London – Les said, the better II

Protests 6, 7 and 8

My 50 protests in 2020 project continues, but I’ve gotten a cold and feeling somewhat grim, so this round up may be weird.

Local Rebellion: Defend Councils Net Zero

Less than 1% of new homes built in Britain have an A energy rating. This means that they are badly insulated. Saving carbon with a heat pump is no good if the heat just leaks away in five seconds. Poorly insulated homes cause fuel poverty.

In 2018, only 1% of new homes in the UK were band A energy performance — Architects! Climate Action Network was involved in the protest.

Some councils, in an attempt to meet their carbon goals, have declared higher standards for new construction in their areas. However, the central government is trying to impose a national standard which undoes that, called “future homes”. This disempowers local councils and undoes their good work while also increasing pollution and misery.

Future gomes standard = climate catastrophe — Protestors engage in a tug of war where one side is “Local Government Net Zero 2025 Targets” and the other side is “Central Government Future Homes Standard”

Energy efficiency and homes of a decent standard of efficiency cannot be treated as luxury goods for the rich. This backwards-looking proposal suggests the government is not taking its carbon commitments seriously. Any chance to bestow favours on buy-to-let landlords would seem to outweigh the global need to cut carbon for the sake of everyone. Rich people will not benefit when their swanky Thames-front flats are flooded.

Stop Cargill

This is the weekly protest with Climate Save. This week was smaller than the first one, but I expect next week to be much larger and hopefully momentum will continue to build. You can come out next Friday and every Friday after around noon.

Cargill’s actions really are shocking. Aside from working with Bolsinaro’s government to weaken standards for Amazon deforestation – their campaigning for him was a direct attack on LGBT people, they also are implicated in child slavery in Africa. Nestle sells the finished chocolate, but Cargill sells them the beans.

This week, they didn’t bother covering over their names. The issue of child slavery in chocolate has been widely documented. It’s outrageous and alarming that there can be an office building in central London that’s involved directly with slavery.

Night Pride

In response to some incidents around London, a group of local queers decided to have a series of Night Pride marches. This one started in Haggerston and went to Dalston. It was a few hundred people (maybe a thousand?) marching joyously while singing along to disco songs. There was, indeed, even a disco ball.

Once we got to the Dalston Superstore, some drag queens spoke and sung outside. The whole event was joyous and lovely. (Also a handsome young man seemed to be flirting with me! Although I think I was kind of feverish by then, so it’s possible he wasn’t)

Drag Street Performance — Drag performers at the end of the march

One of the groups in the march is a new antifa organisation called the Bender Defenders, who are determined to stop hate crime. They jackets are extremely nice.

Upcoming

I want to get well soon, so instead of typing out a synopsis of a few upcoming things, I’ll point you at the calendar and take a nap instead. https://fruux.com/calendars/public/a3298190990/708ec5b4-b3ad-48b1-b2f5-cf816f1d5d28/

A Hug from a Stranger: Saturday Night in Lower Clapton

I was waiting with Sonia at the bus stop, when she saw a man across the road collapse. I went over and he didn’t seem to speak English, so I waved Sonia over because he sounded Russian. He couldn’t get up, so I lent him a hand, but then he was having trouble standing. I had a bunch of his clenched in my fist, as he swayed back and forth. Sonia decided to call the paramedics.

He noticed me touching his back and threw his other arm around me, leaning into a hug, I thought to keep his balance, but he lay his head on my shoulder. I told him everything would be ok, but his hot breath on my neck was more intimate than I expected. He moved his head and I thought he was going to kiss me, so I moved my head back away from him. He stood apart and then embraced me again. I kept my head away from his this time and he started to walk away, but was unsteady, so I lead him to the bench in a bus shelter.

He sat down and after a moment, started bashing his head against the back wall of the shelter, with an angry intensity. I put my hand on the back of his head and asked him to stop, but he didn’t understand. After a while he gestured angrily that I should remove my hand, so I did. Three teenagers came up, waiting for a bus and told him to sleep it off. One of them said he was a rap star and would pay the man a thousand dollars if he quit bashing his head. The man listened and as soon as the kid stopped speaking, bashed his head with greater force.

