Cutting Records

It's been a while, dear readers. San Francisco turned out to be quite an intense experience, filled with driving around the city in a friend's car he left me, bolting in and out of Michelle's apartment in Oakland to fetch her stuff before the gunshots began, and hanging out with a pair of friends, a dynamic of which that hasn't occurred since 5th grade. The last night, I stayed up with my old friend Alex, talking about computers taking over/not taking over the world before catching a bus to the train at 7 in the morning. Needless to say, I've needed a day or two in Denver with my dear Auntie to gather myself and set up the rest of my trip.

Next time you're out in San Francisco, try playing this game: "who's an indigenous San Franciscan and who's not?"

Not to give away all the hints or anything, you may begin by asking people for directions, although as we all know, this isn't always a clear indicator of someone's local status. In San Fran, such a practice is very different from asking the guy in cowboy boots and a farmer tan at the bar in Hanover Minnesota directions to the next bar up the line!

After a few trials of this sort that end in people who you swore were from the city shrugging and saying "I'm not from here…", and after a few people come up to you and ask for directions thinking you're a local, you may be ready to call it quits–but don't give up! You don't have to feel like a cheater by asking your friends who live there to give you a few clues, either.

Maybe you'll at first be discouraged by your host's choice of words, but the fine distinctions will come into focus later. Nowhere do people place such emphasis on the difference between "being from San Francisco," "living in San Francisco" and being a "San Franciscan" while not sounding disparaging in the least. Regardless, your hosts may add, San Francisco is the place where all the freaks come to. So why the hell are you there?

Remember, its important to get a second opinion and continue to ask for directions because map reading sucks. So, you may end up asking someone who moved there because they felt so at home in SF how they tell the locals from the tourists. Surely, it's not all about size as your friend tells you bluntly, you think. How can all the natives be skinny and the tourists fat? But then you do a mental check of your wallet's contents and think about how much you miss that $17 you just spent on a beer and a sandwich and how one could easily put themselves on a diet.

Even a third opinion is a safe route to go, especially since by now you're wondering what the hell someone who has lived here their entire life thinks of all this. By default and by definition, they're a San Franciscan, but you get a strong suspicion that everyone else who lives here or has moved here you've met has come because…well, it's San Fran, right? So you voice your confusion over the matter to another one of your hosts, and maybe they tell you that the people who grew up here are immune to the stereotypes and mainly keep to themselves.

And then you have to catch a bus to leave town.

Here are all the clues I can give you for the game. I really can't divulge any more, otherwise the game won't be fun. But, you can always pick up where you left, I suppose, since there seems to be something inherently San Franciscan about San Francisco, especially when you hear about people moving there to be themselves or be with their loved ones, or people gathering in the park just to hang out by the hundreds, or people just wanting to figure out what this city is all about. Then again, it also seems like some expect San Francisco will give them what they're looking for, but cities are also harsh places that don't grant wishes to everyone.

I have more to say on this city, specifically about the new leads I gathered and the immense number of records I found, but I first have to express my excitement in getting a tour of Aardvark Mastering's facilities here in Denver. Louis, one of the Engineers at Aardvark showed me around the basement of Paul Brekkus' house where they convert tapes, CDs and other media into analog master lacquers that will later get turned into stampers used to press hundreds of vinyl discs that you use on your turntable. It was pretty amazing watching this antiquated 1970s Scully machine lathe-cut a Scott Joplin song onto a spinning lacquer-coated aluminum disc and then play it back!

Louis said that he could count on two hands the number of facilities in the country that do this kind of work; he is one of only a hundred or so people in the world who know how to operate such a machine; and he is one in a million who truly love what they do. It was awe-inspiring to look at this machine with all its tubes and knobs and levers and think that someone knew how to design and manufacture it to cut a master analog disc to reproduce sound. Apparently, Paul, the main guy behind Aardvark, is enough of a genius and an innovator himself to understand it all.

Nat, the artist of all the Isota sleeves from Berkeley, whom I met with in SF, explained the prevalence of 7" records over cassettes and CDs as a demonstration of the commitment musicians make to the distribution of their music. As he pointed out, anyone can burn a CD or duplicate a cassette, but it takes a lot of effort and money (!) to send one's mastered album to a mastering company like Aardvark, have them send the lacquers to a plating facility, arrange to have the plates sent to a pressing plant, okaying the test-presses and having them print the rest of your discs.

Vinyl also keeps guys like Paul and Louis is business and the specialized craft of cutting records alive.

Ride to live,
James