Curio San Francisco

Bronze Burns and Tenderloin Haggis

2012-01-25T23:53:00.000-08:00

Today was the birthday of poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), aday that has long been marked with celebrations and observances worldwide,including in San Francisco. Notices for Burns events appear yearly in the pagesof the local paper through the late 19^th and early 20^thcenturies, put on by the various Scottish Societies and Groups, which continueto do so today. These societies were apparently well-organized in the early 20^thcentury, as they banded together to bring about the erecting of a bronze statueof Burns, privately raising $30,000 for the undertaking. The California artist M.Earl Cummings was attained to render the likeness, which was cast in Louis DeRome’s Bronze Foundry in San Francisco. The design of the Beaux-Arts carved, garlanded granite pedestalwas executed by Arthur Brown (principle architect of San Francisco City Hall). Itwas announced in the San Francisco Chronicleon January 28, 1906, that:

“Loyal Scots, true to their ‘ain countrie’ and generous andgrateful to the land in which they live, have just completed arrangements foras handsome a testimonial of good will as it has been the good fortune of thismunicipality to receive. They are to give to the city for Golden Gate Park amagnificent statue of Robert Burns, which will be ready for unveiling withinthe next three months.”

Three months from that date would have been the end of April1906. But on the 18^th the earthquake hit. Needless to say, there was a slight delaywith the statue raising. Not until February 1908 is it reported that the statuewas “unveiled” on the same day that the Park Memorial Museum has its post-earthquakereopening. As testament to the general enthusiasm for the poet at the time, itis further reported that the statue was “visited by large crowds.”

Bagpipes on Burns Night

Far from any polished parade of tartans, the annualBurns Night Celebration at the Edinburgh Castle Pub on Geary Street offers itswell-established and idiosyncratic night. This year it was held on Saturday the21^st, and having missed it last year for the first time in eightyears, it was good to be back. First off the mood was set with bagpipe airsperformed by Jack Cunningham, who is a long-standing Burns Night fixture andthe possessor of glorious white whiskers. He was in good form and soundedgreat—his mutton chops were the cherry on top.

Kilts at the Castle

The evening was kicked off witha Burns reading by Alan Black: bartender, writer, and Glaswegian heart-and-soul ofthe Castle. Next came the usual presentation by Reverend Jana, who is afull-throttle walking mixed metaphor—earthy and humorous Scotswoman, andordained Buddhist priest. She ministers to the varied denizens of theTenderloin neighborhood through the year, but every January dons a blackt-shirt, black vest, and kilt—and lets it rip on Burns Night. My favorite partis the fact that she demands quiet when she is speaking, which is a huge accomplishmentin a bar that’s packed with drinkers. There is inevitably a contingent of youngpatrons in attendance who appear to have only the vaguest idea of what theevening is about, and to see them shushedby a shaved-headed, female Scottish Buddhist priest with bawdy sensibilities—herreading glasses perched at the end of her nose—is a great pleasure. Along with songs and readings, Rev. Jana chooses a yearly topic tinged with Burnsian naughtiness to expound on. Past years have featured meditations on sheep shagging, and the mysterious ways of the elusive haggi creature. This year was a reprisal of one that has popped up before, but is always a crowd pleaser: farting. A lively laundry list recitation followed (air bagel, cheek splitter, trouser cough, etc. etc.).

Addressing the Haggis

The highlight of the evening is the parading of the haggis. Alan calls for the crowd to part down the center of the bar like the red sea (which all obediently do), and a comely lass holds aloft the platter of haggis behind the marching bagpiper as everyone cheers and ogles the intriguing object. It's delivered to Alan up by the pool table, and he gives his always rousing reciting of Burns' "Address to a Haggis"! Everyone then rushes the table and lines up for their portion. Though I've skipped it in past years, this time I made it to the front of the line and got a serving. The haggis itself was small, and the stuff inside was quickly emptied out, but there were extra heaping piles of it on platters. Tastes to me a bit like grains mixed in liverwurst! The evening carried on with more readings and songs, and the whiskey flowed. Though in previous years I've stayed late enough for the evening to reach the next level of interesting (the first year I attended I was properly flashed by an inebriated, kilt-wearing young gent), this year we slipped out at a very prim 11:30ish. But still a satisfying Burns Night!

Haggis Remains

On Sunday late morning, not so much feeling hung over fromthe evening before as still suffering a general post-2011 malaise, I set out tothe park in the pouring rain to visit the Burns statue, which is located justbefore the museum on John F. Kennedy Drive. Standing in the gray light with hisstockings, britches, and waistcoat, the rain whipping about him, he looked justas a father of Romanticism should—brooding and naturalistic. Though notmentioned in the 1908 article, there is now a bronze plaque on the plinthinscribed with the first stanza of Burns’ poem To a Mountain Daisy: “Wee, modest crimson-tipped flow’r / Thou’smet me in an evil hour…” The park islush and green right now, the air smelling wonderfully of damp redwood bark andeucalyptus trees, and it was a balm to soak it all in under the bronze gaze ofBurns. I splashed back home well cheered.

Burns in the Park

A Clean Well-Lighted Attic

2012-01-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

Walking home through Duboce Park today, this skylight window in an attic caught my eye. The space looks both sunny and shadowed... a Victorian attic with the gloomy interest that comes with age and dubious old things packed away, but that is bright and open to the sky. The City has many old attics converted this way, and I love to catch a glimpse of them.

Where Subterranean Sybarites Sipped

2012-01-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

A little round of time travel bar hopping would be nice right about now. But where to go? San Francisco’s social history winds throughan endless explosion of saloons, speakeasies, bars, hole-in-the-wallrestaurants, bizarre and quaint theme restaurants that come and go, elegantdining establishments, and everything in between. If you share the (odd?) fascination for SanFrancisco venues that are no more, old postcards will speedily transport thetourist of phantom establishments. Insome cases, postcards might be the only remaining trace of a place where once and long agopeople gathered, ate and drank with gusto, and felt alive and rooted in the moment.

The DungeonRestaurant is one of these irresistible watering hole ghosts. It was in businesssometime in the 1920s, and probably not for long, as I haven’t yet found any referencesother than the postcard. It appears to have been in a basement, and featuredtwo rows of jail “cells,” each with a sign above the door giving a crime. Thetwo readable signs in the image are “Bootlegging” and “Theft.” Down the centerthere is a prison style table and benches, and the waiters are dressedfetchingly in convict stripes. There appears to be sawdust covering the floor,as you can just see footprints running in front of each line of waiters. Thatsets the tone. It’s tempting to imaginethe raucous parties that went on here. It probably wasn’t the kind of placewhere you went for a quite meal. In fact, based on the look of the room and the eraof business—it’s easy to imagine that food was not exactly the focus. The Bootlegging booth must have been the mostpopular!

