I went to bed last night feeling like an outsider: I had just closed the curtains on a gay-bondage photo shoot taking place in the apartment building across the alley, and I was treated to an endless parade of sirens and cries and yells and a cacophony of other drag-queen noises from street level.

I woke up for a run today and, 30 minutes later, I felt connected to San Francisco in a way I had never been before. For those of you who know the city, I ran from 8th and Market to the Embarcadero, then up to Pier 39 and back. The best way to describe it is to have you listen to ‘6B Panorama’ by Aesop Rock from the record Float, wherein he uses descriptions like ‘a junkie tourniquet surgeon urging the needle in / a batty senior citizen flashing that awful teethless grin’ and ‘a Nazi with tattoos on his neck / a Vietnam war vet / a Caucasian man with a limp and a cane.’ That’s San Francisco around Market Street.

In short, I discovered a farmer’s market, a breast-cancer benefit walk and a homeless shanty town outside the United Nations building – as well as countless other idiosyncrasies – in just a few short miles.

The rest of the day, in fast forward:

• Photographing angelically cute children climbing on the statue of Joseph Strauss by the Golden Gate;
• Getting a group of 14 undergraduates – none of whom is white – to freely admit that being diverse is a selling point;
• Eating an In-N-Out burger;
• Driving through Lake Tahoe and making giddy references to ‘that fiery orb in the distance’ to which my boss tells me to ‘stop being stupid’;
  
• Looking for a gas-station bathroom, but discovering I have to walk through a small casino to get there, thereby redefining awesome for the rest of my life;
• Holding a photo shoot at night, marking my first successful solo excursion with a full light kit and altered f-stops when an interview in Reno falls through;
• Stopping in a city called ‘Winnemucca’ for the night, where it’s something stupid like 42 degrees outside. And I’m still in my flip-flops.

So rather than head to bed when it’s 1:39 a.m. (real time in Chicago: 3:39), I’m headed down to the lobby of my hotel here in Winnemucca. I’m going to play the slot machines.

One more time, for effect: I’m going down to my hotel lobby to play slots. Yes, I’m going to be that guy. It’s better than being that batty senior citizen with a teethless grin … but just barely.