TRAVEL DIARIES
Summer 2015
(French friends visiting the Bay Area. Four weeks.)
Christian Camus has been one of my best friends for more than 40 years. In my autobiography I briefly described him as follows:
In fall 1984 I made another trip to France, staying most of the time in Paris with my friend Christian Camus. We had originally met in a situ context during my previous trip [1979], but by this time his focus had shifted to experimenting with ways to enliven his own immediate milieu. That’s fine with me: if I have to choose, I prefer intellectually alive people who do interesting things with their life over those who do nothing but regurgitate political platitudes and gripe all the time. Full of playful irony, provocative banter, and jokes in several languages, and possessing a keen insight into people’s games and scripts (in Eric Berne’s sense), Christian keeps me on my toes when I start becoming too stodgy and pedantic.
Christian continued to generously host me during some of my subsequent trips to France and he’s also visited me several times in Berkeley. The 2015 trip he made here with his wife Marta and their 19-year-old son Jacques was the most extensive ever. It was so fun and eventful that soon after they left I put together this account and emailed it to some of my friends. More recently it occurred to me that some of you other people out there might enjoy it too.
* * *
June 23. Picked up Christian, Marta, and Jacques (hereafter “CMJ” or “them”) at 11:00 p.m. They stayed overnight at my place — Christian and Marta in my bed, Jacques and I on futons in the kitchen. (Okay short term, but my place is too small to do this for very long!)
June 24. Drove them up in the Berkeley Hills for a view overlooking the whole Bay Area, then hiked the trail around Jewel Lake in Tilden Park. Then to Telegraph Avenue: Moe’s Books, lunch at a Korean place, and coffee at an outdoor café across from the University. Then to the home of my friends Tita and Michael, who have very kindly offered to let CMJ stay at their place during part of their trip. The fact that everyone in the house speaks Spanish will be nice for Marta (originally from Colombia), who speaks Spanish and French but has rather limited English skills. (Jacques is fluent in French and Spanish and reasonably good at English. Christian is fluent in French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, and German, and is currently learning Chinese just for the fun of it.) To the Berkeley Pier for a closeup view of the Bay, then to the home of Lauren and Rigo, where CMJ will be housesitting starting June 26. Dinner out, then dropped them back at Tita’s.
June 25. They took BART to San Francisco and wandered around the downtown area. In the early evening they returned to Berkeley and we had pizza at the Cheese Board — a thriving workers’ cooperative with live music and a pleasant bustling scene extending out onto the sidewalk.
June 26. Jacques and I played tennis at a court next to the Berkeley Rose Garden, hitting with Kari, a Finnish woman we met there, while Christian and Marta strolled in the garden and then picked up some sandwiches for a picnic lunch beside a stream in the park across the street. Later in the afternoon we moved their luggage to Lauren’s, where they’ll be housesitting for the next nine days. Dinner at Cancun Taqueria with Jim B., his girlfriend Lori, and their friend Joni. (Jim has been a good friend of mine since the 1970s situationist scene, and he’s also known Christian for many years. Among other things, he has translated Debord’s Panegyric and Victor Serge’s poems and edited several books for City Lights.)
June 27. A day in San Francisco. Drove across the city to the Sutro Baths ruins and the Cliff House, then back through Golden Gate Park. Strolled in the Japanese Tea Garden and had some tea and treats, then to the International Café on Haight Street for the monthly gig by the Babar Jug Band. The band begin back in the 1980s as a weekly jam at the now-defunct Café Babar in the Mission. Most of the members are San Franciscans, but I’ve been an occasional participant over the years. This time there were six of us: Jarvis (bass), Chrissie (autoharp), Vernard (guitar), Cliff (harmonica), Christian (flute), and me (fiddle). A few other friends were in the audience, including Cliff’s girlfriend Jan, who chatted in French with Marta. After the band was done, CMJ stayed to explore Haight-Ashbury while I drove home.
As you will see, Christian loves to play music. In Paris he sings and plays (flute and trumpet) in several different groups, doing jazz, French songs, and several Latin American genres. He brought his flute and often carried it with him just in case he might run into an opportunity to play. Here are a few clips of him in Paris, doing a Cuban song, a tango song, part of a bossa nova number, and a French song (with his brother Joël).
June 28. They again took BART to San Francisco. Since it was a Gay Pride weekend and the Supreme Court decision had just legalized gay marriage throughout the country, there was a joyous sentiment floating all over the Bay Area, and they got a good taste of this as they came upon the huge celebrations in the city.
