Annie

At the Wave Organ
The Marina
Thursday afternoon

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I feel like I belong to this city because I know how the streets are connected through bus lines and stories, overheard conversations and intersections. I always try to remember distinct neighborhood landmarks and colors, and there are memories everywhere.

I love San Francisco, with its the quiet moments.  When the morning fog shrouds houses and later on the sky is scraped clear. Suddenly, everything is so bright and alive. I like going into bookstores and staying there for hours. Smelling fragrant jasmine growing in thick bushes and looking at street art. A homeless man sits at the corner near Van Ness and Market and says, “Have a good day” to those who pass by. I say hello to him and smile.

I love being in the Botanical Gardens and getting lost in this wonderland of a park, feeding the squirrels even if I’m not supposed to. I remember walking through alleyways of Chinatown, hearing the crackle of mahjong tiles when the afternoon is blending into nighttime. When I was seven I was in the Chinese New Year parade. I remember wearing ballet shoes while walking on the brick road of Commercial Street.  I love the combination of faded turquoise and red.

It’s the small things, really. When I was little, I remember going to a playground in the Richmond. My sister and I climbed, slid and ran around the sand during many afternoons.  One afternoon we were there, it turned out that there were swans wandering around. I think they were as tall, maybe taller than I was and I wanted to touch one.  I don’t remember if I did, but the memory stayed with me.

San Francisco is magical. I think there are places in the city where it feels like it’s just for me. Being an artist and a writer, it can be a rather solitary thing. I don’t mind being by myself. I like walking around the city and finding places to be inspired by, it can be the bright colors of the trolleys, the ornate typeface of a sign, and a shop window with a giant birdcage. I look at the colors of nail polish lined on the windows of nail salons and buy fragile paper from a bookstore in Chinatown.

Recently, I spent an afternoon at the Wave Organ, a secret place tucked away at the edge of the city, where the water hits at the rocks. The Wave Organ is a sculpture made of cemetery gravestones and pipes. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear sea songs, sometimes it’s really subtle. It’s like listening to a giant seashell. I sit there, feeling like I am so far away from everything else and sailboats will come around, with the Golden Gate bridge in the distance. The trek is worth it.

I discovered the Wave Organ when a librarian told me about it and I thought it would be a great place to write. I’ve been writing poetry since I was thirteen. I’ve found myself amongst a community of writers, through a program called WritersCorps that teaches youth creative writing in schools, community centers and juvenile lock up facilities. I am proud to have several WritersCorps teachers as my mentors. This year, my fellow youth poets and I embarked on writing a book called City of Stairways: A Poet’s Field Guide to San Francisco. The best thing about being a part of this project was exploring the different neighborhoods and appreciating each one for it’s own distinct personality. City of Stairways is part poetry anthology, part travel guide to San Francisco. The book is full color with maps, art and places that both tourists and locals will appreciate. What I discovered while writing my poems is that living in this city is about finding new places to explore and rediscovering the ones you remember with a fresh eye.

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You can see a slideshow of Annie’s photo shoot here.

Annie’s links:

etsy shop: http://curbsidetreasure.etsy.com
blog: http://curbside-treasure.blogspot.com
find more about City of Stairways: A Poet’s Guide to San Francisco

Medea

The Marina
Thursday morning

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Living on an edge is a must for me. Something to do with my Viking ancestry, no doubt. I was born and raised in Florida, lucky to have a warm beach to walk every day after school or work. When I moved to San Francisco 20 years ago, I fell in love with the Marina at first sight. A lot of people live in The Marina; I live IN the marina.

My piece of San Francisco is 39’ long by 15’ wide. In this slip lies my sailboat, a 1968 Islander 37, designed by renowned yacht designer and naval architect Bruce King. Though she’s a fiberglass sloop, her classic exterior lines, swoopy stern, ample beam and teak bits give her the air of a more traditional wooden boat. Down below, her salon is warm and cozy. I sleep here, lulled by the foghorn and the rhythmic thrumming of the halyards against the masts. It’s best when raindrops join these to create a hypnotic symphony. The salon also serves as a reading room, home office, and when friends come to visit, an intimate wine bar.

On sunny days, the view from the boat’s cockpit rivals that of any of my land-loving neighbors. Look left, there’s the Golden Gate Bridge. Swivel right and the sky is filled with kites above Marina Green. Gaze across Marina Boulevard at the barrel tile roofs against the sharp blue sky, it’s easy to imagine being in my beloved south of France.

While the boat herself gives me as much pleasure as I can stand, my little marina ’neighborhood’ has its own tempo, which changes depending on the day of the week. Weekdays are special to me since they are typically quiet—there are boat owners who go out during the week, but they are few. Most Monday-through-Friday action comes from the intrepid guys who don a wet suit and tank and brave the murky harbor waters to scrub boat bottoms, or the occasional marine electrician or refinisher out to fix bad wiring or refinish someone’s teak.

Weekends, though, the marina is a Happening. Boats wander in and out all day. Friends bring their friends to share an afternoon on the bay, a trip to Angel Island or maybe sail over to Sausalito to dock at Sam’s for lunch. Kids learning to sail brave the distinct possibility of capsizing to work on their mastery of this most enthralling sport. We have periodic festivals or exhibitions or film crews on Marina Green-and those ubiquitous kites. Volleyball games here, regattas there, those funny little yellow rent-a-scooters navigating the traffic—it’s an extravaganza starring all of us who love being by the Bay.

Marina Boulevard, our very own parade route, draws tourists and locals looking for views, views and views. And maybe a flat place to run, walk or bike. The runners run, from sun up long into the evening, weather be damned. The wide sidewalk that extends all along the waterfront lures locals to pedal and tourists to rent bikes—Blazing Saddles must be doing box office, since every rental bike in the Marina sports its signature Blazing Saddles handlebar bag, complete with a trusty map. Segway tours pass often-I shouldn’t but I have to giggle every time I see these clots of peoplemovers, since they do look kind of silly and the mandatory helmets and vests are so matchy-matchy, and I still don’t understand how those things stay up anyway, so I watch and wait, expecting a brutal Segway pile up at any time

Park, who works in the Harbor Master’s office, pops out every few hours to check on the boats, or to get some fresh air—he has worked in the office at least as long as I have. Park is a wealth of local knowledge. He told me about the weekly emergency alert signal one day when I was passing by him, it blared, and I shot several feet straight up. He gives me the skinny on the jumper situation when there are emergency rescue personnel at the marina. Most importantly, he knows who belongs in the marina and who does not: our one-man security force and guardian angel.

I love to walk to Greens for a cup of soup or a cookie, up to Chestnut for coffee, down to Crissy Field, along the beach and the warming hut at the end of the path. I belong to a boating club that is close by also; I’ve made so many good friends here. There’s something special about people joined by a mutual passion. Walking from the boat, I can be alone or with friends, in the middle of urban or at the end of the world within minutes. Where else can you do that?

What I notice most is how kind everyone is here. I attribute it to the gestalt of the marina: the soothing feeling inherent in being on the edge, knowing there’s an exit just there, within spitting distance, if you should need one. Add to that the views worth crossing the globe to see, the scent of the sea, the wail of the seagulls, the gentle to gale force breeze, and the warm kiss of the sweet sun—or as we learn to love in San Francisco, the caress of the kitten-gray fog—and I can’t help but smile and be grateful.