ACCOZZAGLIA

With one day of walking throughout San Francisco behind me, I’m not sure why there is so much hype about the place. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a beautiful city. And that makes for a lot. However, I wonder how belligerent it is to surmise that the hype outweighs the reality. It’s the people that matter most to me, and so far, I’ve yet to see anything that has caused me to fall over sideways.

Maybe Irene is right: you find people where they cluster. The well-educated, high-tech, high-salary cluster. The tranny cluster. The Asian cluster. The V.C. cluster. whatever.

Maybe there’s even some merit to clustering in Minneapolis: the vegan cluster, the “DJing” cluster”, The Matthew cluster, the geek cluster. It’s all relative, and since I’ve had almost four years to acclimate to these circles in the Twin Cities, perhaps I’m being a little unfair when I try to judge San Francisco on a single day’s assessment.

And it’s not like this is the only time I’ll visit. There’s hope I’ll be back after Goins v. West Group is settled (let’s hope we settle and we win the Supreme Court). and I could be back on holiday again within the next year.

On another note: meeting with Irene over the last weekend went very well. I was particularrly anxious about having someone see me who last saw me in 1989. Same with Katharine. It’s almost as if I’m giving first impressions again, and if so, this is not how I hoped to present myself. On the other hand, I’m dealing wuth people who’d know better than to judge at face value. But we’re all human. We are inclined to deliver a first impression and place weight on that judgment, even if we mean to do better otherwise.

It’s vapid, really: I don’t have a marketable face. And that matters greatly. Anyhow, Katharine, Irene and I will have dinner tonight. It’ll be a lot of fun no matter how it’s cut.