Albuquerque: my kind of town

Tact Squad! Would you mind awfully putting your hands where I can see them? Thanks.
This is only the second best neon dog in town:


Finally people are starting to take notice.

San Francisco, city of excess

This, for me, would be the perfect day in San Francisco: brunch at Mama's in Little Italy. Pancakes:
Corned beef hash, eggs over easy:

Pan Dore (french toast w/ apple and a light lemon custard):

After that I'd recommend lying on your side for a few hours panting for breath and sweating profusely before heading over to the the Lower Haight for beer and hotdogs. The Toronado styles itself as a heavy duty beer pub and, as we're in America, this means you're in for some pretty heavy duty beer.
Not much under 7-8% on offer here and most of it dangerously drinkable: the only concession to common sense seems to be putting beers over 9% in a slightly smaller glass. I would recommend the Prohibition Big Daddy IPA, Bear Republic Racer 5, arguing with strangers about ice cream, becoming dizzy and outlining, once again, the perils of underestimating Portugal's ambitions on the world stage.
Fortunately next door is the Rosamunde sausage grill where men in their early thirties with tattoos and obscure band T-shirst will grill sausages and sell them too you in a bun in a manner that makes clear that, despite what one may think, you are the loser and they are, frankly, the all seeing eye at the centre of the hip universe - quite an achievement with a tong-full of saurkraut in your hand. Cracking knockwurst though:

Sorry veggies. Anyway after all this you're probably a little peckish: I'd recommend wandering down the hill to the mission district for a burrito or Mexican food tube. Be sure to point at your mouth at all times to avoid looking like a total idiot.

After this I would recommend a few weeks of brown rice, poached fish and lightly steamed vegetables. Or a trip to Las Vegas.

So

I finally drank a 40 ounce of Olde English. I will not be doing that again. Made me kiss the sky.

Pant's Grass, Oregon

Grant's Pass has got a big statue of a Caveman next to the I5 motorway.

It was errected in 1971 by the Oregon Cavemen a bunch of dudes who, when they felt the time was appropriate, would dress up in fur loincloths and ride around on a parade car with a big cage on it. If they saw any girls they liked they would throw them in the cage, take them to the caves outside town and party like it was 1999BC. I don't think they're allowed to do this any more for health and safety reasons. And, you know, women's lib and that.

In fact some residents think that the caveman projects a rather backwards "redneck" image for the town and would have it removed: indeed in 2004 it was badly damaged in an arson attack. I like to think that the rebuilt statue pleases all parties: the removal of the cavewoman-being-dragged-by-her-hair from the statue's right hand could have left the monument looking imbalanced or incomplete but the brave decision of the restoration committe to replace the existing 8 foot errect penis with a simple loincloth ensures that the statue strikes a fine balace both aesthetically and politically. Bravo.

There is also a shop selling slightly too small T-Shirts! These are the ones I didn't buy.





No ODB shirts. I told the guy behind the counter that I saw a guy wearing one in an off licence in London shortly after Big Baby Jesus went to meet Big Daddy Jesus which featured a white print of this image on baby blue hoody w/ real gold teeth. When I told the guy wearing it that I liked it he just replied "He did what he liked, dinee?". So true. So very true.

The guy in the shop proceeded to describe this image to me in some detail, explaining that he had seen it on a shirt in New York.


We agreed that that sounded pretty good.

Generally there is quite a lot of wierd stuff in Grant's Pass.





Also I bought a gun shirt from a charity shop.

Guy in a bar told me what it was (I thought it just had snappy suede patches) shortly before I told him of my belief that if America hadn't joined WWII we'd all be speaking Portugese now. And then an early night...