san Francisco

What’s punk in 2025?

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On my computer from KQED is a newsletter blurb. The enticing headline was about reviving a punk club from the 70s and 80s. I wondered if I could be the “”Mabuhay’” because I was here then and that was the only punk club I knew. And went to.

Although I knew I had been to the Mabuhay I couldn’t remember anything about my experiences there and wasn’t sure whether I had gone with Vincent before the fall or Linda after the fall. I texted Linda. Yes, she remembered going there and thanked me for the memory. Then I asked her about the 181 club which she didn’t remember to my astonishment. I texted back “You and I had been to hell and back when we met but compared to what was going on at the 181 we were innocents.”

A few hours later after riding on BART and emerging into and navigating through the low life on16th between Mission and Valencia, I walk a mile to the gallery where I will sit for four hours watching people and selling art.

Two people walk in. I think they’re guys and I say “Hey guys” when I realize that one of them has breasts and is probably not technically a guy but then I recognize that “guys”. although perhaps politically incorrect, is often said referring to an all-around person and not just a male so I’m not too embarrassed about the fact that I’ve used a masculine term for a couple. Then I think the Spanish language does this all the time. All of these thought processes take less than a second.

When the person with the breasts speaks they have a much deeper and fuller voice then the guy with the beard. It’s of no business of me or mine what the pronouns are. I’m never interested in that. I’m interested in who the person is, not what sex they like or are.

We greet each other, and after I ask them how their day is going, and hear their answer, I tell them that I have them trying to figure out who owns PayPal. This is a true icebreaker. We are at it right away… with Musk, Amazon, Airbnb: billionaire bashing.

These two people are so young and beautiful and alive and smart and all sexes at once, just so. This is in someway innocent compared to what they were doing at the 181 in the tenderloin of SF 40 years ago. That was scarier: more dangerous and vulnerable

But hey what’s going down for vulnerable today if not now everyone?

A woman in a hat with the dog comes in. The white dog is named Julian. Julian is so full of love, all I have to do is look at him, tilt my head a little, and he starts to wag his tail.

The woman with the hat and dog mentions the news. We together lament the news as I had been doing earlier in a different way billionare bashing with the guys.

This woman is more pointedly directed towards fascism. I wholeheartedly agree with her and say something hopefully stupid like “Still, it couldn’t happen like it happened in World War II“

She says “It’s already happening. They’re already taking innocent people and putting them away“.

All I could do is agree.

She bought a set of my heart card images. She paid cash and she, after tax, didn’t want the 72cents change. Told me to keep it. The heart cards she bought I originally made in February as “Valentines”. After February I call them “Love cards”.

Who doesn’t need a little more love?

San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade 2025!

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On the Subway we are wondering how all the groups are going to make a snake costume. We have seen cute monkeys, pigs, and rabbits but are having difficulty imagining a cute snake on our way to the Chinese new year parade 2025.

Coming out of the underground with most of the train, ascending the escalator, we can hear the drums, gaining momentum. The air is festive. It’s friendly all around.

We get to our desired spot and eventually edge our way in to the front next to the fence. Placement at the parade is paramount. At our corner, there are those lining the pavement, others standing on utility boxes, and a bunch of youth on a scaffolding where a building is being upgraded.

As soon as we are in place we begin the wave. We wave at everyone and everyone waves back. It’s agreed. We are celebrating life together. I am waving at beautiful women in beautiful costumes, at little kids playing their drums, at high school and college bands in full regalia with trimmed sashes and white tipped shoes. It is a night of forgiveness. We even wave at the casino ladies and the politicians in red mustangs.

There are illuminated dragons chasing pearls galore and innovative homemade 20’ long snakes. There are cool guys with green rimmed lights on the bottom of their shoes, which make them look like they are levitating as they run through their martial art routine.

The real martial artists are the ones on the scaffolding. I watch them get to the fire escape of the adjacent building. They move up from the first to the second to the third etc. until they are at the eighth floor when the scaffolding changes to a very long thin ladder which reaches the roof. I watch them until they get to the ladder and then I can’t look anymore.

