Quarter Life Crisis
The world according to Sven-S. Porst
« Parks • Main • Eatin’ USA »
San Francisco¶
528 words on Travel
After departing from Yosemite park, we drove to San Francisco. I liked San Francisco when I'd been there before. Partly because it's 'more European' than LA, say. I can get to many places walking without too much hassle. Then they have all those hills and that pretty bridge – which looked particularly good the day we were there because it was really sunny (apparently a rarity for the area) and the sky was deep blue.
The motel we had booked was in a somewhat seedy area with many people begging and doing what could euphemistically be described as 'hanging out' down the road. The other guys who were doing about the same trip we did and lived in a hostel right in the middle of that area said they felt really unsafe at night – so we took a slight detour when walking back home.
Apart from the obligatory cable car trip – we even visited the museum which turned out to be free and lets you have a look at the gears driving all the cables – we also went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Claus had showed it to me a few years ago and it's really good. Nice building. Many pictures.
They had a section on Pop Art. And somehow that triggered the 'Uh, that's easy to do in Photoshop' reflex in one guy who was there at the same time we were. Apart from the fact that I'd prefer Illustrator or such likes to write words on solidly coloured backgrounds, this just seems to be a wrong approach. To begin with making those paintings surely took some manual skill at the time: Not an overwhelming skill, but certainly more than typing a few words into a computer. (Like it's quite funny that those Roy Lichtenstein paintings are actually painted although they look like they're rasterised and printed). Put that's probably still missing the point – although one of those paintings was apparently painted with the artist's blood.
Other exhibits included my Powerbook and a Next Cube, in addition to some typography stuff. For the typography I wasn't quite sure whether it qualifies as 'art'. Particularly when the layouts or typography in question was for ads. The main purpose of that would be to sell stuff, wouldn't it? Somehow it seems different from the Pop Art stuff to me. Not only does the 'I could've done that' statement hold here – also, those prints from just a few years ago looked seriously more outdated to me than the much older Pop Art paintings. Odd.
We also made a quick stop at the Apple Store where I had someone look at my iPod (which isn't as firm as other iPods are). The 'genius' was friendly but eventually not really helpful: He said that his iPod is the same and confirmed this isn't the way it's supposed to be, but personally he doesn't worry. As mine is personalised, he said they can't try to fix it at the store anyway. Bad luck. Also used the opportunity to check my e-mail.
As seen on Golden Gate bridge: Crisis counseling. Ties in nicely with my site…
