Jackson

Near the Sausalito/Larkspur/Angel Island Ferry platform
The Embarcadero
Tuesday afternoon

***

I was in a cab with my (now ex-) girlfriend headed up the Bowery past Astor Place when she said, somewhat out of the blue, “Do you want to move to San Francisco?”  Without a moment’s hesitation, I said “Yes.”  That was 1999.

February marked my tenth year by the Bay, and April will be my seventh in San Francisco.  My ex broke my heart, though in retrospect I did my best to break her spirit and the relationship.  The good news is, when she moved Back East, I finally got to leave Oakland for San Francisco, which is really where I’d wanted to move all along.

I’ll never forget meeting my new roommates at my first place in The City for the first time.  After finding the listing on Craigslist for a basement room in a house on San Bruno near 24th, I arranged to meet the other tenants.  As we sat in the living room chatting and drinking beers, the first bomb in Operation Iraqi Freedom dropped on Baghdad while protesting San Franciscans ground city traffic to a halt.  The basement was dingy, but it was cheap and had its own entrance and bathroom, there was roof access and an old friend from New York lived just around the corner.  And it was in San Francisco.  The Mission, no less.

Needless to say, as a house full of drunks and stoners, it was pretty much a constant party.  And, just my luck, the roommates and neighbors enjoyed cocaine and meth as much, if not more, than I did!  When money was good, it was weekend brunches and barbecues on the roof watching the fog roll over Twin Peaks.  I spun records at house parties.  Hooked up with a young Berkeley grad, but she lived in Oakland, so that didn’t work out.  I vowed never to date someone who didn’t live in San Francisco to spare myself the commute (though, naturally, later I ended up in a long-distance relationship with a New Yorker — because I’m prone to forgetting the lessons my mistakes were trying to teach me).

I ended up with the only real job I’d had since just after college after a nine-month stint as a temp at the corporate offices of an upscale housewares retailer, editing graphics and copy for online outlet.  The pay was decent, and I had health and dental insurance, but I was bored to tears and resented the management — the art director for the sites had no actual creative experience, having been promoted from being a project manager.

I’d had a moribund blog since 2002.  But at the time, blogs were mostly personal affairs — and I determined my life wasn’t particularly interesting.  Ah, but San Francisco!  So many stories.  Looking to while away a couple of hours at work, I got some submissions to the Web site of a twee, local publisher accepted.

That probably gave me the confidence to start writing on my own blog — the first posts were, naturally, about where to find decent pizza and bagels in San Francisco, as there are still some things I love about New York.  I just wouldn’t want to have to live there ever again.

A popular local New York City blog posted a notice that they were looking for writers to start a version in San Francisco, I sent in an email.  After a couple months of “so when’s the site starting,” “when we have an editor,” the colonial outpost in LA debuted.  Already with a San Fernando Valley-sized chip on my shoulder (even though I was born in Los Angeles county) I decided that, damnit, San Francisco — where blogging was practically invented! — was not going to take this lying down.  So I emailed the New York publisher and told him that I’d edit the San Francisco site.

The first “staff meeting” consisted of me and two now longtime friends.  We got burritos at the El Farolito on Mission.  We were, apparently, just young enough and stupid enough to be the right people for the job.  Not that it was an actual job — I think I managed about a month’s rent out of the gig in a year and half — but it was something to do at work.  Unfortunately, between the parties and the blog, my job performance left a lot to be desired, and a few months after starting the site, I was fired from my job.

But editing that site did for me what drinking in my basement apartment and playing video games until all hours couldn’t.  Namely, it turned me on to a world of writers and techies that eventually became good, supportive friends.  Parties on my roof turned into parties at 111 Minna, Varnish and the House of Shields.  I got a press pass to attend South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, and made new friends from around the country.  People I’d never met actually knew my work!  And liked it!  People would introduce me: “This is Jackson.”  “The Jackson?  Jackson from San Francisco?”  It was, frankly, awesome.  I felt like a celebrity.  And with all the free booze events, drank like one.

Having lost my day job, however, I had little to do but drink and blog.  With no particular income, I was a particularly shitty roommate to live with.  Eventually I started missing posts, and made plenty of stupid mistakes trying to manage the blog, and was summarily fired over the phone by the publisher in New York. I cried.  I had tried to nurture that site like a child, and it had become my raison d’être. I’d done my best to help create something that would keep running even if I were run over by the 9-San Bruno, but actually losing the reins was a sucker punch.

Thanks to the people I’d met, I actually ended up getting work that paid.  Though, once again thanks to the sauce, generally managed to fuck those opportunities up, too.  I was living the dream, and the dream was slowly killing me.  At least I spared my roommates, having moved to a studio in North Beach that I initially shared with a painter but eventually had to myself.  Once again with my luck, I stumbled across a coke dealer in the neighborhood and went on some pretty epic benders before finally stumbling into a rehab clinic in 2006, shortly before my 30th birthday.

Thing is, many of those friends I’d met through the blog and gotten drunk on venture capital-funded open bars with were there to support me.  Near the end of my 28 days, around two dozen showed up at a little party I organized at the clinic.  I’ll never forget that, or them.  San Francisco has long been the last refuge of vagrants and vagabonds, and if anything that afternoon at a rehab clinic in Oakland illustrated how profound both the tolerance for wild, unconventional behavior and the belief in the powers of redemption and self-improvement are here.

Now I’m back in the Mission after losing another blogging job and my studio.  I spent the summer with friends in Sausalito and family near Seattle amidst our collective global economic meltdown, nervous that I’d never make it back to my now true love.  I’m working the local beat again, if only part time, still struggling to make much of a living, yet I couldn’t be happier for the opportunity to back and telling Frisco stories.

People complain about the trash, and the homeless, and the crime, and the rents, and the public transportation or whatever — I certainly have.  But cities are supposed to be messy, chaotic things.  After a bike ride to Ocean Beach, or cresting the hill past Alamo Square on the 21-Hayes, or fondling world class produce it will suddenly strike me that I live in the most beautiful place full of the most beautiful people in the world, and it’s worth all the money and heartbreak and temptation I can stand.

***

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

Jackson’s blog is here: http://jacksonwest.wordpress.com/about/