Jimothyk Road: From San Francisco to Mexico

Seeing Alcatraz was amazing but from here, on the Golden Gate Bridge, you can look back over the city and see it during any number of it's differing histories. Picture it as a trade port, with sea weathered boats or a military staging post, with naval vessels laying in wait for a battle that never came, a gunslinger's paradise, with brothels and bars littering the coastline, a miner's rest, where trade is made and the spoils spent on whiskey and women, a hippie's dream, where acid and promises are promised in song and now, a silicone hub, where facebook, Apple and twitter live. This place is amazing!

Walking the Golden Gate Bridge, we saw the two points that made up the forward positions of the three point defense with Alcatraz at it's rear, or eastern position. This is the forward south position located under the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is part of the forward northern position, under the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is a cross-section of the main cable used on the bridge.

Made from thousands of smaller cable.

Freaking awesome!

Bridge.

Scary...

Seals playing under the bridge... "baby... a kiss from a rose..." ok, bad joke. I'll stop.

Next up, we wanted to go and see Haight-Ashbury but first, I wanted to go into the Beat Museum. I got to see Neil Cassidy's shirt...

... And Jack Kerouac's woolen jumper! F#cling w00t!

Allen Ginsburg's old organ.

And a rare, underwood typewriter. Along with a bunch of other stuff.

Anyways, Haight Ashbury... What a weird place. We went into a coffee shop and talked to an old hippy named "Rainbow". He had a lot to talk about but then I think he got paranoid, cause without warning, he jumped up said see ya and bolted out the door.

This place must have been quite something in the summer of love.

It still is quite something.

All the stores are weird.

There's struggling grips of the hip history everywhere.

The buildings are rad.

Warped and weird.

From there we trekked into Golden Gate Park. This place was definitely the west's version of Central Park. It was huge!

I could've stayed in San Francisco but the road speaks and we heed it's call. Morty and took separate busses into Los Angeles but arrived the same day. Santa Monica would be our rest for the next four days however, it became evident quite quickly that this would not be so. We met a dude named Robby from Boston. He had just finished working on the new film Hall Pass and was kicking back in LA before heading home. He rounded us all (Morty, myself and a bunch of other travelers) up and took us to a bar around the corner from the hostel called the Broadway Ale House. The bartender was passionate about the brew and had twenty beers on tap from all over the world and a lot of local micro-brews as well. I, along with everyone else, got completely roundhouse kicked in the face by Chuck Norris strength beers! I haven't been that drunk in a long while. The atmosphere, the mix of cultures and the friendliness of the people, the place and the bartender made the evening one I won't forget... of the moments I can remember, of course.

Munted.

Santa Monica is a beautiful place... sort of. It is a strange place, the way the beaches have been developed for recreation is so unique to anything I have seen before. Long flat sands, broad bike-paths, footpaths and roads flush with the sand. It's all a little strange and eery. Made worse one day when Morty and I went down to the pier and was suddenly engulfed in a strange fog that swept in from the Pacific. Residents said it was awfully strange and had not been seen before.

We sat at the end of the pier and soaked it up and watched fishermen catch colds.

It really was surreal.

This was also when Morty kept getting taken for Zack Galifianakis.

The fog.

The Santa Monica pier minus the fog.

After the soak in the fog, we decided to walk down to Venice beach. Along the way we passed some cool sights and listened to a crazy person who, while running, would grunt and gasp out loud... very loud. We heard him coming from a mile away. The sound of footsteps clunking on the boardwalk, with cries of "aagh, aah, uhh, aah, huhh, aaah" getting louder and louder with every step. The closer we got to Venice, the thicker and crazier the crazies got. Then, before we knew it, BAM! F#cking crazy town! Venice beach is a madman's paradise. The place is a loose pen of freaks, junkies, hips and Kush Doctors. All hustling and peddling junk. The shack stores with paraphernalia and tie-dies. Twisted hobos, skaters and rock-n-roll tragic's litter the sidewalk. Graffiti murals and time frozen architecture bound in unison, packed against the thoroughfare. The place is a jungle of subculture and reckless freedom. A place where people have been left to their own devices for too long. I imagine this would have been an awesome place during the late sixties, when the shackles of the tightly bound, conservative approach to society was being shed from the shoulders of America's youth, but now it's a haven for debauchery and misguidance. A place where parents would fear and those residing here, are probably far too gone to thread back into the weave of common society. I may have enjoyed this place more ten years ago but now I felt like an outsider, looking in like a camera clicking tourist. I felt older than I should have.

Predator!

General Venice freak show.

Graffiti on the beach.

Morty being Jewish again.

Shack shops.

Peddling junk.

The 5O busting up some Hispanics.

Hood games.

Back at Santa Monica, Morty and I went shopping. We found there's an awesome shopping district right by our hostel. We saw some cool shit.

Masks made for Morty.

Dinosaur plant water fountains.

Wholefoods. (for Paul) we bought veggies to cook back at the hostel. Our bodies thanked us!

Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

And the best damn pizza I've ever eaten. I thought I didn't like pizza till I ate Joe's Pizza!

I have so many other stories to tell, but yet again, they're better told in person. It was now time to fly to Mexico.

And here I am. Mexico is even stranger! I feel so out of place here. I am learning Spanish quickly. Very quickly. Our room is in the YWCA in Mexico city in the Historic District. There's homeless living in the street below us and today, we ventured out and bought tacos from a street vendor for 3.50pesos... about 35c. They were tasty! I'm apprehensive about busting out the camera as I don't feel 100% safe yet. It's a very dirty country. People everywhere and the whole place looks like a shanty. We needed some dinner and we tried to talk to our hotel reception but they don't speak a word of English so we went across the street to a restaurant. The place was like stepping back into the 1600's. Very medieval monk like. No one spoke English here either so we had to try and communicate with hand signals and with our very limited Spanish. I got pork sausage with white beans and Morty got a weird looking steak. By comparison to our tacos, this place was very expensive. It cost us around US$20 each. But the place had a strange banquet going on downstairs with jesters and musical performers. Everyone was clapping and cheering. It was very surreal.