A paramedic arrived on a motorcycle, which the kids ran over to flag down. The high-vis vests medics wear don’t look all that different from the ones the police wear and the man became more alert and said a few words in English, but ran out of vocabulary quickly. Sonia and I left them to it, but after a few moments, the man had enough and walked away as quickly as he could. The paramedic spent the next ten minutes filling out paperwork. We watched from the bus stop back on the other side of the road as a young woman approached and put on his motorcycle helmet, and sat on his bike, asking for a ride, until one of her friends dragged her away. Sonia’s bus came and I walked towards home, the feeling of the man’s boozy breath still tingling uncomfortably on my neck.

New Flat!

First of all, I loved my old room in the co-op. The kitchen was chaotic and had moths and rodents and finally kittens, but the people were lovely. Having 18 housemates meant that it never got lonely, even if it occasionally was loud at times I wanted to be asleep. However, Sonia and I wanted to do the heteronormative couple-y thing and got a flat together.

It’s the newly-renovated top floor of a Victorian house, just around the corner form my previous room. The landlord just converted a single family home into three smaller flats. As far as I can tell we’re the first (not related to him) tenants in the house. Clues include the smell of paint and that I cannot seem to locate a phone jack anywhere in the flat.

We moved in and the management agent gave us two sets of keys to the house a a key to a meter. Well, sort of. When the removal van finally showed up and got all of my worldly possessions to to my new flat at 6pm on Friday, it emerged that the keys they gave me do not actually open the door. I tried calling the letting agency and the property manager, but they’d all gone home for the weekend. So I told the mover to leave all my stuff on the pavement outside the flat and then I waited for Sonia to get home. Thank goodness it wasn’t raining.

My American readers may be wondering why one would need a key to a meter. Remember reading Pygmalion in high school? Eliza Doolittle went home to her room and put an extra penny in the heater because the professor had overpaid her for her flowers. It all seemed so terribly Victorian that you would have a meter that you needed to put pennies into before you could run your heat. Well, they never quite got rid of this system in England, just updated it. Now it’s a fob system. Somebody gives you a ‘key.’ You take the key to a corner shop – the kind of store that mostly sells cheap alcohol to adults and magazines and candy to kids. You hand them the key and some cash (really, cash only) and they add money to the key. Them, when you get home, you stick the key in your meter and it will allow you to spend exactly that much money. Imagine if you were running it a bit tight on the electric bill. Under this system, your power might be cut a few days before every pay day. The bonus is that you don’t need to pay extra to turn it back on. The downside is that all your food spoils. Plus you get to pay loads more than middle class people get with their normal power bills. The Victorians were masters of screwing poor people. When conservatives in this country speak of ‘Victorian values’ they do so with nostalgic pride, not the deep shame the phrase deserves.

So I went down to the Londis and put all of my cash on the key and went back to the flat and looked everywhere for the meter. It was Saturday and the property manager was having his day off. I was slightly concerned that the power might turn off at any moment, but I had gig-related activities and anyway, there was no hot water and needed to find the boiler. Finally, I found a mysterious electrical switch in the bathroom and turned it on. There was a gurgling behind the wall. Aha! This must be the boiler. Of course, it would need time to heat up. So we gave it time. And Then more time. It was sealed behind a wall. So I took a cold shower and was grateful it’s August.

Maybe I could just do a load of laundry in the mean time. Augh! Water everywhere!

Meanwhile, Sonia asked the guy downstairs if he had any insight and it turned out he was the landlord’s brother. He came up and used a pen knife to get open the bit of the wall with the boiler behind it and thus we discovered that whoever had redone the bathroom had thought it was a good idea to seal the boiler behind a wall, having first left it in the ‘off’ position. So we waited again for it to heat up. Also, the power meter was located. In the basement flat, which is rented by yet another guy. So, we need to put money on the card, then knock on the door of the guy living in the basement, hope he’s home and charge up our power. Obviously, this will not do, so today Sonia rung up the power company and had a series of confusing conversations with them. And a series of conversations with the property manager. It gradually and painfully emerged that the card we had been given was actually for the gas meter, which is also in the basement apartment, locked behind a door that even the man who lives in the basement does not have a key for. So the reason we’ve got no hot water is because the gas meter was completely out of money. Meanwhile, the electric meter also has a key, which we don’t have. There was all of £3 left on the meter by the management company, so I’m just waiting for everything to turn off at any moment. Meanwhile, the guy in the basement has gotten extremely pissed off, as it took a few trips to his flat to figure out which meter was which and what’s going on.

Apparently, not having access to a gas valve is also something of a safety issue, but nevermind.

