Posts from — August 2008

Over what exotic South Pacific village ceremony does this fearsome Tiki god tower? Are there tropical flowers, swaying grass skirts on white sand and palm leaves in the ocean breeze? Or perhaps it’s one of those fun Tiki-styled 60’s cafe’s, motels or liquor stores from the golden age of Southern California. Getting closer - maybe it was a liquor store at one time. But now this great island god holds court over gas fumes, revving engines, grease puddles, asphalt and wrenches: Mission Bay Auto Repair. View from the road (click on the photo to enlarge):

Mission Bay Auto Repair

Don’t miss the tiki design fascia too (click to enlarge):

Tiki Garage Fascia

There is an area East of Mission Bay in San Diego, along and behind Morena Blvd, that’s the home of various low-rent commercial enterprises such as furniture outlet stores, cabinet shops, cheap Chinese take-out restaurants, auto supply stores, office supply chains – you get the picture. I went down there to pick up a bag of kibbles at Petco, and swung by a Taco stand I like there - Nico’s - to nab a carnitas plate with guacamole (a rib-sticking brunch for this Working Boy). On the way out, I spot this place. Here’s another view (click to enlarge):

Mission Bay Auto Repair

Spying this sets off a chain of intense speculation in my mind: if this were once, say, a Tiki-styled liquor store, and is now an auto repair shop, what might such a building potentially become? What are the possibilities for Tikiness? All sorts of wonderful businesses and offices might replace it. The imagination spins wildly:

Tiki Dentistry: the dentist comes out in full colorful Pacific Islander costume, complete with a necklace of wild pig’s tusks around his neck, and with Island cheer he regales you and begins a Tahitian prayer chant to speed your healthful procedure. And he has you drink some strong Kava Kava from a coconut bowl, to relax you.

Tiki French Pastry Shop, with pastries that look like tiki totem poles in chocolate.

Tiki Funeral Parlor - your loved one (or their ashes) gets taken out to sea in an authentic dugout outrigger, paddled by a strong and spiritual Hawaiian dude, about 300 pounds with immense arms and a dark rich tan glistening in the Pacific sunlight as he sweats, a string of green tropical medicine leaves around his neck, singing powerfully as he rows.

Tiki Private Investigators

Tiki Civil Engineering

Tiki Betty’s Bed and Bedding

Tiki Cheese Shop

Tiki TV

Tiki Drapery and Fabric

Tiki Corporate Law Center

Tiki Gun & Ammo Outlet and Firing Range

Tiki Catholic School Oufits & Nurses Uniforms

Tiki Eye Surgical Medical Group

Tiki Nuclear Disposal Systems

I’ll just leave the rest up to you - fill in the details, or go open your own business in a Tiki building.

Have you seen this woman?

Kristine, organizer of "Cocktails in Historic Places"

Going by the name “The Cocktail Maven”, this infamous wench, this scrofulous minx, lured upwards of 30 victims into a small, dark lounge in the seamy “Stingaree” district of downtown San Diego – within the former opium den and house of prostitution named “The Quong Building” at 416 3rd Ave. – where they were subjected to hours of interesting historical stories, delicious drinks, fun conversation and camaraderie with a lively group of characters from the underworld of San Diego’s business and cultural scene.

Cornered by the Maven woman, who claimed her name was “Kristine”, I was subjected to massive warmth and personal attention I felt was undeserved. This attractive and charming red-headed female was dressed in a beautiful orange Chinese dress, and cleverly seduced me into having fun and being social. She is a wanted woman.

I was personally forced to drink two powerful margaritas, which caused me to smile, laugh, and talk uninhibitedly, engaging in pleasant conversation with total strangers, finding much common ground in our lives in San Diego (well, once I finally managed to get the barman’s attention in the din and crush of the crowd).

Next time I’ll be more alert, and arrive early for the punishment (I was late this time, and the talk about the history of the Quong Building was related only by hearsay).

According to inside sources, August’s meetup is cancelled because the Cocktail Maven has to go out of town, but no doubt more crimes will be committed in September.

A plaque on the outside of the Quong Building details the structure’s sordid past:
“The Quong Building (1913) is not only an historical structure, it has also been the site of archaeological digs. The business gets its name from Mon Yueh Quong, a businessman who operated the structure from 1889 to 1928. The building has been listed in city directories as being used as an opium den, a restaurant, and an oriental merchandise store, all during Quong’s operation. Later years saw the building used as a house of prostitution run by the infamous Mary Smith.”

