Ukiah
I’ll talk about San Francisco later.
Made it to Ukiah, the biggest town in Mendocino. Came up through Napa, which is beautiful, and then around Lake Clearwater. I’d heard of it as a hippie town, center of the marijuana growing industry.
Ukiah is the sketchiest fucking place I’ve ever stayed, and that includes several cheap motel districts, South Central among them.
My first thought was “wow, for a hippie town, that’s a lot of signs advertising assault rifles”.
My second thought, driving down the street was “wow, there sure are a lot of institutions that deal with abandoned children”.
Then I checked in at my motel, and walking across the parking lot there was a normal-looking couple in a normal-looking truck, and the woman waved me over and asked, all friendly, “hey, do you happen to know where I could find-” and her voice here dropped like 15 decibels - “some crack?”
I didn’t, but she went knocking on other doors at the motel and I guess someone did, because a while later she was back out in the parking lot very loudly imitating a chicken.
The internet told me the bar one way down the road was a meth den with cheap drinks, I tried the other way and there was a microbrewery with a reggae band playing and young people with dreadlocks dancing. So that was a bit better, but you listen to the conversations and their lives had an absurd amount of violence in them. Not even related to criminal enterprises or feuds or anything, just absolutely pointless violence between friends and lovers. One girl was complaining about how this guy was avoiding her after she beat him up after he threatened to blow her foot off with a shotgun. One of the stories on the front page of the local newspaper was a 27 year old man who was arrested for - while driving! - severely beating his passenger girlfriend in the head and attempting to force a knife sharpener down her throat.
Also I had random people driving by yell at me on the way to and from the bar. One called me “fatass”, one called me “faggot”.
Dude I don’t even know. Apparently it’s still harvest season, when hippies and drifters from all over flood in to trim the marijuana crop for pretty good pay. And judging from cowboys and sailors when a bunch of transients get their pay all at once things get wooly. Maybe it’s different the rest of the year.
Finally, passed by a bunch of tents in a park on the main drag. From experience in Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and San Francisco, I assumed this was #OccupyUkiah. Turns out it was a Boy Scout camping event for the Pumpkin Festival.
Every so often someone from Ukiah finds this post and messages me or reblogs it to say it’s dead-on.
Going through another cycle right now, so thought I’d bring it back for the followers.