of course San Francisco is grey and cold, its high summer and everything is as it should be. I was feeling underwhelmed  yesterday morning as I braced myself and tore down through the fog  to Unsafers. Having a hound is good for the spirits, Akira is just dumb happy to have us home & I can tell by the way hes practically trotting at my side.

On Monterey Boulevard I spotted an outsize naked Barbie doll, her hair a little muzzed and her rigid legs thrust out showing her naked plastic nothingness to allcomers. She was sitting in a dolls pushchair and it would have made a good ravedrama photo if I’d had the means to take it.

Akira and I continued to the store, I was a little blue, the depressant alcohol still swilling in remote capillaries, wondering whether I really want to live here in california anymore. A chubby hipster pulls up in a turquiose Nova station-wagon, gleamingly restored and just fabulous.

As he disembarked I complimented him on his ace car and he scratched Akira’s head and flattered me with his mutt appreciation.

Wherever you are you still have to deal with yourself. sf  has been a great home to me, I can put up with the summer fog.

We really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. There are times when only gentleness and a sense of humour can give us the strength to settle down.- Pema Chodron

FIERCE is not an outfit or a sexy way of dancing. Now I know this – took me 37 years to get there, but I got it alright. Oh, yes I did. More on this later.

Right? In case you missed his performance at the MJ tribute. Holy smokes.

It was the Fourth of July in the mid-seventies, and some girl was doing the splits upside down. She was young, maybe in her late teens, and wearing an American flag bikini. My mom and I were at a gathering of bikers and hippies at a waterfront park near the Gate 6 houseboats in Sausalito, where we lived for a year, or until the boat began to sink, says my mom.

I remember this moment so clearly, watching this girl do slow motion sumersaults, pausing to spread her pale white legs while on her head. I think we noticed her only because she had placed herself in the center of the grassay area, and bikers were shouting her on, like she was a stripper.

“Is she a hooker?” I asked — and I’m not even sure how I knew what a hooker was, but hey, that was the 70s.

“I don’t know,” said my my, pulling me in closer. The energy was sinister, although the girl seemed to enjoy being a spectacle. Soon the bikers had formed a circle around her, and I either sensed or knew that she was removing her bikini. My mom pulled my hand, and we left as fast as we could.

What happened? Was the girl gang banged by a legion of Hell’s Angels, or did she just put on a show? Whatever it was — it was pretty dark. And her frightening vulnerability as the bikers closed in on her is something I will never forget. She had to be about 17.

The Fourth of July is hot apple pie, county fairs and bbqs that reek of burnt meat, cheap coal and lighting fluid. It’s a small paper American flag attached to a toothpick, stuck in some old man’s straw hat. It’s wood-paneled station wagons and little blond kids who can’t contain their snot. Beer bottles, illegal explosions and steep holiday discounts at Safeway. And also, teenage runaways and biker gang rape. Happy Fourth, and God Bless America, y’all.

Trina describing a slaggy girl bad-mouthing her, “she was cunting me off”, first verbal usage in my living memory.

Dude in photo is King Arthur Pendragon, Battle Chieftain of the Druids.He is a former British Army soldier that changed his name by deed poll and spends most of his time down at Stonehenge protesting for public access to the holy site. He was recently arrested for living in his camper van at the side of the road proximate to the stones. He argued that the van was just protest HQ, home is in south london where he drinks tea & nibbles hob-nobs with Merlin.

Viva freaky freedom-fighters!

we got a cab to ‘trina’s from waterloo station, when we disembarked at the elephant Blivs looked up at the high-rise blocks and said “this is england”. both boys are loving the contemporary , brazilian, african , polish cockney london.

Trina runs her 8th floor, two storey southwark council home pretty much like we run ours at home, open fridge policy and wide berth on flat-screen tv watching. the view is tremendous, out around lambeth and across to westminster, we can see the Houses of P, big ben & the terrifyingly huge London eye.Its been hot like Lagos and we sit out on the balc, catching up &  going forward, drinking lager & smoking roll-ups. trina has gotten engaged to the most endearing south london anarchist, and is happier than I’ve ever seen her. Blivs calls her man the Main Guy. He works for the council and brings Trina all kinds of good stuff from the move-outs, most notably DeadMans Bar, a kitsch piece that fits perfectly in the living room and didn’t come from the dead mans house.( A few weeks ago, Main Guy went to a move-out, thought something was seriously off in the fridge on entering but turned out to be an old dead guy, who left this life while sitting in his tv chair.

