses cookie with a Hershey’s Kiss pressed in the middle, wrapped in wax paper—much less HALF of one. (Soozy claimed a whole cookie was too strong for any one person…)

I snatched our cookie from Soozy’s hand and ate my half in one bite. I handed hers back to her and said “let’s go for a walk.”

I don’t pretend to understand the physics of eating marijuana even now, in the golden age of cannabis. But back then– in the early 1990s– our experience with eating pot was probably limited to a Cheech & Chong routine or some other urban myth about brownies from an Afterschool Special. What me and my mates dug at that time was smoking pot and drinking whisky. We played in a heavy metal band. Eating pot cookies seemed like something our parents’ wilder friends might do, or else homosexuals. I rolled my eyes.

Of course it took about as long as a stroll from the I-Beam down to the intersection of Ashbury Street and back to understand just how powerful half a molasses marijuana cookie could be. By the time we got back to the I-Beam, I felt like this was the Haight of 1968—Stoney Baloney. Just higher than fuck, in a way that I wasn’t accustomed to being high. The last thing I wanted to do was go back into the club. The keys to the red van were still in my pocket, and I said “Soozy, there’s something I want to show you.”

We got into the van and I drove west on Haight, turning north on Stanyan before looping around the Panhandle and easing into Golden Gate Park. I was born in The City, and had spent a lot of time in the Park as a kid. I gleefully pointed out the landmarks of my childhood as we wound through the narrow lanes of the interior of Golden Gate Park, the afternoon light filtering down through the Eucalyptus trees. Soozy was singing, her head out the open window, just like Mr. Bear would later do.

The aerodynamic Mr. Bear

There’s the Bison range. That’s the archery meadow. Kezar Stadium. Oh, my god—the Aquarium!

Soozy was raised in Raymond, and she’d seen plenty of the Pacific Ocean. But when you break out of the woods at the western exit of Golden Gate Park, past the windmill and first catch glimpse of the majestic 10’ breakers of Ocean Beach—it’s always as if you’re seeing it for the first time. This day was no different, and in fact extra powerful. Duh. But it still wasn’t what I’d come out here to show Soozy.

I turned right onto the Great Highway and started the gentle ascent to the Cliffhouse, where I found a spot and parked.

“This is what I wanted to show you, babe,” I said, turning to grin at Soozy. “Seal Rock!”

Soozy gleefully jumped out of the van and ran across the sidewalk to the rail. I remained in the driver’s seat rolling a cigarette. She returned to the van and flung open the driver’s door.

“Dude!” she beamed, her eyes wild, the ocean wind blowing her hair. “It’s so fuckin’ beautiful! And it’s just covered with seals!”

I got out of the car and made the rail, beholding the monolith. It was indeed so beautiful— just as I remembered as a child, with the afternoon light shining on it and the surf curling around its base.

But there were no seals on it.

“Sooz,” I said, lighting the smoke, “That rock is covered with seagulls.”

She looked at the rock and then back at me and we both dissolved into hysterics and stood there laughing and smoking till the sun sank into the Pacific and to wherever it goes when it’s no longer visible from here. China, or wherever. In fairness, they might have been pelicans. But I learned later that the seals split Seal Rock for Pier 39 after the World Series earthquake of 1989. That was the end of an era of sorts. But that evening, standing at the rail in Land’s End was the beginning of a different era—the era of my friendship with Soozy Bridges.

Happy Birthday, Soozy. Get well soon. I love you…

Teatro Zinzanni, 2003?