Florida is known as the "Sunshine State." Obviously this is a reference to the weather, about which I really have no basis to complain. But to me, the "Sunshine State" name has a different resonance.

Have you ever seen the movie "Pleasantville?" The movie is about 2 kids from today who get sucked into a fictional 50's era TV town called, naturally, Pleasantville. In Pleasantville, everything is nice, pretty, and, well, pleasant. But there's no flavour, no excitement, no surprises, no colour.

Well if Pleasantville is pleasant, the Sunshine State is very sunny. It's got beaches and golf courses, gated retirement communities and "real" New York delis. And if you set aside South Miami Beach -- Florida's single enclave of any kind of culture whatsoever -- the Sunshine State is boring as hell.

Mandatory Membership

My parents' house in Florida is inside one of the gated communities, a lovely garden flat on the 8th hole of the West golf course (a total of three 18-hole golf courses line the backyards of my parents' gated community condo neighbours). They inherited the house from my mom's father when he passed away, and so starting with my grandparents, our family has had a residence in this gated community since 1976 or so.

With the building boom in Florida, there are plenty of similar gated communities in the area, and since this is one of the older ones, the average age of a resident in the community is getting pretty old.

So the residents, who are also members of the complex's country club, are starting to worry about keeping the country club alive as residents die off. The popular solution is to require new community residents to be members of the country club. This decision came up for debate while I was visiting, and my folks definitely have some opinions about the situation, so after a round of golf one day, I had the privilege of witnessing part of the debate first-hand.

'I am NOT a crackpot'

Those of you who know me well know that I am a huge fan of "The Simpsons." If you too are a fan, you've seen Grandpa Simpson write irate letters with the closing line "I am not a crackpot."

I couldn't help but think of that while watching the membership debate.

I arrived during the "public comment" portion of the debate, which means there was a queue of septugenarians queued up behind a microphone for a moment to say their piece before the board of the country club.

One wants to know where all these new members are going to park. Another is keenly interested in whether the "Social" members - i.e. the ones who pay a lower membership fee but can't play golf or vote on club issues - will have a vote on social issues.

And then a guy - let's call him Frank - comes to the microphone and makes a comment, followed by about 18 other comments. When the board finally cut him off, he demanded his right to speak. When the board declined to hear any more, Frank just continued speaking. At which point one of the septugenarian board members actually threatened to "come down there and shut you up myself."

Could it really come to this - could a debate over mandatory membership really come to fisticuffs?

Thankfully no, but you could really feel the tension in there for a moment. The golf pro, who aside from me was perhaps the youngest person in the room, came over and settled Frank down before the board president could open his can of whupass.

But please - if I ever reach a point in my life where country club politics threatens to draw me into violence - take me out of my misery.

The Eagle Has Landed

Now, at long last, I have reached the holy grail of my trip - New Orleans. I got here on Sunday and am settling in, but I'll save the details for next week. Suffice it to say that New Orleans is definitely not "Pleasantville."

31 days till Jazzfest!

--Andrew

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So much for home. This week the object at rest went in motion, and I headed out to the west coast, back to San Francisco, where I lived for 3 years before moving to Europe.

It's weird, my relationship with San Francisco. I have no real connection with the place. I have no family here, and I my connection to the Bay area through my job no longer exists. In fact, very little of what used to be my life here exists.

Still, often even moreso than when I go back to New Jersey, when I land in San Francisco, it feels like I'm going home.

Old Friends

First stop after I landed and checked into my hotel (my "place to crash" fell through at the last minute) was to head down to swingin' Sunnyvale, where I was invited to be guest chef by the lovely and talented Jones sisters - Tracy and Shannon. Sherry joined the party as well, so it was me and 3 women. Nice ratio!

On the menu: Fromage d'Affinois, Pont L'Eveque, and Cambozola with a sweet baguette (note: 3 years in San Francisco 'soured' me on sourdough. Oh, and Tracy was stingy with the cheese, but I'll forgive her.). Cornmeal encrusted pacific snapper over spinach with a chipotle pepper sauce, and rice cooked in a homemade pork stock.

Tracy supplied the wine, a 1993 vintage cab that didn't make it past the cheese. Yum!

I don't get to spend enough time with these people. There is a lot of love in their house.

Wine Country

Next day, I made a swing up to Napa to search for the wine that cried.

OK, not really. The wines from California that cry to me are the Pinot Noir that come from Carneros County, but that is a haul and Napa is much closer, and there was one wine I really wanted and can heartily recommend - the Niebaum-Coppola Estate Cabernet Franc (yes, that Coppola). I bought what I could and headed back to the city for dinner with... more old friends.

Asia de Cuba

Have you ever stayed at an Ian Schrager hotel? I don't usually, but in the past couple of weeks I've stayed in two - the St. Martin's Lane in London (super!) and the Clift in San Francisco (ho-hum). A common theme among his hotels is that in most cities, at least one has a branch of Asia de Cuba, a sort of family-style over-portioned chinese-cuban fusion dealio with lobster mashed potatoes. Yum.

That night, the parade of the Yahoo! posse continued, with Derek and his wife Kim, plus Kathy for cocktails and dinner. Waiting for our drinks, we got to spy the Redwood Room, apparently a classic bar in a classic hotel, but with giant framed plasma TVs on the wall featuring people looking at you. In a word, that sucks. Who wants Big Brother staring at them from the wall while they're having a drink?

Is it intended to be challenging? Disturbing? Controversial?

It was off-putting at best, but it didn't ruin a lovely dinner with Derek, Kim, and Kathy.

And it was so good that I went back the next night with my buddy Michael, but I have to say that I remember only brief flashes of that night, lost in a sea of Citron and Tonic. Let's see, there was dinner, then, um, Red Bull I think, then a club, then a bar, and I do not recall going to bed. It was followed by a scorching hangover the next morning, as I had to wake up at the crack of ASS to head to...

Santa Fe

My previous experience with New Mexico having been the stretch of highway 10 that connects El Paso, Texas with Tuscon, Arizona, you can understand that I wasn't too enchanted with the state.

However, my good friend Joe (whom you can see pictured at right in his natural habitat - note the characteristic shit-eating grin) and his wife-to-be Claudia know how to live, and all reports indicated that Santa Fe would be quite different from the El Paso-Tuscon corridor. The reports indicated correctly.

Santa Fe is a celebration of the good things in life -- lacking only oxygen, its thin atmosphere owed to the 7,000-8,000ft (roughly 2,300m) elevation.

The town shows off the distinctive adobe architecture common to the region, and is loaded with spanish colonial furniture, artisan crafts and pottery, and outstanding mexican food (that I'm sure I will pass sometime this week). There are more varieties of chile pepper than you can shake a stick at.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend of slack, inspired by Joe - the slackmaster himself. Reading, shopping, eating, and a much-needed and highly welcome 70-minute massage in a Japanese garden. The only problem was that it was too short, as I had to head back to San Francisco to take care of some final business today.

Next Stop

Off to Florida tomorrow, then finally to New Orleans on Saturday!

39 days till Jazzfest!

--Andrew

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