A paragraph detailing the meetup group’s purpose was obtained by reading these words scratched into the walls of a prison cell: “This group is for anyone interested in the architecture and history of San Diego. The goal is to provide a comfortable social happy hour in historically significant surroundings, and perhaps increase awareness of some of the triumphs of preservationists in the San Diego area.”

Hope to see you there next time!

In the Large Magellanic Cloud, stars form and evolve, blazing with high-energy radiation, lighting up glowing tapestries of dust and gas in the surrounding nebula (click on image to enlarge).

Hubble Image of NGC 2074

This image was taken in commemoration of the 100,000th orbit of the Hubble telescope around the Earth, in it’s 18th year of operation. The image shows a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. “It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies.” (Astronomy Mag.)

Gaseous filaments glow under cosmically intense ultraviolet radiation, and giant pillars of dust form canyons a hundred light years wide.

Took a little poll (very little, but high quality) from a couple photographer/writer friends I’ve known for many years and whose creative judgement I trust, and they both liked (from the list I sent them), the name “strangeoutput” the most. “Something about ’strangeoutput’ amuses me.” Troy Paiva writes, and Larrie Thompson says “… Anyway, yeah, strangeoutput… Another vote in favor!”. I tend to agree. “Tend”? No, it’s more than a tendency, it’s a … something stronger than that anyway. A bone of… no, that’s ‘contention’. A boner? I have a boner for it? Nevermind. Like I said – or am about to say – the brain serves up strange output. In any case, it rings true - with what my girlfriend says about me and what the brain does. And it just sounds cool, and let’s face it, in this coollified medium, that’s what counts, eh?

And besides, “Blog Sin Nombre” is already taken - by a few Spanish-speaking bloggers in South America. There’s also a YouTube video by that name - (actually two) by some Spanish-speaking dude yabbering into the camera.

The subtitle of the newly-renamed blog, er “Tagline” (as if this were a movie - maybe it sorta is, with the way it “plays” on a screen, before the viewer’s eyes…), what immediately came to mind was “Missives from the edge”, which goes along with “strangeoutput”, since my tendency to think philosophically, or be interested in the edges of science, be skeptical about society, always reaching for some creative newness in art, photography, writing, inventions, ways of living, etc. … it all goes together. (If it all starts “going together” too much, it’s time to put me in the loony bin).

Now I just gotta be brave and sign up for the domain name, before somebody nabs it …

And if I do at some point, then I have to migrate all the posts, comments, etc. over to the new site. Then do a little trick so that the search engines don’t wipe me out of their listings because of duplicate content – this involves, from what I’ve read, putting a 301 redirect in the .ht … something or other. On the server. At the “root level”. You techfreaks can read about it here.

Yeah, I like it.
“We’re getting some strange output here,” the master technician said, staring at the monitor intently, tapping determinedly at the keyboard …

Indeed.

Did you see the news item about fears of a micro black hole being created by the new Large Hadron Collider at the European particle physics laboratory (CERN) - a black hole that could eat up the Earth? Yeah, some dude in Hawaii was worried enough to sue them. Here it is: “Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More”

Well anyway I just ran across a video from CERN – basically an advertisement for them. Cool but slightly scary in a sci-fi sort of way:

This (reassuring) article from Science Daily reflects the view of scientists that there’s no danger:

If The Large Hadron Collider Produced A Microscopic Black Hole, It Probably Wouldn’t Matter

Here are some good links about the Large Hadron Collider. There’s even an “outreach” site from CERN.:

Wired: Science

LHC Machine Outreach

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider website

Ray At Night is a monthly arts event on Ray St., in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego. It’s a big party, but with culture: galleries, music, food, and freaky people, looking at art and imbibing the refreshments and snacks.

I got there somewhat late this time. The crowd was thin tonight for some unknown reason. Met some friends – Jill, Pasha and Dave – at the “Tiki Bar” in the backyard of one of the galleries. Only had a twenty for the $2 donation for the plastic cup of Dos Equis beer, and she gave me $14 in change (I discovered later). Ah well at least it tasted good.

