Michael

Outside Casa Sanchez, 24th Street
The Mission
Tuesday afternoon

***

My “aha!” moment came in the summer of 1974 on my first visit to San Francisco.  Within moments of stepping out into the foggy city streets I realized that I’d found the perfect mix of California Cool combined with the urban energy, density and diversity of my hometown of Manhattan.  Up to that point my enchantment with the Golden State had worn thin. When I left New York City at age fifteen to live with my father in Hollywood I fell in love with California and its friendly, laid back, palm tree-lined grooviness.  My first two years in L.A. were spent cocooned in the warm embrace of Hollywood High School’s drama department, where my confused adolescent angst was embraced by a group of fellow eccentrics.  But once I left the sheltered bubble of high school and started college I quickly grew to hate Los Angeles and its automobile dominated, smoggy, soulless sprawl.  I longed for the gritty, densely packed urban landscape of New York and the cultural, creative and intellectual stimulation that I didn’t find in vacuous L.A.  On that first trip to San Francisco I found exactly what I was looking for right here on the Left Coast.  And the fact that by the mid-seventies San Francisco had turned into the Gay Center of the Universe made it even more of a Mecca in my grateful eyes.

I returned to L.A. after that first weekend visit and wasted no time in transferring to S.F. State University.  And so on another foggy late summer day in 1975 I officially moved into my first studio apartment on lower Nob Hill just above Polk Street, which was then the principal gay thoroughfare in the City.  I was still just a couple of months shy of my twenty-first birthday and I longed to enter the many gay bars that lined Polk Street, each one tempting me with its disco beat.  I even clumsily tried to alter my I.D. card, but was no match for the craftier bouncers who laughed at my attempts.  Finally that glorious day arrived when I could legally join my gay brethren in the bars and I proudly entered a popular bar named the “QT”.  The 1970’s were heady days in San Francisco and we imagined that we had conquered the world.  Then the AIDS crisis arrived like a giant bucket of ice-cold water and the party was over.. By that time I had finished college, traveled from Europe to India and back, had moved to the Haight-Ashbury and had worked as a waiter in a series of greasy spoons.  However, my restlessness and wanderlust thwarted any and every attempt to settle down.

After a second epic trip to India I returned to San Francisco and spent a year as an activist in the anti-apartheid movement at U.C. Berkeley, commuting across the Bay daily on BART with my protest signs and flyers.  Just as I was down to my last penny a friend suggested I talk to a friend of a friend who had an opening for an admin assistant position at a social service agency serving low-income and homeless families in the Tenderloin.  Eureka!  I found my dream job.  Within eighteen months I was made the Program Director and I worked at that inspiring and nurturing program for eight years until my wanderlust once again got the best of me.  I moved to Mexico City in 1993, where I lived and worked as an English teacher for the next five years.  But San Francisco was never, ever far from my heart, and when I returned in 1998 the very same social service program took me in and rehired me. I stayed for another three years until I fell in love with Brazil.  During those years in Latin America I became fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, developed a love for all things Latino, and discovered that I had a good eye for street photography.  In-between stints abroad I found that the Mission District and I were a perfect match and I can’t imagine living in any other neighborhood.   Now I divide my year between San Francisco and Brazil, with short trips to Mexico in-between. But no matter how far and wide I travel, San Francisco is my anchor and always welcomes me back like a loyal friend.  And one day, when my wanderlust loses its luster, San Francisco’s forty-nine square miles will be my one and only universe.

***

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

Michael’s link: http://www.flickr.com/people/sangroncito/

Anne

In the Tower
Mission Street at Cesar Chavez
The Mission
Sunday morning

***

There’s always this funny moment when people ask me why I moved to California where I have to instantaneously assess whether or not they can handle my truth, or whether they’ll get lost in what seems like “crazy San Francisco liberal heebeegeebee.”

I had a dream.

