Palo Alto is Miserable

Unfortunately, I’ve been staying in Palo Alto for the last three weeks while waiting to move into an apartment in SF. Though I’ve spent a good deal of time here in the past because my girlfriend’s parents live here, I feel I’ve only truly gotten to know the place over the last 19 or so days and find it to be the most miserably boring hole I’ve ever had the misfortune to spend time in. But for a few blocks downtown (which is filled with useless overpriced stores catering to the dull zombies who live here) no one is ever on the street. The people seem to be locked up in their multi million dollar homes and never come out. Though the ideas behind last night’s activities are simplistic and naïve (yet only just a bit), the desire for a more authentic life they point toward is certainly the most valuable thing I’ve seen in this town so far. There are not even the rudiments of a healthy public life and so its little surprise that kids would desire to destroy the place. The only sense of mood or personality emanating from any of the homes is a sort of bland conformist stupidity, best expressed by the Lexus SUV or BMW in every driveway. And although the kids are naïve, it is clear that Palo Alto’s outrageously rich adult population is far more naive in believing that they can avoid uncertainty, danger, and their ultimate deaths by hiding behind their homes and their disgustingly expensive cars (which could feed a Third World family for a lifetime). It is as if they truly believe that suffering-the most common experience of the world’s masses- ceases to exist as long as you can’t see it from behind your high hedges; as long as you can divert your gaze from it by thinking about which laptop or imported coffee press you will by next. I do not doubt that the central fact of life for any remotely intelligent, sensitive individual in this town is as simple as RTS organizers put it in their call to action: “Our lives are fucking boring.” My condolences to all of the non-zombie youths who must call this dead space their home.