The Dungeon Restaurant postcard gives the location as “47 Anna Lane, just above Ellis and Powell St.” However,there is now no trace of the little lane, which was located somewhere in theblock bounded by Powell, Ellis, Eddy, and Cyril Magnin. It could bear more research, but no doubt that basementspace is now a sadly bland storage room for one of the retailers or fast food places alonglower Powell Street!

The Log Cabin Saloon isanother establishment that would warrant a place on my San Francisco timetraveler’s itinerary. It was located at1382 Market Street, so somewhere under the sprawl that is the Fox PlazaApartment Building and the post office. Not sure of the date, but based on thepostcard style, perhaps the teens or earlier? Once again, it seems to be abasement locale—where all properly seamy places reside, of course. The ceilingand walls appear to be entirely faced by actual redwood logs, and are coveredwith an orgy of taxidermy and pelts. A bald eagle has a place of prominence,and a mountain lion sits coyly on the floor (stuffed, I assume? But whoknows!). There is not a bar stool in site, and it looks like spittoons are seton the floor along the front of the bar. There are two little log housestowards the back, which are perhaps the facilities?! Much rustic fun no doubttook place in this debauched-Daniel-Boone interior.

The Backyard Cellar,though also subterranean, looks slightly more salubrious than the other twounderground lairs. This bar was in the basement of the celebrated BackyardRestaurant in North Beach, located at 1024 Kearny, which operated from about1935 to 1953. In more recent decades, the address has been a series ofnightclubs, culminating with a rock and punk venue that closed in 2000. It wasthen renovated into what looks like part of an unremarkable office building.But in 1937, when the Backyard was featured in a volume of Eating Around San Francisco (Hange & Thompson), it was a warmand whimsical retreat. The authors describe walking up the steps beyond thesmall lobby, and entering the dining room made to look like a backyard:

“Subdued lantern lights revealed the wooden walled room inwhich were windows with silhouettes depicting intimate phrases of family life,as if again we were looking up from our backyard through the windows of theneighbors… there was youth flirting; there was the old man taking his ‘nightcap’before retiring; there was the husband, evidently caught at some misdemeanor,if the wife with her rolling pin in action were to be believed... and in frontwas the neighbor’s balcony with demijohns, an old shepherd’s horn, corn cobsand garlic drying.”

The dining room menu featured a choice of half a bonelessfried chicken with pine nut stuffing and cooked with white wine, double lambchops, or steak, with assorted offerings of salads, salami, peppers, soup,spaghetti, vegetables and potatoes, and a desert of fruit in wine.

And to get to the bar:

“One is directed by a yellow traffic sign to the cellar whenhe first enters the door… The cellar has been drilled from solid rock. It iswalled by real and imitation brick… An old fireplace gives glow and warmth… Thehors d’oeuvres table is laden with tasty bits of pig’s feet, crackers, pots ofcheese and canapés. The companionable bar, above which are handsome murals ofItalian peasant scenes, has a suspended bottle of champagne in the center,”from which a “foaming finish” is given to the cocktails that are served.

So that settles it. I will end my time-trippingfirst with a champagne foam-topped cocktail in the Backyard Cellar, followed byfeasting upstairs with the silhouettes. Okay, maybe I'll nip back to the Dungeon afterwards to see who's hanging out in the Bootlegging cell. If anyone comes looking for me I'll be in the 1920s.

Hanges, Chef Louis, and Thompson, Ruth. Eating Around San Francisco. Suttonhouse Ltd., 1937: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York.

An Amnesiac and a Drunk Walk into a Bar...

2012-01-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

"The Man Who Forgot HisName Escapes with Tremens Patient"

(San Francisco Chronicle, January 5, 1902*)

On New Year’sEve in San Francisco, 1901, a man did not recall how to get home, his name, hisage, or what he did for a living. Knowing he was in need of help, he tookhimself to a police station. Consequently, he was delivered to the insane wardof the Receiving Hospital. The man eventually maintained that his name wasWilliam Clark, but beyond that “his ideas were disconnected.” As of January 5^th, Clark was atlarge, having joined forces and escaped with a fellow patient, Robert Paul, whowas suffering a bout of delirium tremens. The great escape took place whenClark and the other poor wretch were amongst a group of patients being transferredto the dreaded wards of the City and County Hospital. Taking advantage of thegeneral activity, having decided that they’d “had enough of strait-jackets andbitter ‘D.T.’ medicine,” the men hot-footed it away from the crowd. They werethen seen “waving their hands in adiufrom across the street,” which was taken as a greeting of friends from thosewho noticed. The article pithily ends with this summation of Clark and histravails:

“He is nowtrying to find his way home in company with Paul, who was partially recoveredfrom an attack of an overwrought imagination brought on by a protractedcelebration of the Christmas Season. It is argued that possibly what Clarkforgets Paul may imagine, and thus succeed in finding Clark’s home.”

It could also be argued that waking up in the New Year with no specific memories of what camebefore is not such a bad thing, and is maybe even a merciful, blissful tonic—depending on the New Year’s Eve in question. Or, for that matter, notsuch a bad thing depending on the nature of whatever might have come before. I am inclined to take thatview on this disconcertingly bright and sunny San Francisco January 1st.

* San Francisco Chronicle (1869-Current File); Jan 5, 1902; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922) p. 22; through www.sfpl.org.

An Old Fashion Christmas

2011-12-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

“Someof the Unconscious Humor and Pathos of the Great Holiday”
(San Francisco Chronicle, 1888)

In a January 1^st, 1888 San Francisco Chronicle article* titled: “Odd Celebrations: QueerObservances of Christmas, The People Who Dine Alone” the paper (in a sort ofpost-holiday blind item debriefing) takes note of the lone “old bachelors” and eccentrics whospend Christmas Day dining alone in restaurants around the City, or in other unorthodoxways. San Francisco has long been a place where dining out as a matter of course was the normal thing to do, as it was a frontier city that sprung uparound the early flush of the state’s gold fever, when men were suddenlyfar removed and disengaged from hometowns and family hearths. By the1880s, however, the City had settled into a more establishment identity.

