07.13.15 – 3:36PM – Monday afternoon – Boston Logan, Terminal B

I guess I’m way more used to flying out the ass-end of this airport. Terminal B is pretty swanky in comparison to Terminal E, and looks kind of like one of those 1950s in-the-future-everything-will-be-a-lounge-and-all-the-women-will-have-beehive-hairdos-and-we’ll-all-be-as-cool-as-the-jazz-cats-but-not-in-a-threatening-and-still-very-white-kind-of-way propaganda films. Compare that to where the international flights depart from – which cuts out the middle-man by actually just being old and shitty – and the difference is striking. I guess Boston makes its money on domestics. Sounds about right.

This is a work trip. A conference on semiconductors in San Francisco that actually started earlier today and will keep on through Thursday. The magazine I work for and will be lucky enough to represent is a trade journal for the industrial gases industry (you have no idea how much the double “industry” irks me, but that’s what it’s called; “commercial gases” is something else), which is really only tertiary in its involvement with semiconductors and photovoltaics – solar power stuff, to be discussed at a parallel conference I’ll also be hitting, notably for a free breakfast tomorrow – but that’s apparently enough to get my ass on a plane.

For seven hours. Plus. Woof. When I was checking in, they showed me how full the plane was as if to say, “Hey, guess what? In like three hours when you actually get on the plane, we’re gonna kick you in the nards and there’s nothing you can do about it. Wanna pay $100 for a seat upgrade aka a softer-soled shoe?” Money spent. I don’t think I’ll be able to expense that one to the company, but whatever.

My hope is that whatever time I have left following business obligations I’ll be able to spend record shopping. San Francisco, in addition to housing the billionaire slime of the tech industry, has a couple pretty sweet shops – Amoeba Music and Aquarius Records come to mind first. I’ve been fortunate enough to hit both on past trips to the city – this is my third or fourth time there – and will be shooting toward a similar goal over the next couple nights. I looked and Acid King don’t seem to be playing, but if I can find another gig to hit and there’s time and whatnot, I’ll make it happen.

I’ve traveled for work before, but never quite to anything like a corporate conference, unless one counts SXSW, which as far as I was ever concerned was a bunch of shows and marked-up beer spaced out over a few days. I anticipate this will be a different experience. For example, I didn’t pay for the flight or the hotel, or the iced tea and blueberry muffin I bought a little bit ago from the coffee shop in this, the nice part of Boston Logan. These are strange times.

Really that’s true of the last two years for me – minimum – but waiting at Gate 23 for my row to be called, it seems like a really thick line between where I was and where I am. My feelings about that are complex, but I’m hardly in a position to complain.

Tags: California, San Francisco

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2015 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.