It was 9 am-ish in mid-December. I sat in a cafe along Folsom Street in the SOMA neighbourhood of San Francisco. This was the nearest place to me that had caffeine. Scratch that – the actual nearest place was a tiny 24/7 corner store (you’d call it a “bodega” in NYC), and had prepared coffee in a big tankard, no seats. So I was sitting in the nearest place to where I lived that had caffeine but also seating. The cafe was a “combination cafe and audiophile equipment store”. The back room was for audiophiles with money to burn, only. The barista was a gender-ambiguous Mr. Clean look-alike, complete with single piratical earring, who towered over everyone at 6’5″ish.

I lived in a two-story pseudo-legal “artist warehouse” made out of cinderblocks. It has now been razed to the ground, after nearly a decade of premonitionary threats that a condo building would go up there. The plot still sits empty even now, unfortunately.

I only lived there for the last 4 months of 2016. My room was just a bed – directly outside my door was some sort of stage/rehearsal area. About 12 people shared two bathrooms. Given the quantity and fluid-proof coverings of couches in the main area, this was probably a sex club at some point.

One Friday morning a month and a bit before, I was woken up by the sound of high-pitched squeaks. I opened the door of my room to discover multiple people in Pokemon outfits. This was not a for-fun anime or furry convention, but in fact serious character performers rehearsing for a high-paying gig at a Niantic party that evening, celebrating Pokemon Go.

A couple weeks before, a similar place to where I lived burnt down, killing 36 people. I can’t possible summarize this, and you should read the article about Ghost Ship in Oakland. I had friends of friends who died. This type of living arrangement was common in the Bay Area because (a) rent was expensive (b) the Bay Area attracts weird and wonderful people that want to co-live with art spaces. Our building’s live-in manager was way less sketchy than many, and I felt completely safe in our place. However, we did get a round of surprise inspections, and had to make a big show of not living there to the property owners (those of the long-term condo-building plan). This performance required us to haul all our mattresses into one back room on short notice so we could pretend that our bedrooms were art studios. For the next few weeks, we were paranoid that people would report our location as illegal housing, and so had to enter and exit the building like it was a spy safehouse. During this urban espionage era, a friend and I were playing a long-term game with where we only corresponded using pre-phone technologies, such as letters (that’s a story for another time) and they accidentally sketched out several of my building-mates by standing out front one day and asking if I lived there.

I moved out of SF and back to Toronto at the end of Dec 2016. I had decided to pursue a Green Card (permanent residency) in the US, and in consulting with a lawyer, determined the fastest way to do so was to manage the process by myself while doing consulting work, instead of with a fixed employer in the US. I made the choice to do this, sending the lawyer his deposit, the day before Donald Trump was elected. I still consider this a bait-and-switch on America’s part. The morning of the election, me and several friends sat in silence in the now-closed DNA Pizza location. The morning after, I went to the same audiophile cafe, and I’ve never experienced such caring eye contact from strangers as everyone silently checked in. For my last two months in SF, I rented one of the garage spaces on the first floor of the building I lived in, as a live mixed reality production space for Raktor, my foray into live VR performance and concentric levels of audience participation.

We fancied ourselves smack in the middle of the VR District-to-be:

(our nearest neighbours Rothenburg Ventures ultimately having a hilarious fallout)

Back in that cafe, in late December, as I was pondering my future heading back to Toronto. Two women walked in, one in her 20s, one in her mid 50s, probably a daughter and mother.

They walked up to the barista and the older said “Is your latte artist here?”

The barista, mid pour, glanced and them and replied “No, unfortunately, she’s gone freelance”.

The woman said “Ah, that’s too bad” and left out the front door, neither having ordered anything.

I have not since experienced such a high density of surprising information.