When I first moved here as a wide-eyed tourist/transplant from the Midwest (and of which some days I still am), I was greeted with a massive mess of cultures and activities and new things to learn and love. Like the Blog 365, this was roughly on par with eating an elephant—I looked at California and panicked a little. How would I remain me and yet expand my horizons? How does one know where to START, for crying out loud?
Four years later, after treading water in the cultures, I’m starting to see my own patterns in the chaos. I tried working my way through the cafés, but that got expensive and actually useless the more places that I tried, particularly when I found that more and more places were just copies of other places. Yes, certain cafés DO stand out for their food or for their service or for their atmosphere, or, if I am really lucky, ALL OF THE ABOVE. And I still try new places to see if I have a new hangout in a neighborhood. But for the most part, my desire to know all of the cafés of the City has tempered.
A lot of the paninis and capris salads and white house wines taste alike, and we all my theory on ordering coffee at any place but Philz—that it’s a waste of time.
So I add some rooms to the exploration and thought that this year I would try two new methods of exploration, one of them being a tour of the City’s libraries. There are no menus there, I don’t have to buy anything, and all of the branches have their own event list. I can check out books all over the City, or write at warm-wood tables with lamps all over the City, and find my favorites. In this process, I plan to develop all kinds of aspects to investigate and write on, and share some of them with you here. Perhaps I will even craft my own tour book of them and the other method of exploration, which will be explained in tomorrow’s blog.
Happy reading, dear peruser of mine.
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