Went over the Andrea Rushing’s gallery - sort of an obligation to make an appearance, since I had two paintings up there. Saw people looking at one of my paintings that always attracts interest – “Girl With A Cosmic Outlook (after Vermeer)” – and got a photo of one of them:

Viewer looks at "Girl With A Cosmic Outlook (after Vermeer)" (click to enlarge)

Jill and I were hungry and I felt like pizza, so we wandered over to Florencia’s Pizza around the corner. I ordered a 10″ Hawaiian Pizza. It wasn’t bad (nothing spectacular) and I was hungry enough to eat three pieces (I’ll write a review for Yelp.com).

Jill was tired, but before leaving, I had to pop into the San Diego Art Department where I used to take classes, and take a few shots of Jim Stewart’s show (click on images to enlarge).

Jim was almost always there in the studio working on one of these nudes when I was working on paintings. He likes to paint colorful, impressionistic nudes. It was nice to see the body of work he’s built up. His oeuvre. He has a unique use of color which I always enjoyed, and I respect his dedication. In the past he’s always painted his women from the back, with their face hidden. His latest painting shows the woman’s face, and the face is nicely done:

"Valeria, Reclining" by Jim Stewart (click to enlarge)

These are just the beginnings of some notes and explorations about the topic of Social Networking Software and websites. I welcome comments.

I’ve been playing around with Facebook lately, and have an account there - an “identity” if you will (as myself - Eric Platt) . I’ve gotten some messages from friends and family, and notices via email that someone wants to add me a s a “friend”.

But it’s a strange kind of socializing, if you want to call it that. What is it about? People update their “Status Updates” with what they made for lunch or what kind of tea they drank. My question is, who cares? If they do care, why? I exchange messages with people, yet I could do that via email. I prefer to use it to mention projects I’m working on.

Is it real community? A symptom, or a cure of what ails us?

It’s ironic that I’m writing about social networking software sites via a blog - yet another way of trying to connect with people via computer networks and software. Of course, people have been doing social networking with computers for decades: using email and Usenet. What’s the difference?

I asked a friend of mine, who is not a computer person but very social and has used FaceBook, her impression of the social networking website phenomenon. For one thing, she mentioned that the difference from email and such is that you have visuals.

Speaking of visuals, Flickr, the photo sharing site, is also a kind of social networking site. People share their photos, make comments on each other’s photos, interconnect their accounts from this and other social networking sites, and so forth. It has some of that same cutesy, trendy concept and design. I tried used Flickr a little, again at the urging of an acquaintance, and found the interface frustrating. If I was going to represent myself as a photographer and as a person through time (a photo journal as it were) on their site to other people, I wanted to have a large collection of my photos online, and that was just too onerous a project, given the awkwardness of the uploading, tagging, organizing etc. via their interface, and the fact that I’d have to go through 7 years of photos and find the relevant ones and re-size/process them for Flickr’s site. Who has the time? A friend of mine that does night photography, has a very high output level of photographs, and has published a couple of books on the subject, uses Flickr as a kind of testbed to see what people’s reactions are. It’s a marketing tool, both for feedback, to get his name out there more, and connect with other people that he knows or doesn’t. I can understand how for him it has a function. For me, I’m not quite so sure, yet.

Another interesting observation my friend made, that I also noticed, was that people do it to show how popular they are. Why show how many friends you have (a feature of Facebook)? Is it the Same Old Game? In other words, stupid social status popularity contests like in high school? On the plus side, she thought it would be a way to see what friend has what friend, or could be a way to connect with a friend of a friend. You could possibly find people with similar interests, or who you’ve emailed with in the past. Kind of scary though that all these people from the past show up in the “Friend Finder”.

I also took a look at Twitter, where people post what they are doing moment to moment almost, but it seemed pointless to me. I think it’s really more for high schoolers (if not younger) laying on their beds with the iBooks and cells phones their parents gave them. The graphic design would seem to reflect that.

Twitter: What are you doing?

