San Francisco is My Home

27
Mar

The San Francisco drinking game

Author: kris, Category: Seen

Grab a flask of your favorite drink (and here we mean, obviously, some kind of lemonade, because this site does not support public drunkenness) and hit the streets. It’s time for the San Francisco drinking game. Ready?

Take a drink every time:

A MUNI bus driver uses MSL (MUNI Sign Language) at you. For example, they might give you that half-hearted wave as they speed by, refusing to stop and pick you up because they’re running late and there’s another bus behind them…somewhere. Or they might use the half-scowl and grunt MSL that indicates the fare machine is broken and you are to proceed onto the bus without paying.

You see someone walking around in a costume without any visible reason for it. Period clothing also counts.

You see two people standing next to each other talking on their cell phones who appear to be talking to each other (i.e. one speaks, then the other speaks).

You see someone on a Bluetooth headset talking to him or herself.

You see someone not on a Bluetooth headset talking to him or herself.

You see a sign in a house window for a losing candidate who ran in an election two or more years ago.

I’m still working on this game. If you’ve got suggestions, I’d love to hear ‘em.

07
Mar

San Francisco IS my home

Author: kris, Category: Seen

Carol Lloyd wrote an interesting column for today’s Surreal Estate, the Chronicle section whose name we all wish we’d thought of first. She wrote about a new book by Richard Florida called Who’s Your City which, according to Lloyd, says that “where you live still largely determines your destiny.”

The two points it makes about our area, from what I gather, are 1) that San Francisco will always be expensive because 2) San Francisco will always be an awesome place to live. (This is due to all kinds of factors: climate, the prevalence of alternative lifestyles, the large concentration of top scientists and creative-types, and so on. Obviously Florida doesn’t read the Chron, or he would know that all these advantages are counteracted by how often we apparently maim our own children. Whoops! Our bad!)

It all reminded me of a quotation from Frances Mayes, who wrote Under the Tuscan Sun and who also happens to be a San Francisco resident when she’s not living it up in Italia. She said “Where you are is who you are. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.”

I am often struck, as I walk around this weird little wonderland of ours, by how much growing up in the Bay Area has shaped who I am. Because I grew up here, I recycle without thinking about it, I don’t own a television or a car, my social circle includes LGBT people and I know what LGBT stands for (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, if you’re wondering). When I want to play, I go to costume parties or board game nights, or I go to a Mochi Pet show, or I hike around in the mountains and rivers. When I want to work, I apply for jobs at non-profits, or, as now, I work for myself.

Also because I live here, I don’t blink at paying almost $1000 in rent each month, I know almost no black people, and children frighten and annoy me except in small doses.

My only point here is to marvel at how lucky I am, not just to live in a place like this but to be shaped by it. But enough about me. Next week we return to your regularly scheduled weekend roundup, and I may add some other weekly posts as well. (Weekly profiles? Weekly restaurant reviews?)

Also, even though I love it here, it would be cool to pay less rent. I’m just saying.

This image is from here.

30
Dec

The love bus

Author: kris, Category: Seen, Transportation

Ok, I know I sometimes complain about MUNI. But if ever you find you’re sick of the city, with its ridiculous real estate and its heartbreaking homeless problem, take a ride on the 24 line. You can go in either direction. Outbound takes you past several examples of the city’s beautiful and strange iconic architecture, as well as through the snooty but visually interesting Noe Valley shopping district. Inbound rides you down Divisidero, past some fine eateries and drinkeries and partieries (Little Star Pizza, Toronado, The Independent, anyone?) and through parts of the Haight. Gaze out the window and remember that there are some darn lovable things in this hilly little town of ours.

30
Dec

The winter cobra

Author: kris, Category: Seen

Some of the downtown MUNI stations are filled with Starbucks posters. The posters all depict cartoony figures in happy, traditional winter scenes: skiing, making snow angels, catching snowflakes on tongues, and so on. Except one poster, which features a mongoose and a cobra standing in the snow, wearing scarves and hats and being friendly with one another. The poster says “Make new friends.”

I get it, of course: a mongoose and a cobra are traditionally enemies, but the Christmas season has caused them to forget their differences. But you know what else they traditionally are? They are traditionally known as animals that dwell in hot climates. India, for example. Why on earth didn’t Starbucks pick traditional snow-dwelling enemies? Like, I don’t know, a polar bear and a penguin? This poster bothers me every time I see it. Thank goodness I can share these little upsets with you.

20
Dec

Family Link and a friar’s belt

Author: kris, Category: Charity, People, Seen

I saw the friar again today, still in his robe and baseball cap. He was coming out of a door on Castro Street that I’d never noticed before next to a sign that said Family Link.

A few minutes of internet research later, I learned that The Family Link is a non-profit that serves people with AIDS in an interesting way: by offering hospitality to their visiting friends and family members. It provides a space for people to come and have some coffee or a meal, talk to others going through a similar experience, and decompress a little in a nice atmosphere.  An admirable way to find a very real need and fill it, I say.

I’m fascinated by this friar, who I imagine works with Family Link in some capacity. As the newspapers flare up with stories about the Catholic Church denouncing the good-doing Sisters of Perpetual Mercy, and books like The End of Faith and The God Delusion become best sellers, it’s interesting to find the places where religion is still being a help and comfort like it’s supposed to.

I’m also fascinated by the friar’s belt, which looks like rope but I think is not actual rope, not the kind you’d use to tie something up on a ship or lead a mule to market. I’m sure the rope belt began as actual scraps of rope, because the friars had taken vows of poverty or whathaveyou and were just using whatever came to hand to tie their robes together. But I wonder if in the modern world you actually buy your rope belt from a manufacturer who makes you a nice smooth synthetic version or something.