My Grandfather came to me in the dream, but it wasn’t exactly him. You know how sometimes in a dream you see a tree and you know it’s your cousin or something like that? It was one of those. He was his desk, his desk was him. It was the desk I inherited when he died 10 years and 3 months before I had the dream.

At the time of his death, (in real life), the desk had been mostly emptied by my Mum and her 6 siblings. All that was left, I realized at 11 years old, were things that were Unimportant to them, but Important enough to Bumpa to keep for years. There was a porcelain penguin family, and newspaper cutouts of cousins’ sports triumphs, and, most importantly, a card that he had written to me talking about a dream that he had (about me), complete with a drawing of me with missing teeth from where Babe Ruth’s homer had hit me in the face. Being one of 27 grandchildren, sharing my love for Bumpa and my loss at his death with a whole city, I remember that finding this card seemed to signify that our love for one another was unique, and this desk with its reincarnation.

The first thing I did with the desk was to write a story about living in California with a rich friend who was slowly giving away everything she owned to the homeless. I had never thought about California before that, and didn’t think of it again until 10 years later when Elizabeth (“Liz, cute, little” back then) starting talking to me about moving to California with her after graduation.

Back to the dream: I’m sifting through the desk drawers again. Pulling out each small item, and wondering why he chose to save it. Suddenly I feel him speaking to me “Go to California,” he says sternly, clearly and in a way that transcends dreams, and dictates compliance. In the morning I call Elizabeth before I am even out of bed.

“I guess I’m coming with you to California”

It took baby steps to get to San Francisco though. I had to work myself up from country girl to city girl, living first a series of small towns mostly in southern Maine, to a slightly bigger college town in New York, to Oakland, Berkeley, and finally to San Francisco – to the Mission.

Now, I know intellectually that my presence in the Mission is a symbol of gentrification and possibly cultural disaster for this unbelievable corner of the universe. But somehow I feel exactly at home here, like I was made to live here.

It’s the murals. And it’s the not-perfectly-clean-ness. And the a-little-too-loud-to-be-polite-ness. And the busy-ness of the streets. And MAPP. And the Istanbul Treat at Philz. And the salsa verde at Guadalajara. And the geeky brilliance of the people who work at Lost Weekend. And the gypsies who hide out at Amnesia. And the dark guayusa tea at Om Shan Tea. And finding a flannel bush tree in full bloom on Cesar Chavez, or watching rain from underneath a bottlebrush tree and finding myself breathless. And forging my path as a musician in a warehouse off Bayshore. And parading with cowbells and ukuleles on birthdays. And coming across a crowd at 2am dancing around a trombone and an accordion on the corner of 16^th and Guerrero. And it’s suddenly realizing that I know the trombone player and kissing her joyously before walking on.

Yes, this is mostly it: community. The reason the Mission feels like home is because I cannot leave the house without seeing at least one person who knows my name.

But San Francisco is also mostly music to me.  I played my first solo show (my band the OSHEN) at Amnesia. I first performed my Folk Opera at Socha Café. I first played upright bass (with Wolf + Crow) at Socha Café too, though for electric bass (in Sweet Crude Bill) is was at Studio H. I played my first ukulele song at Hotel Utah. And my only show ever as a drummer (with Il Gato) was at the Make Out Room. I’ve gotten to be a part of the amazing Elationist’s Centennial Band, and perform with Brent Bishop’s Path to the Temple project. Sing with Savannah Jo Lack, Jesse deNatale, Corinne West, James Nash, James Caran, and so many amazing San Francisco musicians.

On top of this – literally – my partner Jeremy and I live in a Tower. A three-story tower sitting on top of a three-story building (the Old Sears Building). It’s like nothing either of us has ever experienced. From our living room we can see downtown, from the kitchen we can see Bernal Hill, from our bedroom we can see Sutro Tower. We fall asleep every night to the sounds of the city – skateboards scraping on pavement, sirens, traffic on Mission Street. From any point in the Tower we can hear almost every show at Roccapulco and the patio shows at El Rio during the summer.