So the yearly solitary holiday ritual of one middle-aged“conservative and successful business man” is deemed curious enough to note. Eachyear on Christmas day he took his meal in the same room out at the Cliff House Hotel, where he has a leisurely multi-coursemeal, tips the waiter generously, goes to smoke his cigar on the balcony, then “takeshis buggy and drives away to town.” The writer speculates that “…there is awoman somewhere in it—a woman no longer of the flesh and blood, but anintangible recollection of the past that stirs the heart of the steady-goingmerchant, and makes him for one day in the year a different being.”

It’s observed that “The large contingent of oldbachelors does not, however, supply all that is curious in the ways ofobserving Christmas,” and that there are “other eccentric people who celebrate Christmasday in fashions that the steady-going family man never dreams of.” (Though, aresteady-going family men really so immuneto dreams of observing the holiday in the manner that the author then goes onto recount?!). Apparently, that Christmas day a “well-known pioneer residentand property-owner” was found drunk and “dancing like a lunatic” on the beach, with another “highly respectable old residentgloriously full and peacefully snoring off the effects of his overindulgence”!They were discovered by a little boy who, concerned that the one passed out on the sand was dead, went to the police. Makes one wonder what "pioneer families" they did hail from! But the back story for the antics of these two earlySan Franciscans is more interesting:

“It transpired that they have been for many years inthe public habit of celebrating Christmas on the sand dunes near Fort Point,where in early days they lived together in a rude tent and spent their firstChristmas after leaving New York. Every Christmas the two pioneers take acouple of bottles of the necessary stimulant and go out to the sand hills, andsitting down where their old tent stood, proceed to talk of bygone days andempty their flasks.”

So, sloppy inebriation and all, it’s a wistful,sentimental tableau! And so really, in essence, the men have a traditionalChristmas.

Cliff House, stereoview, 1880s

* San Francisco Chronicle (1869-Current File); Jan1, 1888; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922) p.30; through www.sfpl.org.

Frisco Fibs: Imagined Histories I

2011-11-13T16:38:00.001-08:00

The Manicurist

Her real name was Bonnie Carroll,but she had been going by “Pamala Page” since arriving in San Francisco fromReno. She’d seen a starlet in Photo PlayMagazine with that name, spelled with three a's, and figured she might as well borrow it. Phil liked itbetter than Bonnie, said it was more glamorous. And that’s how the other girlsat the salon knew her. The American Room Beauty Salon on the Emporium Capwell departmentstore mezzanine got a nice clientele, and in a way Pamala was surprised thatthey believed her story about working for two years at a Reno hotel salon. Theydidn’t even call her girlfriend up there, who was all ready to put on an actand give a story. The best part was that the job was a quick ride on the cablecar from Phil’s place at California and Leavenworth, where she was staying,then a quick walk down the hill to Powell and Market.

That night after work Pamala wasgoing to meet Phil and his friends, some whom he called his associates, at theDomino Club. The guys had reserved the table by the bar under the nakedpainting of “Gloria,” and all their girls were going to meet them there. One ortwo of the guys were on leave, but Pamala didn’t know what most of the others did.Anyway, she couldn’t wait to walk down those steps in Trinity Place alley rightinto the middle of that fantastic noise and fun.

The evening plans were on hermind as she stood in the Capwell’s powder room carefully re-applying her darkred lipstick. How nice it would be to get those pearl earrings she’d seen downin the jewelry department to wear for the dinner. A platinum blond came out ofthe dark wood stalls, adjusting her girdle. She wore a black lamb’s wool swingcoat and black velvet ankle strap heels. Slightly older than Pamala’s twenty-twoyears, the woman took no notice of her as she followed her out of the lounge afew paces behind. Down in the basement cafeteria, Pamala sat down at the lunchcounter a few seats away from the blond. Pamala sipped her coffee and shot quick looks at the womanpicking at her grilled cheese sandwich. At the cashier to pay, she watchedover the woman’s shoulder as she rifled through a thick billfold of money.

On Market Street, the womanturned left and headed down 5^th Street. Pamala watched her coat swayas she took small, quick steps in her pencil skirt. They got to the corner ofMission Street, where the woman paused in front of the Pickwick Hotel, as ifshe might go in. Then she turned down Mission and went into the hotel’s parkinggarage. The attendant in the booth nodded at the woman as she entered, and Pamalaslipped in after her when he looked back down at his paper. No one else seemedto be in there. She had no sense in her mind of what she was about to do, justa vague feeling of resentment. When the woman stepped past a pillar thatput her out of the attendant’s site, Pamala stepped forward and pushed her hardfrom behind. The woman fell forward and cried out as her head hit the backbumper of a parked car. She looked up insurprise at Pamala, who grabbed her handbag and, after turning to step away,turned back and swung the hard-edged purse forcefully at the side of the woman’shead. Then she ran out an exit on Jesse Street. It was something she had swornto herself she wouldn’t do again, yet here was the woman’s bag now in hersweating hand. The attendant musthave heard the woman scream, because before Pamala had reached 4^thStreet, she was grabbed and restrained by him and another man.

All night in the cell she thoughtof the party going on without her at the Domino Club and who Phil might bespending time with. It made her sick to think. But when she remembered theblond woman’s tight little steps and how she had looked right through Pamala,she felt like she would do it all over again. It wasn’t until three days later thatPhil came and bailed her out with $100. By then she was feeling as low as youcould get, and she knew she’d probably lost her job. And she didn’t know whatwould happen next. If Phil asked her to leave, it wouldn’t be too much of aproblem. She hadn’t yet had the nerve to unpack her suitcase at his placeanyway.

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T12:58:00.001-08:00

A rainy, atmospheric day at the Presidio. Gray mist shadowed the green slopes and white marble rows, and the Golden Gate Bridge faded in and out of view. The hilly spot overlooking the Bay was established as a National Cemetary in 1884, the first on the west coast.

City Pulp: Rooming House Blues

2011-10-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

I have a still tiny collection of San Francisco-related pulp fiction paperbacks, and Rooming House (Beacon Books, 1951) is one of the more notable. It features particularly unsavory cover art, showing the bitter protagonist threatening his frowzy, voluptuous mate. But it's notable for several other reasons. To begin with, it is reasonably well-written and descriptive, in a vintage hard boiled sort of way--at least compared to the wooden and clunky prose of other examples I've dipped into. Additionally, the author is very specific about the locations where the nasty protagonist skulks about, street by street, including his forays to speakeasies. And finally, it revolves around a fascinating aspect of early life in San Francisco and other American and European cities: the urban rented room.

