North Beach with Dad

For my slightly belated Father's Day tribute... Here I am on my Dad's shoulders, having a North Beach day in 1967. We're at Columbus and Vallejo St., and you can see the old Rossi Market at the left. I think the seed of my love for San Francisco must have been planted in these early months of my life. My father was born and raised in San Francisco, but work and family eventually landed him across the bay in Oakland. Periodically he needed to get his City fix, and from the start he would take us kids with him. Through the years, usually on Sundays--with the excuse of getting us out of our mother's hair for a few hours--he'd load the three of us into the Chevy Suburban and head across the bridge for a San Francisco mystery day. He wouldn't tell us where we were going and would just drive somewhere on whim, sometimes out to Ocean Beach, or somewhere in Golden Gate Park, Fort Funston, or just a drive through a neighborhood he'd been thinking about. These days often ended in North Beach, with a stop at Clown Alley for a hot dog. I remember my feelings on those outings, a sense of excitement when I smelled that particular foggy air, and picked up on my Dad's sense of homecoming and pleasure at just being in those 7 x 7 miles. Even when I was a kid, I knew I'd find myself living in the City eventually. Those were wonderful days we had with our Dad. He was one very cool dude.

Cedarville Sojourn

Work has taken me on a long stay in far northeastern California--so I'm going to deviate from my San Francisco focus for a brief small town detour. And while it may seem a radical departure after my last post, this one is actually unexpectedly linked to it's predecessor by a familiar figure... Part of my journey up here was taken on the Amtrak train to Reno. When the train reaches the pass it follows a beautiful mountain route right alongside the Truckee River. As I watched out the window, a small iron trestle bridge came into view. There in the middle of the bridge, his hands resting on the railing, stood a balding man with a full, long white beard, watching the train go by. Totally nude. "What?!" I exclaimed out loud, my head swiveling around to see if I saw what I thought I saw. Yep, naked in all his pale glory, the grandpa beard brushing the top of his round white belly. As a friend aptly observed to me later, it gives an entirely new meaning to "train-spotting"!

So I find myself in Cedarville, California, close to the Nevada border. Cedarville lies in the beautiful Surprise Valley, an area ringed by mountains, green and lush from abundant snow-melt streams and rivers. The population falls under a thousand people, and "downtown" is comprised of one restaurant, a cafe, bookstore, market, corner store, a "cowboy church," and a few shops and real estate offices. The town was established in the 1860s when two dry-goods merchants (Cressler and Bonner) laid out the main street and further established a business which served those passing by way of the emigrant trails to Oregon, those heading feverishly to the gold fields, and a population of ranchers who had come in search of higher grazing lands following the severe droughts in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.

It's perhaps obvious to say that life is different in a small town, but--life is different! For one thing, strangers drive by you on the street and wave. Dogs generally aren't tied up, and seem to know how to comport themselves in a more responsible way then their city-dog counterparts. When I get my cravings for Indian, Japanese, or Vietnamese food, I'm basically out of luck. The one bar in town is only open on Fridays and Saturdays. And from April to June, this is a very bad place if you happen to be a ground squirrel. The hunting season starts off with a bang in April when the town is overrun by enthusiastic rodent-assassins. Things have tapered off at this point, but currently at my motel a group of raucous squirrel hunters is finishing up a week-long foray.

The town has numerous historic buildings and overall retains a feeling of being removed from the recent passage of time, while evoking shadows of the late 19th up to the first half of the 20th century. The Cressler & Bonner brick building, which currently houses the bookstore and cafe, is very little altered. The high ceiling and shelving of the cafe maintain a hint of the old store and bank , and it's easy to imagine people stomping around upstairs in the onetime lodging house, pool/dance hall. And the building has a link to the City: the Surprise Valley Chamber of Commerce website describes the "steel shuttered doors and windows on the first floor, manufactured in San Francisco to make the building virtually fireproof."