On the positive, I was able to arrange an appointment with the phone company to come and install internet and a phone line. In three weeks.

But at least there are no mice. And, this is not a phrase I’m ever likely to repeat, thank goodness the cooker is electric. And at least partly works

London Flat Hunting

I am currently house sitting for a council tenant. This is perfectly within the rules for eighteen months. It has been longer than that. I am going to be evicted, but I don’t know when. Ergo, I am looking for a new place to live.
Despite the many tales I’ve been hearing of people being evicted in advance of the Olympics, this seemed to get off to a promising start.

The Art Space

I went on a web site that caters for people looking for a room in a shared housing situation and found something that seemed ideal. It was a live-work space, catered towards artists. I arranged to go look at the rooms, without Xena, as, at the time, the vet still thought she might have a sprain and she was not allowed to walk very far.
The rooms were tiny and seemed overpriced, and the organiser was overwhelmingly hispterish, but the shared space was good and it seemed I could get a ground floor room with my dog. There were 10 rooms going in each warehouse space. Given the prices, I worried my future housemates might be trust-funded artsy wannabes, but then I decided to get over myself. I emailed the organiser the next day and asked to arrange a meeting between him and Xena in order to get the room I liked. He said he did not want to force an injured dog to walk and I could have the room if I wired him the deposit the next day. Alas, I still do not have internet banking and asked to put it off to Monday.
On Monday, I was feeling too glum about Xena’s impending demise to leave the house and warned him I couldn’t do it until Tuesday morning. He wrote back something with a smilely in it and thus on Tuesday morning, I sent the wire, intending to email him saying I had done it when I got home at the end of the day. But, alas, at the end of the day, I found he had emailed me that afternoon to say he had rented the room to somebody else. I had a moment of panic and asked for the last room in the building with a window in it. More than half the rooms he had for rent had no windows or outside light, which I know from experience will mess with my head. This last room was smaller, more money, and up a flight of stairs.
But wait a second? How could the room be gone if I wired him the money that morning? I called him up and he explained, basically, that he had undercapitalised the project. The building owner would not let anyone move in until he paid the full deposit for the entire building, which was not money that he had. Therefore, in order to get things underway, he had decided that whoever sent him deposits first could have whatever room he had for offer. He had promised the same room to three different people and I was not first to prove that I had wired him money, ergo, it couldn’t go to me. I briefly explained that I needed both a window and ground floor access, due to my dog’s mobility issues and he said he would try to see if we could shuffle around a bit, but I would still need to pay the higher rent in that case. I said ok. I have to move. I have a dog. I need a place.
My friends, however, said I should get my deposit back, so I called the landlord and said I didn’t really feel comfortable with how things were going and as I had wired him money for a specific room at a particular price, I would like my money back. He sounded unhappy and I apologised at length for the inconvenience I had caused, but he agreed to return the money. Again, I have no internet banking, so I don’t know if he has done this yet. I have his real name and bank details, so I am confident that my money will get returned.

The Recording Studio

I was cycling past a set of studios that are in high demand and was surprised to see for lease sign on the building. I phoned up and found that the sign was out of date, but the company had several other things on offer. Would I like to live in a three bedroom recording studio around the corner from my current address? Would I! The price was high, but if there were three of us, I could just about do it.
The recording studio turned out to be in the basement of an office building. It was two bedrooms, a small living room, a fantastic kitchen, a large recording area and a control room. The guy previously living there had done it up himself in a kind of haphazard way, which the estate agent kept describing in terms of the ‘architectural vision’ of the DIYer, as if he were an undiscovered Frank Lloyd Wright. The man had not merely stapled budget-rated acoustical foam to all the walls and then decided to cover them with shabby black coverings that did not hide exposed pipes, he had left it unfinished on purpose as part of his great aesthetic.
Indeed, he did seem to love black walls, as the entire studio was black, as was a wall of the living room and was the bathroom. This was a daring choice for a basement apartment with no windows of any kind. But not as daring as the shower.
The shower was attached to the master bedroom, which was really the only proper bedroom, as the other one had hanging sheets instead of a wall separating it from the living room. He had clearly run out of room to put in a shower, so he put in a bath tub, in the interior, windowless, black painted room. The ceiling was not high enough to support a shower. But then inspiration must have struck him. He dug into the ground and made the bathtub deeper. Approximately 5 feet deep, so it was a long, narrow enamelled space that he had put footholds in so one could climb in and out. Or, possibly bleed out the corpse of an animal slaughtered for dinner. I may yet have nightmares about that shower.
With the sound proofing and the black walls it would have made a great SM dungeon if it was not so shabby. As it is, it would make a perfectly great rehearsal space and a nice place to live if I wanted to go slowly insane. Especially if this manifested itself as cannibalism. It has a really nice kitchen.