Otto, my bud  & Trina’s twin,  came for the weekend with Villette and their three kids. We were jazzed at how the next generation jelled, its in their genes to rave together, and they did, later & harder than us old school 40-somethings. As an example of how hospitable our hosts are they housed all of us, 10 in toto,  in the most chilled out style. We needed it after tiptoeing around grandma.  I’m glad we are here and I see the boys soaking it all up. Eldest is drinking  stella shandies at the Main Guy’s request, I like how he is with the boys, no patronizing,  good empathetic uncle vibe.

last night otto, villette & I took all the kids up west in their roomy mercedes van ( they drove in it to Morocco last summer!) the streets were tokyo teeming with people, mostly young, high-spirited and drunk up-for-its. the kids were loving it, we ate burgers in covent garden and people watched.

sight-seeing hasn’t occured on a large scale but the kids now know their way around elephant & castle shopping centre and are happy to be sent to tescos for supplies. they bought thirty bags of crisps on offer and I was glad to find a  worchester sauce flavor packet, steak & chips flavour? no ta. Somehow I’m taking sugar in my tea and buying hob-nobs.. its south london and it must be done.

The night before last there was a terrible fire in a high-rise just down the road, seven dead and the whole block traumatized. Feeling grateful for every day and the friends that we love.

Fuck if I know.

Felicia – we need to learn these moves. They are doing the Charleston. Isn’t it crazy how contemporary they seem?

Rave revival: NO. New takes on futurism: YES.

How do I write about the stuff that most interests me without including the stuff that makes the history complete? I guess it’s not possible.

For research, I’m wading through Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces…a real tome of a history. And it’s making me realize how very little I know about the history of punk rock. Since the turn of this century, punk has come back into focus. And suddenly people who were only touting electronic dance music in the 90’s are leaping to reclaim their punk rock pasts. It is trendy, almost, to say how punk rock you were in the 80’s. Especially if you are white. I cannot make this claim.

First of all, I’ve always been more of a lazy, moody bitch and less of an angry mover and shaker. Also, my mom was young, single and a hippie – I did not have much opposing parental ideology to rebel against. And by the time I was old enough to dye my hair black, my family unit was solidly middle class in so-not-punk Noe Valley. To front as a Haight Street gutter punk would have been pretty laughable.

The things we love — the cultures we buy into, both figuratively and literally — are determined by what is available to us. A baby only knows the love it is given; we only know the music we are fed. It begins as soon as we are born. A baby loves nothing more than the sound of her mother’s voice as she sings her a lullaby. Music, melody, repetitive rhythms, warm vibrations…humans crave this. It is who we are. Radio transmissions, TVs, movies, anything online, we surround ourselves in music for the rest of our lives. Even though a lot of it is crap.

My musical tastes in the 80’s were largely formed by Bay Area radio DJs on KMEL, the Quake, KSOL, and KFOG. Radio was huge and amazing in the 80’s — without it, the music would not have spread like it did, and let’s face it: the music made in the 80’s was pretty epic. Hip hop, electronic r&b, dance pop, post-disco, new wave, punk, house…it was a spectacular time for music. Which meant, for me, it was hard to be exclusive with only one type.

I was obsessed with Prince, but also with The Smiths and L’Trimm. The cross-pollination was made possible because not only I was lucky to have access to diverse independent radio, SF public schools had legendary after-school dances in the 80’s that were DJ-ed by early Bay Area roving hip hop sound system crews , and I had friends whose precocious older sisters danced at new wave nightclubs (Lipp’s Underground, the Oasis, the I-Beam) and owned copies of Upstairs at Eric’s — and that one Ministry album. Breakdancing crews set up in corners of the yard at recess at Aptos, including the famous Littles.

This was the era of Thriller, “It Takes Two,” TI jackets, Adidas, and weird arty girls wearing old men’s jackets, torn black tights and pointy shoes. Hodgpodge sounds corny, but that’s what it was.

So..I could never claim a subculture to have been a part of back then. That would be comforting to say I Was a Punk Rocker, I Was a Hip Hopper. I was nothing really. Just waiting to blossom into a stupid raver, I guess.