1. Zza’s trattoria on Grand Avenue. Sitting by the window, I could look into Lake Merritt and eat my lunch.
Ordering lunch was a liminal moment. No olive oil with the garlic bread. When the waitress brings me an omlette, she brings no butter with the toast. Only jam. Which I suspect is made of organically grown fruit. I don’t want to risk eating it.
I should have known better. When I order the omlette, the waitress doesn’t ask for what kind of bread I want. Nor does she list the various potato options. She already knows what’s best for me.
I now begin to comprehend Californians will turn even grease into health food. The omlette though was delicious, with lots of vegetables and sausage. Even potatoes were baked in the oven, with no oil. Eventually I realized the toast had a little bit of butter brushed on to the outer surface.
The cooks at Valois cafe in Chicago would have been offended by the lack of grease. I was.
2. Northern California is surely different. Not just peoplewise but topographically too. As I walked through the streets of Lake Merritt and Grand, I began to pine for the flat plains of the Midwest. Here though, every block is a hill. Cleveland, where my native informant Blake lived once upon a time, is a steep climb up from the Lake Shore avenue. Nearly hundred steps to get up there, through a nice little park. How do old people live here, if they don’t drive? Even young people.Blake told me none of that. I had mapped out every single block, googled the hell out of Google Earth but I still was clueless about hills and valleys.
Doesn’t one need more grease and less health food to climb up these hills!
3. The Organic City - story telling in Oakland is really, really cool. Both conceptually and to build a community. It’s a thesis project of of Seamus Byrne and Sarah Mattern, students in CSU East Bay’s Multimedia Graduate Program.
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Thank you for making note of my poem,
CALL HER.
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