June 29. Morning chat with Christian at a café on Solano. That afternoon they hiked around Tilden Park and explored the Botanic Garden.
June 30. Picked up my sister Kathy, who had flown out here from Missouri to see CMJ. (She, too, is a good friend of theirs, having known them from visits to Paris as well as from some of their U.S. trips.) She and I drove out to visit our uncle, who lives in a retirement home in Pleasant Hill, then back to Berkeley for dinner at CMJ’s place. Then us four oldsters went to a karaoke bar. Christian did several songs in both French and English as well as a couple of Spanish-language numbers with Marta. I did “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and Kathy and I did a duet of “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
(Jacques could not join us at the bar since he’s under 21. During the trip there were sometimes questions about what he wanted to do, since he was usually the only young person around. We tried to accommodate him with some of the activities, but at other times he preferred to remain alone, texting his friends or doing whatever other mysterious things people of his generation do with their smartphones all the time. I hasten to add that that’s not all he does: he studied classical guitar for several years, was a nationally ranked chess player in high school, and is planning on going to med school.)
July 1.
Drove to Point Reyes, a wonderful wilderness park just an hour away from
Berkeley where friends and I have gone hiking and backpacking countless
times over the years. The five of us hiked from the hostel to Coast
Camp, then looped back via the Coast Trail — around six or seven miles
total. Late lunch at the Farmhouse in Olema, then headed south. Stopped
at Green Gulch Farm, a branch of San Francisco Zen Center located near
Muir Beach, and I gave them a brief tour of the place. Then to Sausalito,
where we visited the house where Kathy lived for several years in the
1970s when she was married to her first husband.
Back in the East Bay, stopped briefly in
Albany to show them the Sala House, but we could only view it from the
outside since it is now occupied. The house was designed by Christopher
Alexander, an innovative architect who is the main author of A
Pattern Language, a book I highly recommend. The house had come on
the market three or four months earlier, and my friend Bill M. (from our
Proust group), in partnership with some of Alexander’s family and former
students, had given serious consideration to buying it and turning it
into some sort of museum or heritage site. But they ultimately backed
out, concluding that it would be too complicated. You can see a video
about it at
here.
July 2. Lunch at CMJ’s place. Brief visit to my old home in northwest
Berkeley — the fondly remembered windmill-converted-to-cottage where I lived for 48 years
before moving to my current home in 2014. I’ve become friends with the
current occupants, and they graciously showed us around. It’s been so
extensively rebuilt that it scarcely resembles the ramshackle cottage I
knew. If you’re interested, you can view a lot of photos from the huge house-leaving party I
had
here.
Then to the Omni Commons building in
north Oakland, which in the aftermath of the Occupy movement has been leased as a joint community space by a
number of radical collectives. We got a tour of the building by my
friends Niki S. and David K., two of the many people who have been doing
an incredible amount of volunteer work to fix it up and coordinate the
various activities during the last year or two. Among many other things,
the Omni hosted my class on Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
last fall and showings of two of Debord’s films last spring.
Midafternoon coffee in the charming
garden behind Café Leila, then early dinner. Looking for possible jams or open mics, we
went to the Starry Plough, where we ran into my accordionist friend Art
P., whose group had unfortunately just finished playing. Then across the
street to see the Long Haul Infoshop. Then back across the street to La
Peña, which did have an open mic evening. Christian did a solo
French song and a duet with a Brazilian woman we’d met there, and he
also accompanied one of the other performers on flute.
July 3. In preparation for the party tomorrow, Kathy and I did shopping and set up tables and chairs in the garden. (My in-law apartment includes the use of a lovely patio-garden created by my landlady, who is a landscape architect.) Picked up CMJ late afternoon and went to Oakland First Friday — a huge monthly street celebration along five or six blocks of Telegraph Avenue, with music, dancing, food, art exhibits, etc. Met Robert C. and his wife Elaine and went to Luka’s for drinks. (Robert and I have been good friends since the 1970s situ scene, and he’s also known Kathy and Christian for many years.)
July 4.
Party in honor of CMJ’s visit, noon to 5:00. During the last couple
hours Christian (flute), Steve T. (guitar), Chie T. (ukulele), and Danny
G. (vocal) played and sang a variety of songs at one end of the garden
while the rest of us continued eating, drinking, and chatting. Around
fifty people showed up — too many to name here, but they included Zen
friends, radical friends, folk music friends, book
group friends, neighbors, and a variety of others. I enjoy bringing
such diverse people together and seeing what happens. (Writing this a
few weeks later, I am delighted to report that a new romance has
developed between two of the guests who met at this particular party!)