Business people are noticing though - if there’s a trend, there’s a market, right? The other night I noticed an ad on the sidebar of Facebook. It was for a new social networking site “for adults”. It’s called teebeedee, and is marketed towards those over 40. I found an article about it entitled “TeeBeeDee - Social Networking For Baby Boomers” at Business Pundit. The founder, a successful businesswoman already “realized that her generation is very different than previous generations, and that they needed a way to connect, talk, and learn about the things that were important to them.” Now, it doesn’t seem to me it’s strictly for “baby boomers” - I’m 48, and don’t consider myself a boomer - but I get the point: us “old people” just can’t relate to Twitter, Facebook etc. We don’t “get it”. I will probably sign up, just to explore it, and report back to you…

Speaking of ads, let’s be honest here - these are businesses we are talking about, and some of them make serious money.

My friend also suggested that these types of sites prey on people’s loneliness and boredom.

Does it replace real life socializing and being out in nature? There is another site, called Second Life, that’s even stranger and scarier. A programmer friend told me about it. She thought it was so great and wanted me to get involved in it. She is someone that seems to spend all her time at her computer, seemed reluctant to meet people in real life, being an introverted type (who’d had some painful experiences in the past) especially if it was strangers. You can build things, sell things, all in a 3-D virtual world … but why?

Second Life Online Virtual World

The other comment my observant friend made about social networking software was “Why are so many people so lost?” Of course, the theme of “alienation” has been in the culture for a very long time. I remember an acquaintance years ago (she was 17 at the time, but very bright), in relation to Instant Messaging, said that she thought technology actually separated people more than it brought them together. So it is ironic that we are trying to bridge the gap with software. Is it working?

These activities, or ways of being, are what I would call, from my psycho-spiritual studies “Mind-oriented”. It’s why computer dating doesn’t work very often. An image you have in your mind of someone is not the real person. It is a projection. When mental life and reality collide, there is disharmony, pain, even violence.

But these new forms of electronic social networking can have their benefit. You can see what people are doing - if they post something of substance - or experiencing. Perhaps the question to ask is, how much to you expect to get from it - photos of someone’s vacation, or a sense of real connection?

I also am concerned about privacy issues, but will save that for another day…

Recently (June 18, 2008) a cover article entitled “No Shushing in This Library” appeared in The San Diego Reader newspaper about the libraries in San Diego. Featured prominently was the North Clairemont Library (Google Map link). This was rather interesting, because I knew that my father, who was an architect, had designed it - in fact I’d been up to the library a number of years ago to photograph it.

(I haven’t found my photos yet, but in the meantime, here’s the Google Street View):

North Clairemont Library, Google Street View

I didn’t expect him to be mentioned in the article, but then towards the end of the article he was! The author – Alex Finlayson – apparently lives near the library and likes it. He (or she?) mentions that it was rebuilt a couple times after fires in the 80’s, to original specifications. It was designed, I’ve now learned from my own research, in 1960.

” ‘The North Clairemont Library is among our favorites,’ says Keith York, SOHO member and moderator of ModernSanDiego.com. San Diego architect Robert Platt’s design ‘communicates like a billboard, attracting onlookers and passersby to investigate what’s inside,’ he says, singling out the unique ‘diamond-shaped fascia’ that runs across the library’s front. According to York, the North Clairemont Branch Library is ‘among the few and best examples of Googie architecture’ left in San Diego.”

Apparently it’s a well-liked library, and they have a scrapbook about the library and the fires at the branch.

This sparked off a dialogue between Keith York and I, which in turn led further motivation to the preservation of my father’s archive of work. My mother recently was moved into an assisted living facility, and her house put up for sale. All his work is in her garage, and I am the only one who has the time (or interest perhaps) to work on a preservation effort (plus the skills to do the digital work). Keith has subsequently published some of the material I’ve sent him on his site.

At this point (8/7/08), I’m in the early stages of the project, and need to write up a basic biography and timeline. I managed to find a project list (my father kept everything), and started to construct a web page of Robert Platt Architecture Projects , using that list as a backbone. I haven’t listed all the project yet, but you can start to see how much work he did! Another exciting thing for me was to see what buildings are still around. I was able, as I found addresses to add to the project list, to find a Street View in Google maps, and see the buildings, and recognize that they were definitely his - he had an unmistakable style. I’ve added links along the side of the project list web page to these Google Street Views.

