Monday, February 08, 2010

 

Valencia

Since moving here it has been my experience that many Valencianos feel that they live in the best place in Spain and therefore the best place in the world. I certainly don’t waste any time or effort disputing this and certainly not with Valencianos. The local residents of many areas of the world probably have the same feelings for where they call home. I guess that I just haven’t met many indigenous residents in the many places I have lived in my life. I knew only a small handful of people born and bred in Seattle and they all thought highly of it. Most of the people I meet are often other transplants, immigrants, drifters, castaways, and fugitives.

Valencianos truly believe they have the best weather, food, and lifestyle in all of Spain. Spanish people may complain about their country but nearly all of them feel that they have the best lifestyle. Spanish people may travel and venture out to life in other places but almost all of them are in a hurry to return home again. As one Spanish writer has said, “Spanish people don’t immigrate; they just go on a long weekend.” I have never met a Valenciano who was really interested in leaving Valencia for more than a few weeks and even when they leave for a relatively short vacation they prefer to carry a lot of familiar food with them. It’s as if the bad food they will encounter in their travels is tantamount to breathing contaminated air.

Even if I were in a mood to argue their point that Valencia is the best place to live I’d have a hard time coming up with a strong argument to the contrary. I live without central heating and without air conditioning with only a couple of weeks of discomfort in winter and then perhaps another uncomfortable week in summer. There is something like 300 days of sunshine here and sitting outside on a café terrace is an almost daily pleasure. It just a lot easier to agree with people when they say Valencia is agreat place to live.

Labels: Valencia Spain

9:39 AM

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Sunday, February 07, 2010

 

You Can’t Keep a Good Man Walking


**

After the theft of my hybrid Orbea bike that I bought upon arriving in Spain I have gone from bikeless to having three bikes in a matter of two weeks. In a previous post I talked about the first two bikes—a crappy folding bike and an old racing bike in need of some TLC and a few euros in repairs. The latest addition to my new bike stable is this Trek mountain bike with street slicks. It is great to have something nice to ride and if the truth be told it is a better bike than my old one. The frame is better, as are the gears, brakes, and suspension. It is not quite as fleet as my old bike as the tires are a bit bigger but it is more stable on the off-road stuff that I have to negotiate on a daily basis, such as humping through the mud flats of Turia Park.

I have a few things to do to this bike to get it up to speed, as they say. I need to get clip-in pedals and a few other vital options but it is a pleasure to ride. It should be completely the way I want it by the end of this week. As far as keeping it safe I have decided that I will just hoist it up the three flights of stairs in my building and keep it in my room. I don’t want to waste any more time worrying about it getting stolen, at least when it is at home. As much of a pain in the ass that it will be to bring it up and down the stairs, that is preferable to suffering another theft. Since my bike was stolen two weeks ago I have spent a lot of time examining how other people secure their bikes. It is absolutely fucking ridiculous how much people here in Valencia spend on bike locks. I see lots of bikes that have locks that cost more than the bikes themselves. It’s like the police in Spain can’t even be bothered to deal with bike theft. Being a bike thief most be a pretty good vocation here with almost no consequences.

**I like this bit of graffiti I came across in Rocafort, a little village a few miles outside of Valencia. Ni Latin Kings Ni Burger King is a call to oust both Burger King and the Mexican gang The Latin Kings from Rocafort or Spain.

Labels: bikes

9:27 AM

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Thursday, February 04, 2010

 

Cinema Manifesto: Romantic Comedies

Most romantic comedies are neither comedies nor even faintly romantic. Hollywood hardly makes a romantic comedy these days unless it has some sort of ridiculous gimmick. Movie people have something they call a log line which is usually a one sentence summary of the film. For most romantic comedies the log line involves some sort of idiotic high jinks.

Here are a few egregious examples of this practice:

Two people make an agreement that if neither of them were married by the time they turned 28, they would marry each other.

Benjamin Barry is an advertising executive and ladies' man who, to win a big campaign, bets that he can make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days. Andie Anderson covers the "How To" beat for "Composure" magazine and is assigned to write an article on "How to Lose a Guy in 10 days." They meet in a bar shortly after the bet is made.

Julianne fell in love with her best friend the day he decided to marry someone else.

A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her Visa status in the U.S. and avoid deportation to Canada.

Beth is a young, ambitious New Yorker who is completely unlucky in love. However, on a whirlwind trip to Rome, she impulsively steals some coins from a reputed fountain of love, and is then aggressively pursued by a band of suitors.

I know, I know, you are saying “Please, please just fucking stop already.” I just have one more that you may like:

A group of high school football players have a bet to see who can impregnate the most girls before the end of the season.

