It’s hard to say who treated the Native Californians worse, the Spanish missionaries who enslaved them in the name of converting them to christianity or the later American settlers who embarked on a program of systematic genocide without the cover of religion. This weekend we stopped at Fremont Peak State Park, where in 1846 Fremont first raised an American flag in an attempt to claim California for America before being chased off by the Mexicans who owned it at the…
We’re back in San Francisco, and it’s Easter, which means it’s time for the annual Hunky Jesus competition put on by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. For those of you who don’t live in the Bay Area, the sisters are a sex-positive non-denominational order of cross dressing nuns. They create or help run a number of progressive and transgressive events, and are something of a local institution. If you see the sisters are involved in a event, that means it…
A unique tribute to conspicuous consumption, Hearst Castle sits like a gothic wedding cake on a hilltop on the southern California coast. Hearst Castle was a meal ticket for architect Julia Morgan for twenty-eight years, and the estate now includes the hotel sized big house and three guest cottages the size of mansions. Here’s one of the cottages. William Randolph Hearst was a collector with the artistic sensibilities of a rabid magpie. He collected coffins, ceilings, floors, tapestries, and fragments…
The town of Cambria on the California coast was the inspiration for “Pine Cove” in Christopher Moore’s books. It lurks on a hill overlooking a bay with a small lagoon where eldritch horrors quite probably gather when they want a seaside vacation. Though most of the inhabitants clearly eke out a precarious existence selling each other antiques and curios, there may be some farming. We did see one couple with a pig on a leash, though whether this was for…