A group of elementary school kids are dressed as Mahjong pieces. It is like the game board is tumbling down the street. I look back up and I can’t see the kids on the scaffolding anymore.

The best fun is to get “kissed” by a lion’s furry eyelash because it’s great good luck. That’s why you have to be up against the fence. I got kissed.

Then the red Lucky shopping cart rolls by. It is way gigantic, so the many people inside it look tiny, like a Gulliver’s Travel adventure.

On the subway home there is a kid in an appropriately sized stroller. He can see himself in the opposite glass. He is waving happily at himself and himself is waving back.

Hourglass

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If life is to be measured like sands of time, running from the upper hourglass to the bottom, I think it only fair the sands possess different colors for different periods. Not all of one’s life is the same color.

Once the sands of time have fallen through to a beautiful mountain at the bottom, the hourglass being flipped over to do it’s thing again resembles reincarnation. Even if I were to buy into the idea of reincarnation, (or purgatory for that matter) does it not seem ridiculous that one would have the same amount of time in the next life?

Perhaps the sand measures something else… Love, for instance…. However, if one hopefully were to progress as in evolve, would not there be more love in the next life? Looking at history of human beings on the planet, one wonders. Perhaps it’s the opposite.

Where the alchemical meets the mundane in etchings of hourglasses, they have wings. These wings signify that time flies. But it doesn’t always. We all know that. Sometimes it drags.

Then there’s those shattered hourglasses. Those tragically smashed all over the pavement in sharp shards. Like so many young black guys killed by ignorant policeman. A mad man with a gun in a school or a shopping mall throws that hourglass full of sand in the upper half against a brick wall. Sands released too soon.

Let’s forget about time altogether and consider the hourglass as a female form, in ephemeral youth, temporarily full of wonder.

Yet, maybe there’s something outside the physical realm. It’s like that sometimes. Sometimes things get lucky. Perhaps even magic exists and there is something that is not bound by time.

Wwhoooshh

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I’ve been writing a short short story a day for eleven weeks, I am doing this as a participant in a Round Robin at The Writer’s Salon in San Francisco. I now have 77 stories. they are piling up so I have decided to share some here. Each day there is a prompt which starts me off. From there, anything goes. Rule is: one can only write for 12 minutes and can edit afterwards.

Two TREES on the edge of a cliff

~I’m tired of being here

~What do you mean you’re tired of being here? You can’t be tired of being here. You are a tree. We are trees. We’ve been here a long time.

~Right, & we’re supposed to be here for a long time to come, but I’m tired of it. Sorry, but I am even tired of you. You and I, all the time, here on the edge.

~It’s better than being on the edge alone, you know that.

~Right well, you got me there. UHG..this time of year…I hate the gray skin. I hate the nakedness of it all. Truth be told, I’m tired of the whole winter, spring, summer, fall thing. It’s same old same old all the time. So predictable. Nothing happens.

~Yeah, but you gotta admit in the winter we have a lot of fun and in the fall our leaves are the brightest, orange yellow-ish color anywhere on the planet other than some sunsets which never last very long.

~It’s true I like the splat contest. I like that we’re not on a farm and that the people who live near us hardly ever come at the right time to get our persimmons. I like how we play the game who can get the most splats in the day.

~True that’s a fun game but we always know at the beginning of the day how it’s gonna end. Always depending on WonderWind and what mood she’s in that day and the way she cares to gust, blows the surprise out of who wins on any given day she’s around.

~Yeah, But it’s super fun and she’s not always around being the deciding factor.

~True, but I’m tired of being taken for granted. We are saving these humans lives, and they are so busy they can’t even see or appreciate us. 

~Remember that time when people used to hug us?

~Yes, that was nice. I think the worst time was when that idiot Shel Silverstein wrote that book “The Giving Tree”. I mean what the fuck bullshit message was that? What was he doing? Trying to teach people how to have a dysfunctional relationship? 

~Yeah, I don’t think people read that to their kids as much as they used to.