My very favorite building in town is the Cedarville Grocery. There's not much to it, but it has a wonderful personality. The structure was built in 1906 as the Bank of Surprise Valley, which later branched out as the Modoc County Bank. When the Depression hit, the bank failed and closed in 1933. At that point, the building had its first incarnation as a grocery, and was owned by the same couple for 38 years, with several owners following. Under today's proprietor, the shop serves as the town's "corner store." Collectibles from the period of the store's early days decorate the space, and copies of old photos are set out showing the bank's interior and later shops. The decorative molded press-board wall coverings that you see in the photos are still entirely extant, and though they're looking time-worn--I love the fact that it has all been left alone through the decades. The black-painted frame of the bank vault can still be seen in the back, and it now opens to the storeroom. A Coca-Cola ghost sign (dated 1946) covers the side of the building and, together with a similar one down the street, impart a sense that you've stumbled back in time for a moment.

So I continue my Cedarville sojourn, enjoying the slow pace and motel-living, and feeling a bit awed each morning as I walk down the highway and look around at the surrounding mountains, some still snow-capped, and watch the dramatic cloud-filled sky churning up weird June storms. I wave to the passing cars and trucks, stop to watch the horses in the pasture behind the motel, and catch a few ground squirrels throwing a well-advised spooked look behind them before darting into their holes.

Dionysia on Fell Street: The Bay to Breakers

I live close to the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, so every mid-May I look forward to stepping out with my cup of coffee in hand and settling down to watch one of San Francisco's best "parades"--the Bay to Breakers run from the downtown waterfront to Ocean Beach. After struggling up the steep Hayes Street hill, the participants continue up Fell Street alongside the panhandle and into the park. By the time I wake up to the sound of helicopters and stroll across Broderick Street to Fell, the people who actually run the race are long gone, and the stream of people has devolved and blossomed into a debauched, whimsical, and good-humored procession. It has elements of Gay Pride Parade, Halloween, Spring Break, Burning Man, Mardi Gras, and the civic booster parades, but it is all of those things rolled into one more informal, unstructured, casual, collective expression of lust, hope, pleasure, fantasy, myth and religion, birth, youth, popular culture, politics, and more lust. For me, as the early morning imbibing and cavorting unfolds, so does a 21st century version of the Classical World's celebrations in honor of Dionysus, the ancient god of wine, fertility, resurrection, eternal rebirth.

The Great Dionysia urban celebration wended its way through the city of Athens in early April, so the parallel timing is just about right for spring to be sprung in San Francisco. And the modern equivalent has no shortage of sacred vessels of liquid (kegs-on-wheels), beautiful Bacchae (young women in spandex dancing wildly), mythological theater (people dressed as super heroes and "Where's Waldo"), priapic exaggeration (men with stuffed Speedos or artificial phalluses), and the always essential satyrs (naked men-of-a-certain-age). A few minimally dressed rotund, over-indulged looking men were in the running for the god of revel himself.

This is the third year I've watched the event with an eye to costume themes, trends, zeitgeists, and modes of ecstatic celebration--and there's no doubt that it was less exuberant than the two preceding years. There was a definite effort made by the sponsors (ING) to tone things down--their advertising tag-line was "Register, Respect, Revel"--but there was a relative reservedness that seemed to come from the participants themselves. Which isn't to say things were tame, just less elaborate than usual. Still, there was plenty to take in. The usual college-age demographic were well represented, hooting and hollering in clusters, beer-bonging and staggering, dancing and groping. I didn't see a lessening of the naked men over 50; they thronged the crowd in abundance, blithely swinging in the breeze and taking in the sites. I idly wondered out loud why it was these older gentleman that felt the need to be naked in a crowd, and a city chick next to me launched into a complicated, forceful socio-political explanation of pride, body, power, and statement. Personally, I think it's a lot simpler. Some mature dudes just get a thrill from being naked in public. Which is all the more appropriate--they are the goatskin-clad Satyrs amongst the faun-eyed college boys and bikini-top-wearing urban nymphs!

