i had a couple hours to kill, so i walked into into 1155 grant st, where i would kick back, have a couple drinks and be endlessly entertained by dive bar karoake. i look up to the projected screen tv -- sprawling landscapes are running and on top of them, the lyrics to My Way. I sit down, look up and see two loaded mexican girls telling me how they had a few regrets, but too few to mention, really. Meanwhile, the song ends and my bartender, candy , looks at me. "honey where you been you no come in here no more." and as if to make up for my time gone she pours me a 7&7 with a shot of 7 sidecar. the mexican girls have moved on to labamba and the cantonese barman/baritone starts belting with them. i don't know this guy's name yet, but i have a pretty good sense that he's gonna be a major form of entertainment for me over the next 12-18 months. this scene carries on and on. candy is pouring me drinks and lighting my cigarette. to my left four cantonese fellas are sitting around styrofoamed left overs , a bottle of glenlivet, and some dice. they and candy and the barman, lets call him wayne for now, are really pounding dice, yatzee style, and the BANG BANG BANG of the rolls are punctuating their shouts, their singing, their shots. im watching all of this as wayne steps up and sings some cantonese karoake song. the whole idea of being able to read the cantonese characters so quickly is fucking killing me , as well as the scrolling picturesque background. he's singing hong kong's top 40 to video of horses in the upper peninsula of michigan. i cant contain myself and look to the man sitting next to me and tell him this is my favorite fucking song. which seemed funny at the time. next thing i know, this guy, 40 something, of slight height but not lacking in inebriation, is standing 2 feet from me, his arm around me, working through some complicated karaoke situation with me. 'you sing la la la.' and i sang 'la la la' but you know I'm atonal and that shit didnt work right, so he tried a few more times and then decided to tell me about his life story instead. 'why are you here in america' . his grammar was fine but his accent was almost impossible to decipher, especially in the noisiness of chinatown. there is no quiet in chinatown and thats why people come here -- people are so numbed by their enclosed subrurban spaces, they need to feel the human contact . come in, see the chatter of the markets, overstimulate yourself, engorge yourself on dumplings, and get your ass back to pleasanton asap. anyway, i'm hearing this story while a czech couple next to me is watching this whole thing go down. their smirks tell me 'you are in the trap now funnyman. let's see you get out of this. Dominick Hasek forever!' this man's expression changes slightly and tells me that his parents made him come here from china but he cant go back now -- there is nothing in hong kong for him now. i attempt to empathize with my new friend about the difficulties of being an immigrant, the insistent sense of geography, the challenges of it all. understandably, the responses were unintelligible grunts and i only felt better about this when candy couldnt even understand his native cantonese. i can't tell if he's about to laugh or cry and the whole thing is making me plan for an exit. i like talking to strangers but when they start getting up in my grill and being super emotional i need to get the F out of dodge. so i pulled the broken phone out of the broken pocket, put it to my ear, and said to no one in particular: 'cool, i'll be right there.'
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welcome to my new neighborhood! thanks to my newfound and exciting hyperawareness to the perils of bedbugs, I havent moved directly into chinatown. instead , i have traded dirty mission streets, packed with hatted hipsters for the vibrant north beach streets, teeming with tourists, europeans, and east bay revelers. some might think this swap is a push at best, but they would be sadly mistaken. i have lived within one block of valencia street for over four years and let's just say i've had enough! enough dirty streets, littered with crushed tallboys, used rubbers and drug paraphernalia.
enough hipsters! i'll say it twice cause its nice: enough hipsters! maybe i'm not artsy enough to understand, or maybe i've grown too old (seems unlikely -- hipster powers seem to peak at 32), but i can no longer tolerate this subculture of bicycles, fidel castro hats, dudes in tight jeans, and unemployment. i've never had a visceral response to a demographic before (this is a lie) but something about my immersion amongst these people has triggered an intolerance that i can feel in my bones. it's not cold enough for a scarf dipshit. and seriously -- bright pink pants and camo gloves?
it's not just the hipster, though they do exhaust me so. i had always had my eyes set on north beach. there is something quintessentially san franciscan about this part of town and i felt like i wanted to live in that for a while. the mission isnt that unique in the world -- there are divey, multicultural neighborhoods everywhere, and while it gives the neighborhood character, its no different than the character of my old neighborhood in chicago, ukranian village, or the east village in new york. if im living in sf i want something that feels sf and only SF and north beach has to be that place.
it's not cheap here, and i gave up a big ass space for a smaller apartment that costs about oh, twice as much. but i have discovered a new need in my life: a well lit living space. holy shit the new place is bathed in light and you never need lights during the day. the old place was long and narrow, on the first floor of a victorian, completely surrounding by houses left and right - basically a cave. towards the end of my stay at 75 liberty st, i had been spending a ton of time in my room which is all the way at the back of my house, down a 35 foot hallways. every day, i would wake up in the dark, dress in the dark, and extricate myself from that dark back room. at night i would come home and re-insert myself deeply into the house. in my head that hallway had become increasingly vaginal , and there i was birthing and unbirthing myself everyday. lets just stay that one when your hallway becomes associated with the birth canal, it may be time for a change. so i looked northward for some thing accessible, well lit and markedly unvaginal . i lucked out! plus my ride, Black Thunder, has a garage where he can kick it with his new homies.
back to geography. yes! i have swapped hipster for eurotrash. all around me are tourists, europeans flocking to cafes, and the trickle of chinese from the south. my roommate, my old friend gaz, is perhaps the most english person i have ever met, right down to the full ricky gervais catalog on DVD. just yesterday he forced me to try the national sauce of english, MP, which apparently was made just for the members of parliament. and, in a proud english manner, the sauce was strange tasting and tangy. not to worry though -- the local fare is incredible -- i fully expect to have a prosciutto sweater in my colon by august!
from my roof i can see alcatraz, a couple bridges, downtown, coit tower and that twisty shit coming down lombard (pictures soon!) . i walk onto my street and have to avoid the cable car. yesterday i saw an amphibious vehicle , full of midwesterners, chug up columbus street, PA system barking out sights full blast. i dont think these things are inherently bad, or people wouldnt live in manhatten. it's just an adjustment, and a fun opportunity to meet people from all over the world, especially indiana. more than that, there is something comforting about living in a place where people on the streets are definitely not from here. it is well known lore that not one tree in san francisco is indigenous to this place. instead, the settlers out here painfully irrigated and cultivated the endless sand dunes so that new trees could set roots. this has always been a strong metaphor for me regarding my own attempts to root here. it aint easy! but posting up in a part of town full of tourists, i feel the that us and them tension and it isnt bad -- it overemphasizes my residency here. they are here to visit MY city, and everytime i pull out my keys to unlock my front door amongst folks with digital cameras and goofy hats, i feel a jolt of proprietary and pride about my city. the empowerment of the key -- my apartment has allowed me to reattach to this town in a way i didnt fully expect.
so, i dont know cantonese and i dont know why my parents brought me to america. maybe somethings are best left unresolved. but i'm feeling fine in north beach, friends. and if any of you would like to crack a beer on my roof, drop on by, and i'll show you how we do in frisco.