It’s been nice to write all of this out. I have to admit there are days when I loathe San Francisco. It’s too expensive and too frenetic sometimes. San Francisco demands that you come out and play, and sometimes I am just too tired to play. But here I am gushing like an 11 year old crushing on the older boy down the street who just started the first band on the block.

For the record I’ve tried to leave San Francisco for good 3 different times, and it never works. Always within hours or days I know I’ll be back. And always I am so grateful that this city takes me back.

***

You can see the slideshow of Anne’s photo shoot here.

Rachel

In the studio, on Dolores
The Mission
Thursday morning

***

San Francisco is the perfect place to be an artist. Creativity oozes from the cracks in the sidewalk and drifts in softly with the fog.  Magic.  It sticks to you like sand between your toes.

In San Francisco, people share their secrets with you. They let you take a swig of their sparkly pink wine on a hot day in Dolores Park.  In San Francisco, you can never be overdressed, or be wearing too many necklaces at once.

In San Francisco, you eat bacon-maple donuts, taco-truck delights, or locally-grown-biodynamic-seasonal produce.  You can smile at strangers and get complimentary hugs on a street corner.  In San Francisco, people toss around words like “freegan,” “hipster” or “urban cowboy,” then throw their heads back and laugh, certain that they are instead a “post-hipster intellectual.”

In San Francisco, I can be a “wild and crazy artist” and climb up onto my Mission rooftop to caw out the triumphant Call Of The Hawk, or sip my fair-trade coffee in the sun.  My hands are forever speckled with paint and fabric scraps cling to me always. Bliss.

I fell in love in San Francisco.

Seventy years ago, my Grandparents fell in love in San Francisco. It was the early 1940’s—she, a classical pianist and UC Berkeley grad; he an officer in the Presidio. I often daydream about the San Francisco my Grandma lived in. I make paintings of the single-screen movie theatre where my Grandparents first held hands and the trolley car she rode to work each day. I stroll past Saint Mary’s, where they were married, and afterward try to pick out which apartment was theirs.

“Washington and Jones. I had a gorgeous, sunny, top-floor apartment. In fact, I’m quite sure your grandfather married me for that apartment,” and she chuckles with a faraway look in her eye. It’s nice to know some things never change. A good apartment in San Francisco is worth falling in love for.  Now I live in a gorgeous, sunny, top-floor apartment. Now I am in love.

People back home in Colorado think San Francisco is Avant Garde. On the edge. Glamorous. They think I am just a carefree artist, a dandelion floating in the wind, a gambler to try to make a life out of making art. They think I took a death-defying leap, moving to this strange city all alone. They are right.

Except that you are never alone in San Francisco’s sweet embrace. Her hypnotic Siren Song inexplicably lures you into her cradling arms. You are surrounded. Her deep roots remind you that yours is not the only story, that yours is only one thread in the web that has been woven since time began, a web that will continue to grow until this little chunk of land falls into the ocean and is carried away by mystical sea creatures.

I grew up with Grandma’s rosy stories of her San Francisco—love letters to days gone by. Now, I am the one telling her stories of my San Francisco. Now she daydreams about the San Francisco I live in, wondering what has changed since she last sat in her favorite café atop Telegraph Hill. She has that faraway look in her eye. So I paint her a picture. Show her my San Francisco. Our San Francisco. The perfect place to be an artist.

***

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

Rachel is a painter, fashion designer, and performance artist who loves to play dress-up. All the clothes in her photo shoot are her own one-of-a-kind handmade designs. See more artwork and fashion, including her new paintings, “Postcards from SF,” on her website: http://www.rachelzart.com

Rachel’s facebook: www.facebook.com/rachelzart
Rachel’s twitter: www.twitter.com/rachelznerold

Tony

On 22nd Street
The Mission
Thursday afternoon

***

Grandma Marie bought Grandpa Gary a ring on 24^th Street in the late 1940s, when they were dating. They got married, moved to Albion Street, between 16^th and 17^th Street and gave birth to Dad in 1950.