There were far less large-scale floats then the last two years. Last year there was an orgy of rolling pirate ships, viking ships, and mobile Tiki bars that carried costumed people, blared music, and were general show-stoppers. I saw a few pirate ships this time around, but they were small affairs in comparison. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" films were fresher in people's minds then, and dozens of Jack Sparrow's served as avatars of Dionysus. Thespis, the legendary "first actor" of ancient Greece, is thought by some to have taken his troop of dancers in a ship-form wagon to perform in other cities--the wagon representing the stories of Dionysus as having arrived on mainland Greece by ship. It's thought that these floats were also used in the Great Dionysia procession to carry the high priest. What more appropriate high priest of the new revels than Johnny Depp's mincing, slurring, louche pirate?

Fitting nicely into the spring/rebirth leit motif, the last two years have brought out mobs of people dressed as bees and butterflies, chickens and eggs. This year there were even more chickens, oddly: full chicken costumes, multiple groups in chicken hats, and a group in chicken hats with an animal rights message (their banner read "Say No To Plumping"). The egg theme always carries over to the human reproductive realm, and their are usually several variations of sperms and eggs. This year I saw several young men celebrating the Rites of Spring dressed as sperm, with one pair pulling a giant red paper mache ball, which I believe was an egg. My favorite examples from last year and the year before: one person dressed as an ovum, jogging, being followed by several people as sperm running after him making breast stroke motions and chanting "I could be the one! I could be the one!"; and another group wearing white swim caps and carrying a banner that read "Fallopian National Swim Team."

The devotees of priapus this year included a man in a full giant penis costume, a guy with a plastic bone sticking out of his underwear, and armies of guys who had padded themselves in one way or another, like the suggestively padded costumes of Greek comic actors. One fellow with some sort of artificial appendage had brief congress with a blow-up sex doll that was tied to a young woman, to the cheers of the crowd.

Today I observed all the usual perennial costumes, including Elvises (Elvi?), mobs of "Where's Waldos," Roman toga groups (some with french bread and lettuce attached to be Caesar Salads), Wonder Woman, Super Man, Cat Woman, bunnies, pink Genies, Trojan soldiers, Smurfs, Simpsons characters, stewardesses, men and women in bride's dresses, cows, costumes with blow-up dolls, cavemen, running of the bulls in Pamplona costumes, Flintstones, car costumes, Wizard of Oz characters, Devo, lots of Burning Man style day-glo disco getups, and an inordinate amount of nearly naked people wearing adult diapers. There are no goat sacrifices to Dionysus at the Bay to Breakers but, as there were today, there are usually multiple blow-up sex toy sheep tossed around--and they probably don't survive to the next day. And this time around, there were all manner of swine-flu pig incarnations offered up. So close enough.

The Greek Dionysian festivals featured comedies that satirized and touched on events and figures of the day, and similarly the Bay to Breakers is usually a stage for commentary and current cultural preoccupations. There seemed to be a little less topical action this time around then in previous runs. The dominant theme this year was of course, Swine Flu, and there were multiple pig floats and pig props. But it was strangely non-political overall, with less creative satire. Last year featured many polygamist women in dowdy dresses and several Amy Winehouses with bloody ballet slippers, Hillary Clintons, Barack for President floats, there were men with gas pump nozzles stuck to their butts, and a Hanjin Cosco Busan boat float with drunk sailors. Several odd themes emerged this year: more groups of Crayola Crayons, many more then the usual number of gnomes in pointy hats, and a steady stream of people dressed as bananas or wearing banana hats. Why?! The other odd theme was flamingoes: multiple groups in flamingo hats and full flamingo costumes. One lively group of flamingo boys was accompanied by a sailor girl in a naughty nautical getup--not sure how she fit into their story. There were at least two men who looked like pagan "Green Men" in green costumes covered in leaves, and far more vegetables in general, including two women wearing skirts and bras out of actual Swiss chard. There was one large group looking sweltering in giant fruit costumes. I saw several groups of men dressed as pieces of bacon for some reason (whereas last year there was a plethora of people dressed as "pigs in a blanket"). The food and vegetation theme of spring outdid the skewering current events and pop culture angle. However, there was a group of guys wittily dressed as Face Book pages (their heads in illustrated cardboard boxes), who were running around frantically asking to Friend people.