I just made that one up but I expect some Hollywood agent to smash my door down with an offer any minute now. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the Microsoft Word program there is a template for creating romantic comedy log lines and this is what Hollywood writers use to crank out this seemingly endless supply of insultingly bad movies.

Just why Hollywood has this compulsive need to summarize a film in one sentence is beyond my understanding. Do people really base their movie attendance on a one-sentence synopsis of the plot? Do movie goers really want to see a romantic comedy that is constructed upon the basis of a moronic gimmick? Does anyone really like Sandra Bullock? How much would she charge us to stop making movies?

Here’s an idea for a romantic comedy: a story about two normal human beings with average jobs who somehow meet and are attracted to each other? It’s such a completely crazy idea that it just may work.

Labels: movies

11:28 AM

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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

 

RIP old bike.

Bike, Trains, Buses, and Walking

My bike was stolen last week. I have never lived without a bike before. Back in Seattle I had three bicycles: a city bike, a lovely Bianchi racing bike, and a top-of-the-line K2 mountain bike with full suspension and disc brakes. I bought my Orbea Eibar hybrid bike only a couple weeks after arriving in Spain a bit over three years ago. I forget what I paid for it new but if you were to calculate how much it cost me per kilometer I rode it then the price would be infinitesimally small. I rode the living shit out of that thing. I think what pains me the most about the theft is that someone probably bought it from the thief and won’t ride it.

Bike theft in Spain is an absolute curse. The police don’t seem to care a bit about this issue and bike theft seems to be a pretty safe way to make a decent living here as there don’t seem to be any legal consequences for this crime—if it even is a crime here. I think that the authorities really need to do something about this if they want to encourage more people to ride bikes.

Only a couple days after the heist I bought a real piece-of-shit little semi-folding bike from an ad I saw on louquo (Spain’s answer to craigslist). My new clown bike wouldn’t be too bad except I can’t raise the seat because the former owner pounded a pipe into where the seat post should go instead of replacing the seat post. Besides the utter lack of dignity of riding around town on this pipsqueak of a bike, it probably isn’t even safe. I ride it like I am in a breakaway in the Tour de France. It has little tires and the brakes barely work yet I fly around on it like I’m being chased by an Al Qaeda assassination squad. In engineering speak the speed at which I subject this bike to is called “terminal velocity”…literally. The aerodynamics of this bike are also hampered by the big orange wig I wear and my huge clown shoes.

A friend gave me one of his old racing bikes that needs a bit of fixing up and I hope to have that working by this weekend. It’s not exactly what I am looking for but it could be a good bike with a little care. I hope I don’t have to invest much money in this experiment. It needs new tires and inner tubes at least and I don’t know what else. I am still looking for another bike, something similar to the old one as thin racing tires aren’t a good match for the bike trails around town, especially on a rainy day. Here in Valencia they insist on using these small tiles for the bike trails and the ruts between the tiles can be treacherous in wet conditions, even for fatter tires.

I have never walked so much in my life. I have taken several metro trips around town and into the outlying areas. I have also chased down a few buses. I carry bus and metro cards on my wallet. They bus system in Valencia is excellent and would be even better if I was more familiar with the routes. It seems that you can get just about anywhere in town by only walking a couple of blocks. Public transportation is inexpensive here as well as highly efficient, something I consider to be the hallmark of a progressive society.

The walking part has been the hardest for me. I really hate walking mainly because it is just so damn slow. Something that has taken a bit of the sting out of my walks has been listening to audio books. I just finished listening to Jon Krakauer’s new book, Where Men Win Glory: The Pat Tilman Odyssey. I also listened to this while standing on trains that were too crowded to pull out a book. I am thoroughly hooked on audio books for any situation in which reading isn’t possible. I think my audio book days are about over because I should have enough time tomorrow to get the racing bike fixed up well enough to ride.

Labels: bikes, Valencia Spain

11:11 AM

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Tuesday, February 02, 2010

 

The Geography of Somehwere Nice




The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler probably had more of an effect on me than any book I have ever read. This effect can be measured by my choices of living environments. I moved in constant search of livable cities, from suburban Washington D.C., to Miami, then to Seattle, and now Valencia, Spain. This book has shaped my own writing as well and I hope to publish a novel that is centered on the American suburban landscape some time soon. The problem in America is that few people know anything other than the strip mall model of urban-suburban architecture. However, when presented with what seems like an attack on their lifestyle, they become defensive and refuse to even consider an alternative. Too many people have accepted a life in which the automobile is responsible for effecting 100% of their transportation needs (in my current model car use represents 0%). I don’t think these people are making a choice, I don’t think they ever felt they had a choice. We have allowed the exigencies of Chili’s® parking requirements to dictate our urban planning with no voice given to the citizens. I feel that the need for a healthy and social living environment is the single most important factor in defining our happiness.

