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Posted by keithosaunders on January 6, 2011
How strange it is for me to associate home with the Bay Area but that is indeed the case. This afternoon I flew home to the west coast for the first time in 27 years. The trip to New York was a good one, both work-wise and personally. I got to spend some great time with my friend Jeff in the Bronx as well as see other friends and former colleagues.
It’s bittersweet, however, as I return to a life bereft of gigs. In New York I was working three to five nights a week as well as teaching. Here I have had to start from square one in a jazz scene that is not as busy as New York’s. It is daunting to say the least. Still I look forward to the few gigs I have, as well as getting back into hanging out and meeting new people.
I have to say that San Francisco kicks ass when it comes to airport transportation. It’s a quick walk through the terminal to the elevated air train. From there it’s a five-minute ride to the BART station which gets me to within two miles of my home. In New York you have a choice between a 40 dollar cab ride, for which you’re going to have to wait on a long line, or an air train that takes you to a subway station in Jamaica Queens. It’s confusing, cumbersome, and unpleasant.
So put that in your crack pipe and smoke it, New York!
This entry was posted on January 6, 2011 at 8:08 am and is filed under New York City, San Francisco. Tagged: BART, Bay Area, jazz, life, New Years, New York, San Francisco, subway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The World According to Keitho 
bkivey said
I see BART’s made some improvements since I lived in SF. I always flew out of OAK: 10 min. bus ride to Market St., board the train at Montgomery St., get off at the Colliseum/Airport, catch the shuttle to the terminal. I never bothered to compare fares because SFO was a hassle to get to and from.
I’ve never had the pleasure of using the NY airports. I did some work one winter in NJ and even though there was a handy commuter train that stopped in town and would take you to Penn Station, the company had us using Baltimore.
Blair
keithosaunders said
My wife tells me that the BART airport extension cost two billion to build and is one of the reasons that BART is so expensive.
bkivey said
Holy Mackeral! That comes to about $240 million per mile. I see that the trip I mentioned from SF to OAK would run about $9 these days and take about an hour. The same trip where I live now costs $2.35 and takes about ninety minutes. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll write a post comparing selected airport transit systems. Perhaps a website . . .