Kateri might be moving to the southland by year's end because . . . this City. When she said that, I knew exactly what she meant. Fine to all the people who love this City and if they left it, they would leave their heart here. It veritably ripped mine out.

This City is certainly not for everyone. Who this City ravages, it ravages well. This City has not been good to me, and with knowing realization I told Kateri, yes, get out, get away while you still can.

First of all the weather, it's pretty temperate all year round. That characterizes this City. It's sort of a bland flat-line, all year round. You don't have the passionate sweaty heat of summer, you don't have the bitter angry cold of winter, you don't have the exuberance of nature awakening in spring, you don't have the vast colorful introspection of dying in autumn.

Second, I lost the two loves of my life during my Bay Area sojourn. Neither of them happened here, they just ended here. Also here I suffered the indignity of staying in a boring, nothing relationship for eight months longer than it should have lasted just because I didn't feel like going through a break up. Far in the past, thank god.

Third, so overrated as being a liberal hotspot. There is just as much right-wing greed and corruption as anywhere else (it just happens to be guised as left-wing greed and corruption, hello Willie Brown). Heartlessness towards the homeless abounds. The idealistic hippie generation has spawned a generation of obnoxious pierced punk privileged runaways who harass you if you don't empty your pockets for them. Hello dotcom yuppie central.

This City bills itself as a "world-class city". What "world-class city" is so paralyzed in reliably getting a particular individual from here to there, from point A to point B? Public transportation in this City is pathetic! (Los Angeles doesn't purport to have public transporation). There is a bid to host the Olympics here. It intrigues me to think about the logistics in getting athletes to their venues. I'm bitching and I don't even take public transpo unless it's raining.

OK, OK, stop bitching about the City. If I hate it so much, why don't I leave? Still trying to figure out where to go.

current soundtrack: Versus - "Hurrah"

Next week: The Virtues of the Bay Area (I'm trying to break out of a funk)