With my first, and most likely last throwback Thursday, I wanted to do something special and a little bit dangerous. You see, in my apartment I have hanging up, a photo that I have taken with me to every city, every apartment that I have lived in since I was 17.
Back in 1999, in an odd coincidence, my friend Yoko and I were both traveling from New York to Northern California to see family during our last high school spring break; she was seeing her father in San Francisco, and I was visiting my brother up at Humboldt State University. Before heading back to New York, I took a Greyhound down to the city for a few days to see her, where she took this photo.
Market Street.1999.
I remember that night, camped out in a sleeping bag in her father's living room on Potrero Hill, with my pink glitter retainer in my mouth, I declared that I was going to live in many places before settling down somewhere at the old age of 25. 25 and old. What a little shit I was.
So what makes this throwback post dangerous? Well...while in San Francisco last month, I decided to reenact this moment with a twin photo almost 15 years later. This really could have gone either way....
Market Street.
2013
Not too bad, eh? We tried to recall what the photo looked like since we had left it in Paris, so this was the best that we came up with. Aurel was also kind with me and didn't do the extreme close-up that Yoko did. Good husband. There's no denying that I have a few deep-set lines, crows feet that appear when I smile, an acne scar here and there, and some sun spots, (also I think I was due for a lip wax) but that's all a part of not being 17 anymore.
That week in California was the first trip I had ever taken on my own, which inspired over a decade of adventures, mishaps and memories. Perhaps if I had stayed in one place, now at the age of 32 I would be more "settled" in life with an actual career, a house, and maybe even a few babies in tow. Who knows?
I may have been a dumb 17-year-old who thought turning 25 was old, but I was curious enough to want to see more, as well as aware enough to know to just go for it because you only live once.
Those of you who have a roaming eye for travel, was there a particular moment in your life that you knew there was more out there that you just had to see? Share your throwback memory!