A rooming house was distinct from a boarding house, in that it was a building purpose-built for multiple renters. A boarding or lodging house was generally a private home where boarders were accommodated in extra rooms and dined with the family--the lines of privacy being more blurred. But aspects of each overlapped, with renters who paid for board at rooming houses dining with the family and fellow inmates at a common table. In Rooming House, the motley group of lodgers sit down to eat with the landlord as his daughter serves.

Based on just a cursory inquiry, Fred Malloy seems to be a pen name for Holland E. Nickerson. Or, both are pen names for Jack Woodford and/or another writer at The Jack Woodford Press (the answer is perhaps to be found in the pulp specialist Stephen Spender's The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers). In any case, whoever the author or authors were, they clearly spent time in San Francisco.

Though the cover art mostly evokes the time of publication, the story is set sometime during Prohibition. The pitiful and eventually violent main character, Harry, is a ragtime saxophone player from Chicago who lands in San Francisco to make it big in the club circuit. But a weakness for the bottle and tawdry dames, coupled with his unwillingness to play the newer jazz sounds, eventually separates him from his band mates and lands him in a decrepit rooming house South of Market on Hampshire Street. It's run by an unpleasant Sicilian named Guido, along with Emma, his broken-down, room-crawling daughter. Harry is seduced by the blowzy vixen in his threadbare bedroom, and his life becomes entangled with the rooming house and the vicious, seedy characters that inhabit the place. It does not end well for any of them.

Harry is described as taking the "green surface car, rattling and swaying down Bryant..." to and from the rooming house. He walks across Franklin Park (where he later has a racy tryst on a park bench), which is now a sports field, turns on Hampshire Street and heads a block to the building which is described as having a shingled porch. This close to the field, the street is currently lined with new condos and large commercial buildings. But further down (take a Google Street View stroll...) there are many blocks that include numerous wonderful Victorian and turn-of-the-century buildings. On Hampshire between 20th and 21st, there is a two story building (currently painted blue and white) with a double-level porch and entrances, which has the look of a 19th century purpose-built rooming house. It's easy to imagine this structure, or one like it, as the book's cauldron of hard boiled drama.

The specificity of the character's movements are a pleasure for the San Franciscophile. For example, the author tracks Harry heading up Bryant to 11th Street, and then to Market Street where he gets off the street car and crosses Civic Center to Polk Street. He heads up Polk until he gets to O'Farrell (the Tenderloin; ever and still a destination for lost nights), where he takes a turn and heads for a rough and nasty speakeasy in a little cul-de-sac:

"Papers and cans littered the area, a kind of meaty slime seemed to cling to the brick walls of the narrow alley.... he shuffled through the muck that covered the paved surface toward the dim stairs leading down into deeper shadow. The street lamp struggled valiantly and managed to send just a somber gleam into these dank corners."

Also interesting, from the perspective of Prohibition in San Francisco, Harry frequents a speakeasy held in a private home ("everyone was trying to scratch out a living these days") on Division near 11th, where now there are only commercial buildings. The place is described as "...more like a family gathering, though some nights they drew quite a crowd. The man and his wife tended bar, which was a small buffet table set in the basement."

Other locations throughout the City feature in Harry's increasingly degenerate and degenerating wanderings, which could be plotted precisely on a map. Early on, after skirting a gig at a society maven's home on Knob Hill, he heads for a speakeasy on Montgomery Street. He regularly frequents another "speak" on California Street called Al's. At the ferry building he boards a boat for Oakland (at which point the first of several murders is committed). He visits various banks on Market Street to initiate a doomed plan. And the child of his cursed union is born at San Francisco General on Potrero. The details of people and places belie the front and back cover titillations ("Emma made the beds in that cheap San Francisco rooming house. She was young, pretty in a tawdry way, and jail-bait hungry.") A little bit of Pulp with a lot of vintage local San Francisco color.

Side Notes: The volume is out of print and pricey, but for a great social history study that touches on American lodging/rooming houses and focuses on residential hotels, see "Living Downtown" by Paul Groth. On the subject of shared meals: the most vivid and stomach churning description of boarding house dining imaginable can be found in the early chapters of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, in which his perpetually grimy-handed landlord leaves an oily black thumbprint on every slice of bread he insists upon cutting.

Ball in Play

2011-09-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

The wonderful collection at the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda includes a selection of machines from the 1930s-40s. Of these my favorite is (of course!) the "San Francisco" machine. Close second: the London-themed "Big Ben." Each has great primary color graphics with stylish, saucy, vintage gals. All machines at the museum can be played with entrance fee, which supports the maintenance of the collection, and the preservation and appreciation of pinball art and history.

May Miscellany

2011-05-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Cranky Old Biddy
This year's San Francisco Bay to Breakers run has come and gone, and for the first year in a long time I missed the whole spectacle (see May 17, 2009 post). That morning I woke up already lacking the most rudimentary Bacchanalian spirit, but all hope was lost for me when I caught a toga-wearing frat boy urinating at our building's front stoop. One was not amused; the San Francisco woman above represents my state of mind at that moment. I threw open my window like a neighborhood crazy lady and shrilly cursed the guy out. Urination-interuptus. I heard him say "oh shit" and then he scampered off with the several young blond girls wearing lingerie and fairy wings, who waited for him. So I didn't end up wandering out to watch the stream of revelers, and can't report on this year's Dionysian leit motifs. However, in the Mission later that afternoon I did spot two men and one woman (or maybe three men?) sitting in a restaurant on 24th Street, excellently done up as Natalie Portman in Black Swan: white tutus, white faces, and evil black swan eye makeup.

Art on Market Street
The San Francisco Arts Commission is doing its part to breathe new life into the frayed Central Market Street Area, and has launched the second year of its "Art in Store Fronts" program. The aim is to have artwork displayed in empty or underused storefronts, as well as murals and street art installations. May 13 was the public celebration, and included a jazz band in front of one of the electronic stores, and a top-hatted pianist playing on a baby grand on the sidewalk. It was a lively evening out there, with young art groupies, the usual gritty 6th Street and Civic Center characters, and crowds of Bay Area teachers from an education cuts demonstration, all mingling along the street. I went specifically to see a new mural by Rafael Landea, titled "20,000 Missing Seats" at Market and Golden Gate. After the 1906 earthquake and up to the 1950s there were numerous movie and performance theaters lining this stretch of Market Street. Landea's mural represents the loss of these theaters, with 20,000 being the combined estimate of seating lost. There are still a few extant old theaters, some boarded up, and one or two that have long functioned as down-market girlie show venues. I would love to see this area become a theater concentration again with the remaining old buildings renovated and revitalized, girlie shows and all (maybe tarted up to be a bit more top shelf!), with the addition of new movie houses and live performance theaters, alongside the blooming art scene here. The City is making strenuous efforts to bring in such companies as Twitter to anchor a new iteration of the neighborhood, which I think could be positive. But the most exciting prospect would be an area continuing to be increasingly alive with new and diverse retail, restaurant, and entertainment commerce in a swath of the city still rich with historic structures.