Grandma Elizabeth and Grandpa Tor left Norway for Trinidad where Mom was born. They relocated to Treat Street in 1953.

Years later, Mom and Dad got frisky with each other. Nine months later I was born. They ended up on the peninsula where I grew up.

The Mission District called me home. When I was a suburban teenager, I would come up to San Francisco and act like an idiot. My friends were up from Millbrae and looking for a good time and San Francisco was our Disneyland. People rolled their eyes at us as we skateboarded around town and pathetically wooed girls.

The Mission District called and I hung up on it and moved to the Western Addition in 1994. The dot com came and spat me out into the East Bay, needing lower rent and waiting for my chance to move back into San Francisco.

I love the East Bay, but San Francisco is my soul. If Grandma didn’t give Grandpa a ring and get frisky in 1949, there would be no Dad who got frisky with Mom and there would be no Me.

I ached to come back to the Mission District. The diversity, the music, the chance interactions with strangers…some who become friends, some who should have taken their medication.

The Mission District called and I answered and I now live back where it all started, with my family getting frisky.

Grandma Marie and Grandpa Gary were divorced in the late 1950s. It wasn’t a friendly divorce. Grandma remarried Grandpa Barney, an amazing man who I’ll always remember as my Grandpa, even though their friskiness didn’t have any result into my existence today.

Grandpa Gary still wore Grandma Marie’s ring, the one she bought for him at a jeweler on 24^th Street. Until the day he died he wore that ring and said, “This is when Marie loved me.”

I inherited that ruby and gold ring. It fits on my middle finger. It lives on 23^rd Street, one block from where it was purchased over ½ a century ago. I wear it everywhere. Even though Grandpa Gary was bad at relationships and his definition of love was a little fucked up, the ring represents undying love to me. The ring represents the DuShane family. The ring will be buried with me later this century and will finally fall off my finger as I decompose.

I wrote my debut novel all around San Francisco. At cafes and bars and laundromats. I wrote my guts out at Socha, The Nervous Dog and Café la Boheme. I wrote while washing my clothes and Spanish TV was cranked to compensate for the noise of the washers and dryers so the women kept up with their telenovelas.

I wrote notes on bar napkins, on my hands and in my notebook on characters and story arcs.

Soft Skull Press published the book in February and it’s called Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk. It’s a dark comedy loosely based on my experience growing up a Jehovah’s Witness in Millbrae.

Leaving the Mission District, even if it’s to go to North Beach or Burlingame or Los Angeles, is hard for me. I know the separation is temporary, but the Mission gives me those puppy dog eyes when I leave, and wags its tail when I re-enter its boundaries.

But, I always wear my ruby ring on my middle finger. The ring that represents my existence. The ring that got the DuShanes frisky in the Mission and gave me the chance to spend time on this planet and live in my favorite place on this earth.

***

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

Tony’s reading at City Lights is Wednesday, March 3: http://tonydushane.com/events.html

Recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/01/DDOM1C7CBU.DTL

You can also find him here:

Silvi

Inside the Atlas Cafe
The Mission
Monday afternoon

***

I

“as with humans, poems have fatal flaws.”

three minutes or less. no editing or revision. for better or for worse.

II

“be a teller of great tales, even the darkest.”

the stories that cast shadows on my life: my father’s death, my mother’s cancer. these are the
stories i will forever be writing. note: you cannot have shadow unless you have light.

III

“think long thoughts in short sentences.”

secrets are safe in whale songs. sisters in pirate stores need mopping. fog sits haunting.
the best part is best. trust strangers to mail your mail. alamo square will teach you wind. trouble  sings like hummingbird wings. gratitude fuels greatness. sometimes birds poop on benches.
make time for yes. no. oh. yes.

IV

“the sunshine of poetry casts shadows, paint them too.”

secrets you never told anyone: putting his toothbrush in the toilet. giving the homeless man a
dollar most days. telling another you can’t spare any change. how it felt to be caught. how
it felt to be saved. loving the girl with the apron. trying to jump off the bridge. hugging him.
getting married. we will never see each other again.

