Price of Garlic
Gilroy, Los Angeles and metaphorical airports
When I was a child, my mom made me swallow garlic cloves every now and then. She explained that it helped with digestion and overall well-being. I'm starting to see the wisdom of this after living in a country that does not share the same affinity for garlic. I was reminded of my mom’s garlic routine when I watched Les Blank’s Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers, a documentary shot at the Gilroy Garlic Festival1. I have been to Gilroy once. Very briefly.
In 2019, I flew to Los Angeles for Refactor Camp2 - a conference attended by around 80 people who enjoyed the works of Venkatesh Rao and Sarah Perry. I can't really explain how I made decisions back then. I was working rideshare apps and making $12 an hour. My bank account constantly oscillated between being overdrawn and holding ten dollars. All decisions were made in a fugue state, one that I came to occupy under severe duress. I noticed the same fugue state in others when I delivered overpriced food to some of the poorest households in South Houston. Once this state becomes your reality, life narrows down to a tiny air vent that you can crawl through, if you please.
I found an Airbnb somewhere close to Inglewood. My knowledge of the landscape of Los Angeles at that point came from movies and rap songs. Ingelwood and Compton got mentioned in rap songs, next to lyrics that went like "pow pow" or "thats where my cousin got shot". Somewhere close but not too close to those places seemed like the budget pick.
It's not that I got scammed. I sincerely wanted to believe that a clean hostel with two bunk beds that charged $50 a night was possible. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that, logically, this could not be true. The house had two large rooms, one for men and the other for women. The men's room had double bunk beds against all four walls. It smelled of weed and sweat, and the pheromones of someone not doing so well in life. On the first night, I slept with my hands wrapped around my backpack while listening to bunkmates play videos on their phones sans headphones. People drifted in and out of the room without any purpose. I suppose they thought that a change of scenery would make them relaxed and lull them into sleep, alas the other rooms did not offer anything better. Early in the morning at 5, motivated by lack of sleep and fear, I tiptoed into the muddy restroom to take a shower. At least two of the beds had propped up large insulated bags with the branding of a food delivery app. I could make out the silhouette of the men leaning against the bags and their dull eyes lit by the phone they held. I imagine their life was platformed by $50 per night Airbnbs and food delivery apps that afforded the nightly fee.
I think I went to the conference with the hope that I would be able to relate to a person or two. After all, we had read the same things and occupied the same ideas for so many years. But, looking back, it seems obvious that I did not share the same reality as the conference attendees. At this point in the essay, I could do some blue-collar cosplay of the kind that people who wear Carhartt jackets and carpenter jeans in Manhattan might appreciate. I could say that I related to the hard life of my gig worker bunkmates - the type of thing that I know gets a rise out of people these days. Even though I spent 12 hours a day driving around people and food, I always made a point of not identifying with that labor - perhaps I was embarrassed or because I saw how it narrowed down my air vent even more.
I didn't know anyone at the conference so I approached groups of people having a conversation and just stood there. I was a six foot two troll that hovered over every conversation without uttering a single word.
There were people who saw past my glaring lack of status, thick Indian accent, and inability to string together sentences. Loren, who was in his early 20s and visiting from Berkeley, was one of them. His smile and floppy hair gave him a gentle and jovial disposition. My good friend Michael, who I met two years later, reminds me of Loren. In fact, I've made a habit of being friends with people like Loren over the years. We are two archetypes that gravitate toward each other like moth to a light in awkward social situations such as parties and conferences.
Venkat concluded the conference with a small talk. He said Refactor Camp is not a community but an airport3. For a brief moment, people gathered from different parts of the world, discussed ideas, and ran into people who shared the same keen eyes, even if trained on different things. They then dispersed in different directions. I was headed north.
My plan was to make my way up to San Francisco. I had convinced myself that I could find a tech job if I just went to San Francisco for a week. I intended, rather foolishly, to take the train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I mentioned this to a group at dinner and was met with incredulous stares. The LA train ran from Bakersfield, an hour and a half from the conference venue in Santa Monica, and it cost about a hundred dollars. Loren offered me a ride. Well, not exactly his ride. He offered to ask a couple who had agreed to give him a ride back if they'd be willing to add one more person in the car.
I don't remember much from the drive. By then I had perfected the art of being a human gnome and listened in on the conversation in the car. As we drove through the arid landscape of Central California, Loren mentioned something about the electric lines sagging under the high load of the summer. I looked out the window and saw them glimmering in the distance, forming a neat U between the posts and gently undulating in the wind. We passed the central California cattle farms I wrote about in Pasteurized Memories. About an hour from our destination, we saw billboards that announced Gilroy - Garlic capital of the world. The bald man who was driving, who worked on an open source project for making cheaper insulin, who had not voiced anything but carefully considered opinions until that point, veered into the exit that read, "Take this exit for Garlic ice cream."
We sat outside the deli, sharing the last scoop of garlic ice cream. The woman behind the counter had scraped it from the bottom of the barrel. It was 68 degrees, and the crisp summer air smelled of fresh garlic. This was my airport. As for my San Francisco trip, it was predictably unsuccessful.
Gilroy Garlic Festival was cancelled starting the same year that I visited Gilroy apparently