You can see some photos from the party here.
At 5:00 p.m. we did a quick preliminary
cleanup, then went to another more folk music oriented party
elsewhere in Berkeley, where we played more music, nibbled more potluck
goodies, and chatted with my friends Colm M. (from Ireland), Steve W.
(from Wales), and Ken M. (who had made the housesitting possible by
putting me in touch with his neighbor Lauren). Back home, Kathy and I
did the remaining cleanup from my party.
July 5. Drove CMJ to the Oakland Airport (flying to Las Vegas) and Kathy to the San Francisco Airport (flying back to Missouri).
During the next ten days CMJ were traveling — briefly in Las Vegas, where Marta’s niece lives, then visiting some parks in the Nevada-Utah area, then to Idaho to see other friends and relatives — while I caught up with work and other things. (I do part-time copyediting from home. Fortunately, I had virtually no work while they were here.)
July 15.
CMJ back. Picked them up and took their luggage to Tita and Michael’s,
where they’ll be staying the rest of their trip. Lunch at Espresso Roma.
In the evening we had a music jam at my place: Christian (flute), Rob L.
(a jazz guitarist), Lee (clarinet and guitar), me (fiddle and
guitar), and Danny G. and Annie H. (vocals). Snacks and margaritas in
the kitchen, then played in the garden till it got too dark.
(Annie is one of my folk music friends. I
know Rob from Berkeley Zen Center, but have recently gotten to know him
better since he’s joined our Proust group. Lee and Danny are good
friends of mine whom I originally met through
radical connections back in the 1990s. Danny is a computer programmer
and a long-time Zen
practitioner. Lee is an avid backpacker, plays clarinet in the Brass
Liberation Orchestra, is an accredited cuddle party facilitator (Google
it), and is currently going for a biology and music double major at
Cal.)
July 16. CMJ to San Francisco for lunch with two friends of mine who were grateful to Christian for having showed them around Paris a few years ago (as he has done with many other friends of mine). In the evening we went to an affordable “pay what you can” performance of Fiddler on the Roof at Julia Morgan Theater.
July 17. Tennis with Jacques and Kari, again followed by a picnic lunch with Christian and Marta. Later we had a Japanese dinner downtown, then to the Freight and Salvage folk music club to hear an excellent Hawaiian group.
July 18.
As a thank-you for the housesitting hospitality, CMJ took Lauren and
Rigo and me to a nice breakfast place on Solano. Then to north Oakland,
where we jammed for a couple hours with a guitarist and a bossa nova
singer whom Christian had met at a jam in Paris. Then to a party at the
Mythos Gallery in Berkeley, where Marta and I chatted with my friend Sandy
N. while Christian jammed with the saxophone player who was
providing the background music.
As another hospitality thank-you, CMJ
took Tita and Michael and me to dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant.
Then to Caffe Trieste in southwest Berkeley to hear the Inside Men, a
jazz quartet whose piano player, Carter S., is a friend of mine from a Rexroth
connection. Christian sat in with them for a few numbers on flute.
Afterwards he said he was not really on the same level with these guys.
Maybe not, but the fact that he was good enough to at least play along
with such sophisticated professionals was still pretty impressive.
July 19. Breakfast with some friends in Sausalito, then drove across the Golden Gate Bridge (which Jacques wanted to see up close), then across the city and back to Berkeley. To Cedar-Rose Park, where we met my friend Renée T. (a vivacious theater director from Venezuela) and saw the latest San Francisco Mime Troupe play. Then with Christian to our Proust discussion group. Hosted in the pleasant back room of University Press Bookstore and ably facilitated by my Zen friend Patrick M., we’ve been meeting there every other Sunday for nearly four years to discuss Proust’s immense novel In Search of Lost Time (a.k.a. Remembrance of Things Past) and are nearing the end of the last volume.
July 20. They borrowed my car and took another drive to Marin County and the Golden Gate area. Late afternoon met Christian at the French Hotel café for a final leisurely chat. Dinner with all of them at Spenger’s and early to bed.
July 21. Up at 4:15 a.m. to drive them to the San Francisco Airport. They arrived back in Paris the following day.
[August 24, 2015]
Account of French friends’
2015 visit to the Bay Area.
No copyright.