fake town

I've been meaning to write this post for over a year. It takes a fair amount of balls, because the Capetonians might kick up a bit of a fuss.

But what the hell. I'm just going to say it. I hate Cape Town.
And now that my job entails writing for a Jozi site and a Cape Town site, it looks like I might have to fly down there sometimes. I will be hurled into the abyss, and will therefore have to accept this.

I was hoping to never go there ever again, but let me explain before you potentially get all “fuck you Delilah” on me.

I lived in Cape Town when I was a student. I've done my years; both on holiday and actually living there. And I had a whale of a time. I've done all the shit there is to do in Cape Town, including the youthful intoxicated extras like stealing road signs, 1 000 m of red and white roadside tape, and streaking and breaking into the Claremont Swimming Pool. I've also sat on Jameson Stairs discussing Stanley Kubrick's very probable crystal meth habit.

I've smoked joints on the Tampon Towers and I've ridden the fucking cable car 8 times. Hell, I ate a Johnny's Roti.

You and I will possibly fall asleep reading this, but, the beach every Friday, the wine route, the frigging mowwwntain, Long Street, District Six, the carpeted walls of Corner Shop.

Kirstenbosch Gardens and the copulation thereof under the Strelizias and I even climbed Devil's Peak. Naked. (Well only the second half. Long story.)

Cape Town is an aesthetically beautiful place. Everywhere you look there's beauty. (Barring Ottery. “If God ever took a dump, it landed in Ottery.” - a friend summed it up well.)
The sheer opulence of the city is both overwhelming and powerful...and overrated. Yes. It slaps you like a wet mop, because it's just in your face the whole time.

By contrast, one needs to look a little harder for the beauty in Johannesburg, but once you get it, you appreciate it more. Cape Town is very one-dimensional. It doesn't have layers, unless you include the Cape Flats. Fine. And Valkenberg Mental Hospital.

This is my personal opinion – it's probably wrong – but it's how I feel. Cape Town also depresses me. I have memories of that place that are bittersweet, and I find it hard to go back there for a holiday. In fact, fly me to East London rather. If I don't go to Cape Town for the next five years, I'll survive.

It is a place that harbours sadness for me. Not when I was a carefree student, but the spin-offs of that. Capetonians also stick to their own.
The problem of course is that my family all live down there.

I find Cape Town a bit....taxing. In a lost childhood/misspent youth kind of way.
Leaves me cold. Can't bear the thought of it. I have an issue with Cape Town.
Hell, I have issues with Johannesburg, but I find, for fucked-up-me, it's more stomachable to live up here.

So nail me up on a board, and tell me I'm a dumb, irrepressible fuck. See if I care. Cape Town doesn't do it for me. Anymore.