street theatre
February 14

San Francisco

Dead Presidents Weekend. And Valentine's Day. Life has been pretty uneventful, a little work here, a little work-out there. In a flurry of photographic frenzy I shot a couple rolls of myself in my room and put some on this site. Been practicing bass again. Saw a hilarious movie, Girls Will Be Girls, and I would drive to LA to see it again, I hadn't laughed so much in (or out of) a movie theatre in a dog's age. I hope some distributor is brave enough to pick it up.

Little else has stood out this past month. Two of my LA friends came up to visit and it was a little manic at times, but nothing to shoot anyone over.

Among my various gardens I've planted foxtail, heirloom sweet peas, rosemary, feverfew, tulips, cineraria, fountain grass, Labrador violets, a species primula and a daylily. A friend from up north brought me a collection of unusual succulents and pelagoniums.

Perhaps the lack of a dramatic story line (ok, I did have to chew out my roommate a couple times) lead me to look for the unusual. Here's what happend Valentine's Day:

My roommate busted into my room very early in the morning wanting to know what I was doing for breakfast. I growled that I had to see a site and I wanted to sleep until eight. He busted into my room again a few minutes later to pin up Margaret Cho tickets on my bulletin board. I was livid.

At his suggestion, I got driving directions for the site I was to see from Yahoo Maps. I copied them down, it all looked very simple, that is, until I actually got on the road and ended up getting lost because one of the streets those yahoos told me to take didn't exist. I got lost in Bernal Heights, a cartographer's version of your junk drawer- one way streets, parks, dead end roads, freeway ramps- everything just crammed in there- except the street I was looking for.

Only a few minutes late, I was shown the 'grounds': a cliff installed by the city to halt the slide of an 1906 house. The terrace was a nearly vertical stack of undulating concrete retaining walls overrun with weeds. And then there were multi-levels of gardens in the back forty, some strewn with discarded household items and dog shit. This spread just scrambled up to heaven. I haven't submitted a bid yet.

I needed to finish an ad for the local paper with a noon deadline so I drove home, and on the way witnessed something bizarre that I'll come back to. Once home I worked out some finishing touches and realized I was going to be delivering to the paper something I had created on my personal computer, and they use Macs. I boarded MUNI anyway, hoping that somehow our floppy discs would find a middle ground.

Nope. So I got some suggestions from the paper and headed home to redo the ad for next week. No big deal, but on the way home I began to notice more strange things on the street. A pair of crapped out pants, laid out spread eagle with shit all over them.

A single bronze colored 'Ted Williams' ten pound weight plate from Sears. A deranged and/or drugged up woman stomping her way across Market Street wearing bright red boots, a long red scarf, a red print dress- maybe it was Bjork.

This black guy who I've seen for years wandering the Tenderloin wearing skirts and a pile of black clothes on his head that I always mistake for some wild harstyle. I boarded one of the special trolleys, this one from 1912 San Francisco. It had three separate classes, wicker seats, and I had to enter from the rear (nothing unusual there!).

On the trolley was a man I have seen many times, who always seems to be wearing the same tight jeans that showcase his nads. Back in the Castro, I decided to grab a burrito and sitting down is a 'bear' (this weekend is the 'Bear Rendevouz'- surely some right wing talk radio nutcase will link the gay community to anti-American terrorism because of the use of a French word- oh wait, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson already did that).

I mention this guy because he's wearing a rugby shirt and expensive sunglasses (on the back of his head) and then notice another big guy in line, also wearing a rugby shirt and the same expensive sunglasses. They were a couple. If I hadn't been so haggard from lack of sleep and the ongoing freakshow, I would have talked to them. One had his foot in a cast, they must have been real ruggers.

I then ran into a friend, wearing bright red sneakers, a red shirt and a red vest, looking especially bubbly, and he proceeded to show me the Valentine's presents he got from a couple who've taken him on as their play thing. "Gotta go home and douche!" Excuse me, but I'm from Philadelphia, we don't talk about such things (yeah I can write about them but you won't hear me making proclamations).

But the strangest thing of all, the thing that got me thinking I might have just begun a memorably weird day, happened on the way home from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Homeward bound, I passed through an area where Latino day workers wait for pick ups. Since I drive a truck, I always get waves, and I admit to having entertained fantasies of picking out a hot looking one and seeing what I could pay him to do, but that's just my mind playing, I have to mention this especially after what I'm about to report.

I had come to a four way stop, baseball capped men waved at me. I must say, another day I had driven by this same area on my way to a job and there were blocks and blocks of day workers standing on the street, eyeing me aggressively, trying to flag me down. I wondered if my growing uneasiness was a cousin to the upset felt by certain anti-prostitution zealots. Them wanting me for my money was making me uncomfortable.

But what happend next I'll never forget. So, at this four way stop, the car to my right had gotten there first and pulled into the intersection. I started to go, and then the vehicle slowed a little and out of nowhere, a sizable cloud of dollar bills. They had thrown a pile of money right in the middle of the intersection and I drove right through it.

A second later I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the workers rush into the intersection to grab the bills. The frenzy horrified me and I just kept driving. Was the money real? Was it a joke? A sick psychological prank? Were the men supposed to get hit by traffic? Fight later over the money?

Was the donor some Robin Hood philanthropist or lottery winner who could think of no equitable way to split up the disposable income? Maybe a former comrade who got over and wanted to somehow give back? A cosmetics heiress?

I didn't look back again, nor did I stop. I didn't want to see what happened next. I've been fortunate to have been able to freelance in various industries, to possess the small if inaccurate optimism that I could easily pull several hundred dollars in a couple days, that my maximum income had no ceiling. This has always helped stem the panic when money has been tight. I didn't want to watch that hope pecked to death at the site of a hit and run.

what song I can't get out of my head: 'Thighs High' by Slave.
what I'm reading: 'One! Hundred! Demons!' by Lynda Barry

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