San Diego Zoo

(Someone please convince me that now is not the time to attempt switching over to wordpress. God damn it blogger.)

I feel guilty about loving zoos so much. Even in the good ones, you see a lot of stereotypic behaviours (pacing, weaving, head bobbing, etc). And no matter how much paint you use or enrichment items you toss in, a moated enclosure is never going to feel like an ice floe. On the other hand, there are at least a dozen species who would be gone already if not for captive breeding programs (most recently, they reintroduced the Przewalski's horse after being extinct in the wild for thirty years, this makes me so happy), and having big charismatic vertebrates up close where the general public can see them is crucial to convincing people to care about conservation.

The SD Zoo is one of the good ones, though. They've got a ridiculously diverse collection of species, and for the most part the enclosures are very well done. The kiwis have an entire building to themselves - the interior is dark, lit just enough to simulate moonlight and encourage activity. There are several massive aviaries, with tiered walkways allowing visitors to see how different birds prefer different levels of the canopy. Loads and loads of interactive educational materials all over (which in itself is a little depressing - the animals aren't enough of a draw for kids, we have to give them playgrounds to engage them?) I was surprised by how small some of the enclosures were though, and how many of those there were. The serval had an area hardly any larger than the one in the Valley Zoo, and when you're inviting comparisons with the Valley Zoo there's problems. That said, even the smallest enclosures were well done - but with the zoo's reputation, I hadn't expected there to be any of that type at all.

It took me six hours to walk around the entire thing (tour buses are for the weak). It's divided into half a dozen zones (outback, savannah, jungle, etc) and each zone has its own cafe and giftshop, in addition to the main giftshop at the front gates. There are two full time restaurants on the grounds and food carts every fifty feet, because god forbid you miss an opportunity to spend money. Some of it feels like overkill, but all in all it's pretty impressive, and they've made some amazing contributions to species conservation. Most importantly, they have okapi.

WORLD'S BIGGEST VEGAS POST!!!!

I am just going to condense everything into one post, because let's face it those four days have sort of blurred together into my head. Also, i'm going to do it tomorrow.

Salute the Emperor

Spent the morning at the Aquarium at the Bay – a two-story educational facility on fisherman’s wharf filled with fish and sharks and jellies, most of the species that live in the Bay and a few exotics. The Aquarium is pretty neat – the first room holds a wall tank of stinging nettles, and a cylindrical tank of jellies in the center, lit from the inside. It’s a pretty neat effect. There’s a heavy eco-conservation slant, of which I wholly approve – one of the fish tanks is set up to look like it’s filled with trash ie. What the bottom of the bay looks like right now. This particular tank also had barnacles, which are fun to watch feeding. It’s like a tiny spindly arm frantically scooping water. This leads into the aquarium’s main draw, a two-part tunnel submerged in a massive outdoor tank that simulates walking on the floor of the Bay itself, without all the boats and trash and whatnot. There are leopard sharks, dogfish sharks, skates, rays, giant goddamn sea bass (seriously this thing was the size of a dirtbike) rockfish, you name it. They swim around and over the tunnel – it is especially cool to watch several hundred herring schooling directly over your head. They circle like a giant scaly whirlpool.

The last room has a large touch tank with leopard sharks, rays and skates. I love rays, they’re so inquisitive and friendly. I’ve seen them in touch tanks before and it’s always the same, they circle around the edges, splashing and popping their heads out of the water. They seem to enjoy being petted. It’s kind of weird for a fish. There were also some chinchillas, snakes and tree frogs, probably as some kind of “oh yeah and I guess there are non-aquatic animals in California too, look just stop throwing trash in the bay” thing. More kid-height plaques and activity panel things on how ecosystems are important and what you can do to reduce your impact, which made me feel a little better, although no one seems to ever read these things. Like back in the Oregon Zoo…standing in front of the african wild dog enclosure, in a room with walls covered in Wild Dog Facts, Other Names for Painted or Wild Dogs, How do Painted Dogs Hunt, artwork and photographs et cetera et cetera and hearing a guy tell his children to “Look at the hyenas!” It was very difficult to not say anything they are totally different animals god damn it, hyenas are not even canines, are you stupid or just illiterate?

Despite all this it didn’t take much more than an hour to see all of the aquarium, so Hank and I decided to go pay our respects to the Emperor.

A few decades back San Francisco, rapidly running out of space for the living, was forced to evict their dead and reinter them in the town of Colma, a few miles south. The population of Colma is about 1.5 million, but only 1300 of them are above ground (the city slogan is “It’s great to be alive in Colma!”) Colma is now technically a necropolis and most of the town’s economy revolves around its various cemetaries. Fortunately the BART train passes through, so I hiked down to the Woodlawn Memorial Gardens, almost accidentally crashed the funeral that was happening next door, and asked the receptionist at the office if Joshua Norton was buried there. She knew immediately who I was talking about and handed me a map from a stack of photocopies with his name highlighted in the corner – he is a relatively popular man.

His grave is not elaborate, not compared to some of the statues and monuments in the cemetary. It’s a large but simple pink granite headstone, engraved with his name and titles, flanked by two small bushes. There were no flowers, but coins had been placed on the stone and the grass around it, other visitors leaving tribute to the Emperor. It seemed appropriate.