As I headed back home, I saw a guy in a devil costume having a quiet chat with a fireman in his truck--they color coordinated nicely. I didn't see any police until the end, when the last of the stragglers were moving up Fell Street. They were just watching, and didn't seem too concerned with anything. From what I observed, the event was peaceful and feel-good.

People drank to excess, danced and pranced, rubbed up against strangers (like the topless woman in the picture above, who spontaneously did a little number with a "Pharaoh" on a float), acted out fantasies, celebrated procreation, became heroes and myth figures, became forces of nature, made personal statements, and generally let loose. The celebrants of ancient Greece would not have felt out of place, and Dionysus is likely gratified by the day.

Sage of Civic Center

If you live in the city you walk out the door never knowing exactly what will greet you, and that's what I love about it. My simple aim today was a trip to the main branch library, down at Civic Center, to renew a book and get my stack of DVDs for the week. Market and 8th Street was bustling, with people clustered outside of the Orpheum theater waiting to enter for the next performance of "Wicked," the bus stop island was full, and the usual gritty characters milled around outside of the Burger King. The library was lively too, with people streaming in and out, filling up the computer stations on the first floor, lining up for the automated check-out machines, and generally not showing any signs of the Swine Flu fear "Social Distancing" that's been written of in the media.

Leaving through the library's main doors facing the City Hall courtyard area, I could hear music and see that some sort of fair was taking place. Turns out today is "Cannabis Awareness Day." Who knew? Certainly not me. In my neighborhood, it's a daily state of affairs, with the absurdly numerous headshops in the Upper Haight, and more in the Lower Haight, together with the hydroponic store and the medical marijuana venue, The Vapor Room--which has recently gone "upscale" with an admirable refurbishment of their below-street-level Victorian townhouse shop space.

So I wandered over to check things out. Booths of vendors and interest groups were set up around the center area of the square, a blues band played on a tented platform with City Hall directly behind to the west in all its Beaux Arts glory. A varied crowd of people loitered and enjoyed the music, including a few of the area's regular city-worn wanderers, tattooed teenagers, hipster twenty- and thirty-somethings, grey-haired ladies in vintage-groovy splendor, and an inordinate number of men in the 40-50 plus age range. Most of these men were unremarkably dressed and average looking, but one particularly eye-catching gent with purple hair, purple camo pants, and a vivid orange "Tide" jacket stood out like a tropical bird. He very obligingly posed for a picture standing with gilded City Hall in the background. I watched a prosperous looking, conservatively dressed older couple stand for a while listening to the music and observing the kooky folks dancing. The man took pictures of the crowd with his iPhone. A young, chic blond girl affected a nonchalant expression and bent down behind a sixtysomething woman with frizzy gray hair cascading down her back, and appeared to take a digital photo of the crowd through the lady's blowing hair. I sat for a bit and listened to the blues band, which was lead by a portly, seated slide guitar player who proclaimed: "I've been smoking pot for thirty-five years--and I'd be fine if it weren't for chocolate!"

Leaving the fair I passed by an arresting tableaux on the lawn. Four young men sat closely together in an orderly row like obedient school children, and listened intently to an urban wild man sprawled about three feet in front of them on the grass. This guy was browned, tattooed, wearing nothing but raggedy shorts and looking like he'd just climbed down from a hermit's mountain cave. He spoke and gestured with a stick and the boys seemed to listen with gravity. These five people appeared so focused on each other that my instinct was to not interfere. But now I wish I'd gone and sat down to hear what the urban sage said, and to find out what had the boys looking so serious. At one point the man put the stick end near his eye and managed to hold it horizontal for a few seconds somehow with his cheek and eye socket muscles--definitely a trick honed in a cave, be it a tangible or intangible cave.

