Reason Number 14...

…to leave Portales: Girl Watching. Or rather, the lack of same. “Girl Watching in Portales” is a contradiction in terms. If I had to rate the girl watching opportunities in Portales they’d be only slightly better than what was available in Kabul under the Taliban. The greatest part of the problem is population; when you live in a town of only 12,000 souls your opportunities are limited, by definition.

Hang on to your hats, I’m about to say something good about San Francisco.

Oh my, but the girl watching was good in SFO. Especially in late Spring when the rains came to an end and the weather warmed up, or warmed up as much as it ever does in SFO. My daily vantage point was right outside my workplace at 44 Montgomery, just up the street from the intersection of Market and Montgomery, in the heart of the Financial District. As might be expected, the majority of the women walking by were dressed in immaculately tailored business suits. But SFO is a very cosmopolitan city. In addition to the business-suited women I’d see women in saris, tourist women in tank tops and shorts, black-clad Goth Girls, and the occasional oh-so-stylish woman who just had to be a model. Oh, yeah, it was good!

As good as the girl watching was in San Francisco, it pales beside the opportunities available in almost any major European city. And the prevalence of sidewalk cafés is the primary reason for these great opportunities. Case in point: here are three photos I took in Prague, during the Great Divorce Tour of 1999.

Sidewalk cafés do exist in America, I’m not denying that. But they are fairly rare, and our mindset isn’t quite the same as that found in Europe, where girl watching could best be described as a minor sport. Girl watching in America is something done on the sly, out of the corner of one’s eye, never obvious, never blatant…at least among those with manners. I’m exempting college kids during spring break and drunks of all stripes. It’s attitude. And here’s an example of European “attitude:”

You simply don’t see that kind of blatant “sexist” pandering to males in the American press any longer…it’s been bred right out of the culture, and mores the pity. It wasn’t always so, of course.

Don’t you miss it? Just a little bit?