You should know about Jonestown because a bulk of the events happened here in San Francisco about three decades ago.

I just watched a documentary film called Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple. I first learned about this historical event after reading the second book in the Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin called More Tales of the City which is set in the Russian Hill district in San Francisco which was recommended by my roommates who are both 30 so there is a little bit of a generation gap when it comes to what we have read and heard of. At the end of the second book, one of the characters in the book series writes a note saying that she is moving to Guyana, which sparked absolutely nothing in my mind at the time. After talking to my roommate about the book, she asked if I knew what they were referring to when they mentioned Guyana. I said that I had no idea, and she explained to me briefly about Jonestown and I was shocked that I had never heard of it before.

For those of you who don’t know about Jonestown, the picture below only paints part of the horrifying picture of the end of Jonestown.

909 Peoples' Temple members committed suicide in Guyana --by drinking cyanide laced Kool-Aid--on the urging of their leader Jim Jones

After watching the film, I had a discussion with my roommates and in our discussions the even more horrifying thing was that at the beginning, the People’s Temple really did have an appeal. The racial integration, the community feel, the sense of belonging is something that could have easily been appealing to many people today. While we see it as a cult today, it wouldn’t have been as easily seen as such back in the day. These were normal people who weren’t necessarily from a particular background or social economic status, it was people like you and me…families.

I had many feelings as I watched the film, but mostly it really felt unreal. It felt like I was watching a movie until I saw faces that I recognized in the footage.

Jackie Speier’s name hit me because during my Americorps placement at the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health doing community outreach, I became familiar with the names of different local political figures. She is the current Democratic Representative for California’s 12th District, which encompasses most of San Mateo, and was shot 5 times when she accompanied Congressman Leo Ryan, her political mentor, to investigate Jonestown in Guyana with a film crew after disconcerting news was released in San Francisco about how Jim Jones had treated members of the Temple. Knowing that the news was about to come out, Jim Jones rounded up his members and fled to Guyana where they were building a community isolated from the United States.

The visit went pretty well at the beginning, but after Ryan found out that there were people who wanted to leave Jonestown but couldn’t or weren’t allowed to he knew that there was something wrong. Congressman Leo Ryan was killed on the airstrip along with four others as they were preparing to leave Guyana because Jim Jones feared what he would do to Jonestown, and he is the first and only Congressman who has been murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.

Before you say “I would never join a cult like this” or “I would never commit suicide  or feed my babies cyanide just because someone told me to” you really should watch the documentary. The hold that Jim Jones had on his members and how the power of influence that masses have on individuals is something that really takes me aback because I can’t honestly tell myself that I could never get caught up in something like this.

There were so many facets to the story of Jonestown and my descriptions really don’t portray it each part accurately enough. I found the documentary that I watched on YouTube ( has parts 1-6) so that those who are interested can see how the events unfolded. It really is shocking.

Part 1 is below.

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And now I’m resting peacefully at home in San Jose hanging out with my parents and my brother.

On Thursday for lunch (& dinner –ate the other half) I had some good Afghani food from the Emeryville Public (don’t forget the L, it can be quite embarrassing as told in a story by one of my old coworkers) Market, and it didn’t quite settle very well in my stomach. I had gone to bed that night at 8pm, and when I woke up at 7am on Friday, my stomach was all sorts of uncomfortable, coupled with a lot of pain needing to be relieved. I’ll spare you the gross details. To keep it brief, I made a good friends with my toilet from 7 till 9, and went to work still feeling kind of bubbly.

My coworker invited me to dinner with her friends in the city, and I was kind of anxious because of my current stomach condition but everything turned out ok. We had dinner at 2223 Restaurant in the Castro, which was a very nice (casual fancy) restaurant, and filled with middle aged gay men. This was actually really interesting to see considering the fact that usually fancy places have heterosexual couples out on dates, making the dining room gender balance pretty even on most occasions. Our server was super nice, and commented and complimented me on the best coast shirt that I was wearing. I ordered a drink and the salmon entree which definitely filled me up nicely, helping me out with my alcohol tolerance as we danced the night away at Q-Bar. Our first choice was to go to The Lookout after dinner, but it was boys night. Our second choice was to go to The Cafe, but it was Boy Bar night! I swear I’m cursed or something because the last few times I’ve gone to the Castro with people, the place we want to go are always having some sort of “boys night!” Cursed I tell ya’, cursed. If you want to go to a lezzie bar, you better not take me with you.

