Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Vampires
Our gym sits right next to a pizza parlor, no doubt for the convenience of putting the fat back on after you’ve worked so hard to get it off. My son and I pulled into the parking lot a few minutes after nine, and the pizza parlor was dark. Plenty of cars in the parking lot — ours is a busy gym, and stays busy well past ten — and yet the restaurant had already closed.
One thing about going to Berkeley: you become accustomed to a city that never sleeps. If I remember correctly, I could (if I was so inclined) get a slice of Blondie’s pizza right up until midnight. Was Top Dog open that late? I don’t remember. Even back then, I wasn’t insane enough to eat a Polish sausage at midnight. But the coffee shops stayed open and so did the used book stores and record stores. That city is alive.
Not all college towns are this enlightened. I remember our shock when, one Sunday morning, Karen and I tried to find an open coffee shop in Palo Alto. This was not one of those, “I wonder if anything is open” adventures. We knew there would be an open coffee place probably one to every city block. And we were wrong. Or rather, we were right, but we were in the wrong city.
Berkeley is a town for vampires. (As I think I might have mentioned at one point, the grad student who had Karen’s tiny studio apartment before she did must have been a vampire. He had quite carefully covered every last window with foil. Needn’t have bothered, though, since the windows overlooked the apartment building’s hollow central space — sorry, there must be a word for that, but I don’t know it — and no, ATRIUM is all wrong because that implies something kinda nice, and this wasn’t. Anyway, precious little light penetrated down that far, even at noon.) It’s a town for vampires and insomniacs and students whose midnight oil miraculously burns Hanukkah-style until 3 or 4 in the morning. I walked or ran or skipped those streets because often they were quieter than the dorm. And often less depressing.
And so I’ve decided my son ought to go to his parents’ alma mater. Jake goes to bed after 2, sometimes well after 2. And while he’s not into eating Polish sausage at midnight now, I can’t help but think, Not yet.
Other kids go to college and experiment with drugs and alcohol. My prediction for Jake: he won’t do the drugs and he won’t do the alcohol. No, he’ll go the full vampire, completely inverting his schedule.
How he’ll manage to make it to his classes is a mystery to me, but fortunately, that’ll be his problem and not mine.
D.
Austin is Vampire friendly – except in the heat catagory. And even that is less extreme at night. The campus are has lots of places open til mifnight.
And here I am at 3am. I’d happily be a fampire if I didn’t need to function on others’ schedules during the day. 🙂
That was one of the neat things about living in Toronto, too — lots of places open until midnight or later, any night of the week. Twenty-four-hour grocery and drug stores, too. A bit different from way up here in Northern Canuckland. We joke that the sidewalks get rolled up by 9pm…but it’s mostly true.
But that’s okay. I’m old now and would much rather be at home and reading or watching a movie than meandering city streets.
Ugh. That sounds really sad. Might as well move me into the nursing home, huh???
Austin, what little I saw of it, looked like a fun college town. About the only place in Texas I’d consider returning to, in fact, since it had a very California feel to it.
I’ve heard great things about Toronto as well. Oh, and Kris? You’ll be nursing soon enough, no?
Oh, and Kris? You’ll be nursing soon enough, no?
*SNORT*
Funny, funny guy.