I have found Valencia to be about as close to urban perfection as I could ever imagine urban perfection to be. The city has good public transportation as well as a fantastic network of bike trails in and around the city (as well as having wonderful weather almost year-round for cycling). Almost every urban block in Valencia is like an island capable of sustaining life for those citizen castaways who call it home. My apartment is less than one block away from a major supermarket, a green grocer, a half a dozen bars and restaurants, a shoe repair shop, a tailor, several hair dressers, a tobacconist, a pharmacy, a bakery, and a pizza take-out joint—among a few other businesses. Why anyone who lives in Valencia drives a car is beyond my capacity for understanding.

My local bar—or I should say my favorite bar—serves as the collective living room for my little neighborhood. People shuffle in and out all day long to have their needs met, whatever those needs may be. The bar/café is where people come together throughout the day and throughout the week to meet with friends, to connect with other people when they are alone, to quietly sit and read a book or loudly scream during an exciting football match. And my little bar is only one of literally thousands around Valencia that serve this same purpose. I shudder to think of the isolationism and solitude of the life most suburbanites lead as they drive home from work, enter their garages, and then raise up the castle drawbridge and spend the rest of their day with no contact with other people in a sort of Unibomber existence.

Labels: politics

8:58 AM

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

 

The Great (modest, minute, tiny?) Leap Forward

I feel that I have not been as active in improving my Spanish as I have in the past. To this end I have decided to greatly increase my reading. To this end I purchased a copy of Ken Follet’s Los Pilares de la Tierra (The Pillars of the Earth), a 1,356 page (with small print I might add) leviathan of a novel about the construction of a mediaeval English cathedral. I found an audio book of it several months ago and began listening to it on my bike rides. I had to give up on it as the robot voice started to drive me nuts about a couple of chapters. I was already hooked a bit on the story and asked around to see if anyone had a copy in Spanish. I finally broke down a couple of weeks ago and bought a copy and started reading in earnest.

I don’t remember this book being very popular in the States but it is enormously popular here in Europe. In Germany it was a monster best seller and here in Spain it seems that most of my Spanish friends have read it. It’s one of those books that when you are reading it in public complete strangers will comment to you about their experience with it. I just find that it is fun to read, although rather difficult in certain passages that deal with the technical aspects of mediaeval architecture. By the time I finish I may not be able to design a cathedral but I could probably get work on a cathedral construction gang—one of my life-long dreams, right after giving the Pope a wedgie.

I am 500 pages into this thing and as far as novels go it isn’t anything to really write about. In one crucial part of the story a family is robbed in the forest and the thief outruns a man while carrying a pig under his arm? Almost nothing has happened that isn’t completely predictable and the characters are right out of the Microsoft Mediaeval Literature software program: a beautiful princess, a nasty little prince, corrupt and ambitious church officials, and a pious monk. It’s something I probably wouldn’t read in English but in Spanish I am quite enjoying it. I like the fact that I see new vocabulary over and over again which helps to reinforce memorization. I have learned a lot of new expressions besides all of the architectural terms, many of which I really didn’t understand I English. As I have said over and over, I just feel that reading is extremely important in language learning. If you like to read you are at a sharp advantage over nonreaders. This is true at least as far as building vocabulary is concerned. I remember having to learn lists of vocabulary in French class way back when. I didn’t really start learning French until I just started reading it.

It is great to be in the middle of a book that I just want to be reading all the time: when I first wake up in the morning, while waiting for a train, on the metro, and then in one or two cafés during the day. I have to go now, time to read.

Labels: language

9:53 AM

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Monday, January 25, 2010

 

Levante UD, Valencia CF, and Paella

What could be more Valenciano than watching a Valencia CF football game and having a paella at my house? How about going to watch Levante U.D.—the other Valencia football team—play, have a paella, and then watch Valencia CF? That was yesterday’s schedule for me—not the worst way to spend a Sunday. It was my first time to see Levante play and I had never even seen their stadium before even though I used to live fairly close. It’s hard to miss as it isn’t very big and even if you do miss it you aren’t missing much—truth be told it’s pretty much an eyesore. They played Betis yesterday and it was a pretty good game, at least the second half when Levante scored on a great free kick. This was enough for them to get three points from Betis. It would be great to see Levante climb back up into the first division for next year. Valencia CF is trying to hang on to third place in the first division behind Real Madrid and Barcelona. They only managed a draw against Tenerife yesterday.

