Titania Veda

Whiff of Whimsy: I Left My Couch in San Francisco

I never met Emmanuel Lemor. But he did let me sleep in the living room of his San Francisco flat where, for a week, I shared a blow-up mattress with a French couple.

By the time I arrived in San Francisco, Emmanuel was in North Carolina dealing with a family matter. “I shall leave the key under the mat,” he had written in an e-mail.

In all my years as a couchsurfer (www.couchsurfing.org), many generous individuals have allowed me into their homes, providing me with a place to sleep during my stay in their countries. But I’ve never met a host who left his home completely open to total strangers. Emmanuel’s trust in his fellow travelers was definitely unique.

Such were the eclectic breed of individuals I encountered during my short sojourn in the Bay Area, famous for its fogs, tremors and the rock ’n’ roll culture of The Haight.

Most people who reside in cities, where danger lurks in the urban shadows and alleyways, are either untrustworthy or suspicious. The residents of Fog City appear to believe in the good in others, exuding benevolence and altruism. Residue from the hippie era, perhaps? San Francisco is the only major city where I’ve come across commuters thanking their bus drivers when they alight. The residents have a small-town friendliness about them, a jarringly refreshing trait to find within a metropolis.

On my first day, I decided to hit Golden Gate Park. As it was a Sunday, it was full of lively events held in every open space. Closest to the famous Haight-Ashbury intersection was Sharon Meadows, where Pet Pride Day 2009 was being held. The grassy arena was filled with dogs in every costume imaginable. Siberian Huskies, Akitas, black Labradors and greyhounds were groomed to the hilt. They sported everything from sequined red devil horns, green butterfly wings and black witches’ hats. After being licked by a tan mutt with hazel eyes called Chocolate, I sat next to a girl from Cooper’s Dream Animal Rescue. She was foster mum to a shy pug-Chihuahua mix named Lou. Cooper’s Dream had saved him from certain death a few weeks prior. He was scheduled for euthanasia when they pulled him out of a local animal shelter. No one had wanted to adopt him as he was no longer a pup, the girl told me. Sadly, I’ve heard similar statements made by orphanages about their older charges.

Only a few miles further was West Fest, a free concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. The festival was a music-satiated spread of peace-loving, tie-dyed T-shirt-wearing, marijuana-puffing individuals who had transformed Speedway Meadow into a small city of flower-power hippies. At both ends of the meadow were massive stages with musicians crooning out songs from 1967’s infamous Summer of Love. On a hillside overlooking the hubbub, Asians and Hispanics manned food stalls, selling a smorgasbord of snacks and ethnic dishes.

In the midst of the rambling crowd moving from one concert to another, past tents selling recyclable goodies and flowing hemp dresses, sampling organic chocolates and signing “Free Marijuana” petitions, sat an Indian woman. She was nude. Her hair flowed like gushing mud behind her and matched the color of her leathery skin. The white man she was facing was fully clothed, decked out in Hawaiian prints.

The next day, I went on a last-minute date. While exchanging my euros for dollars and dollars for Mexican pesos in the financial district, I started chatting with the man behind the counter. Kartlos is from Georgia — the country not the state. Intrigued by all things journalistic, he invited me for coffee in the Mission district.

Like most of the people I’ve met in America, Kartlos is an immigrant. Now in his late 20s, he arrived in New York when he was 19, with $400 to his name and no English. Yet when he spoke of his favorite tuna cheese melts and showed me his apartment on his iPhone, his voice bore hardly a trace of a foreign accent.

The fact that Kartlos spoke highly of Georgia, the extensive culinary fare and his desire to return there, intrigued me. Back home, I met numerous overseas graduates who dismissed Indonesia as a third-world country and longed to remain in the progressive West. Kartlos, on the other hand, resisted his assimilation into the American culture and expressed concern over Georgia’s brain drain.

“I don’t want this country to be my ‘home.’ I want my own country to be my home,” he said. Ironically, he was waiting to obtain his US citizenship before he returns home.

Later that night, two French girls breezed in through the door — new couchsurfers hailing from the Lorraine region. They filled the small flat with their colorful language and raucous laughter. As the living room was occupied, we had to break into Emmanuel’s locked bedroom.

Titania Veda writes a weekly travel column. She is a former features reporter at the Jakarta Globe.

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