I live in a city

Last night I rode BART across to the Oakland Coliseum station to see my friends Catherine and Jenny perform. They're part of a loosely organized circle of Action Theater improvisers and they do these pieces several times a year, always on a shared evening with other performers. The show was held in a remote industrial location called the Milk Bar, a throwback to the industrial gentrification pioneering of the 1980s when lots of people had dance and theater spaces in former factories, before real estate people caught on to the idea of "lofts" that could be sold instead to upper middle class buyers at $800,000.

The walk along the BART line and up a deserted industrial side street was properly adventuous. Even when I reached the building itself, it was hard to tell how to enter or which was the right door; I and another would-be audience member walked through a parking lot, from door to door of the former factory, until we found the right one. I was very early but there were already a few people there -- most of them performers, but the food and drinks were already laid out; I regretted having eaten in the city before getting on BART. While waiting I read Steve Erickson's Our Ecstatic Days, the first hundred pages of which are really amazing. I noticed the last time I was at a large independent bookstore that the hardback is already remaindered, so you ought to go down to your local bookstore and pick it up cheap. It's one of those books that make you think, wow, I could never do this, this is really great. It's also very sad, I sat there before the show nearly in tears.

My friends' performance was fine. The people before them were terrible in the sort of stupidly casual way that's typical of performers in their late 20s, who have fantastic bodies and skills and are busily squandering them doing absolute crap.

At intermission my friends left and took me back to BART on the way so I didn't have to walk back. It wasn't far but it was deserted and a little scary, since I don't run as fast as I used to and have probably descended to the level of prey relative to the threatening classes.

This morning: sunny and cool. I hung around until Cris woke up, and gave her coffee.