The Comstock Saloon
The wonderful and welcoming Comstock Saloon in North Beach recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. This bar and restaurant was created by Absinthe Brasserie bartenders and partners, and masterfully offers an atmosphere of Old San Francisco. It's in a space that has been a drinking spot since 1907, and the interior was well designed to evoke a late 19th-early 20th century establishment. The menu is inspired and informed by the era in America when "free lunches" were offered at saloons (soups and stews, cold and hot meats, meat pies, relishes, pickled eggs, etc.) to get and keep patrons in the bar--and to spur on more drinking! I've yet to explore the menu fully, but I tried the smoked salmon on rye with dill cream appetizer, and it was very good with my gin cocktail. They have inaugurated a "free lunch" item with a two-drink minimum, which is a very nice nod to San Francisco dining and drinking history. For me, the cherry on top at this place is the live music they have every night, performed above the main room in a tiny, open mezzanine/nook. When I was last there a quartet of young musicians (piano; stand-up base; drum; trumpet) performed some fantastic classic jazz, which floated over the happy bar-babble below.

On Free Lunches in San Francisco, by Louis Laurent Simonin (From Malcolm E. Barker's More San Francisco Memoirs: 1852-1899, The Ripening Years, Londonborn Publications, SF, 1996):
On the corner where the politicians collect [the Montgomery Block] is located the most famous bar in all of California, and it is there that takes place one of the most popular lunches of the city. Any passerby may partake of this lunch. Oyster soup, pork and beans, roast beef and potatoes, all the sacramental offerings, are spread out on a table, with a few pieces of thinly sliced bread. One grabs a plate and eats while standing. Then one goes up to the bar to receive a glass of claret or sherry. Only the drink is paid for: 25 cents... Those who do not drink do not pay, and many Californians, half-starved and down on their luck, go from lunch to lunch to fill their stomachs and their pockets with enough to last them the rest of the day, at no cost.

Presidio Morning

2010-10-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

The barracks in the San Francisco Presidio, where generations of men slept throughout the Spanish-American War, World I, and World War II, are in the process of being admirably restored. They are also being gently adapted for new use so that they can contribute to sustaining one of the most historic places in San Francisco. Walking before the freshly revamped brick buildings now, it is easy to imagine the impact these structures had in the late 1890s when they were built.

And yet, they also had a wonderful atmosphere when they still showed a patina of time and the faint stamps of military use that continued up until the 1990s. Here are some images from a foggy morning a few years back, when the years still lingered around the edges of the bricks and the corners still held shadows.

Spring Arrives--And She Wears Platform Boots

2010-06-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

It's spring in the City--and following another raucous and inebriated Bay to Breakers event, the season is heralded by the parading of the Sacred Spring Mannequin!

Well... actually, it's a vendor from an Octavia St. and Hayes Valley street fair last month, carrying his display. But her tutu skirt and platform boots kick off the season with just the right note!

A Whiff of Prohibition San Francisco

2010-02-15T15:32:00.001-08:00

Continuing on a Jones Street theme... I was recently lucky enough to have a tour of the original speakeasy basement at the popular bar Bourbon & Branch at the corner of Jones and O'Farrell. To gain entrance to the street level reservations-only bar, you ring the outside bell at the heavy, anonymous door and give a password to the doorman. The owners (who also run the newer, historical themed Rickhouse on Kearny) additionally created a back room called "The Library," which is reached from the main bar through a clever bookcase-disguised door, and does not require reservations. The decor in the library is theatrical, but evokes just the right mood. My only gripe is the white plastic(?) leafy modernist looking chandeliers, which almost blow the affect for me. Everything else was so carefully done it seems a shame that more evocative light fixtures couldn't be installed. But still, the proprietors' labour of love in bringing the bar about is clear to see and ultimately effective.

As our barman-guide related, the owners had planned on a speakeasy bar at this property before realizing that the address had been an actual illegal drinking establishment during Prohibition. In fact, as they discovered, the location at 501 Jones Street has been registered as a saloon since 1867. From 1923 the space next to the main bar was a "cigar store" run by a John J. Russell. Patrons in-the-know would request a certain brand of cigar, and a trap door in the floor would rise to admit them into the speakeasy below. The cigar store space has been vividly re-created, including a painted mirror sign featuring the original J.J. Russell logo, and can be rented for private events.

The basement renovation/re-creation is nearly done, but not yet open to the public as of this writing. The wooden trap door is original, as are the white marble surfaced stairs beneath it. Standing in the basement looking up, it's easy to imagine white kid leather high-heeled flapper shoes capering tipsily up and down the stairs for an evening of illicit slumming--perhaps in the company of more worldly ladies and their dangerous gents. The most wonderful thing about the basement is that an original mural on thin raw canvas still exists mounted on the north wall. It mostly consists of a primitively done, brown brick wall, but at the east end the bricks open up to a garden vista scene centered by a cypress tree. It's done in a charming, simple Beaux Arts style, and lends a palpable feeling of historicity to the room. The fabric must be infused with the hundreds of cigarettes, cigars, and wild escapades that took place down there--like an absorbant underworld shroud. Admirably, the owners don't plan to do anything at all to the painting, but intend to leave it as-is. I only hope that future patrons respect it, as it is such a unique and ephemeral treasure.

An escape tunnel still lies behind a bolted door in the basement of Bourbon & Branch, which apparently once led to a hotel on Leavenworth Street a block away. I wonder about such tunnels, many of which must still crisscross beneath the modern downtown streets, at least in remnants.

Another known speakeasy tunnel entrance can be found at the venerable House of Shields bar on New Montgomery, just across from the Palace Hotel. The House of Shields is notable for its still original interior, down to the huge oak bar and tiny hexagonal tiling on the floor. No theatrics here--the space is an authentic piece of San Francisco's past. The basement room is essentially undecorated (or was when I saw it a number of years ago), which is perhaps close to it's Prohibition condition? Large wood doors are located on the west wall. The story I've heard is that the tunnel connects to the Palace Hotel and allowed prosperous guests to easily and safely nip across the street for a little night life--their public reputations no worse for wear.