Feed at the Fairmont

On April 18, 1906, the new Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill was finished, but had yet to open. The elegant interior appointments had been delivered and awaited unpacking, and the grand edifice was poised for its debut. At 5:20 am that morning the earthquake hit. The structure held together, but the insidious fires that decimated the city eventually reached the Fairmont. The hotel did open--and in remarkable time a scant year later, representing the resiliency of the city and its citizens' irrepressible appetite for life's pleasures. On April 18th, 1907, an enourmous banquet was held to celebrate the hotel's rebirth. On the menu: 600 pounds of turtle, 13,000 oysters, and thousands of dollars worth of French wine. In no time at all, the Fairmont was at the center of the city's post-earthquake social whirl. And so to commemorate this day, I offer up a little note from a San Franciscan sybarite three years after the quake, scrawled on the back of a Fairmont Hotel postcard.

The card is postmarked San Francisco, August 26, 1909, and addressed to Mrs. T. O'Sullivan, c/o Casino Barbershop, Santa Cruz, Cal. Why Mrs.T. O'Sullivan was getting her mail at the Santa Cruz Beach Casino barbershop I can only imagine. Perhaps she was an employee in the casino--which was not a gambling place, but rather an entertainment pavillion. Or was she just having a little end of summer vacation at the beach? In any case, she got a little teaser from San Francisco. The card reads (as far as I can discern):

This is the place where the big feed comes off. Don't tell Mae she will lose her appetite (nut) A.E.W.

I'm not so sure about the word in parentheses. Could it actually be "not"? I think it's probably "nut," implying that she'll lose her head. In any case, it seems that Mae wouldn't be making it to the "big feed," and the site of the extravagant Fairmont Hotel might be too much for her! There must have been some great shindig planned, and Mrs. T. O'Sullivan definitely knew all about it.

Where Mobs Mingle, Fatty Fell, and Ladies Lunch

I was right in thinking this last Sunday would be a good time to take a walk downtown--as many tourists and residents alike were indoors watching the Super Bowl. Ordinarily it's a maddening place on weekends, when you'll find yourself laboriously weaving through thick streams of shoppers and sightseers. I'd been meaning to go down to Union Square to try to establish the vantage points of two vintage snapshots I have: one is of an unknown woman in a fur collar coat, circa 1950s/early 1960s; the other shows my father's mother Leota standing with her friend Edith (who, like her, had been a nurse in WWI), probably in the early 1920s. I had no doubt that the the mid-Century color photo was in Union Square, but my grandmother's photo proves more challenging. I believe she was living in San Francisco at the time, and it seems to me from the picture that there's no other place it could be.

Union Square is an enduring central and magnetic location in the City. Through the decades it has undergone numerous reconfigurations, and from the time before the Civil War when the site was the scene of violent pro-Union demonstrations, it has served as a forum for protesting, commemorating, celebrating, regrouping, meeting, malingering, shopping, performing, displaying, and--most crucially for urban existence--simply sitting and taking a moment. The San Francisco Public Library has a collection of historic photographs online, and the series of Union Square pictures form a wonderful history of place. A 1928 image features ladies knitting, talking, resting on a bench. Early pictures through the 1930s show benches lining every walkway and packed with hat wearing city people in repose. Later images show the shifting times with street performers, nary a hat in site, and people sprawling on the grass.

Since 1904, the St. Francis Hotel has served as anchor, landmark, and catalyst for the square itself. Luminaries of every age have passed through this building, each leaving a new layer of narrative for Union Square's history. Infamously in 1921 (roughly several years before Leota and Edith's snapshot was taken) the silent movie actor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had his reputation and career obliterated following a stay at the St. Francis Hotel. Though cleared of official blame in the end, he was smeared by a firestorm of gossip and press coverage when a starlet died soon after getting sick at a raucous, liquor-drenched party held in his rooms. And Union Square itself has starred in movies, most notably in The Conversation with Gene Hackman, whose character spies on, records, and obsesses about a young couple who have a seemingly innocuous conversation as they stroll around Union Square in its 1970s incarnation. The images in this movie are parallel to my first memories of Union Square, how I ultimately think of its configuration, the way the benches and walkways looked, how the people looked. The SF Library collection includes a 1974 photo of a long-haired, bearded, shirtless man sitting and holding a rat in his hand--and I almost feel like I might have seen this guy once myself.

