COLGR49--specificity of place

[Doug Millison]

Hewlett and Packard established their company in a garage (Palo Alto or
Menlo Park, I forget which now) in the mid-'30s, I believe, and introduced
its first product in 1938 (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/hist_30s.htm).
The company's founding is considered a seminal event in Silicon Valley
history.

Yes, people still call SF "the City" despite the burg's decidedly Disneyfied
aspects -- those almost too-cute cable car bells tolling through wisps of
fog up hills lined with rows of neatly-painted Victorian gingerbread houses.
I guess for the unalloyed version of that, tourists now can just stay down
south in the new Disney theme park, "California Adventure" or whatever
they're calling that PoMo abortion.  I'm working right this minute in one of
the ugly high rises that have marred the skyline south of Market just two
blocks off the Embarcadero, I can see huge container ships -- a very long
one right now -- as they pass through the ship channel, bypassing the port
of SF to go under the Bay Bridge and unload at the port of Oakland across
the Bay.  My view includes the island of Yerba Buena (a good idea on a
chilly City evening, of course) across the channel, extended by the flat and
man-made Treasure Island, and part of the Bay Bridge. 

Cal remains Cal, especially for the football and basketball fans but for the
rest of us UC Berkeley graduates, too.

Not enough of bohemian City life left for my taste, what was left by the
mid-90s pretty much got driven out of town as rents mushroomed and the SUVs
took over in the dot.com boom.

It's been a couple of years since I read COL49, and my copy's packed up --
we're finally going to move house this month, and if you know anybody who
wants to buy a cute little 3 bedroom 2 bath in El Cerrito just three blocks
from BART, I've got one to sell them and can provide the url for online pix
and info -- I don't remember Pynchon using  the Northern/Southern California
rivalry that is so important to some snooty San Franciscans who look down on
Los Angeles and what they often refer to as Lower California. Of course by
now we're all victims of the malling of America, so any cultural snobbery is
decidedly misplaced, IMHO, even among you New York-based P-listers.  ;-)

Pynchon is said to have a long history here in the SF Bay Area.  The
Vineland Papers contains a rather funny -- for several reasons -- essay by a
guy who reports his experience of smoking pot with P in Berkeley back in the
'60s.  P is said to have written at least part of Vineland at a particular
house in Aptos, a beautiful seaside town near Santa Cruz, which would be
across the mountains by that name about an hour's drive (depending on the
time of day of course) south of San Jose, the southern terminus of Silicon
Valley and the Peninsula that serves as a setting for COL49.