It seems safe to say that a primary result of Prohibition in San Francisco was to imbue alcoholic merry-making with an even more piquant enticement. A drunken, squealing dash through a dark tunnel must have been quite the end to an evening!

What Was a Gal to Do?

2010-02-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

Reading old classified newspaper advertisements can be entertaining and illuminating, and they can yield curious finds. For instance, this caught my eye in the San Francisco Chronicle of August 4, 1903:

Dr. Howards infallible, reliable treatment for female troubles: relief guarenteed or no charge: $10: 35 years experience. Hours 9-9. 301 Jones St. cor. of Eddy, opp the Alhambra.

Oh my. With those long business hours it would have to be infallible. And $10 was a lot of money in 1903. I wonder if it could have to do with those alarming "healthful" electrical contraptions and harnesses shown in late 19th-early 20th century Sears Roebuck catalogs--when electricity was all the rage for addressing women's "nervous disorders" and men's "vigor." Or could it be "trouble" of another sort? Whatever the case, Dr. Howard--now lost in the mist of San Francisco--was certainly confident in his ability.

Holiday Season in the City

2009-12-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

Already the holidays are here, 2010 is just around the corner, and I have neglected my blog for months. So, here is a pair of images... just to get things rolling again.

This time of year about five decades ago in San Francisco--it was glamour time. Ladies got properly gussied up and hit the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel to catch the Ernie Heckscher orchestra, and maybe even Tony Bennett. The hairspray came out, giant corsages were pinned on, and people headed for the Top of the Mark at the Mark Hopkins--like this unknown stylish blond in a found photo. She was clearly heading for a night to remember. Don't be fooled by the prim smile.

North Beach with Dad

2009-06-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-07T18:58:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

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.

The City's Favorite Holiday

2008-10-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a more than usually warm and glorious October, and Halloween expectations are bursting out all over the city and Bay Area. I knew the general preparation would begin soon, when I walked by Berkeley's Monterey Market in late September, and saw that giant "Big Mac" pumpkins had arrived. They're big enough that if Peter-Pumpkin-Eater had a very petite wife, he could neatly stash her in one of these.

The other harbinger has been the sudden and alarming (for me!) appearance of many large, brown, long-legged and fat stripe-bodied garden spiders weaving huge webs and hanging ominously over the sidewalks I need to walk on! At the moment, there are three webs stretched across the branches of the tree in front of my building. When I walk up or down our front stairs, I have to run this arachnid gauntlet. I respect these creatures, and I know they have no interest in the likes of me, but I can't suppress my primordial shudder. One house in the neighborhood has taken my horror to a nightmare level, and the occupants have decorated with two enormous crawling spiders.

The Halloween party circuit began at least two weeks ago, but the line in front of Costumes on Haight only started to form out the door a few days ago. Starting last night, things begin to intensify. All those so inclined get to exercise their scary/sexual fantasy/theatrical impulses. In this town, Halloween is definitely for grownups. Walking around today, the hot, bright Fall day and the many people surging in and out of the second-hand clothing stores on Haight Street discussing their costume plans ("...should I be a sweet sexy fairy, or a scary sexy fairy?"), finally started to get me in the mood. Heading home to my personal spider Fear Factor challenge, I walked past an open window and met the knowing, green eyes of a spooky unblinking cat--and that sealed the deal.

An Incomprehensible End

2008-10-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

While riding home on his bike one evening in the Richmond District, a friend's young brother was shot and killed by two unknown men in a white car. To say that it was senseless barely begins to touch on the sorrow of this loss. A memorial bike ride to the corner where it happened was held on the same night seven days later. Friends and family came, and also strangers who had never met this wonderful young man but nevertheless rode and came out of empathy and solidarity with his family. In this evening honoring his life and marking his death there was a beauty, a powerful counterpoint of furious love and defiant unity in the face of those who are able to end a life and then simply drive away. In memoriam to Jordan.

Windows by the Bay

2008-09-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

House and apartment windows are not just for letting in light and air and flouncing with curtains. Not in San Francisco, in any case. Windows here can become personal tiny stage sets, a changing canvas, a social or political platform. If you've been wandering around the city for very long, there are certain windows that you become familiar with, that become part of the normal landscape. Mannequin, or parts of them, are regularly featured. On Haight below Fillmore there's a cardboard baby, that's been there for years, in the window of a second story Victorian.

Certain neighborhoods are more likely then others to have window adornments. The Mission and the Castro, for instance, are hotbeds of window expression. But occasionally I'll walk down a seemingly mild-mannered street and suddenly I'm met with a strange decoration or surprising window knick-knack. Near Duboce Park one day I passed a two-pane commentary: a rubber George Bush mask topped by a black hat with skull and cross-bones on it, and in the next window a plastic skeleton head wearing a beaded cap. Perhaps they found their way to each window in separate fits of decorating, but the end result was pleasingly unified. Another day, walking on Mason Street near Nob Hill (where I wouldn't expect to find personal window display), I passed a playful assemblage of identity: toys and little tourist dolls beneath an American and Mexican flag.

A static window decoration is one thing, but an ever evolving window can become a destination. Such is the case with the venerable and celebrated "Troll Window" in the first floor of an apartment building on 18th at Valencia Street. This window is a marvel, a glittery mirrored disco ball extravaganza of miniature kitsch-Baroque stage design. Troll dolls feature in ever-changing seasonal or event-specific tableau, and have done so for the last seventeen years. Many people, like me, first notice it while going by on the #33 bus. I was on the sidewalk taking a picture of the latest window when the artist himself walked by on his way home from picking up laundry, and stopped to introduce himself. The troll window artist is Alfie Hamilton, who is not only a San Francisco Personage-Extraordinaire, but a wonderfully friendly and sweet guy. After chatting for only a few minutes, he invited me inside so he could give me a copy of xpress magazine, which featured a 2006 article about him by Kellie Ell. A Cliffs Variety Store employee and long-time professional window dresser, his apartment is bright and bursting with his creativity. In the hallway was a plastic bag with several trolls that had just that day been laid at his door, as he is a "safe surrender" location for unwanted troll babies. My picture of his window did not turn out well, but to see the latest display, and to keep up with future windows, visit his blog at sftrollwindow.blogspot.com.

