Category: San Francisco

January 20th, 2024

The promised second storm has blown in and unlike yesterday’s, it is truly a storm, with everything beyond the western hills lost in gray and gusts of wind that make tree-tops pitch, windows rattle, and rain hit the panes like handfuls of gravel. It’s always the wind that makes a storm in San Francisco. Windstorms have been known to knock out the power city-wide, blow out windows, and turn the Golden Gate Bridge into an enormous, thrumming harp. This one is not at that level, but it darkens the apartment to where lights have to be turned on, and it makes me grateful to be inside.

During the Friday Zoom meeting our head librarian said the sidewalks around the public library in the Tenderloin are almost impassable with tents as the homeless do their best to “shelter in place.”

For me, sleeping late is 7:30 am. Michael, quite sensibly, is still in bed. Even the cat, who normally demands her breakfast before dawn, stays in the bedroom next to her radiator, and if I so much as peek around the door at her she mrrrs irritably at me without opening her eyes or raising her head.

A friend posted the figures on the numbers of those known to have the virus, and the largest number seems to be those not considered at risk, the young. This may be due to the false sense of security that comes from not being in the “vulnerable” category. Yes, some of the young went out and partied, but in our neighborhood at least, many of them offered to help by delivering food, running errands, volunteering to manage the lines at grocery stores, etc. They now may be paying for either foolishness or unselfishness. I hope the statistics on the severity of the virus hitting older folks harder stand up, and those young people suffer only a couple of weeks of sickness.

11:10 am

Both Michael and the cat are up now. The cat is on her customary spot on the sofa behind me, Michael at his desk, and rain is steady for the moment. The wind has died down, Grace Cathedral is broadcasting its service, and the shadows and the steady patter of rain are all tied together with the meditative rumble of an organ.

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January 18th, 2024

I don’t usually write poetry, and when I do it tends to be doggerel (hopefully comic) like this. I wrote this years ago, but I recently saw an exchange online that reminded me of it. Hope you are amused. If you’re not, sorry. I calls ’em as I see ’em. Herewith, “Song of a Thread.”:

Peace reigns upon the online sea
And all is copacetic,
For on the forum all agree,
Each poster thoughtfully says “B”
When they respond to the OP,
Some gaily and some solemnly
Some off-hand, some emphatic.

Yes, “B” says One
And “B” says Two
And “B” says Three and Four,
And “B” says Five
And “B” says Six,
Who knows how many more
Would’ve anted up their B
If Seven hadn’t wrecked the thread,
Gone on a wicked trolling spree
By coolly and deliberately
Posting a “C” instead.

Most are stunned by Seven’s gall
Some lurkers turn and flee
The errant “C” has cast a pall
That baffles posters, big and small,
Till Five, the bravest of them all
Steps in, and standing firm and tall
Replies, “No, Seven. B.”

Yes, “B” says One
And “B” says Two
And “B” says Three and Four,
And “B” says Five
And “B” says Six,
Nobody has before
In cold blood dared to disagree
And worse, then offered the reply
To Five’s polite correction mild,
An answer, brutal, mad and wild:
“No, I say C. Here’s why…”

Is Seven crazed, or just plain mean?
Some caution, “Wait and see.
As of yet, we just don’t know
If Seven’s deaf, or maybe slow
Let’s band together. That will show
Her that the answer’s ‘B.’”

So, “B” cries One
And “B” cries Two
And “B” cries Three and Four,
And “B” cries Five
And “B” cries Six,
In a united roar,
They all affirm the blessed B.
Surely that will penetrate
The skulls of any fools who prate
Of other letters, and they wait,
Only to hear. “No. C.”

Eyes narrow. Something’s going on.
Why does Seven insist
On answering? The lines are drawn,
So why does Seven not desist,
When other posters all persist,
With comments she could not have missed,
All saying that she’s wrong?

“It’s B” shouts One
“It’s B” shouts Two
“It’s B” shouts Three and Four,
“It’s B” shouts Five
“It’s B” shouts Six,
Who adds “and furthermore,
I think I’ve stumbled on the key.
On careful reading,” Six opines,
“The awful, hidden meaning shines
From out between your written lines,
You’re really saying…G!”

