The "Tuesday is the new Sunday" Friday five.

Top five reasons you know you're not in the Bay Area anymore, Toto, in no particular order (except the first one which is really lame but never ceases to amaze me):

• It rains off and on every single day for five days straight - it even rains while the sun is shining, for Pete's sake - and no one is carrying or using umbrellas but boy, do you wish YOU had one.
  
• Attention to architectural issues like the viaduct warrant the level of attention that the Fatburger debate brings about in your hometown.
  
• And speaking of the popular Seattle profession - the architectural wonder also known as the Seattle library contains seven different books dedicated to deconstructing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the local record store only has three Grateful Dead albums.
• While standing in the aforementioned local record store waiting for the free Shins noontime show,* people all around you are talking about how "yeah, this record store is okay, but there's this one? in Berkeley? called Amoeba? dude, it's AWESOME."
• You're eating the best tater tots you have EVER EATEN... at Goth Night at the local bar, 11pm on a Sunday night.

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* I was booking my flight six weeks ago and I randomly decided to get a Tuesday late afternoon flight home - figuring I could putz around downtown that morning after my friend went to work. Sunday I learned that James & Co were doing a free show at the record store 3 blocks from my friend's apartment at noon today. Pardon my overuse of the uber-overused word, but it LITERALLY could not have worked out any better for me.

That's right. I was standing 30 feet from the Shins nine hours ago. Who wants to touch me? I said who wants to fucking touch me??!