Another familiar sight, for anyone who passes through the Dolores Park area, is the lively owl window. It has the appearance of a window that evolved organically at the hands of an owl figure fancier, with colorful retro ceramic owls intermingled with plants. I've walked by it many times, and always pause and wonder if the owl obsession begins and ends in the window, or if owls have overtaken the rest of the occupant's space. A collection can sometimes grow despite someone's best efforts to stem the tide. Beware of letting on to people that you like cows, angels, ducks, trolls, or whatever--it may soon overtake your life (it can be irresistibly satisfying to buy things for other people's collections). But that being said, if the end result is a humorous, surprising, kitschy, visual riot of an urban window--then by all means indulge!

North Beach Cocktail

2008-09-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Perfection can be antiseptic in people, places, things. Maybe it is peaceful, transcendent, impressive--but dull, limited, ominous, sexless. San Francisco, being a living, breathing city proper for upwards of 150 years, rarely if ever suffers this fate of perfection. The subterranean river of unpredictability and cross-polination flows on. Above ground, it can be surprising and rich to simply stop and hold your eyes here for a moment where they might otherwise brush over.

On a weekend afternoon walk in North Beach I turned down relatively quiet streets and peered at the backs of buildings. The Columbus and Broadway neighborhood is maligned by some city residents for its Thursday to Saturday nights, which often turn the streets here into one big crowded frat party and shrieking suburban bachelorette outing. And it's true that evenings can get downright obnoxious.

But if you walk into the neighborhood on a weekend afternoon, up Montgomery or Kearny, avoiding the maddening lack of street parking--it's a different experience. The women standing in front of the strip clubs look sleepy, with one girl's acne showing from under her makeup in the sunshine. There are tourists in colorful windbreakers about, but you can take a turn and find yourself alone in a cool, shaded, narrow street. The bars that still feel like true relics--Spec's, Tosca, Vesuvio--will be relatively quiet and you can enjoy an Irish coffee in peace.

On this day, passing a Chinese restaurant where laundry aired above in the fire escape, I walked through an open driveway on Columbus. It lead to a large parking area behind a post-1906 brick building. It was closed in on all four sides by weathered walls, with some lower windows bricked over. The lot was empty except for a man and a woman talking intently in a parked car at a far corner, not taking notice of me. Against one wall was a thick cluster of phone wires and cables beside an enigmatic painted "6" on the brickwork below a grated window. An odd, asymmetrically pleasing, unexpectedly beautiful little dingy square of city space.

On the narrow, sloping Osborn Place, I was completely by myself, the second story windows above dark and curtained. On the sidewalk there was a partially burned magazine surrounded by a black halo of soot on the cement. Looking up I saw a small bit of graffiti art on an electrical box by a hand familiar in the Mission and Haight: a bubbly frog form with the word "Ribitt." Coming up at the foot of Telegraph Hill, I was back into a bit of bustle and brightness. Walking west I passed an alley just off Broadway with a lamp that had been bestowed with a melancholy face.

Any famous location and destination risks acquiring a Disneyland feel, but North Beach is in no danger of that. There have been too many layers of existence here, with each having traces that are never entirely cleared away: the old and new Chinatown; the brothels and murderous dives of Pacific and Jackson Street's Barbary Coast; the early Wild West days of Telegraph Hill when shacks, goats, the Sydney Ducks gang, South American urban homesteaders, and legions of miscellaneous disaffected souls ruled its wasteland; the Italian immigrant community; the post-WWII days of music, poetry, "Bohemian" pulp, drugs; the '60s and '70s of Carol Doda's blinking nipples; the '80s, '90s, and '00s of punks at the On-Broadway and Mabuhay Gardens, Coppola, high rents and high-end antique stores, dotcom boomers, a continuous coming and going of restaurants, bridge-and-tunnel revelers, and the long-time local inhabitants just going about their usual business.

It's all still here in a great big co-mingled neighborhood cocktail of outright displays, flashes, hints, and shadow glimpses.

Obama in the Lower Haight

2008-08-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

The capricious city weather has turned again and the heat is rising. Danny Coyle's pub in the Lower Haight was the perfect place in my neighborhood to watch Obama's acceptance speech because the large casement windows were flung out, opening the bar to the street. As I watched the t.v. in the corner, a rainbow flag on the Victorian house across the street fluttered in the warm breeze, catching my eye.

The crowd gathered to collectively watch this moment were a miscellaneous bunch: a few of the local and regular Irish expats, two British couples in their 50s/60s who had likely wandered down from the Metro Hotel on Divisadero Street, the usual 20- and 30-something Lower Haight habitues tending primarily and assiduously to the sexual dynamics of the room, a group of well-groomed and nicely scented men in suits and nerdy-hip glasses, a young African-American woman who yelled "there's my girl!" when Michelle Obama came on the screen, two women who appeared to be a couple sat to one side of me at the bar, and on my other side was a young UPS warehouse worker.

Some patrons talked through the speech while others listened raptly, many clapped and yelled and ordered more drinks. As the speech went on people walking by heard the powerful voice on the television, stopped and looked in the windows, and meandered in. The convention camera, panning the many thousands of people, landed for a split second on the ever flawlessly coiffed Mayor Newsom and his new wife, and several people in the bar yelled "Gavin!"

After the speech I talked with the UPS worker who was knowledgeable and passionate about what was going on as well as healthily cynical. We talked about people in America who are consciously or unconsciously afraid of the "Other," about closet Republicans, about the fact that he was making less at his job then he was seven years ago doing the same work.

As the post-speech program continued, the bartenders turned the t.v. sound off and the music back on, the room started to cool as the evening grew dark, more bodies pressed up to get drinks, a female bartender a good fifteen years younger then me gave me my tab and called me "honey," and I strolled slowly back up Haight Street in the balmy night thinking about the months to come.

Urban Idols

2008-08-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

On this mild San Francisco day, my walk from a brunch in Noe Valley to the Lower Haight Street area took me on an accidental tour of Sunday ritual. Walking north on Church Street I turned east at Dolores Park to continue up the wide and palm-tree-lined Dolores Street. The park was thick with blankets full of people drinking coffee, sunning, playing with dogs, napping, and kissing in all gender combinations.

Dolores Park Cafe had a line out the door of late wave breakfasters waiting their turn. The egg-rich, homefry-potato-laden, caffeine-washed brunch is sacrosanct on weekends at cafes across the city. The first wave of diners has had a prim Saturday night; the second wave has stayed out just a tad later then they planned; the third wave--usually rolling in at noon or later--is in dire need of massive amounts of protein and starch to soak up the indiscretions of a night that may not have actually ended yet.