At last the truth is running free,
Now that it’s been revealed.
That Seven has, with wicked glee,
Tried to wreck the board’s esprit
de Corps not just denying “B”
But trying sneakily to shield
A “G” behind a “C.”

“Not G!” cries One
“Not G!” cries Two
“Not G!” cries Three and Floor,
“Not G!” cries Five
“Not G!” cries Six,
All join in to deplore
Extremism, foully, wickedly
Ignoring every patient plea.
Seven’s exposed for all to see
And plainly must be shown the door —
A G’ist saying “G!”

Peace reigns upon the online sea
And all is copacetic,
For on the forum all agree,
Each poster thoughtfully says “B”
When they respond to the OP,
Some gaily and some solemnly
Some off-hand, some emphatic.

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January 18th, 2024

Photo by Alan Light via Wikimedia Commons

I swear I am not deliberately posting a cluster of diary entries about deaths. This is just the order of the entries.

Tim and I drove to Berkeley to eat before I dropped him off at work. We stopped first at Comic Relief on University, which had a new issue of Love and Rockets. As we were leaving, we noticed a copy of Dori Seda’s Lonely Nights mounted in a plastic frame, and a rose beside it with the words, “In memory of Dori Seda.”

We turned around and went back in.

Unfortunately, the woman we are friends with had gone into the back to work on taxes and was replaced at the desk by a young man we didn’t know who wasn’t very forthcoming. “Oh Dori Seda died,” he said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. Complications. She was in a car crash.”

We walked out, shocked. Just a couple of months before, we’d met Dori Seda at a party Comic Relief had held. She was a tall artiste with a mane of frizzy brown hair, a round bunny face and a space between her front teeth. It’s a cliché to say of a well-known person “I felt as if I knew her,” but I did. Her work was always so funny and ribald, and it felt familiar.

No, Dori Seda did not die from a car crash. She died, far too young, from a bad bout with the flu, her lungs undermined by the silicosis she’d contracted when she worked in ceramics. Seda’s art was so good that, a few years after she died, I talked with someone for several minutes at a Bay Area party while wondering how I knew the man. I had seen that face, and I was sure he must be an old friend.

In fact, we’d never met. He looked familiar because, as a friend of Dori Seda’s, he’d appeared frequently in her comics.

I loved the humor and realism of her art, which was so unlike many female cartoonists at that time. Women underground cartoonists too often depicted being a woman as being grotesquely self-hating — which I suspect is how many male publishers of underground cartoons imagined us. Seda was good-looking, and she drew herself that way — along with all that went with being an attractive woman in a circle of male artists and cartoonists who had come of age in the sixties and seventies.

One of my favorites of her panels was a door-frame view of an angry guy she’s just brushed off. He’s holding a six-pack in one hand and raising his middle finger in the other, just before she closes the door on him. The caption reads “Pissed cuz he didn’t get laid.”

Which I’m afraid summed up so many men in the ’80s when you were young, female, and cute.

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January 15th, 2024

San Francisco is supposed to have been hit by a “storm” this morning and later today. Currently the “storm” I see now through my window is little more than a sullen gray sky and occasional droplets on the windows. Maybe there will be hail tonight, winds that shake the panes, or even the Bay Area’s half-hearted thunder, which tends to be distant thumps and scrapes high overhead, like someone moving furniture in the attic.

In any event, there will be no walk on the roof today. For now, we sit writing at our respective desks, Sam Phillips singing “Strawberry Road” on the CD player. I’ve showered, brushed my teeth and washed my face, but I’m not sure I’m going to bother changing out of my pajamas. Our kitchen is well stocked now with roast chicken and veggies and aside from this and working on my novel, my one stab at productivity will probably come tonight when I make the blueberry muffins I promised.

Our century-old, rent-controlled apartment is a two-bedroom by San Francisco standards, which is to say, it has a living room and a dining room in addition to an actual bedroom. By tacit consent, the first part of the day is generally spent in separate rooms at our desks, mine in the living room, Michael’s in the dining room. That way, when we emerge from our working comas late in the afternoon, we act pleasantly surprised to see each other.