The Levante game ended at 13:45 which gave us just enough time to take the metro from the stadium back home, cook the paella, eat, and then walk next door to see the Valencia game at Bar Canadá which has turned into my new proxy living room. I go there almost every day now for a coffee or maybe a glass of wine in the evening. They show all the games there, the food is pretty good, and it’s a great place for me to read. It just so happens that this was also the first bar I entered in Valencia when I moved here over three years ago. After settling in a bit in my first short-term apartment my brother and I started walking towards the historic center of town when we came upon this bar on a palm-lined boulevard and stopped in for a caña. Now I live a half block away; it’s like god wanted me to move next to Bar Canadá.

Labels: Football

7:51 AM

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Tuesday, January 05, 2010

 

A First-Rate Society

From TVGUIDE:

David Simon (creator of The Wire): The parting message is we are no longer a culture that can recognize our own problems, much less begin to solve them. We will accept the short-term solution, the juked statistics, the jerry-rigged profit over actual substance every time. This is the America we've built and paid for, and it's all we deserve. We have not paid the real cost of being a first-rate society. As long as we buy into the notion that you can build a just society with capitalism alone, it's not going to get any better. It was a critique. I am not anti-capitalist, but if you think that's the prescription for building a just society, you're just naïve. It was a real, angry critique of the last 30 or 40 years.

To me this should be the central message of modern liberalism. If you disagree with this statement (in bold) then you are just a fool who refuses to look at the facts in the matter. When people argue against socialized medicine I ask them to point to a health care system that works better for the people than the systems created in Western Europe. Conservatives will point to silly anecdotal stories where these systems have failed an individual but they won’t look at how our privatized system has failed most of our society. Imagine if we just allowed our roads and highways to be built by private enterprise alone with no help or guidance by the government? It is an absurd thought yet this is how we have chosen to run our health care in America with results every bit as tragic and pitiful as you would imagine coming from this make-believe highway system.

We have already given over to the private realm the planning of our suburban population centers and for the most part they are completely awful and barely fit for human habitation. We have let the parking requirements at Applebee’s trump the needs of the people for a shared human space. In fact, we have gone so far to accommodate the retailers that we have completely forgotten how to even construct a livable urban area. It is no wonder that America has become a country of maxed-out credit cards and people stampeding after one new diet craze after another—we haven’t given people much else to do besides shop and eat.

This is the most important argument in the liberal ideal: How can we expect the needs of citizens to be met when they do not participate in the process? Where are citizens when the strip malls are being planned? I can’t imagine that even the most heartless individual would sign off on a plan that makes a parking lot of about 60% of his environment urban environment. They certainly wouldn’t if they had at least one other choice. It’s not even human beings who design these landscapes; it is committees and flow charts and sales figures that shape sprawl. The biggest problem, as Simon points out, is that we are incapable of even recognizing our problems. We seem to have all of the answers (especially if you ask a conservtive) but we aren't asking the right questions. Most people don’t even realize that they could be living in a much better environment because they have lived with the present landscape of sprawl for so long. To many people Applebee’s is real food and the strip mall is a real town.

I think that what has fueled so much of America’s conservative movement was born out of the mentality of suburban sprawl. Voting statistics will certainly back me up on this. People who live in cities are almost always more liberal than those living in the country or suburban areas. Sprawl has created separation and an unwillingness of many citizens to try to live together with disparate elements of our culture. Why bother to get along when you can just move to a gated community? Tolerance? Who fucking needs it when everyone in the parking lot looks just like you?

It’s difficult to see the benefits of cooperation when you live in the suburbs. There’s no mass transit, few common areas for people to congregate, and almost everyone around you mirrors your income and often your ethnic background. I like to ask conservatives to point out the sort of society they are trying to build. They often tell me that they want America to be more like we were before. They are pretty vague about exactly when their idyllic American society existed. What they really mean is they want us to roll back all of the things Americans literally fought in the streets to achieve and live like we did in the days before income tax, child labor laws, safety requirements in the work place and for products, back when citizens had little say in how the world was shaped, back in the days of completely unregulated capitalism. Man, those were the days.

What I have in mind for America isn’t some dopey utopia or an amnesiac’s cherry-picked view of our past. I can point directly to examples of how we should look in the future. You don’t need a crystal ball to see the kind of society I am talking about; you just need a passport and a couple of weeks of vacation. Take a look at The Netherlands, or Denmark, or Belgium, or France to see evidence of what Simon calls “first-rate” societies. We could learn a lot from Spain about how to build a better place for our citizens to live. Of course, anyone who suggests this is immediately branded as anti-American because America is the greatest country in the world. Period. End of discussion. Except we didn’t really have a discussion.

Labels: politics

8:36 AM

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