So, getting to the title of this post. My coworker/friend (haha I never know what to put) offered to buy me a drink, so I agreed. She said “You’re gonna get a Tokyo Tea” and since I didn’t know what that was, I naively agreed, then asked her what was in it as the bartender was making the drink. “Oh, just 4 different types of alcohol” —-”WHAT???” —for those of you that know me, I’m pretty lightweight when it comes to my tolerance. I’m usually happy and buzzed after the third drink (if you count a drink as 1 shot). Though I don’t go out very much to drink, I do know that mixing liquor makes you sickerrrrr.

In case you’re wondering what’s in it, here’s the mix:

1 oz vodka
1 oz gin
1 oz rum
1 oz 1800® Tequila
2 oz kiwi liqueur
1 oz sugar syrup
7-Up® soda

Sounds delicious? It is not. It’s also a teal color. It took me awhile to kill the drink, but I did to my own surprise, and wasn’t feeling too bad. It was the kamikaze that really did it. I’ve never been hungover before, though I have thrown up once from flu+drinking the night before, but other than that I usually just get buzzed, go to bed and wake up tired, but ok. I was really nervous that I was going to crash at my friend’s place and let it out all over the place in her room, but I fared well and didn’t even have a headache in the morning or anything of that sort–miraculous, considering I had a total of about 6 drinks, double of what I usually have over the course of an evening out.

So as people always say, “You learn something new everyday” ….

Despite no hang over or any extreme discomfort….

NO MORE TOKYO ICED TEAS. ICK.

ASK WHAT IS IN A DRINK BEFORE YOU AGREE TO GET IT

What a fun night sweating all my worries away in a club where I got action from two men (one who danced up on me, and the other one who kissed me on the cheek)…who were probably both gay.

Yesterday I finally got to cross one of my “to-do” items off my Things to do in 2009 list, as I headed to the ballpark yesterday to watch my first SF Giants game with Alana and Jason.

My day in Berkeley started off with a nice 25 minute morning walk to the Bart station to get my car, which I left in the MacArthur Bart parking lot sort of inadvertently after I hitched a ride back with Dan back to Berkeley  the night before and completely forgot that I had driven my car to the Bart station earlier that day. I could have just walked back to the Bart station later since I was going to go back into the city, but I didn’t want to get there and either 1) not find my car or 2) find my car broken into.

To get to the park I hopped on Bart, took it to Embarcardero and then hopped on a crowded Muni to the ball park. Alana and Jason graciously picked up some Subway footlongs for us for lunch which we were able to take into the ballpark (a big plus). Jason is a AT&T park pro and showed me how to pick up our will call tickets from an automated machine outside the ballpark in 5 seconds without having to wait in line.

We had pretty awesome seats for only $13. The players were definitely bigger than I thought they would be from our seats so I was happy camper. For the Fourth of July, the players on both teams wore special red white and blue hats. Lincecum, the Giants star pitcher, was the starting pitcher and pitched a shutout while he was in. Giants won the game 9-0 against the Houston Astros, which followed a 13-0 romp from the night before. I even got to bump into a few Pomona people! I was watching the game and all of a sudden I hear someone calling my name coming up the steps to our section and it was Ben Meyer! Ben was getting together with another Pomona classmate Alex Perkins, a southpaw pitcher himself, to watch the game. Haha, out of all the sections in the stadium…what a coincidence!

Here’s a picture of the giant coke bottle and glove on the left field side.

After the game we walked down to close to field level while the field crew was cleaning up. Next time, hunt for cheap craigslist tickets to get these lower level seats.

After the game, I thought that I’d walk back to the Bart station instead of getting involved with the post-game crowds on the Muni and save a couple bucks. It was such a beautiful day that the 20 minute walk was actually really nice. For the people not familiar with the Bay Area, this is a picture of the Bay Bridge which spans from SF to Oakland.

Next up on the To-Do list, OAKLAND A’s game!