V

“if you have to teach poetry, strike your blackboard with the chalk of light.”

i am teaching them imitation. we read nikki giovanni and they utter, “ooo’s.” they are from el  salvador, the philippines, jamaica, the united states of america, have been to turkey, but mostly, have lived here. we count up the years: 503 collectively.

VI

“allow yourself dazzling flight–flights of imagination.”

i will not wait to become a bird. already i find feathers between the sheets of my bed, dark,
iridescent. contrast the sharp yellow eye of a starling, a mallard’s wing, a peacock’s lady-getters. this morning ravens collected shiny things in my bedroom and offered them at my feet,
laughing, as if they too know what each night i am becoming.

VII

“secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.”

see especially prisons, nursing homes, hospitals, high school proms, zoos, and those without:
faces, tongues, families, friends, happiness, truth, freedom from shame.

VIII

“write short poems in the voice of birds.”

the little black bird
sings like water dropping,
now pick up your jaw.

IX

“if you call yourself a poet, sing it, don’t state it.”

my voice meets a stranger’s and is recorded on the tap tap  taptataptap of red royal typewriter  keys. tell me what you sing. i will listen.

X

“wake up, the world’s on fire!”

what more is there to say than this?

(All quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art.)

***

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

You can read an interview with Silvi discussing her poetry here.

Silvi’s website, The Poetry Store, can be found here.

Steve

In Osage Street
The Mission
Wednesday morning

***

My San Francisco story includes at least two distinct chapters so far.

In chapter one, for the first sixteen years of my life here, I sat in a room in the middle of the night, pushed buttons and listened to public radio programs. Five nights a week, I worked as an announcer at the venerable KQED-FM. While most people slept, I delivered the news and weather and ran a control board. It sure didn’t do wonders for my social life, but in one key way I loved it: my days were free. So, while most people worked, I played. I was into nature and photography and countless weekday afternoons, I headed out to explore the city and the beautiful Bay Area. I walked and I hiked and shot photos. I roamed the city’s beaches and cliffs, all the lovely parks, the quirky staircases and the obscure lookout points. Just as often, I ventured beyond the city into the Marin Headlands, the redwood forests of the Peninsula, and throughout the East Bay hills.

Chapter two began in 2004. I lost the radio job. What to do next? Well, I did what I love: grabbed my camera and headed out to the streets to shoot and explore. But this time there was a new twist. I gradually began to notice something that, for whatever reason, had never caught my eye in the many years I’d lived in the city: its prolific graffiti. At first, the vibrant colors and funky shapes grabbed me. Then, the mystery. What did the controversial art mean? Who was creating it and why? How were they getting away with it? I became obsessed and devoted myself to looking for answers and documenting the scene. Over the last six years, sometimes alone and often with friends, I’ve hunted all over the Bay Area to find and photograph as much graffiti as possible. It’s been a fascinating and totally unexpected adventure. I’ve crawled into abandoned buildings and tunnels packed with huge “galleries” of illegal art, searched behind highway barriers, hiked along train tracks through gritty industrial areas, and scoured San Francisco’s neighborhoods street by street, alley by alley to find artistic hidden treasures. It’s been the most involving, energizing and challenging photography of my life.

In the middle of it all I decided to compile my photos into a book. Then I made another.

Now, it’s on to chapter three…

***

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

There is another photo entry about Steve on CALIBER.

***

Find Steve on flickr here: www.flickr.com/photos/phunk

Also, here are the links to both of his books on Amazon.

Bay Area Graffiti

and

San Francisco Street Art

Gregory and Xeno

On the corner of 16th and Valencia
The Mission
Monday afternoon

***

Xeno, Baby.

Xeno was born in December, on the darkest day of the year. The air had that cold, damp, satiny gray brume that lets you know the North Pacific will be there far, far longer than any of us. Everything was still.

