Michelle
Posted: October 20th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 8 Comments »
Inside Adobe Books
The Mission
Thursday afternoon
***
That’s what you get for going to the café with all the cute people, for going there because there are cute people. Wham you see your ex, not that you can call that person an ex. To be an ex of something you have to have been that something, and you weren’t. I mean, you were something, you just weren’t the something that leaves you with anything when it’s over. Who is that person to you now? You know, that person who you did all that stuff with. Like being pushed out of a moving car. Last time you were in this café you were with your friend who, oddly enough, is also not an ex of that very same person! And that’s what she said: Like being pushed out of a moving car. That’s how some people roll.
But you go to that café and you are grateful for it, grateful for all the cafes up and down Valencia and also the ones that stretch up 18th, the places on Mission Street, all these cafes where cute people go to get coffee, because after you’ve been pushed out of a moving car it’s nice to be around cute people you’ve never hitched a ride with. Valencia Street is good for that, the promenade, it’s good to have a reason to pin your hair up and put on cute shorts that you didn’t buy at Candystore, you bought them at Bloomingdale’s, and you cursed yourself later, you said, I am so nouveau riche, why, when I want to buy shorts, do I go to Bloomingdale’s? The shorts were much cooler at the Candystore, but by the time you figured that out it was too late, you can’t go around buying shorts and shorts and shorts, you only get to wear such things for a single week in San Francisco and it’s this week, and you’re wearing them to the café and you have on your patent leather loafers you got at the Salvation Army and the tank top the girl your other ex, the one who is really an ex, sort of left you for made. She made the tank and your roommate was getting rid of it, having a yard sale on the corner of 18th and Valencia, clothes flopping on hangers on the long chain link. She said, in a sort of sorry way, You know old so-and-so made that, but you didn’t even care, you had so moved on from that whole thing and it was a cute shirt. That is what you were wearing when you ran into the person that is not your ex at the café full of cute people and of course this person would be there because aren’t they cute? They are so cute. You remember when you didn’t think so, or you thought, sure they’re cute, whatever who cares, lots of people are cute, you weren’t particularly moved by this person’s cuteness, and then wham, you get a little close to a person, you sort of aim your heart at them and fling the shutters open and all the goodness and pathos, all the tragedy and triumph and weirdness and deep secret wonderfulness, all of that comes beaming in straight from their face into your soul and now it’s like they’re the very source of beauty. And you’re like, great. You were just at the café, minding your own business, sort of hoping someone else would mind your business too, one of these cute strangers, and you got this one. The café on Valencia which had seemed so big now seems very small with the awkward source of all beauty and love regarding you, the loveless face of love, the guilty face of loveless love regarding you awkwardly, Valencia Street had seemed so very big but what is it if not a plank to walk daily, of course you would see this person, you will see this person again, and again, and always within five or so blocks of where you stand right now. The person is on their way to the bathroom, they like your striped jacket, awesome, the person has come to the café to work, like you are pretending to do, but probably they too are looking for the next person to push from a moving car.
After they walk away it takes you about five minutes to know that you can’t stay and fake-work in the café, you must go home to your back porch with the flock of pigeons that take off and land and take off and land like they are in training for the pigeon Olympics. The crack of their wings snapping in unison sounds like a shot and the bulk of them soaring in harmony blots out the sun. You sit on your back porch with its pigeon shit and tufty feathers, the pretty trees and bushes and shrubs glossy in the heat, the persimmons slowly yellowing from green, the Angels Trumpets vivid peach, that other tree, you don’t know what it is but it flowers and spits hard fruits onto the roof. You smoke and wait to cry but you don’t. The pigeons above you make another loop, and then another. The sky goes dark, and then it’s bright again.
***
Michelle’s spoken word and performance art site, Sister Spit, is here.
Michelle’s website RADAR Productions.
Michelle’s interview on Mission Loc
Liz
Posted: September 27th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 3 Comments »
Bryant Street
The Mission
Thursday afternoon
***
I stood on the edge of morning light and water at Ocean Beach, holding my shoes. My bare feet shivered happily on the damp sand. I looked with great content at the waves and thought to myself, “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say ‘I live here’ yet.”
I’m coming up on my 1 year anniversary with this city called San Francisco. The way people talk about this city… it’s got it’s own distinctive personality. I never met a city with so much! A dame, a bum, a queen, gender? How do you describe a city so in your face, brash, slightly crazy, beautiful in a weather worn way, and shy, hiding its treasures… I’m only just starting to feel like maybe we’re friends. After all, I just biked all the way from the Mission to Ocean Beach and didn’t feel lost once.
I could’ve picked any city in the States to move to. Last July, I came back from living in Japan for a year and had the savings to do it (well, kind of). I was in Colorado with my family and my brother said, “I will PAY you to move.” He was right, I couldn’t stay in my hometown of Colorado Springs. I love Colorado, and sometimes I wonder if the mountains will call me back one day. But at the time, I couldn’t stay. My brother’s fear, and mine, was that I would get stuck. Colorado Springs is a beautiful place to live, but art scene wise, it’s got a ways to go… And as much as I love the Denver/Boulder area, I went to university there and I needed to try something new.
San Francisco was at the top of my list. I had started thinking about it back in Japan. I wanted to live in a big city that had both a metropolitan and country feel – access to nature with a great art and dance scene. I wanted to dance professionally. New York City was too intimidating, Chicago was too extreme with its temperatures, Seattle and Portland too pretentious and damp, and Austin was… well, in Texas. But San Francisco always had a good vibe when I had visited it in the past. It had a renowned art scene. And – dare I say it? – the dance scene claims to rival NYC.
