My new temp job, at DS, is just down the street from a place I temped a year and a half ago, the AARS (Asian American Recovery Services, a drug rehab center). DS is a little store-front interior decorating company, owned by a fellow who, until very recently was running the business out of his house. The neighborhood is in the hinterlands of Hayes Street, a long bus ride from almost the foot of Van Ness near the Opera House.

Like many such neighborhoods in San Francisco, it’s a bleak stretch of street and pavement, with very little shade except a few skimpy sidewalk trees and the shadows of the two-to-three-storied buildings that line it. Most of them are old by SF standards, going back to the early 20th century, with curlicued decorations, faces and flowers carved over the doorways, sills and windows, and fretwork outlined in colored paint, but even these are usually grimey, and the upstairs windows are curtained with bedspreads or sheets, or heavy drapes that tie in the middle.

The storesfronts tend to be bars, laundromats, cafes, or dark little businesses with obscure and uninspiring missions. The bars look cheap and uninviting, and the cafes are frequented by weary-looking people who seem resigned ot living cheaply most of their lives. Next door to the place where I am working is a storefront that doesn’t even have a sign in it. The only clue to what it might be is a simple cartoon in counterpoint of a businesswoman carrying a briefcase. Your guess is as good as mine.