There is the usual Sunday double-parking down the center of Dolores by both those worshipping the coffee bean god and the Wi-Fi spirit in nearby cafes, and those emerging from the Baptist, Mennonite, Lutheran, and Catholic churches. At the Spanish Colonial Mission San Francisco de Asisi, I detour down the alley street alongside the chapel cemetery, and peer through the metal fence at the tourists strolling among the tombstones under the marble eyes of Father Junipera Serra. Continuing up Dolores Street I'm stopped in my tracks before the niche in the front cemetery wall with a white statue of Mary. There are two candles and a baseball bat beside her. Does the bat represent a prayer for a kid's game, for the San Francisco Giants, or for nothing at all to do with baseball? Maybe it belonged to and is a prayer for someone lost.

I turn west at Market Street and then continue again up Church Street, passing the St. Francis Lutheran church where same-sex couples make their way down the steps past men napping on the sidewalk in street-dingy sleeping bags. A tattooed boy with a ring in his nose weaves by pushing a bicycle with one hand and eating a burrito from the other.

Up at the corner another idol catches my attention. In the window display at Out of the Closet, a second-hand charity shop, a plaster version of the "David" stands saucily with a lady's fur jacket flung over his shoulders. The white figure echoes the Mary in the niche, and I see them side-by-side watching a ballgame at AT&T Park, cuddling together for warmth under the fur jacket when the wind starts blowing off the Bay. The gods here are urbanites.

Sidewalk Archaeology, Part 2

2008-08-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

I'm pining for a pale pink 1980s slimline telephone. It seems that Berkeley has a thriving "free" pile tradition of its own, and I found just such a choice item while strolling there this week. Alas, I restrained myself and did not take it. I often have a self-conscious twinge before I bend down to look at items on a sidewalk, and others do too, I think; rifling through other people's trash, and all. At first I walked past this choice vertical deposit, but turned back at about ten paces. A few moments later, a man and his two children came out of a nearby house and joined me--interest breeding interest and breaking the ice.

The telephone was not the only treasure. Very unusually for a sidewalk pile, there were two original vintage orange crate labels. I pulled them out of the box and quickly strode on, amazed at the acquisition! They are from the 1940s, and though not in a pristine state, they look good for having been tossed in a box. One is a pretty "Senorita" orange label, the other a coastline with a rising orange-sun. If in mint condition, I learned, they can be worth $24.99 and $4.99 respectively (see the fun advertising ephemera site: thelabelman.com). So while not quite perfect, my labels are nonetheless a great free find.

And why did the owner choose to part with them? And the pink phone? Both items are very much of the 1980s/early 90s. I remember fruit crate labels being a hot item, with a slew of reproductive images being done--back in the days when Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell were having a lively revival, and folk quilts were fetching very high prices at auction and spawning myriad books and museum exhibits. All nostalgic yearnings amidst the age of The Bonfire of the Vanities. This particular free pile was the cleaning out of old nostalgia (with a miscellaneous exodus of clutter thrown in), making room for the trophies of the next collective mood.

On Leave (From Usual Sensibilities)

2008-08-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

It's the height of the tourist season and if you step out of the BART station at Powell and Market, you see them streaming in all directions: up the cable car route, snaking through the downtown shops, crammed in the F-streetcar headed for the Wharf. I'm generally glad to see them, except when they form tight little dawdling knots on the sidewalks when I'm trying to get somewhere. And I feel in sympathy with them, having had more than my share of lost, hideously awkward, and completely confused travel moments. But mostly I'm pleased for an opportunity to ponder an eternal question: why must people dress like idiots when they are on vacation?

Some do escape this pitfall. Last weekend on Haight Street I directed a very comfortably urban dressed group of Spaniards to the second-hand clothing store they were looking for. But this evening on my way home I saw a generously formed out-of-towner in white golfing shorts and dainty white ankle socks with black loafers. Judging from his bluish-white legs, shorts were not part of his usual attire. The wife had a quasi-nautical look going: white Capri pants, a blue striped tank top, jaunty red neck scarf, and exceedingly high sandals. She was clearly suffering sore feet and freezing from the icy fog that had descended in the early evening. Another family brushed past me: a British man who was hurrying along his three children, one of them a small girl in tiny shorts and flip-flops. It's a running joke here, the tourists who arrive expecting San Francisco to be the Beach Boys' California. The Market Street pharmacies very obligingly (or cunningly) stock an array of sweatshirts and fleece jackets.

I find it hard to believe that these hordes of scantily clad tourists do no research before packing their bags--it's not as if there's a shortage of means and sources. But dressing for the wrong climate is only part of the story. When we go on holiday, we dress for the vacation we hope and desire to have. Abdicating one's normal wardrobe is part of the process. But what trip can possibly live up to specially purchased palazzo pants or a brand new "travel vest" with multiple pockets? And can San Francisco ever hope to satisfy the unspoken needs of the man in white golf shorts?

Sidewalk Archaeology, Part 1

2008-08-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

The best way to live in one's own city is to move through it like a traveler. San Francsico feeds me every day and I never tire of it--at its best and worst. A predictable ride on the bus suddenly erupts into an angry incident; a man passes by on a bike wearing a Viking helmet; I recognize a woman who cried over her wine at a cafe where I was a waitress almost twenty years ago. 19th century wood structures, cement towers, marble facades, mid-century boxes, corners of old brickwork revealed in gaping downtown construction sites--all overlay, cross-hatch, and color my daily steps.

San Franciscan's have a wonderful system of shifting possessions from one person to another. It is an unspoken, accepted, looked-for practice to leave unwanted items on the sidewalk. Do other cities do this? It is common to have a tale of a great find gleaned from a pile of apparent trash waiting for pickup: perfectly good bookshelves, a working coffeemaker, a velvet-covered chair just slightly ripped, a painting, a flowerpot. Yesterday my downstairs neighbor found a plastic garment bag filled with hundreds of duplicate movie and music posters. Some time ago I found a large blue painted wood sign that reads "1428 Madison" and now graces my bathroom.

But even when there are no "treasures" I stop and look at what has been discarded. These piles, scatters, jumbles are ephemeral vertical strata. They are revealing. They vanish overnight, in a day, sometimes within hours, and are reabsorbed into the city's warren of sub-divided Victorians and multi-story apartment buildings. Some items must take this journey to and from the sidewalk over and over again. This tradition must be the bane of those charged with keeping the city clean, but it is a special kind of recycling. I've seen people of every ilk poking through these piles--so it seems that practitioners, those who salvage and those who discard, range from million-dollar-condo-dwellers to shopping-cart-pushing permanent residents of the street. It is a system momentarily untethered from the civic, technological, and financial, revealing tiny moments of domestic shift.