Keith got excited when I showed him the drawing I’d uncovered of the Pearl Hotel. Turns out a friend of his renovated this hotel (originally called “The Sportsman’s Lodge”, and built for businessman Frank Naso). A bit later I found the folder for the Naso Hotel, which included the orignal (pencil!) plans and a wonderful concept sketch, with lots of typical R. J. Platt flair. I remember “The Sportsman’s Lodge” - the logo on the front of the building - I must have passed it hundreds times of times, growing up in Point Loma, but moved from there in the late 70’s …

Last night I watched an interesting program entitled “Buddha’s Warriors“, by the CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. The report was about Buddhist monks taking action against oppression by the Chinese in Tibet and in protest against the military regime in Myanmar (Burma).

Tibetan Protester

I applaud their efforts to stand up against oppression. But a philosophical question occurred to me:

All things are interconnected, and helping others leads to happiness, claims the Dalai Lama. Likewise hurting others causes suffering in oneself.

What about helping those who cause suffering? This would seem to be a dilemma. For example, should Buddhist monks help the Chinese (who are causing suffering), as individual Chinese human beings, and as a group? There are a couple senses in which the monks might “help” their opponents. For example, the Dalai Lama and some others favors a conciliatory approach towards the Chinese (and autonomy rather than independence). You could argue that this is helping the Chinese, and may or may not be helping the Tibetans in the long run (it’s hard to know - I’m just posting the question). Or, let’s say a monk who is walking along in the street sees a Chinese soldier, who yesterday shot one of his brother monks during a protest. The soldier suddenly slips and injures his leg and starts wailing in pain. Should the monk stop and help him, or would that be helping “the enemy”? Where would the greater harm lie? Can the Buddhist ideals be reconciled with (Buddhist or political) pragmatism?

This topic reminds me that a few days ago I was researching the Dorje Shugden controversy. (I researched it after stumbling on this page at the Buddhist Magazine Tricycle). “The practice of Dorje Shugden is currently banned by the 14th Dalai Lama, and this has led to ongoing segregation in the Tibetan community in exile and disharmony amongst Western Buddhist centers.” (Western Shugden Society website) This controversy points up the fact that even in a religion that stresses the unity and interconnectedness of all things, politics and divisions occur.

(I used to be a Buddhist. I’m not anything now - just a plain old, flawed human being

The scenario: Horton Plaza, late at night, when you are a bit drunk, spaced out from the late hour, lost, trying to “get validated” (for parking, not psychologically), needing to take a pee with no restroom to be found, and trying to focus on finding your car, going up and down levels that look the same… is an experience straight out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil movie.

Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" movie

How it came about: “Just for that, I’m gonna fuck you up, bitch”, chided the bartender, pouring tequila and triple sec with both hands into my glass. The bartenders remarks were all - or mostly - in fun: him playing up his role, and dealing with my complaint. He didn’t do it in a mean way, and he didn’t charge me - but his pride was hurt that I insulted his margarita-making. He even showed me his ingredients, pulling a large white container of margarita mix from under the bar. What inspired this defense? When he’d asked me if I wanted another drink I’d said, “No - that margarita you made me was watery. I paid eleven dollars for a watery margarita!” (I was already buzzed from margarita number one, and feeling less inhibited by this time). And I said this in earshot of Kristine – the woman I was sitting next to, chatting with.

The occasion: A “meetup”. The Meetup.com website is a way for people with similar interests to get together – in real life. A friend mentioned that this particular meetup – “Cocktails in Historic Places” – would be a good place to share something about the work I’d been doing preserving my father’s architecture work. And indeed, the organizer, Kristine - an affable woman - who I contacted via email, was eager to meet me and even mentioned The Pearl Hotel (which my father designed in 1959) as a candidate site before I did. This meetup location was the lounge in the front of a very fancy downtown Mexican restaurant called Candela’s in an historic building – The Quong Building (1913) no less – that used to be an opium den and place of prostitution, to name some of the formerly profitable ventures there.

Well, I’m not a big drinker, and don’t weigh a lot, being one of those ectomorphic skinny high-strung cerebral-artistic types. So by the time I walked out of there - at 11pm, three hours after driving around and around trying to find parking, and finally giving up and parking in Horton Plaza – I was pretty high - “tight” as they used to say, in historic times (as far as driving - fortunately I’m a controlled drunk - you generally can’t tell I’ve been drinking - partly because I don’t’ drink enough so that you could tell!).

So after sucking back this potent second margarita, and jabbering some more with the delightful characters in the dark lounge, trying to compete with thumping music that shook my body and head, we walked from the restaurant straight down Third Avenue to Horton Plaza.

