We now have a new Locus car, a bright red mini-van. Shelly fell in love with it yesterday during her test drive. She joined forces with Quina to convince Charlie it would be a perfect van to take to Yosemite. After Charlie and Quina used it to run errands, he returned to Locus a little downcast. I overheard him telling Shelly, “I just don’t feel the same sense of ownership anymore.”
Category: San Francisco
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On Satuday night we walked down the hill to an Art Institute event, a series of Ken Anger films. The Art Institute is a rather medieval/Spanish looking building, all broad corridors and courtyards. To our dismay, we found when we got there that we’d arrived an hour late. It was long after dark and we stood in one of its cold galleries looking out onto a courtyard, Michael negotiating with the stocky, dark-haired man running the event. We could hear the soundtrack to one of the films.
After the applause we made our way into the theater, which was dark and so packed we had to sit on the aisle steps, already dotted with people. The Anger film, Lucifer Rising, was a collection of colorful, vaguely Satanic images that managed to be interesting, even without an identifiable story-line. A lovely woman in Egyptian garb reclined on the foot of a massive sphinx. A handsome, long-haired man covered in blood bathed in a huge bathtub. The music by Bobby Beausoliel (currently serving life for a Mansonesque murder) was quite good.
After the film was over, a few people left and Michael and I were able to get a couple of seats. Unfortunately, that had been the last Anger film. (I would have liked to see Rabbit’s Moon again.) The next film had a title I don’t remember.
…but it was memorable, and deserves its own entry.
The building that housed the San Francisco Art Institute stills stands, but it’‘s currently an empty gray pile at the foot of Russian Hill, A non-profit has bought it and will presumably resurrect the place as The California Academy of Studio Arts. I am hopeful, but won’t hold my breath.
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Neither Charlie nor Quina were around today. They’d taken off to Carmel to visit Ginny Heinlein, so we rattled around Charlie’s house doing the usual between-issue chores. Shelly left at one point to go across the bay to The City look at a new van she wants as a replacement for the Locus car. She returned happy and excited about the test drive.
Milton Wolf, who is writing a bio of Charlie, called and asked about the party on Sunday. He said he wants to talk to me and other Locus employees. Should be interesting
The plums on Charlie’s tree are truly beautiful this year, a sort of luminous greenish-gold. Shelly tried some and said they are very sweet.
I believe Milton Wolf is a Science Fiction scholar, currently the VP of the Science Fiction Research Association. The bio in question was likely not so much a book as an entry in a larger reference work.
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This season is the thief of time. From here to January, every moment is going to have an awkward, many-sided feel to it, and no matter what I am doing I will feel as though I should be doing something else. This week we’re flying into Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with Michael’s family, and from then on it’s going to be one long, screaming tobaggan ride down to the end of the year and our visit to Hawaii.
But the event to be written down is, of course, the election.
I voted first thing in the morning on November 7, walking down to the polling place at Grace Cathedral. There was a line — I’d never seen that before — and new, huge, sheet-like ballots. After you voted, they were fed into what looked like a giant shredder. At work I don’t remember much talk about the election until the end of the day, when I began to sense a certain excitement. Gore had taken Florida. Several of the agents turned on a TV in one fo the conference rooms, and every now and then would emerge to deliver bulletins. Gore had Florida — and Pennsylvannia and Michigan. The agents were still watching it when I left.
I was in a pretty good mood all the way home, relieved that we weren’t going to have Alfred E. Neumann in the Oval Office. Still, I was wary and didn’t feel inclined to watch the returns. I sat at my computer and Michael watched sports, every now and then changing the channel back to the returns.
That’s when we found out from a wide-eyed Dan Rather that, oops, Gore didn’t have Florida. We watched the rest of the evening with growing apprehension and turned in that night depressed, convinced Bush had won.
It wasn’t until the next day that we discovered everything had bounced back into the air.