None of this should be taken as any reflection on the friar, whose supportive presence at LGBT rallies and AIDS charities makes him one of our unsung local luminaries in my book. I’m just curious about the rope.

05
Nov

Mexican food, dead bagels and Wes Anderson

Author: kris, Category: Food, Seen, Shopping

I went to West Portal last night because sometimes I get such a  hankering for it. West Portal is a cute little neighborhood in the city that reminds me of Walnut Creek in the East Bay. Walnut Creek, while it maintains its suburban vibe, also has non-strip-mall shopping and independent bookstores and some decent non-chain restaurants, or at least non-fast-food-chain. West Portal, with its two-story buildings and in-bed-before-10 family vibe, likewise gives me a pleasant Walnut Creek feeling.

My fella and I visit now and then to eat at El Toreador, which is my favorite Mexican restaurant that’s not actually in the Mission. The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in bright-painted toys and figurines, and everything is painted in blues and reds and pinks and greens and you feel like you’ve walked into a big, cheesy Mexican rainbow. The food is not as stellar as the decor but they do have a lot of good beers, which my fella appreciates.

On our way from the MUNI stop to the restaurant (about two blocks), we passed Noah’s Bagels, now closed for the night. The four trashcans outside were overflowing, and I glanced at one and noticed a huge garbage bag full of nothing but bagels.

I am sure that, like me, you’re remembering The Little Princess right now, specifically the scene where saintly Sara Crewe gives her bun to a girl starving even worse than herself, and as a result the bakery winds up giving bread to all starving kids at the end of every day.

In a city full of homeless, I wonder what restaurants’ policies are on leftovers. It seems like it would be good to hand it out the door to whoever was waiting there at the end of the day. Although maybe the employees at this branch know that people will be along to dumpster dive and so this metric ton of bagels is not actually going to waste. Still, it seems more human to actually hand it to someone rather than throwing it in the trash for them to find.

But then, who am I to talk? Did I reach into the trash and haul out the bag and bring it to the homeless folks in my neighborhood? I did not. Did I instead go see the new Wes Anderson movie at the West Portal cinema that is so tiny after the mega-theaters downtown that it seems like one of the figurines glued to the ceiling at El Toreador? Yes, yes I did.

02
Nov

The end of Halloween

Author: kris, Category: Events, Seen

To my great surprise, the city succeeded in shutting down the Castro Halloween party. In m.h.o., the thing that did it was the transportation issue: after 8 pm, no public transit stopped anywhere where you could easily walk to the Castro, and cars parked in the area were towed.

There were still a few people out, some of them dressed as widows and funeral attendants at the death of the Castro Halloween, but over all it was a pretty quiet night. I didn’t even see a lot of costumes out.

“It would be great if all the tourists who show up every year without costumes and take pictures DID show up tonight, but none of the costumed people did, so they’ve got nothing to photograph,” said my fella, peering out the window.

I tend to think the moral outrage making the rounds over the party shutdown is a little overblown. In two years or five years, the locals can start coming out of the woodwork in their thousand-hour hand-crafted costumes and with any luck the Mission will be the hot place for the tourists to go by then so the rest of us can party on the sly. Of course in five years I might have bought a house on the bleak peninsula and be busy creating and raising my own spawn, but I’m happy to think the neighborhood will go on partying without me.

Speaking of domestic bliss, my fella and I carved pumpkins with my folks the weekend before Halloween, and to close out my Halloween talk for the year I leave you with this image. This is my fella’s pumpkin, on an artistic level far surpassing everyone else’s pumpkins, which is causing my dad to tell the neighbors he is hoping I marry this guy so we can keep those pumpkin carving skills in the family.

07
Oct

Gas station Kabuki

Author: kris, Category: People, Seen

I stopped at a gas station by the city-side entrance to the Bay Bridge yesterday evening. There was a homeless man with a great shopping cart at the gas station: it had an eerie, Kabuki-esque mask mounted on a pole on top and pinups from a Japanese girlie magazine stuck around the sides. If it were coming towards you on a sidewalk it would look like a strange girl-monster headed your way, the terrifyingly fixed expression of its mask-face portending your certain doom at the hands of a hoard of underdressed teenagers.

The homeless man was apparently buying gas at the station, though whether he needs it to power his pimped-out cart remains a mystery. Another mystery is what I was doing at a gas station, since I have no motorized vehicle of my own. We may never know the answers to these questions.

26
Sep

Summer smells

Author: kris, Category: Seen

San Francisco’s true summer happens in September and October (and sometimes, for reasons passing understanding, in February, but let’s leave that out of it for the moment). There is nothing so charming as a summery September walk through the Duboce Triangle, a small, flowery neighborhood that abuts the Castro. The architecture is interesting, with lots of our patented turrets, scrollwork and purple paint jobs; the sidewalks are wide and lined with potted plants and flowers; and the people are friendly and smiling. And every lamppost and tree seems to be wound round with star jasmine, which exudes a uniquely sweet smell that almost serves to overlay the stench of the backed-up sewers. Something about summer just makes the Duboce Triangle sewers run wild. It’s particularly pungent today. In fact, I’d recommend you avoid this lovely summer stroll altogether until they do something about the fumes.

19
Sep

Smile

Author: kris, Category: Food, Seen, Shopping

Sometimes in the middle of the day you dash down to Cafe Flore for a quick cup of coffee in the sun. Once you’re there, the cute barrista might say, with evident sincerity, “Do you know that you have a fantastic smile?”

“Thanks,” you say. And then what other option do you have but to toss your fifty cents of change into the tip jar? Even though all he did was fill a cup from the coffee urn and hand it to you, you can’t not tip after such a nice compliment. Right?

Those quarters would have been useful for laundry, but I guess sometimes social niceties have to trump clean clothes.