Horton Plaza by day

After climbing over a cable barrier to our car, I decided in my condition and tired as I was, it wasn’t worth it to try and go to the upper level and get the ticket validated from the free machine (I remembered using last time I was there). I then drove down the chute to the exit. But I was living in a dreamland apparently, because I was told by the man that because I didn’t validate my ticket when I got there, it will be twenty dollars!! “I thought maybe it would be three dollars”, I said, calmly proclaiming my innocence in the face of this obvious absurdity. Surely he will see that it was a simple misunderstanding, a mistake, and let us go for a reasonable amount. No such luck. After he explains various facts of the matter to me, not budging an inch or really caring or having any hope for me (or a soul come to think of it) and me sitting there in the car pondering what to do - he says the only thing open is Long’s Drugs, on the other end of the mall, and they are probably closed, and they can only validate you for an hour in any case.” Cars are going to start coming in behind you pretty soon” he says. Time for a decision: I’m not paying $20! So I back up out of the exit chute, make a backwards U-turn, and drive up a couple of floors and park by an mall entrance.

I was a bit miffed at this point, to say the least - determined and stubborn - and I didn’t think to memorize what vegetable or fruit my car was by. I was going to get validated if it was the last thing I did, dizzy and woozy and spaced out or not. Not knowing what (same-looking) exit my car was near became problem number three in the Terry Gilliam multi-level maze of Horton Plaza.

Surely dear reader you can understand: you just want find a goddamn restroom for a badly needed pee, which seems to be hidden from mortal eyes, and no one cares that you are an innocent drunk and lost person in the nearly abandoned man-made structure, no one around except the young partyers here and there coming and going, laughing it up, or buying cigarettes at the Long’s Drugs. It’s like a man-made maze, a trap to get your money, and you want to get out of this crazy dream, and you have faith in yourself to do things, and in the goodness of people. It is a surreal experience. It was like being in the movie Brazil, for real. Is there no mercy? You are alone, pitting your wits and resources against The Machine. The artificial environment, the people that work there part of The Machine, the Game, the smoke coming from the loud workman’s saw doing God knows what at this hour. He is in his own world and doesn’t respond to your girlfriend asking him about where the button is to call security.

I thought I’d remembered from past experienced at Horton Plaza there being restrooms in the hallways by the large exit tunnels (the ones with phones and some other vending type machines vending who-knows-what). But there were none there. A security person said there was a restroom up by the Panda Express, way the hell up on the fourth level - he said in passing, not really caring about this strange drunk man. I noticed a fountain - hmm, too many people around to risk peeing in it.

Standing in line, after finally finding the Long’s Drug store, spaced out, still needing to micturate badly, but absolute in my determination to get VALIDATED and not let them get the best of me and take my hard-earned money, with the night flowing with bimbos and party kids wanting cigarettes, an older black man wanting some kind of booze bottle, the stressed heavyset young blond clerk had to talk on the mike to another clerk somewhere to find it. I tried to ask her if I could get validated amidst all this but she gave me an expression like “are you kidding? can’t you see this is insane?” and said nothing. I felt for her and the stress. What kind of life did she have, to be working in this God-forsaken concrete jungle at 11 somethign at night. Finally getting to the counter after much self-control and saying I’d like to get validated, she said it’s only for an hour and you have to buy something that’s at least three dollars. Fortunately my girlfriend was hungry, and she quickly grabbed some bags of white chocolate pretzels and dried fruit bits by the counter that, if it had been me, in my state of mind, looked way too scary to spend my (what felt like extortion) money on, but actually turned out to be pretty good tasting after all this exertion, up and down and trudging the hallways and shiny grey concrete parking levels and colorful shops - I walk fast, especially when I’m angry and stubborn and determined. A good way to work off enough of the alcohol buzz to be able to drive in a more relaxed fashion.

My girlfriend also, bless her heart, had the suggestion of going out through a different exit. This turned out to be a gift from heaven - the young black woman somehow intuiting our plight and heroic adventures to validate (or perhaps we were just another couple of poor schmucks, like she’d seen so many times before, caught in the vicious maze), only charged us two dollars, saying this time is your learning experience, or however she put it. Indeed.

We drive out, smiling, escaping from the rat tunnel, free humans once again, into the downtown night …