Still worn down from the train ride and late night, I hung around the hostel until four, when I forced myself to leave. Hiked up Russian Hill, the highest hill in the city. The famous cable cars were built pretty much for this purpose - the hill was home to rich oil barons and suchlike who wanted to build their mansions on a nice imposing hillside but did not want the inconvenience of actually walking up the damn thing. Strolled through North Beach, the Italian district and home of the west coast beat generation. Visited the City Lights Bookstore, a bookstore/publishing house that was named a historical landmark for its role in counterculture poetry and literature. the visit lasted longer than I planned when I started leafing through Kerouac's Dharma Bums... when I looked up it was two hours later (I lost track of time in a bookstore, who would have guessed).
Walked through Chinatown, ate a lotus bun and watched the tail end of a dragon parade. The SF Chinatown may be touristy and over the top, but it's still pretty neat. The buildings are beautiful and strings of paper lanterns are hung everywhere. I need to go back down there at night.

Had one last pastry from Voodoo Dougnuts then went to the train station. The train ride was less painful than I expected – for one thing, the Coast Starlight track is beautiful. It winds through the mountains, I think our highest elevation was 1200 feet above sea level. Though next time I do eighteen hours at once, I’m springing for a sleeping car. Some of the other passengers were…interesting. Like the guy who kept up a constant chatter with anyone who even looked like they were listening to him, in a voice that sounded almost exactly like the quiet guy from King of the Hill. He would sing whenever he moved between cars. Or the lady across the aisle from me who kept demanding the attendant show compassion and move her to a pair of free seats, as she had been on a train since yesterday morning and was feeling very abused by Amtrak (her words). At one point her train had been trapped in place for eight hours. I felt sorry for her and was about to offer her my seat, since I had lucked out and no one had replaced the seatmate who’d left a few hours ago, until she mentioned why the train had been held up…someone had been murdered. This was, to her, a minor detail. I’m sure the guy who got fucking feels terrible about having inconvenienced you.
Made it to San Francisco the next morning, and attempted to find my hostel. I really need to read the guidebook better when picking lodgings…a few paragraphs after it described the location I’d chosen, “a gem nestled in the rough Tenderloin district” was the Dangers and annoyances section, which mentioned that Tenderloin was the one of the worst neighbourhoods in the city and should be treated with caution at all times. I found this out for myself after walking six terrifying blocks through crowds of homeless drunks and drug addicts. It wasn’t even nine am, and I did not want to stick around and find out what the street was like after dark. Got to the hostel, cancelled my reservation, and took the bus up to the Fisherman’s Wharf hostel…it’s in a super touristy area and the hostel itself is very large and impersonal, but on the other hand I’m not worried about being lost in this neighbourhood. Spent the rest of the day wandering about the wharf – took a boat ride around the bay, underneat the Golden Gates and around Alcatraz. The boat pilot called himself Captain Jeff and kept up a running commentary in between beer chugs. He was about thirty, wearing a floral shirt, and looked exactly like a fratboy in every college movie ever. He was fun.
Later that night, went to the Castro in an attempt to get in to the premiere of All About Evil, a horror flick directed by drag queen sensation Peaches Christ. I underestimated what a big deal this was – the rush line was fairly short but the ticket holder line was enormous. Waited with the other ticketless bums for about two hours, freezing in the wind, to find out that they had a full house. Still not a total loss – if you’re going to people watch there’s nowhere better than the Castro at night. Peaches herself was interviewing people in line with a camera crew in tow. She is kind of awesome.

Said my goodbyes to the guys and left for the hostel – that house and the people in it are an embodiment of this entire city…friendly, mellow, creative, talented and full of beer. I’m going to miss them.
The last Thursday of the month is an art walk that stretches for twenty blocks – a dozen galleries are on the street as well, and they prop their doors open to participate. This early in the year it was fairly quiet, I’m told in the later months the street is packed with people and stands. It was still impressive though, plenty of metalworking and jewelery makers, along with the ubiquitous Portland food carts (the one I went to sold pork or vegan meatballs on polenta, quinoa or pita, with green chili or marina sauce and cheese. So good.) There were almost as many vegan cupcake/bake sale stands as there were artists. I wonder if any of them actually make a living off it, there seems to be a ton of competition.
Later that night, we (two American guys from the hostel and Aoba, a girl from Japan travelling with her mom. They were adorable. I had been telling them about Stumptown earlier and showed them the book I bought from Erika Moen, which meant an awkward few minutes trying to explain why there was a photograph of a stripper in it. I suspect her mom now thinks DAR is a guide to life in Portland. ) went to the nickel arcade. It’s a huge arcade set up in an old movie theater, I think they still do shows occasionally. Skeeball, air hockey, Resident Evil, racing, you name it. All the games ran off nickels – the most expensive used four, which is still cheaper than anywhere I’ve ever been. We stayed there until midnight, when they close, and it was awesome. You could trade tickets for candy and prizes at the front desk – Matt and Dave used theirs to buy a pile of party poppers, which are little pellets of gunpowder wrapped in twists of paper than make a sastisfying BANG and spark when you huck them at the ground. We walked the twelve blocks back to the hostel throwing handfuls of them and giggling like idiots.
Goodbye, Portland. I will miss you.

Bears!

I managed to visit the Oregon Zoo at the exact time as 300 students - the winning streak continues. The zoo is undergoing renovations but most of the rest is pretty damn nice - the most impressive part is the Pacific Northwest area. It's a series of bridges and walkways that give you the impression of being in a national park. Bears, cougars, bald eagles...really well done. I would feel embarrassed about the Valley Zoo but at this point we've all pretty much written that one off.
Decided to walk up to the Japanese Garden, since it was in the same park area. Attempted to take a shortcut through some of the park trails which turned out to not actually be trails and wound up smeared with mud, which did not get me as many awkward glances as I thought it would. Go go Oregon. The garden itself was less interesting than the trip there, so I headed back downtown and had lunch at an awesome cafe - fast food dumplings and bao. Nom.