Trucks in the Sky; A white, 8-cylinder M3 BMW semi-remembered dream

These trucks fly in the sky above the unfortunate West Oakland neighborhood, South Prescott. It's horrible. Basically, the neighborhood's tucked into a triangle, bordered by highways on two sides and the raised BART rail on the other. The BART rail, I just realized, is above ground everywhere in its north and northeast East Bay routes (outside of two stops in downtown Oakland0) besides its Berkeley section. As soon as it enters Berkeley, it goes underground; as soon as it leaves, it shoots up.

Anyways, on the ground in the South Prescott neighborhood, it feels like you're in a Fifth Element-like future city with flying cars, trains, and a chaos of noise. Feels like the houses are burntout chunks of white, loose bedrock of a weed-straggled forsaken, sunburnt parking lot. You know the kind. There's no rest, no peace. I went there to see about an EPA project that revitalizes the lead-infested soils of the 100-year-old neighborhood, contaminated by years of car exhaust and lead paint peeling, dribbling into the soil, by depositing ground up fish bones. The high concentration of phosphate in the bones reacts with the toxic forms of lead in the soil to make them harmless to humans. The New York Times did a pretty good article on the situation. This research continues the urban farming story, which is a sprawling mess of a subject. It's going to be hell to write. Just did 400 words. How do you keep it all straight ... and which plethora of data do you include ????

The EPA dude was smooth, polished, had designer blackframed glasses, the kind with a subtle, elegant burgundy on the skinside of the frame, and wore a musky cologne and some kick-ass cowboy boots. Spiked, gelled, stylish black hair, handsome. He walked out, and immediately I thought, "Harem." And he was polished in the government way, the know-the-game, know-the-rules way, in the hit-your-numbers, have at least one immaculate-showcase-available-to-show-off way.

We talked outside his office in front of his attractive, tough jeans-wearing assistant, woman, and first went to the boneyard outback to see the one-ton bags of ground Pollock bone and smell their surprisingly still-fishy smell, and then to the South Prescott neighborhood, which was just around the corner from this outpost, temporary headquarters.

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Remnants of a Sunday morning dream:

Multi-colored, electric green, yellow, orange, red, 8-cylinder enhancing things. Asian shop. Called Two Stairs Chop shop. It was a shady operation, to say the least. I kept wondering why the fuck I was bringing my car there.