So in August 2009, my BFF, Megs, and I flew out to exhibit at the SF Zine Fest and to check it out. See if this was a place I could live. That weekend, surrounded by artists, zinesters, crafters, poets, and fellow DIY enthusiasts, was the clincher. Everyone was so warm and welcoming. I got advice on where to live and (more importantly) where to eat! People willingly gave me their emails and told me to contact them with any questions not if, but WHEN, I moved out. Our neighbors to the right and left of us became good friends who continue to inspire, advise, answer my endless questions, check in, invite me out, and encourage my art.
So on 9.9.09, I flew out with my essentials and moved in with family friends. Within a month, I was in a dance company and I had a part-time job at a shop in the “cool neighborhood” on Valencia. I was making amazing friendships.
Almost a year later, I’m once again preparing for the SF Zine Fest. I’m now living in a great apartment in between two fabulous neighborhoods (Mission & Potrero Hill) with two fabulous roommates. I have a new part-time job and I’m spending more time than ever making art and crafts.
Sadly, I’m no longer with the dance company. A chronic lower back injury flared up, and I realized how fast I had jumped into extreme movement styles when I moved to SF. My body is asking me to learn a new approach to the passion that led me to this city. It’s a challenge. I’m in a place where my relationship with the career I wanted now seems tenuous and questionable.
I don’t want to be angry with SF. After all, many people have said that the first year in any new city is the hardest. And this city in particular, can be rough. It’s got an attitude, as I’ve said. A fellow dancer even said to me, “People who come here with the ‘I’m gonna take over the world’ attitude, get burnt out.” So, in my down moments, maybe I’m feeling a little burnt by this city, but it’s really my own fault. I moved too quick, got too familiar, and got a little kick for my enthusiasm.
But at the same time, SF gave me an amazing local support network in this time of transitions. And this city oozes opportunities, ideas, and creativity. The cement bleeds graffiti. The native flora and fauna are bright, bold, sassy, sophisticated, but still rough around the edges. And for contrast, you’ve got that mysterious gray that calms and cloaks and reminds me, “You think you know… but so much is still hidden… there is so much to learn.” And SF’s challenge is not a bad thing. It’s an invitation to grow. There’s always room for growth. And there’s always that creativity surging just beneath the surface to tap into, if you dare…
To answer San Francisco’s challenging wiles, I say, “Yes, I live here.”
***
Liz’s website: http://lizbrentdances.com
Geoff
Posted: September 20th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 5 Comments »
Inside Viracocha, on Valencia Street
The Mission
Thursday afternoon
***
The Bay Area is the first place I’ve ever been invited to live. A couple of years ago, the University of California-Berkeley sent me a letter, out of the blue, asking me if I’d like to be their poet-in-residence for 2009. Heck yeah! A dream job for a poet. I’d get paid, teach a class, do some readings, and reside in the poet’s house on campus for a semester.
I’d been living in San Diego, in sunny, soulless, almost mindless luxury, for almost a decade. I was ready to leave, but nothing had been able to tear me away from over 300 days of sunshine per year. Then along came the Berkeley letter (apparently they were big fans of my first book of poetry, Living Room) and I saw the route of my escape.
So I arrived across the bay in August 2009, and started serving my post. Everything about Berkeley was progressive: the politics, the ideas, the arts, the essence. But as much as I loved Berkeley, every time I came over the bridge into San Francisco, I’d suddenly get this feeling like I’d come home. I don’t know what it was. I still don’t, not really. But I moved into an apartment in the Mission in January, and I’ve been home here ever since.
About a week after I’d moved to S.F., I had a conversation with a woman about the relative differences between San Diego and San Francisco. I told her that people move to San Diego because of the sunshine, and I asked her why she thought people moved up here. She thought a moment, and said, “Expression. People move to San Francisco for freedom of expression.”
That answer rang true for me, and has seemed truer and truer ever since. It seems everyone here is an artist or expresser or appreciator of some sort. All forms of expression are accepted and fostered and enjoyed in San Francisco. I love that about my new hometown.
But perhaps the major detail contributing to my “at-homeness” here in the city is directly related to poetry.
I’ve lived in a dozen towns and cities in the United States (and a couple of places abroad) and I’ve visited many dozens more, and San Francisco is the first place I’ve ever been where the words, “I’m a poet” actually carry social cachet. In this town, people seem to actually WANT to talk about poetry, and to respect and even revere their poets.
So I came here because I was invited, and I stayed because I feel wanted. Now, if the damn weather were only just a little better…
***
Geoff’s website is geoffbouvier.com
Michael
Posted: August 16th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 9 Comments »
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.
***
Michael’s link:
Anne
Posted: August 9th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 7 Comments »
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 16th 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.
***
Rachel
Posted: April 12th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 10 Comments »
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.
***
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: Rachel’s twitter:
Tony
Posted: March 1st, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 8 Comments »
On 22nd Street
The Mission
Thursday afternoon
***
Grandma Marie bought Grandpa Gary a ring on 24th Street in the late 1940s, when they were dating. They got married, moved to Albion Street, between 16th and 17th 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 24th 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 23rd 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.
***
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:
Twitter,
Facebook,
Silvi
Posted: February 18th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 10 Comments »
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 read an interview with Silvi discussing her poetry here.
Silvi’s website, The Poetry Store, can be found here.
Steve
Posted: January 20th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | No Comments »
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…
***
There is another photo entry about Steve on CALIBER.
***
Find Steve on flickr here:
Also, here are the links to both of his books on Amazon.
and
Gregory and Xeno
Posted: January 18th, 2010 | Author: julie | Filed under: The Mission | Tags: The Mission | 9 Comments »
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 23rd 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!”
***
Gregory’s website is http://www.dicum.com/