The cat divides her time between sleeping on her stand next to my desk or in her box next to Michael’s until the steam heat comes on. Then she retreats to her spot near radiator in the bedroom. At about 10:00 PM she emerges to tell us it’s time for us to go to bed.

At the end of the evening, we’ve gotten in the habit of watching Sky News, which, at about midnight, shows us a live, British morning news show. Judging from this, morning news shows are now about as apocalyptic as everything else is these days, with intro themes similar to the music from the Stephen Rea “Here’s what’s about to happen…” scene in V for Vendetta. One expects at any moment a shot of a gloved hand knocking over a domino.

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January 14th, 2024

One of those indispensable neighborhood shops I visit at least once every few days has been closed for the past two weeks. The young couple that runs it had warned us they’d be taking their vacation after the first, and so I was glad to see their doors open again yesterday, and I stopped in to say hello. The husband, who was sitting behind the counter, greeted me with a little less than his usual cheerful energy. I asked him how their vacation had gone, and he said, rather wanly, “all right, I guess.”

It turns out they both came down with Covid. He hastened to assure me he no longer tested positive. His wife, however, was still not feeling well.

Today the shop is closed. Normally, they are open on Sundays.

As I walked to our local grocery, I passed a man sitting at one of its outdoor tables, talking into a cellphone, asking someone “have you tested yourself today?

We all want to think it’s over, but it’s not. My uncle in North Carolina is down with it. His wife only just recovered. I keep hearing about people’s neighbors, co-workers, friends getting it and getting very sick, people who were vaccinated, who took precautions, even those who have had it before. I’ve heard about people who breezed through earlier bouts with just a cough and a slight fever being miserable and gasping for two weeks, people testing positive ten days after the onset.

I’m wearing masks again when I ride buses or enter any business.

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January 13th, 2024

This afternoon while I was working, I heard Charlie talking to someone, another male who wasn’t Trevin. I turned to look and saw Charlie showing someone the mystery books he kept at the end of the hall. The man’s face was turned away, but I could see he was tall and gangly and wore wire-rimmed glasses.

I went back to work, wondering if the man were a visiting author or a prospective employee. Charlie brought him in to see the back office, showed him, rather proudly, the Pagemaker set up, and I got a better look at the vistor’s long, angular face and brown hair. He looked kind of like Orville Redenbacher’s grandson. After they left the room I quietly asked Faren who he was, and she said he was Kim Stanley Robinson.

Charlie interviewed him in the living room. Occasionally I came in, bringing a new page for Charlie to examine. Robinson left at about 4:30 after signing some books for Shelly and posing for some pictures.

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January 12th, 2024

I don’t know how many people reading this are likely to see The Zone of Interest, which opens today. The fact that it’s subtitled may be a count against it. But it’s an important film and a timely one. It’s ostensibly based on a Martin Amis novel of the same name, but aside from its setting — the lovely villa where Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss lived with his family alongside the concentration camp — there seems to be little resemblance. I find it similar to George Saunders’ chilly masterpiece “Institutional Monologues,” with its theme of shiny, corporate cheer covering the unspeakable.

I have watched it twice now, and if I can, I’ll watch it a third time because I’m sure there are things I missed. If you do see it, I have two pieces of advice.

First, pay attention to the noises off. Every scene has practically a wall of muffled sound in the background. Some of the characters pause to listen. Others cover it up with chatter.

Second, note how often you see cleaning. Floors and children are scrubbed. Machinery is carefully sponged.

This is not a film that handles its subject the way Hollywood often handles the Holocaust. No chases, no explosions, no romance, no hopeful scenes of escape and retribution. There are no inglourious basterds. There are no depictions of anguished insight. There are no epiphanies.

There is only a slowly encroaching reality that can’t be washed away. Some of the characters see it. Some don’t.

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January 11th, 2024

Michael went out this morning to Costco. Before going out to forage, Michael typically suits up, pulling on gloves and tying a bandanna around the lower part of his face. “You packin’ heat, baby?” I asked before he left.

Some minutes later, the phone rang and I snatched it up, assuming it was him. I heard only a weird, echoing cacophony that sounded like a riot, with an amplified voice making repeated, unintelligible announcements, then the call dropped. A minute later it rang again, I snatched it up, and it was our friend Roger. “Hi,” he said. “I’m at Costco. Was wondering if I could pick anything up for you folks.”