The Missiles

The Ministry of Defence has decided that the best way to defend the Olympics from terrorists is to put surface-to-air missiles on the top of a gated community in Bow. The people living in the flats under the missiles were not consulted about this and are not pleased to have military weaponry on their roofs. (It turns out that the 4th amendment in the US Constitution is more useful than you might have guessed in the modern age.) Much to my delight and surprise, I actually met two people who live in the missile buildings.
Bow is not London’s most sought-after area, so I asked if ‘gated community’ meant something posh. One of the residents explained that the area was being gentrified street by street. Some squares were very rough and others were fine and others were posh, all right next to each other. The gated area is a posh enclave of 20-something yuppies who are buying their first flat before moving to a more desirable post code. She explained they had not yet gotten beyond the ‘stage’ of doing lots of coke and behaving like children. The missiles on the roof are an accident waiting to happen, she opined.
I asked if there was anything going in my price range, because who doesn’t want to live right underneath an embarrassing military accident? She said there was and then emailed our friend in common a link to an advert for a one room flat. It was more than twice as much as she had estimated the average cost to be and well out of my range.
It’s just as well as can’t afford coke either.

The search continues….

And if you know of a place that wants a not-yet-employed recent graduate and a short-term dog, which is on the ground floor, with a ramp or with a lift, do let me know.