When I started to take him out in public, especially once he was a little older and I could wear him facing out – where he can look into people’s faces – I noticed that everywhere I went, everyone was looking at me. All the people in the street. Passing motorists. People working in stores. Shoppers and meter maids. N’er do wells on the corner and the proprietors of the suspicious shop down the block.

And they were all smiling. All of them. I had stepped into a dream, a perfect city where everyone looks at me with a deep, radiant smile of simple purity. It’s a beautiful way to walk around the city, around my own neighborhood as though I were seeing it for the first time. Which he was. And so, I learned, was I.

It makes you giddy. Imagine it: everywhere you go, everyone is happy to see you. Everyone beams when you enter a room. One afternoon I walked into Tartine to buy a loaf of bread, and everyone looked up and stopped talking, like in an old Western. They all smiled as though they had been waiting for me all day, just killing time with flaky croissants and cafés aux lait.

I was never a stroller, and to the extent that I considered myself a flaneûr, it was just that I didn’t mind walking a couple of miles to get somewhere. But the baby likes to stroll; there’s something about little babies that just makes you want to walk around carrying them. They grow calm, then fall fast asleep. You are one. I never had to think about how warm he was, or how cold; if he was comfortable or if something was bugging him. I just knew, the way I know how I feel. It’s got to be evolutionary.

I really learned to walk. I’ve walked every street in the Mission by now. I roamed, and poked into shops just for the hell of it; to chat with the people there and complement them on their tortillas or their just-so crafty earrings. I learned that I can talk to anyone, at least as long as Xeno is strapped to my chest to break the ice. Which is pretty much always.

I talk to everyone I see, which is completely new for me. A lot of it is just pleasantries, but even that is a big deal for me. I’ve learned the names of a half a dozen neighbors I have seen for more than a decade and had never spoken to: Troy, Liz, Tingo, Rose, Kerry, Dora. They were there all along, but Xeno wasn’t.

The baby makes me feel approachable. Maybe I wasn’t before? I don’t know – I certainly always wanted to be approached, but really didn’t want to initiate it, always afraid I’d be encroaching. With women especially, I’ve been maybe too sensitive, maybe too in control, maybe too afraid. But with Xeno as my figurehead, doors open.

A gaggle of Mexican grandmothers on the corner, interrupting their morning chat to swarm the boy “¡Ay que bonito!” Tired commuters trudging home from the BART, hunched over in dark coats, brighten and break into smiles, and stride more happily.

One man, glancing sidelong at Xeno, stumbles on the sidewalk, and nearly falls down. Another stops us to tell the baby he is ninety-seven years old.

The hot, hot women— erect and bright—come straight over and lean in close, and say the things I’ve always wanted to hear them say: “Hello beautiful! You’re so adorable! I wish I could take you home with me.”  They’re aiming their gaze at my chest, at my boy, so I can look back openly, longingly. I can smell their hair.

A homeless woman tells me the story of a child she saved. A man on a bicycle stops to tell me about how much he loves his four year old. Middle School students look him right in the eye and smiling, say “Hi, baby!” People on the sidewalk walk along with me—“Oh! He’s so beautiful!” – and describe their own babies. Babies now 23, or 42.

Young guys have no reaction. Young guys are the only people who have other things to do. Of the rest, a few people look away, or stonefaced, show me nothing, and I feel sad for them.

At its peak, when Xeno was about six or eight months old, and fit folded into the sling like a little baby Buddha, cars would slow on the street. Fixie kids would look up almost sheepishly, their girlfriends beaming. I could lock eyes with anyone, and we could see each other, instantly, for who we really are.

A ratty homeless man, drunk and stinking of urine, looks up from where he’s slumped against a wall in the morning sun, smiles and says “Baby!” through the stumps of his teeth. Whatever else has brought us to that moment no longer exists, and we revel in it.

