Going back to California! After a stint living in St. Petersburg, FL, and getting my degree in NY (thanks for the cheap education and high taxes suckers).  Staying FAR FAR FAR away from SoCal and moving to the Bay Area, however, I am afraid that Oakland has turned/is turning into Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  I have never been to Oakland before (moving for political and educational/career reasons), it just seems like EVERYONE I know is moving there.  But at least none of them I know have within them the bad taste of dressing like Annie Hall or Mrs. Keaton from Family Ties or that dorky gril in your 3rd grade class who always wore glasses that were too big and who's only fashion claim was some ugly headband (yes, that was me!) and I don't want to fucking revert back to ugliness, awkwardness bad taste and I sure as hell do not want to raid the closet of the Golden Girls in my prime physical years to find high waisted, ugly ass clothing that only belongs on refugees whom have no other options.  Yet, these refugees are far more stylish than you, Midwestern cunt who was on Peoples Court today, who moves to Brooklyn and complains about muggin and "shady people".  It's called NYC you dumb bitch!  And there was a reason why so many people moved out 35 years ago and fled upstate and to NJ, because it was dangerous, drugged up and dirty, duh! So take your fucking ugly $500 handbag, your fucking $2000 laptop, your shit brown leather accessories, and your pleated mommy pants that give your 102 lb. frame a "gunt" and go back where you came from!!!

All you do is drive up rent in NYC, gentrify unique neighborhoods and MAKE UPSTATE NY'er's LIKE MY MOTHER, A STATE EMPLOYEE, PAY $6K a YEAR IN TAXES ON A $200K home, FUCK YOU!!!.  You are not "Hip", you are a fucking YUPPIE!  GO BACK TO Wisconsin or wherever the fuck you are from and KEEP OUTTA MY STATE!  Oh yeah, and whats this fake accent you put on like you are trying to be some fucking Rothschild who landed on Plymouth Rock w/ the first Mayflower?  My family DID LAND on Plymouth Rock and the last 3 generations of my family WERE BORN IN NYC AND SOUND NOTHING LIKE YOU, (my Borincan famalia and my white family included)!  You are shitting up NYC AND driving up NY state taxes!!!, You have the fucking balls to call yourself a "New Yorker" because mommy and daddy paid your rent the first 18 months you lived there, yet you A) Never took a NYS Regents Exam in High School (which are hell if you did graduate in NY and know what I mean), B) Never had to pay almost $300 just to get your first Driver's License at 16 or 18 (depending on where you live in NY, bet you didn't know that either huh?) and C) Don't know ANYONE who lives upstate.  If you cannot claim at least 2/3 of those, than I am sorry, you are not a New Yorker just because of your zip code and the fact that now you can say "Fuck" and "Shit" in polite conversations (oh, how novel that must be for you now that you are out of your small, shitty hometown!). 

I WANTED to move to Coney Island, my grandfather was born and raised there and there are good, hardworking teaching jobs there that I qualify for, but you fucking assholes drove up all the rents in NYC and now I have to find some other place to live because NY state taxes are allocated to make your fucking neighborhoods more affluent, rather than paying NY Public School Teachers a good fucking wage and Upstate NY  HAS BEEN SUFFERING FOR DECADES.  That's OK, because I know how much NY state sucks now, and I know that IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.  NYC is fucking Disney World now, with a cop on every block, so have fun suckers!  In closing,  you are certainly NOT a NY'er if this post hurts your feelings!

Oh Canada!

I am back in Rochester and loving it for the last 8 months or so, but as an east coast ex-pat who has returned I want to bash some of these people in the head. Our local government (and assholes who have the gaul to call themselves "Rochestarians" but live in the outlying areas and are too afraid of black neighborhoods to come here) think the solution to our gorgeously depressed and burned out city is to turn it into shopping plaza hell and put in overpriced theater attractions for suburbanites downtown. I went down to High Falls with my boyfriend the other night and laughed at another failed attempt at city revitalization; millions yet again wasted on trying to attract the kind of people who don't live in this city, who don't want to live in this city and people the majority of us who live in the city, do not want in our city. The buildings were all vacant, even the expensive crack town condos are totally empty. There were no cars, yet I couldn't find a legal parking space! All the pay lots that are not even in use anymore were locked up. Nice one Rochester!

