San Fran vacation – Creepy Masonic Temple

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This place was a trip. Our friend Jay who we stayed with in San Fran works in this old Masonic. They still rent out the halls and office space. The above picture is the ceiling of the concert hall / ballroom. They put on a lot of rock shows there.

The building also has a manual operated elevator in it. There is only two of them still in existence in San Fran. The elevator operator is Union and has his own little office by the elevator. You have to ring him. His only job is to operate the elevator.

This below picture is one of the party rooms, complete with creepy red velvet wallpaper and dark stained wainscotting. I know you are jealous Zed – what a perfect place to do a ZombieWalk party!

San Fran Vacation – Henry Miller Library

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I stopped by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur and picked up a few things. The library is basically a gift shop in a small cabin built on one of Henry’s friend’s place. Henry had a place close by in Big Sur. They also have a small stage and put on perfomances. Philip Glass played there this past summer.

The one thing I noticed about Big Sur was that there is a lot of young wannabe hippies, and they don’t like to work too hard. For instance the clerk at the gift shop had to be interupted from eating or smoking everytime someone wanted to buy something or ask a question – he must not work on a commission.

I especially liked the computer monitor crusifix below.

Back from Vacation

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I would like to thank all my contributors for holding the fort down while I was gone on vacation. A small group of us went to visit a friend in San Francisco, it was good times and I will be posting pictures once I sort through them. I also will be telling you about the new musical sensation ‘Tittycorn’.

I was pretty much disconnected from the internets and TV while I was gone, BUT did get to see the SNL episode of Palin in a hotel room in Big Sur – so that was cool (she can’t dance).

While I was gone we noticed a great ‘cost of living’ myth that South Dakota likes to sell to it’s residents as an excuse to pay lower wages. We noticed that though apartments and housing are more expensive in San Francisco, other stuff is about the same price, like food, going out to eat, drinks, etc. And the public transportation system is amazing, and dirt cheap. There is approximately two different train systems, buses and cable cars that run everywhere in San Fran and they are usually faster then by car. Bicycling of course is the main form of transportation in San Fran.

I have always been suspicious of the quality of life, cost of living myth our political leaders try to sell us here, and it has been confirmed. Not only is San Francisco a reasonable place to live, it is fairly clean and and a Hell of a lot warmer.

Don’t get me wrong, it is still nice to be home to the sleepy town of Sioux Falls.