On 23^rd street, we walked into a gang fight; some kind of beatdown under a leafy magnolia wherein a bunch of guys in red danced around a guy in black. “Beat that nigga!” one of them cried, and they did, landing sloppy kicks and messy punches, and we just walked on through with a free pass. I wondered how many of them are fathers.

In the Pirate Store, everyone is talking about us, and I stand there, dumbfounded until the ruddy, bearded hipster pirate, his eyes alive like Young Saint Nick says “Yes, it’s you! Did you know you have a baby on your chest?!”

We went into the theater there, to watch the fish. Xeno fell asleep on my lap and I listened to tinny 1920s love songs and watched the fish make their rounds before the Soviet-era map of Siberia. I missed Karl a bit, and I shed salty tears for no reason at all—and for every reason at once. They ran down my cheeks and made the boy’s hair damp.

Sometimes I have to stop walking and hug the babe to me on the street, and put my lips to his warm hair, and whisper in his ear: “Xeno, baby!”

***

You can see a slideshow of Gregory and Xeno’s photo shoot here.

Gregory’s website is http://www.dicum.com/

Armand

Orange Alley
The Mission
Friday afternoon

***

Somehow, after writing about this city on a daily basis, I find writing about my own life here oddly challenging. There’s no point in writing about how much I love the city, I obviously do, even since I was a little kid, watching 49ers and Giants games on TV (the Saints and LSU sucked, so I had to root for someone, right?)

So then what?

There’s nothing more intimidating than that blank page staring back at you.

I suppose that’s kind of how I felt coming here, jumping on a train in New Orleans. That ride was my intermission, a four-day interlude with nothing to do except stare out the window and think about what lie ahead.

My experience of the city has been one of visiting in the years before I lived here, when the city was my periodic refuge from LA and the rest of southern California. Hours of anticipation in a car riding up I-5, waiting for that first glimpse of the financial district and the city skyline as we crossed the Bay Bridge.

Actually, I guess I’ve spent a lot of time in the city just sitting, watching, waiting, finding the little hidden gems of stories in a McDonald’s, or on a bus, or just walking around for hours at a time day or night snapping pictures with an old Nikon or Hasselblad.

I’d fallen in love with photography before San Francisco, but this is really the place where I decided to spend the rest of my life with it. Now, going outside without a camera is like not wearing pants. And I always wear pants.

Every neighborhood has such a different feel, with endless potential to capture the streets and the people who live there, that I feel like I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. What other city can have so many photographers, and no two images looking the same? Of all the shooters I know, each captures the city in a different way.

As long as I’ve waited to live here, with the crappiness of the journalism field these days, I really don’t know where I’ll be in another year. Life’s been punctuated with a series of intermissions and staring out windows – Baton Rouge, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Ramallah, DC and finally, San Francisco. So there’s always the feeling of what’s next. And for the first time, I’m kinda not looking forward to it.

I like it here, can I stay?

***

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

Another favorite photo of Armand at work is posted here.

An interview I did with Armand about photography is here on CALIBER.

Armand’s blog is www.emamdphoto.com/blog
He writes for www.missionlocal.org
Armand on flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/users/emamd

Tom

On Dolores
The Mission
Thursday morning

***

Tales from never neverland

As I write this, the sound of revellery (in the form of two combating sets of repetitive beats) drifts in through my faux-Victorian windows.

I’m perched on a hillside, a stunning and sunny view of downtown from my window, next to the infamous Dolores Park. If there had to be one spot I could bring my friends and family to from the ‘Old Blighty’ (the UK) and point and say, “look, this is San Francisco, this is why I’m here”, it would be Dolores.

My teenage sister visited – she said it was like never neverland.

It’s a far cry from my old neighbourhood in ‘The Big Smoke’ (London), where I’m almost certain that it’s currently raining, grey and miserable. Where a meander to the shops would inevitably entail an altercation with someone mis-spending their youth, and an evening out would involve an hour-long commute either way.