~I hope not. If that guy walked under my tree, I would make for sure to have a big branch fall on his head giving him a headache for a couple decades. Better yet I’d have one of my roots trip him, so he’d fall off the edge a little bit, not so much as to kill him, but just enough to injure his right hand.

~Hey, wait a minute! hold on there! Why would you ever want to injure anyone? Those human beings are in such a mess. They are constantly injuring themselves! Directly or indirectly.

~Yes, I know it’s true. Even I, a species able to maintain complete equanimity feel sad for them. I wish there was some way I could help.

Just then a young woman comes up to the tree. She has a stool with her. She sets that down under the tree. Forlorn, she pulls a rope out of the bag she’s brought with her. Dejected, she stands for a long time at the edge overlooking the chasm. Is she considering jumping? What is she going to do with that rope? It’s for sure she’s not going to play with it. She has an agenda. She comes back to the stool, stands on it while she ties one rope end around the tree branch and the other around her neck.

WindWonder starts to gasp and move quickly around in a flurry. The trees start to wiggle and wobble in the wind. The girl pushes the stool out from under her. There is a moment inbetween, when WindWonder wooshes, and the wanting tree yearns. The branch breaks. It all falls down.

The young lady gasps “THANK GOD!” She lays down beneath the tree and looks through the intricate lace of the old grey naked branches. She watches the clouds in the sky pass one after the other. For the rest of the afternoon, she looks up through the maze of the tree’s pattern at the clouds changing shapes, appearing and dissolving moving across the endless sky.

She comes back many years later, with two small children, gets on a stool and hangs a swing.

The seamstress, the dress and the Ocean

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There are clearly few, who are so talented as Connie WalkerShaw.

Today I pick up the dress she made for me from special  fabric that had been given to me when I was 35. I remember because it was given to  me by an older woman artist who shares my birthDAY and lives in a synagogue. She gave me the fabric when she was 70. She was twice my age. The fabric has gold threads in it. It is like a color shifting fairy tale fabric that changes from lavender to gold, hinting at rose.

I am late picking up the dress, so her lesson is already underway. I try on the dress which is magical and am ready to go. As I leave, I ask the student seamstress if she knows that Connie also is in a band and that she can play two saxophones at once? The little girl says a shy “no”. I smile, shrug, raise my eyebrows and say “well, she can” and leave.

After WalkerShaw I drive to the beach..   20120317-201932.jpg   Ocean Beach in San Francisco is like heaven. It is so empty and so nothing. I can see as far as I can see in three directions. My cells take in the empty vastness with relief. This hasn’t changed. I think then, have I changed? Each time I stand at Ocean Beach I remember other times I’ve stood before her. Before the ocean and cried out with my soul for all that I hope for. She solicits requests like that. The ocean is vastness itself. Before her, troubles shrink and expire, being obviously temporary. She emanates eternal presence, over and over, her waves sounding like a large echo of my internal self; of something that helps me let go and know.

It’s the same, and different. It always is.

Two solitary men pass me going one way; then an older couple passes the other way. That’s it. The beach’s nature to human ratio is nourishing, safe and separated from the highway by blocks and blocks of gorgeous graffiti, painted on the ocean side, I assume late at night.

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There are birds. That familiar seagull silhouette is everywhere; taking off and landing. I notice a particularly nice one but sense something odd about it. It’s the wrong size. I realize it’s outdoor art of some kind as it is not a real bird and even far away it reads clearly and I like the design so I walk towards it. It takes longer than I expect. Getting closer I see it’s a sign. Not a regular government sign but still it seems official. It says something like “strawberry ice plant sanctuary ends here”, yet there’s nothing but sand for miles.

 

The Lenses We See Through

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After talking with Ilana, whom I’ve just met at a party full of eclectic people, I am starting to wonder about her glasses. I don’t have on my glasses because I am not reading but, truth is, I should be wearing those progressives all the time as there are quite a few subtleties passing me by.