300,000 + tax paying people live within our city Mayor Duffy, what are you going to build for us? Another fucking Rite Aid, Starbucks, Subway or jock bar on Monroe Ave? I know Monroe Ave was your predecessor's fault, but leave South Ave alone OK? Its already getting gentrified enough. I live here because I don't want my fucking city to look like Victor, Gates, Pittsford or god fucking forbid, Henrietta and I certainly live here so I don't have to socialize with these ethnocentric assholes from those places.

Anyway, the point of all this is that there is a parking forum at the Library/School on South Ave. Gleason Auditorium 4PM on Monday March 22. Many people, including I, feel that the downtown can of worms mess of shit and parking is what is keeping many away. I will be there because I still give a good goddamn about where I live and love it because Rochester doesn't need to be another Detroit.

I have been thinking about a lot of things lately, mostly the snow. Summer is by far the most DREADFUL part of the year, no matter where you are. Your hair and skin are mess (dryness or frizz, ugly tans and a perpetual glaze of sweat which makes your face break out). Lets not forget how hard the sun is on your dyed hair and forget jumping headfirst into a pool with a purple head of hair. Your clothing is loose, ill fitting and ugly, as even wearing a pair of jeans is torture, no wearing of fun boots, jackets, hats or pantyhose this time of year. The season is particularly cruel when you lack air conditioning or any large, shaded areas near your home or the ability to drive away from it. The beaches are just as, if not more so, muggy than your neighborhood and full of nasty, obese, republican tourists from Arizona and Nevada whose hoards of whining, spoiled, crying children piss you off everywhere you go, who confuse this with more worldly and tropical destinations and think this place, in all its shopping mall glory, is "paradise." And thanks to the teenagers of these assholes, us responsible, tax paying, residents can no longer drink on our beaches which we pay for because they fucked it up for us.

So anyway, fuck this noise, cause I'm going back to NY in 3 weeks and it will no longer be summertime there.

I am feeling all fucked up today, like someone dragged me backwards in time. I arrived in back in the weekends and long summer vacations of my childhood. They were filled with music, food, roasting pigs, and more family than I can remember. Its weird growing up on both sides of the tracks. One side tells you to be proper, not to use slang, and the extended family gives you dirty looks for being the dark, bastard children your mother had with a man far too young, jovial and terribly uneducated for her Mayflower, Ivy league stock. They prime you and primp you for their world; you know all the states and continents by heart before kindergarten, can read and write most small words, and certainly mastered your arithmetic tables. You listened to triumphant war stories, tales of how they escaped the clutches of a putrid, mid-August Venetian current, conquered Peruvian mountains or a jaunted to Africa, while they chugged Manhattans, puffed on Benson and Hedges, and you sipped your hot Ovaltine in satin pajamas , lounging on an ancient Persian rug or in sassy, Swedish butterfly chairs before bed. Oh you were going to be something! They had no doubts about that. But don't marry a black man. We know your grandmother is black, but your different from them. You are like us.

Aye que linda! Venga chiquita!
You never really knew what that meant, but it always sounded so good. You could do no wrong here, unless you hurt someone or broke something, or you went upstairs. NEVER go upstairs. I never understood it then, but it was for good reason. Words were more than just words here. They had power, however bad or good. Defending and meaning one's word still meant something to them, they were not charades of patronization. You never needed to beg for a hug, kiss or even a dance; someone was always there to smother you with more lipstick and cologne than an Avon sales kit. We had no toys. We played with rubbish we found in the alley; "Achin' Head Alley." Glass, tools, nails, snails, sticks, tree stumps. Sometimes my mother would take us to the discount store and we would bring half a dozen coloring books which featured nameless characters and came with cheap, plasticine crayons that made the paper glisten and smelled like the inside of a new shoe. Then we ate, we ate and we ate at that faux wood, formica tabletop that was always felt sticky and smelled like hot sauce. Grown men walked around in pajamas at noon, smoking cigarettes, playing dominoes, or drinking coffee, asking Buela for money. Papi always yelled at them, trying to make himself out to be the responsible son.

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