I stayed with Alex in San Francisco. The first morning I got up and couldn't find my shoes anywhere. Some hippie had put them on and gone to work. With new shoes I followed the boys to an impromptu video shoot for Alex's band lemonade. You can check it out here. The director had her whole bedroom painted in chroma-key. So I was like, wow that's smart since you're a video artist (I'm thinking of making a mini cyclorama in my new apartment when I move). But she was like, no I just really like the color.

In between tacos, I also met up with my sister who found time to see me while she was between working and going to graduate school at Berkeley. That campus is amazing; I should have gone there. She designs crazy shit in China like mag-lev stations and aerotropolis whatevers. They work on the top floor of a building in the back of the campus nestled up against the hills. Amazing views of the bay and, on the other side, you're ten stories high and in the trees.

We walked from her place on Potrero Hill to Hayes Valley which is full of architecture offices and has lots of really good coffee shops. There's probably a connection. Blue Bottle Co. which has a cute outpost on Linden St. has some of the best coffee anywhere. Along the way she filled me in on what the urban planners were trying to do with the city's various public space projects. Later I went on an afternoon drinking binge with Alex's friend Mahader who's 6'5" and just happened to be strolling around in a gold lamay leisure suit. I asked him why and he said, why the fuck not. We sat outside at a place called Zeitgeist. It's kind of a biker bar with a big back yard and amazing bloody mary's that the bartender makes fresh each time with all 11 or something ingredients. It was packed with tattooed california twenty-something ruffians. I got really drunk and took photos of people I didn't know.

In LA, I saw the überorgan and some other Tim Hawkinson stuff. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be but still pretty cool. I really liked the other paintings/collages he had there. I got to eat at Rosco's Chicken and Waffles (get the chicken, skip the waffles), most of the taco places in west hollywood, a fancy restaurant full of men with ferraris and girl's with fake boobs (same thing, I had really tasty snails), and the apple pan for hamburgers and pie. I gained like 20 pounds.

Alex showed up in New York weeks later on his way back from asia and a crazy rich wedding in northern italy (he had a 9 hour fellini-like meal). Ry Fyan, who's a really good young painter, is putting out his album so we stopped by his studio. He was finishing off some ridiculously complicated micropainting of a tiny thing on a huge canvas while chatting with us.

I took Alex to Cafe Gitane in Nolita. It has these very affected looking europeans spilling out of it on weekends but during the week it's become my regular place for lunch meetings. It's cheap and the food is just so good. Alex managed to charm the entire waitress staff.