Ilana, a wildly talented San Francisco Art Institute grad student is talking about her hispanic childhood in LA and how she devoted twelve years of her life to throwing the discus. She’s got the body for it. She’s funny and is rambling on in a I’ve-got-this-conversation-covered kind of way. I’m fine with that and enjoying the ride as are my two teenagers. It’s Christmas eve and even the food is eclectic because a lot of the party works at Rainbow grocery, one of the first large co-op health food stores in the nation.

I am feeling friendlier and friendlier with Ilana as we get smushed closer together when still others feel there is enough room to sit down on the large couch.

I become more suspicious and say, “Let me see your glasses!”
She shies away and says, “No, you can’t see my glasses!” but in a smiling way.
“Come on, take them off”.
“I can’t see without them”.

Close enough now on the couch for almost anything I grab her glasses. There is no glass in them!

I comment on this and she says, “I’ve got a pair of sunglasses at home just like these”.
I say, “But there’s no glass in them!”
I’m liking her more than ever when she says, “I Know. They’re prescription!”

Museum exhibit

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Walking through the exhibit at the museum, I have what I often have. An uneasy feeling.

I notice that the child gurgling is attracting more attention than the paintings, just for a second. Then the patrons go back to viewing the paintings. After the brief bleep of real life passes, art appreciation or faux appreciation, of art or faux art, resumes.

Two other children are with their parents in the exhibition. The goal of these kids is to move as quickly as possible. They are playing a game. Upon entering the new room, they look for the “EXIT” sign. As soon as parents allow, they follow it.

An older woman in a seventies medium brown pant suit severely limps. She steps with one leg and then drags the other one after her. She moves awkwardly along trying to catch up with her husband which she eventually does when he stops in front of a painting.

I am drawn to the work that is the early work. This work shows some artistic ability. The later work, before which people dutifully stand, seems to me not to deserve the stop of attention. It all seems like a case of the emperor’s new clothes.

I find myself at the end of the exhibit and I go backwards to the beginning. I see the exhibit a second time, to be sure of my judgement. I am giving the artist a second chance and I want to remember the few works that I do like. Having done that, I find I can not exit through the gift shop, therefore I go through the exhibit a third time. I stop a third time at the charcoal drawing of a seated woman in a striped dress which is my favorite work.

Upon this last viewing I realize this drawing reminds me of expensive clothing store ads from my childhood. Those days artists drew the objects for sale. They were good drawings.
The artists were not trying to prove anything. They were just making a living. They weren’t even called artists.

In the museum signage, the famous painter’s statement claims not to stop at the beautiful but to go deeper. To me deeper wasn’t deeper, it was just messier. No one else seems to feel this way. They stand reverently at what is presented to them by the esteemed institution.

In the museum rest room, while washing my hands, I peripherally watch a woman in front of the mirror. She keeps looking in the mirror like she is trying to fix something that can’t be fixed. She is looking at time in the mirror but can not see it. This is what she is doing.

Leaving San Francisco going over to Oakland in heavy traffic, I anticipate the change that happens after Treasure Island. The white wideness of the new half of the Bay Bridge is wonderful and uplifting to drive on. People on the side are walking and riding their bikes. It is a good feeling to like the new version more than the old. To be driving on a man made object that makes sense.

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Diversity

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I am in a cafe when this young fellow walks in with a jaunty step. He’s a lively guy and catches my eye.  My mind is in it’s habit of constantly sizing things up to put them in a place where it interprets in the hopes of understanding. Like any mind. Image

I am not sure whether this guy is hispanic, southeast asian, maybe middle eastern, turkish, philipino, south american or what.  I am lucky this way in that there are lots of people like this in the San Francisco bay area. My daughter can pass for a lot of ethniciities but in fact she’s just a white girl.

This young man has on a terrific shirt. It says, “Everything is Beautiful but Beautiful isn’t Everything”

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I get my coffee and as I am leaving I compliment the kid on his shirt. He responds to this and now I can guess his ancestry from his accent but it doesn’t matter.  Just like everything is beautiful, so is everywhere. Inside and Out.