But back to my photos. The mid-Century lady can easily be placed, standing with her back to the southwest corner of the square at Powell Street. The six-story, rounded corner building seen over her left shoulder shows up in images from at least 1915 onward, and is still located at the corner of Geary at Powell, across from the St. Francis. Before taking the photos down to the square, I had thought maybe Leota and Edith's picture had been taken at this corner to too, but I soon realized it's a different, smaller rounded building altogether. For a long time I compared the image to the front of the St. Francis, thinking that maybe my grandmother stood with her back to the hotel, but after sitting and pondering Union Square, and later scrutinizing the historic photographs, it became clear that this could not be the northwest corner, or the east side of the square either. And, no clues emerged from considering what seems to be a theater sign on top of the building in the photo, which reads: "State / Photoplays / De Luxe." There was a State Theater on Market Street, but it was a large block-fronted building. What definitely can be seen from the historic images is a continuous flux of architecture. So, I'm not yet abandoning the quest to place them, and am still assuming they were not in another location or city entirely!

My goal had been to get a picture taken of myself standing where my long-deceased grandmother had stood, just for the fun and pleasure of San Francisco personal history continuity. That failing, I decided to adopt the mid-Century woman as a stand-in grandmother, and asked an older man relaxing on a bench if he would take my picture. I stood above the area where this lady stood, as otherwise the new palm trees would have obscured the distinctive rounded building behind me. After the nice guy struggled with my digital camera for a few tries, there I was, as ever--happily both a tourist and a native. Then I did what ladies do on a Union Square afternoon, and took myself to lunch.

A Change of Climate

The only word for tonight is: ELECTRIFYING. And the buildup over the last few days has been equally so. Yesterday, emerging from the BART station downtown at Market and Montgomery Street at about 6:30, I walked into a dizzying little cluster of chaos. The station underground was packed with the usual commuters, but this time with a palpable buzz of apparent anxiety and preoccupation. The line for monthly bus passes snaked through the station's exit area, and the mini-mobs of campaigners pushing local propositions (22 on the SF ballot!) added to the general noise and activity. A group of six or so people against Proposition 8 (a ban on gay marriage rights) handed out fliers and put Prop 8 stickers on a few bewildered but seemingly sympathetic commuters. Various campaigners for local Board of Supervisors candidates took advantage of the captive audience of people in line for passes. One lone young guy with Ralph Nader pamphlets was completely ignored at the foot of the escalator. At the top of the escalator, a professional looking man in a suit and luxurious long coat enigmatically stood silent and sober-faced, holding a crudely hand-lettered sign with a cutout photograph of a pig taped to it, in support of farm animal rights, State Prop 2. On the street, the day-long rainstorm had evening traffic in an evil snarl, climaxing in a total standstill when a fire engine and ambulance tried to cross Market Street. People on the sidewalk hurried along, and a sense of of anticipation charged the air. I felt my own sense of anxiety as I waited for the late running buses to make it through the gridlock, and wondered about the next day.

Tonight, home after a remarkable night, I hear the television station helicopters hovering over the City on alert for any newsworthy outbursts of activity and people driving by honking their horns and hooting out their windows in celebration. I spent the evening at the completely packed Edinburgh Castle pub in the Tenderloin, where the several televisions and large projection screen showed CNN coverage of the election returns. Things were looking good for Obama when I got there, but I still couldn't believe it was really going to happen. When the station did a countdown and called the election for him, the bar exploded in roars and cheers and strangers hugging strangers. The ever-cynical Glaswegian bar manager was actually yelling and screaming as passionately as all of us. And that's what was so disorienting--there has been almost a decade of gloom and dark biting discourse in this city, and suddenly... I see and hear a bar full of erstwhile pessimistic liberals actually chanting "O-Ba-MA!" and "Yes We Can!" Not to mention, the crowd vehemently shushed those who were talking while McCain gave his concession speech and there were even nods of appreciation for his tone and words. Frankly, though it was undeniably heady-- it was also downright surreal. What WILL the coming days bring? I can only think--if the iconoclastic patrons of this gritty San Francisco bar got emotional and bright-eyed when our President-elect took to the podium for his acceptance speech...perhaps we really are in for a real wave of change for the better. I sure hope so.