The mundane bubblegum of pirates

[squirmelia]

Armed with Mundane Journeys: A field guide to color, Weird California and the 826 Valencia's San Francisco Literary Map, I continued to explore San Francisco.

The sky was blue, mostly always blue (apart from when I tried to see the Golden Gate Bridge, when it was always cloudy). I remember wandering around San Francisco, and perhaps earlier in the day, before I'd been to 826 Valencia, and before I'd eaten rose and cardamom ice-cream, and before I had purchased the books and maps mentioned above, I stared up at the sky that the TransAmerica Pyramid pointed to, for a while, and then wandered through Chinatown, searching for Beatniks.

I then started upon some mundane journeys. I visited Van Ness and noticed the colours of trains and listened to the different notes of music played as inbound and outbound trains approached. I went to 980 Harrison and looked in the window, but since the book had been written, the shop had turned into Pirates Press. I still looked for things in the street that were also the same colour as things in the window though. The third mundane journey I attempted that day was to 372 5th Street, where I had intended to chew bubblegum, but no bubblegum was to be found, so I stared at stickers of dead eyes and meat hallucinations, and imagined the flavours of gum I might chew.