Welcome to Davis!

Davis is a fabulous hippy town. I love being able to bike everywhere- the whole town is flat and nothing seems to be more than a few miles away (this compared to the hilly 8 miles I used to bike to work in Seattle). Everywhere I go I see more bikes than cars. There's even a bike church. Also, the Davis DMV manual refers to police officers as "peace officers."

It's hot and sunny, and I'm on vacation and working my way through my book backlog, so I got a hammock. Above my feet in the picture you can catch a glimpse of the palm tree growing in our backyard.

The food so far is excellent. I had the best Greek food I've ever eaten at Symposium. Apparently Bill Clinton agrees. All the produce in this area is surprisingly fresh- you can get a great salad even at the diner. I guess this is what you would expect from an area with so much agriculture. Also, we discovered Himalayan food- also excellent.

The Delta of Venus cafe/bar is great: excellent Caribbean food, a relaxed yet well-populated scene, and reliably good music in the evenings. It's also a convenient 5 minute bike ride away. Last week we saw Agent Ribbons, The Dodos, and Jennifer Gentle at DoV. Only caught the last few songs in the Agent Ribbons set, but they seemed like a fun band- loved the powerful and theatrical lead vocals.

The Dodos blew me away. Perfectly synchronized hard driving virtuoso guitar vs virtuoso drums layered with passionate soaring vocals. The drum setup was interestingly unconventional- the snare was way off to the left side, the symbols were doubled up to make a more scacatto sound, and the drummer had a tambourine strapped to his left foot. The use of building tension with repetition and building up vocal layers with a memory/delay pedal reminded me a little of Animal Collective. The energy of the live show was wonderfully overwhelming, and the precision of the duo was impressive. I'd love to catch this band again.

We went to the Sacramento drive-in last Friday and saw the Simpson's Movie (awesome, go see it). The drive-in was totally fifties- even the sign declaring "no refunds due to fog" was in an old fifties font. Outdoor movies here are popular (it's actually warm and not rainy enough to pull them off). Hoping to check out free film noir nights on the projection screen outside the Davis Baskin Robbins.