And that’s where it has stayed. Tomorrow there may be a decision, but it’s been two weeks and we still don’t know who our next president is going to be. Online things are getting pretty ugly, but in the office, where there is a mix of fervent Democrats and fervent Republicans, things have been pretty civilized. A property manager from England told me she was impressed, “Back home,” she said, “We’d all be engaging in slagging matches over this.”
Things have changed.
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I spent the day at work in front of the computer putting in the poll, in front of the typewriter writing letters, in front of the file cabinet looking for some photos that Catherine Crook De Camp wanted. I hardly saw Charlie at all, who stayed in the front room conferring with Shelly and Quina. In the afternoon he departed with Quina to run errands. They got back just as we were all leaving, Charlie and Quina hauling in crates of liquor and mineral water for the upcoming parties.
Yes, letters were written, not on the computer, but on a typewriter. Not sure why.
The filing cabinet of photos was called “The Morgue”, as I believe such archives were called at newspapers in general.
The Morgue could be fun to leaf through, especially since it included a thick file of letters from Harlan Ellison. He could be trusted to send LOCUS an enraged “Why-do-you-HATE-me?” letter following any review of his work, good or bad. The file was labeled “The Whimper of Whipped Harlan.”
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My birthday meal was Sunday brunch at the Crown Room, which tops the Fairmont, a large, squarish old hotel bristling with international flags. From the ground, you can see the Crown Room’s lobby window, high high up, a half oval over a small ledge looking out over the city like a dark eye. We dressed up before walking down the hill . The Fairmont lobby is dark red, deep, and confusing, and we had to ask directions to the elevator.
The Crown Room’s lobby displays reproductions of various crowns of European Royalty. Its dining room is ringed with windows offering one of the best views in the city. We could not have found a greater contrast to crowded, informal Dottie’s. (The coffee was much better too.) Buffet tables offered seafood salad, roast beef, potatoes, shrimp, pastries, anything you could possibly want for dessert. We made three trips. All the well-dressed families sitting at tables, reading papers, looking out at the Bay, reminded me of morning breakfasts with my family in hotel dining rooms when we took road trips. The same pale, early morning light falling on newspaper print, the same white coffee cups set on saucers.
Our waitress, a lively thin middle-aged woman, told us this was the very last breakfast brunch that would be held in the Crown Room. They are going to close it and rent it out for banquets and private parties.
I was genuinely sorry to learn it was the final brunch. Would not have minded making it a once-a-month thing, and I still sometimes look wistfully up at that window as I walk up Sacramento.
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Drove to Chuck’s to pick up the mailing labels today. Nobody was in sight when I got there, and I approached his front door a little cautiously, half expecting one of the wolf dogs to leap snarling at me from the bushes. As soon as I knocked on the door they began baying at me through one of the tall windows. I heard a woman’s voice, scolding, saw an arm in a yellow terry-cloth sleeve pointing down heard “Sit! SIT!” while the big white one, Akita, kept barking defiantly. Finally, the arm grabbed him by his collar and forced him to his haunches before letting me in. Akita kept barking, Chuck’s realtive kept scolding as, followed by the gray, more docile wolf dog, I walked to the back room where Chuck waited.
I talked with Chuck about the labels while the gray dog leapt onto the bed and dug at it with its front paws, tossing its head, begging me to pet it. Akita came bounding in baying, followed by the relative saying, “Don’t scare the poor lady to death.” I assured her I’m not afraid of dogs. She managed to placate Akita with some dog biscuits.
Back at work, I discovered Quina had arrived. She and Charlie and Shelly were getting ready to drive to Sacramento to look at the blue lines and Charlie was in a genial yet obnoxious mood. He wanted me to enter the poll listings into Pagemaker, kept impatiently waving magazines at me and ordering me about, occasionally muttering “Jesus” at my presumed incompetence. I think he was showing off for Quina. It was a relief when they left.