My Fantastic Weekend

I awoke Saturday morning to a text message in which Paula, my closest friend here and neighbour, said that her cat had drowned in the local pond. Indy was sweet and lovely and has spent many evenings curled up in my lap purring, or lolling about hoping for a belly rub. Oh no! I said I would walk my dog and head right over.
My normal dog walking route goes right past the pond where the cat had died, and I was looking at it sadly, thinking of Indy when, with some distress, I noticed that Indy’s body was still in the pond.
I went around to get a closer look, in case there had been confusion, hoping it was some other cat. I couldn’t see his most distinctive marking, but I was convinced it was him.
I went around to Paula’s and we tried to figure out who to ring to remove poor Indy from the pond. The RSPCA is only involved with living animals. I found the non-emergency number for the police and called them, apologising for ringing the wrong number, but explaining that I thought the cat’s body constituted a public health hazard. The police woman was annoyed at first, but then sympathetic and gave me the number for animal control and the department of environmental health, both of whom were closed until Monday.
Desperate for distraction, I shaved Paula’s head. However, Jara, Paula’s flatmate, was distraught about the thought of the poor cat bobbing in the pond until Monday, so we went back with a long pole, hoping to get him. And we tried a longer pole. And we tried tying two poles together, which succeeded in reaching him, despite being incredibly heavy, but not in bringing him closer to the edge. It started to rain.
Some of the neighbours came by and said their porter could get him out on Monday. Somebody else suggested that we just wade out and get him. I went and got my toe shoes and some latex gloves, rolled up my trouser legs and jumped down into the steep-walled pond.
It was choked with algae, which wrapped around my legs. The bottom was squishy and weird. I waded over to where poor indy was, and pulled him from the algae and walked back to the side with his stiff body. I could see his markings then, and it was definitely him. I put him into a sack and then noticed that my gloves had somehow gotten torn.
Jara pulled me up the very steep sides of the pond. I went home and took a long shower and then tried to reach my girlfriend, but couldn’t.
Instead, I went to check my email and found a conversation on an email list that had been annoying me. The thread had grown. One guy organises a lot of events around here and makes a serious and thoughtful effort to be open and inclusive and does a lot of good things for the community. However, he was going on about innate and immutable gender differences, which rubbed me the wrong way and seemed quite othering. It contained a slur, clearly used without recognising it as such. Instead of explaining why I found this troubling, I flounced from the list.
Then I went to sleep and dreamt of Indy and being hit in the head by fourbytwos (known to Americans as 2x4s).
This morning, Sunday, I put on a shirt that my gf gave me, as I thought I would see her in the evening. But first, I went with Paula and Jara and Paula’s friend to the anti-EDL march. The EDL is a fascist organisation, which had been planning on holding an anti-muslim march in the same area, targeting the East London Mosque, which is very near where I live. The EDL had chickened out at the last second, so the rally and march were peaceful and fun. I met a lovely anarc named Hal, who works at the Freedom bookshop. We all went with Joey and another woman to get a fry up afterwards. Hal may come to Wotever next Tuesday. It was all really good, although there were signs that unrest might be brewing among some other people who had been involved with the demo.
Incidentally, while we are at the pre-march rally, my phone rang and it was a friend asking if I wanted to come along to something. This is significant, because it was the first time that anybody that I’ve met in London (but not dated) has called me with impromptu plans. I’ve lived here for two years. I couldn’t go, because I was already at the rally, but it was very nice to be invited.
I went home and checked my email again and found out that I had very deeply offended the guy to whom I had posted my flouncing and that he had said some unkind things in return. I was distressed to find burned bridges, ~~as this guy has gotten me gigs~~ and getting involved in a row on a public email list connected to my section of the local arts scene is really not wise, especially as I’ll be looking for a job soon. Somebody said the whole group may have imploded in the aftermath, but I really hope this is not the case.
[EDIT: Um, I seem to have gotten this guy confused with somebody else, which is also embarrassing. He hasn’t gotten me gigs, but he is active. (25 June)]
Feeling dejected, I tried again to reach my girlfriend, who said that we neeeded to talk. Uhoh.
The last time I had seen her, she had come with me to my pre-op appointment, where nurses took my blood pressure (good), calculated my BMI (low) and asked me questions like am I a vegetarian (yes) and do I have a will? (I do now.) I found that last question to be rather alarming.
She came along to ask questions about aftercare and to encourage scheduling that would coincide with when she had time off and would be in the area. My operation will by 1 July.
Then she went to a conference in Bristol and I hadn’t seen her since and was starting to get the impression that she was avoiding me. ‘Needing to talk’ was not allying my fears and I didn’t think I had the stamina to bike across town for whatever serious conversation she wanted to have.
And that’s how I came to be dumped via chat.
There was no fight, she just decided she didn’t want to be my girlfriend anymore. Five months of that was enough, I guess. It seems rude to go into details, so I won’t, but she had been idly chatting about moving in together a couple of weeks earlier, so I don’t know.
I decided to check my email again and found out that my proposal to play at the SuperCollider symposium had been rejected.
So to summarise: thigh deep in nasty, urban pond water, holding the corpse of a beloved cat in my bare hands, followed by flouncing, followed by getting dumped over chat followed by yet another professional rejection, of which I’ve had a streak for years, now, I think.
At least the march was good and I seem to have some social stability. Which I’ll need because I won’t be staying with my exgf after my operation, obviously, but it will be a couple of weeks before I can carry anything and I’m not sure how much I should be left alone in the day or two after. I’ll be staying with Paula, which is super, but I don’t feel like it’s fair to ask her for everything, even if I cut her hair in return.

Transfeminist Disucssion

I went to panel discussion on Trans Feminism at the London Transgender Film Festival yesterday, which I think was a very good discussion, although emotions did run high. The panel had four people, two of whom were mtf and two of whom were F2-genderqueer.
Near the start, one of the panelists made an excellent point about how gender is a force acting on everyone in society, but trans people end up being perceived as responsible for all gender because of transition. (I’m not stating this quite right.)

The panelists were talking about second wave and third wave feminism. Bridget, a panelist, talked about conflicts between second wave feminism and trans people and noted that the people in conflict were feeling wounded and attacked by society in general. And the people who were the most vocal were the most hurt. And that, I think, shed a lot of light on the conflict between radfems and trans people. Both of those groups have common cause, but both of them have suffered terribly under groups that (falsely) appear to have commonality with the other.

It also came up that a lot of women’s groups avoid having a trans policy to avoid controversy and then trans people don’t know if they’re welcome or not. Given the history of acrimony, these groups should be willing to make a statement for trans inclusion. For example, one of the Take Back the Night Marches last year was not listed as “official” because it had trans participation . . . which is so terrible because trans women have an even higher incidence of rape perpetuated against them than do cis women.

One of the audience members was involved in some women’s march in London (the one that shut down their mics rather than let a sex worker speak!) and she was talking about how she was in favor of trans inclusion and everybody come along, etc. But she wasn’t speaking on behalf of the group, so it was an invitation to push for inclusion.

