Lani and I had a nice day yesterday, despite the fact that she slept until 11 o'clock and ruined my original plans for the day.

We stopped in Oakland at the farmer's market and picked up various food items. While there we learned that the neighborhood is getting a Trader Joe's (which I abhor for its false hippie-like piety but Lani loves). We ran into Kato, my former personal trainer. Since I've got to pot over the last couple years that was like running into an old girlfriend who has gone onto success while you're still just a loser. This man really is an amazing physical speciment. Also, got a flyer from an impeach Bush/Cheney group promoting a showing of some anti-Bush movie at the Grand Lake. First of all, it was good to see the theater owners finally taking a clear stand on the president since until now they've been ambiguous (for those who don't know the area and the theater's very political marquee, this is sarcastic). But I also wonder what they really hope to accomplish at this point in the president's administration. They've got, at minimum, months and months of grassroots work to do to inspire a serious impeachment drive, then many more months of political showmanship to get it going and then by the time it actually happens (in their soft-focused fantasy world where it actually might) the president is nearly out of office anyway). If they must focus their hatred for Bush and Cheney shouldn't they be focused on high publicity (but still doomed to failure) lawsuits against the man to have ready for filing the day he is once again a private citizen?

After that we took our foodstuffs to China Camp State Park, which is just outside of San Rafael (which, for those outside the area unfamiliar with California's mixed feelings on how Spanish should be pronounced, is actually pronounced "chi-me-chah-nga." Weirdos. Anyway, we went there for the simple reason that we'd never been there before.

As far as the historical "attraction" of the park goes, it is underwhelming. The waterfront here was once a large Chinese shrimping community. A community driven out of business by racist protectionist laws against dried shrimp exports and traditional gathering techniques. Later, a single family lived their being somewhat traditional and then at some point the state got the land and maintains the small camp and some descendent of that one family still lives there.

Here's China Camp from the far end of its pier:



There are work buildings to the left, not in frame, but this pretty much shows how exciting it is. There is one building with some displays giving a very fractured history and showing proper outrage over how California treated its Chinese population late in the 19th century (the Bay Area is, generally, very fond of showing this outrage). Left unmentioned is the fact that the method of shrimping they used (static nets) is very harmful ecologically and it was probably good that it was outlawed.

Anyway, it is nice to know it is there but we need never visit again. The state park itself is much larger than just this camp and based on the cars parked along the road as we drove through is something of a key area for mountain biking. We didn't do any hiking or biking but rather had a nice picnic with the foods we bought at the farmer's market.



Then we drove down to Sausalito and walked around a bit. We've also never been there (though we have been to nearby Tiburon a few times). Typical tourist town shopping strip but pretty enough to look at.

Then we drove home and Lani beautified my eyebrows while we watched Scrubs reruns.