Quina was a attractive woman in her thirties with long, light brown hair, which I remember as always worn loose and falling down her back. I believe at that time she worked for a Bay Area publisher or literary agency. She would occasionally show up at LOCUS and Charlie, smitten and beaming, would practically stand on his head. I was never sure WHY Quina was there, but she and Charlie would have serious conversations in the front room about publishing things. The only reason I can imagine for her going with Charlie and Shelly to Sacramento is to have lunch with them after they checked blue lines at the printer’s.
Quina has since carved out a good career for herself as a successful literary agent.
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Saturday morning we went to Dottie’s, a tiny restaurant on Jones. The day started gray and rainy, so we’d hoped it wouldn’t be too crowded, but the minute we saw the little blue awning we saw the queue. We waited in line, inching forward as clots of people left the restaurant and as many moved in.
Dotties was as noisy and packed as usual, every small table taken, the counter thick with people, behind it, griddle cakes piled up on a tottering stack near the stove. There was only one waitress a slender, dark, doe-like girl who didn’t look to be more than eighteen. I had my usual apple sausages and grilled cornbread, with the most delicious cranberry muffin I’ve ever tasted. It was baked on a griddle, so it wasn’t muffin-shaped, but much lighter than usual because the dough had had space to expand. We ate as much as we could and then hurried out to free up the table, walked home through the rain sated and happy.
Dottie’s True Blue Cafe eventually moved from Jones Street to Sixth, which was a worse neighborhood, but had a much larger space with bigger tables. There was still a line for weekened brunch, but diners didn’t feel they had to tuck in their elbows while eating. It closed for good in 2021, a casualty of the pandemic.
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A pretty day, not so miserably hot as yesterday, but enough to make it stuffy inside. The heat brings out not so much odors as the ghosts of odors from the carpet, the dirty clothes hamper, the kitchen sink. I went walking again.
Downtown had its own strange rhythm today. Even the evangelists at the Powell turn-around seemed oddly subdued. The one who goes on about AIDS and virginity was dressed today in rusty red, but sat next to his poster instead of standing and ranting, talking quietly to some tourists while a pair of giggling girls surreptitiously took his picture. The quiet little old black lady in a turban sat in her folding chair, one finger raised as she murmured something to an attentive young man who leaned forward to listen. High over the pit that leads down to BART, a flock of pigeons wheeled around and around, their wings brushing the tree-tops.
As I crossed Market to Fifth I saw the white-faced lady again, this time up close. Vintage 1920s clothes, cloche hat, white long-waisted dress, white stockings, white shoes… I always thought the hats and dresses of that era look as if the wearer were perpetually standing with her back to the wind. If there were any stains or tears I could not see them. Her small, pinched face had very dark, slightly slanted eyes. It was white with what looked like caked, unevenly applied talcum powder.
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I picked up some cheese at 2001 on my way home. St. Andre and, with the help of a fey, elaborately bored clerk, some wonderful goat cheese, (“Is it as good as Humboldt Fog?” “Nothing is as good as Humboldt Fog.”) a hard, nutty-tasting cheddar, Spanish anchovies, some bread and crackers. Then I walked cross the street to the Jug Shop and got an expensive Italian wine. Went home with my arms full. We had a nice, quiet evening. The cheese and wine were deliicious and I read two books.
This was a continuation of my birthday celebration, which stretched over the weekend. 2001, the high end cheese shop on Polk was named after its address — 2001 Polk. I remember it as a white, sterile looking space consisting almost entirely of refrigerators stocked with high-end cheeses. The guy behind the counter watched me as I browsed. I watched him back. If I reached for something he didn’t like, he’d shake his head, and I’d go on to the next cheese. He never steered me wrong. 2001 Polk is still an excellent cheese shop, but it now sells wine and lots of other good things along with cheese. It’s owned by Ray Bair now and called Cheese Plus.
The Jug Shop, a 60-year-old business, is gone, renovated away to another location, which had much less foot traffic. It closed last month.Reading two books involved, still involves, alternating between chapters. Typically it’s something light and something heavy. Like combining cheese and wine.
Pam Troy 