This didn’t come up, but I want to note that “not having a policy” is a position of privilege. Cis people get to avoid having discussions they’d rather avoid. And then trans people get mixed messages about whether or not they should show up. And then, if they do come, all of the controversy is directed at them. So their quiet allies can avoid having to get involved. I’m a bit bitter about this because I got involved last spring with a feminist thing without an official policy and, as I was on T barely four months by then and feeling incredibly vulnerable anyway, a controversy focused on my own gender presentation was hugely stressful and not ok.

Anyway, somebody in the audience wanted to note that the experiences of trans women resonate with dysphoric (read: eating disorder) cis girls, and trans feminism is thus a valuable contribution to feminism because it benefits cis women. This did not go over well. I know she was well-intentioned, but it simultaneous came off as “they think THEY have it bad, but look at you (exotic) lot!” and “well, your stuff also matters to REAL females.”

The person sitting in front of me tried to defend Julie Bindel, by raising the point that Bindel apologized for the tone, but not the content, of her transphobic column in 2004. But she gave up quickly. During the break, she said she had been hoping for a panel of ftms talking about how we still care about feminism. And she wanted to talk about socialization. Given that this is a cornerstone of why some feminists are transphobic, it’s easy to see why the panel wasn’t keen to bring it up. Also, I’m concerned about why a feminist discussion that mostly included ftms would be more desirable than one that included mtfs. The implications trouble me.

What was largely lost in the whole discussion, was that third wave feminism, as an extension of second wave feminism is thus a validation of the second wave. If the second wave hadn’t been useful and made great gains, there wouldn’t be a third wave. We want to build upon the success of the second wave while, at the same time, making critiques of some of the shortcomings of the previous wave. Second wavers were feeling attacked and third wavers get annoyed and don’t spend much time on the positives of the second wave. Which is logical, really, I mean when you’re complaining about radfem transphobia, you shouldn’t have to start every complaint with an acknowledgement that they were the originators of the concept “patriarchy.” But it should come up more often than it does. We owe these women a great debt, but it doesn’t mean theyre right all the time on everything.

Anyway, the discussion was lively and I think productive and it can’t help but continue.

Yay! I have a room in London!

Today, I exchanged money for a key to a house in Lewisham, London. I have a gigantic room that looks out on a garden. The garden is magnificently overgrown. Somebody planted many lovely flowers several years ago and then it’s been neglected for years, so the flowers grow and twine in glorious tumult. The room has tile floors. It’s kind of echo-y, but that will improve as I move my stuff in. It’s large enough that I will be able to set up my gear and have enough room left over that I think I’m going to try to freecycle a couch.
I found the room via Outlet, a gay flatmate-finding service. I don’t know if the owner is queer herself or not, but she’s part of that community in that she makes costumes for drag queens. She’s off to some week long festival in Scotland to work with a drag troupe. She also has a gigantic german shepherd (alsatian). Xena get along famously with the other dog. And the owner’s daughter is willing to make pocket money dogsitting, so it seems I won’t have to find a kennel when I go to that States in July.
Lewisham is in the south east of London. South of the Themes is not considered as hip as north, but I’m not hip. This room is big and the rent is less than my mortgage used to be, so I’m happy. After I let the room, I walked into the center of Lewisham. There was a market going on, which was unremarkable except that a march came through it. There was a guy with a bullhorn and some chanting people and another guy with a trumpet, who would play a lick in between the chant lines. The chant lines didn’t change, so neither did the lick. He played the same 3 or 4 (out of tune) notes over and over and over again. I thought it was weird just on the basis of that, but then as they approached, it turned out that they were doing publicity for a faith healer. Friday night!
Is this every friday night? Is this a one time thing? How do you get 50+ people to march around chanting and handing out pamphlets for a faith healer? As entertaining as this spectacle was, it was also kind of alarming as highly-motivated Christians don’t tend to get on well with my people.
Nearly everyone marching was black. The rest of the market was mixed. After they went by, the commentary among the spectators was amusing. They mostly seemed confused, actually. I’ve always thought of faith healers as an American phenomenon. Some of the commenters were clearly unfamiliar with the concept and not exactly open to it.
The area has a very Oakland-like vibe in general. Including both diversity and snark! I went to a nifty diner and chatted with some people there.
I went to see two other flats on Saturday. The landlords for them were also really cool. I hope I can keep in contact with them. I had two more to see, but canceled, since I’ve got this room.
So I’m going to be moving in the next week.