London is a place that should retain a special place in my heart, after all it’s where I was born and bred. It’s a city that every visitor seems to love. Samuel Johnson famously said, ‘when a man is tired of London, he’s tired of life’. Yet as long as I lived there I could never muster the pride to say I loved it, even liked it. I’ve always been tired of London, yet I’m certainly not tired of life.

Which is why I moved. Now, when people ask where I live, I can hardly contain my pride, my sense of life, when I say San Francisco. There’s nowhere quite like it on earth. From twisting drives up Highway ‘1’ North, with barely a second without a world-class view, to late nights in the Mission. From evenings in a tub overlooking the bay, to friendly heart-warming conversations with complete strangers on the muni. From the madness of the never-ending stream of street-parties to the calm of the Botanical Gardens – all just a cycle away.

Ask 100 people what they think of living in London and you’ll hear lots of ‘it’s alright’ and ‘it’s OK’. They’re a tiring bunch. Ask 100 people what they think of living in San Francisco and you’ll hear an abundance of ‘I love it’s’ and ‘I couldn’t be happier’ and ‘I feel so lucky to be here’. They’re full of life.

People love it here and that simple effervescence is palpable throughout the city. That’s why, for now, there’s nowhere else on earth I’d rather be. All I have to do is persuade a few of my tired friends over to join me, and to slowly infiltrate the quotations annals so that Mr Johnson’s quote is modernized to read:

‘No wonder you’re tired of London, it’s crap – San Francisco’s where it’s at.’ – Mr Savage, Never neverland, December 2009

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

Eze

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San Francisco.

You call it what you want. It’s just as simple as that, period. I been here for 27 years; born at General Hospital and been raised here ever since. I told a friend one time “I’m going to buy a house here in the city and I don’t care if I have to use candles to light my house and be the poorest home owner on that block. I will own in SF.” It’s still my goal after all these debts disappear…

Ever since I was younger, I have never been one for school books. School books in my opinion seem cold; impersonal, lots of writing, and no pictures. Granted though, their job was to give us information that we may use at some point in our lives. But I guess I’m a person that needs pictures. I need imagery to let me understand or relate to something that is read or something that is described to me. That is why San Francisco cannot be put into words. It is a place that can’t be explained on paper and if you try to, you risk missing something about this city that may be dear to someone else. Also, on the flip side of that if I were to put what San Francisco is famous for on paper, the next person could say “I have a bridge in my city,” or “ I have a pier/wharf/(insert similar item common between cities here)What’s the big deal?” Well…it is a big deal. San Francisco has to be experienced firsthand. This place is DIFFERENT than anywhere else. You may walk down one block and see a guy and a girl kissing and on the next block two girls (or guys) are doing the same thing. You could be on one side of town and it could be foggy as hell but about 3 miles down, it’s clear and sunny. You could see the rich on one side of town with the million dollar mansions and on the other you got the homeless sitting on a bench asking for money when you pass by. Every moment in this city is an experience – a mental picture that the person was able to capture.

Now some people may argue that things are changing in the city for the better and others will say it’s for the worse. A friend of mine gets mad when he walks by Pops bar on 24^th because it used to be neighborhood regulars and drunks and now its fixies and more fixies. Some things are for the better though – years back the Mission used to be VERY heavily gang populated and I remember when the park near my house had initiations that had huge crowds that rivaled something like Dia De Los Muertos crowds. Police would come around and they would scatter like ants from under a rock. Now the same park has a soccer field and a basketball court and the same area has a ton of coffee shops next to the taquerias and liquor stores. Change is inevitable I guess but change also brings out new things and better things that make this city stand out from the others.

San Francisco is magical. It is mysterious. It is grimy. It is beautiful. It is just there like an old friend or it is like that new opportunity that is placed in front of you. It is something that is planned or something that is at a moment’s notice. It emits an aura that brings people from all around the world to come see and experience it. Just drive back into the city on one of the bridges and you can just feel San Francisco radiate just because it is one of a kind.

People want to come to San Francisco and I think you should too.

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

His flickr account is here.

You can find him on twitter here.