Yes, it is my birthday and yes, it seems to be going fine. Yesterday I took BART over to San Francisco, Powell Street again near Union Square, where all the tourists and the shoppers and yesterday, at least, all the Sole Proprietors hang out. I walked up the hill, took some pictures, sat outside at a sidewalk table drinking coffee, took a dog leg to Grant and went through Chinatown to Columbus and the edge of North Beach. Haven't been there in ten years. Haven't lived in San Francisco for 18. (This is the place where I go into a long introspective about those years: the thrills, the adventures, the angst, but let's skip it today, OK? Give it a rest.)

I came to San Francisco in 1969 from Seattle after getting out of the army. I remember the bright sun and bright white buildings on the hills. I remember driving with Baumgart to City Lights, the book store of the Beats, the book store of Ginsberg and Kerouac and Burroughs and Brautigan. North Beach. Hot shit.

I went in yesterday and looked around. Same books, new covers with old names. How many people with a hungry look still come to check it out, their belongings in the back of a Volkswagen bus the way we did? And if they do still come, would I recognize them now that I'm an old fart with a camera, taking snap shots like some tourist? (You bet your ass I would.)

I crossed the street to check out Spec's. There was a big heavy padlock on the door. I took a picture. There was a glass case with some old Herb Caen columns tacked inside, the same ones I remember from 18 years ago was my thought. Was Spec's still here? And Spec himself, was he still around? It looks abandoned, but then it looked abandoned in the '70's too, not the place you'd necessarily think to go if you wanted to hang out. (A good test, if they preferred Spec's, if they even knew about Spec's, chances are they were all right.)

I asked the guy at City Lights if Spec's was still open and he said, well it was Sunday, they didn't open til five. Ah, I said, it's still there, I was worried maybe it had closed down. "Thank god yes," the guy said. Like the poster faces on the wall, Spec's was a place from an earlier time when those poster people looking into the camera also got shit faced at the bar. (Discussing art and life. What else? Well, some of them, the one's that hadn't gotten rich and were still alive.)

Later: The DSL line has been installed. Worked fine for about twenty minutes after the installer left then it pooped out. I believe it was live for the install, but then they shut it down at the office. Otherwise the thing is tanked and I'm going to have to screw around with the phone company for about a million years before it works, so I'll tell myself all is well and deal with it if I can't connect when I get home from work tomorrow.

The instructions (and the installer) say it takes 24 hours to set up the ISP end of the deal before you can go online, so I'll finish this tonight and post it from work tomorrow morning. This is, I think, a fundamental change (if it works). People will talk of the old days, the pioneer days when you had to dial in to connect.