Roger is, I estimate, in his seventies. Moustachio’d, gregarious, the proud father of teenage twins. I’m resolved to tell the truth here, so I have to admit my first thought was not, “What the hell is he doing out and about during the shut-down?” but “He has a car!” I told him Michael was on his way, then called Michael’s cellphone and told him to immediately call Roger. That way, instead of riding the bus home as he’d planned, Michael could get there in time to load Roger’s car with our groceries. Then Roger could drop groceries off here and Michael could ride his bicycle back.

We have access to the roof, now, which means I no longer run laps in the apartment. Instead, I do fifty brisk walking turns upstairs, for exercise, sun and fresh air. Unlike some of the rooftops around us, ours has not been set up for strolls or sunbathing. It’s just an expanse of flat black shingles, with three overturned, very dirty white plastic chairs, probably a relic of the young bros downstairs, and one flower pot with the remnants of a dead plant. The view is beautiful, as are most views in San Francisco, and I note it as I walk. Sutro Tower, Pacific Heights, Golden Gate, the bay behind rooftops, then the taller building next to us, then the back garden, Sutro Tower…

From this roof, we watched the new century rung in, December 31st, 1999-January 1st, 2000. Firecrackers popped, and car horns honked and people cheered and hooted out their windows and a million lights blinked in the hills as cameras flashed. The City awakened to the new century and opened its arms to all it would bring.

The booty Michael brought back today, courtesy of wonderful Roger and his car, included bananas, blueberries, tangerines, smoked salmon and other necessities.

There were also two bottles of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap, a favorite of mine since I was in college. I was happy to see the labels are still covered with the late Dr. Bronner’s philosophical ramblings. They always made good reading in the bathtub. “As taught by the moral ABC, the real Rabbi Hillel taught Jesus to unite all mankind free!!!”

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January 8th, 2024

Last night at about midnight, I heard a woman’s shrill voice down the street shouting “Get out! Get out of the car! To want to be my boyfriend and threaten to rearrange my face! Get out!”

I tiptoed over to the window to look out and saw a car pulled up a little ways down the street, a man walking slowly away from it, head down, feet dragging, like one of those cartoon figures drawn to represent shame. The guy would walk a little ways towards Sixth Street, the car following slowly. A few times he lifted his head as though he’d been called, the car stopped, and he walked over to the window to talk for awhile. Then he would walk away dejectedly, the car would follow again, then, stop, and he’d go over to the window again.

This happened about three times before the car finally drove away for good.

Our short stretch of Tehama between Fifth and Sixth Street was often a conduit for strange conversations late at night, muttered drug deals, barely coherent quarrels among homeless wanderers, or loud comments by lost, intoxicated clubbers echoing off the housefronts.

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January 6th, 2024

For dinner last night, we called in a delivery from one of our favorite restaurants, Brandy Ho’s. It’s a venerable Chinese restaurant beloved by both locals and tourists, perfectly located on the border of North Beach and Chinatown, just a block or two down the street from City Lights Bookstore. I’m a regular there, and back when life was normal, frequently picked up the lunch special on my way to work. We took my parents there at least once. My father, who loved peppery food, told me before he died that he regretted he’d never get another taste of their black bean chicken.

I could think of no higher compliment, so I told the owner this, and afterwards he sometimes came over to talk to me when I was there. The week before the quarantine, he strolled to the counter where I waited for my take-out. “Nobody is here,” he’d said, looking around at the dining room. “Lunchtime and it’s almost empty.”

“Maybe it’s the weather,” I said, not really believing it. “When it’s chilly and damp nobody wants to go out.”

He shook his head. “No. People are afraid. They think we all have COVID.”

Then he complained, as he has every time I’ve seen him since it was passed, about the local ban on plastic forks for takeout, “When you run a small business in this city, it’s like everyone is against you.”

Michael and I felt good about placing a big order with Brandy Ho’s. Long may they live. The fragrant, spicy feast that arrived an hour later did a lot to lift our spirits. No plastic forks, of course, but lots of noodles and veggies and enough leftovers to last us a day or two.

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Pam Troy

A Writer’s Website

Category: San Francisco