It was already crowded at KQED. Michael schmoozed, I went in search of food because I’d had hardly anything to eat that day, and the buffet offered dum sum, crab cakes, shirmp, etc. I loaded a plate and wandered for awhile in the crowd, spoke to Jay Rosenblatt, who makes interesting short documentarie using old footage, but without the usual graininess and rough edges.

I got into a long conversation with Hank, who’d been my landlord back in the ’80s when I lived on Tehama with Tim. To my astonishment, he referred to me as one of the best tenants he’d ever had. (My housekeeping is lousy, and in the place on Tehama our cat’s urine destroyed the stairwell carpet.) The subject got onto ghosts, and Hank, who owns a lot of property South of Market, told us about one of his tenants demanding he get rid of a poltergeist.

The tenant was a very wealthy woman, someone who could easily buy any house in San Francisco she wanted, so, Hank observed, she was plainly nuts to be renting a ratty little apartment on Natoma.

“Your apartments aren’t ratty!” I said.

He shrugged. “You’re right. Funky. It was an interesting, funky old place where she lived with two roommates. Not a bad place, but why live there when you can afford something better?”

One night she called him and informed him there was a poltergeist int he house and he had to get rid of it.

“How do you know there’s a poltergeist?” he asked.

“You made a movie here, didn’t you? You made a snuff film, didn’t you? There was a homicede here and it left evil vibes and now there’s a poltergeist.”

“Now, in the first place, a film was made there, but I didn’t make the film,” Hank said. “In the second place, it wasn’t as snuff film, but I didn’t see any real point in explaining that to her. So I asked her, ‘How does this poltergeist manifest itself?’”

“‘The bathroom light flickers on and off when I go into the bathroom.”

“Did you check the bulb?”

‘It’s a poltergeist! I need to go to the bathroom! What are you going to do about it?’

Hank said that he got his toolbox, put an extra bulb in it, and went down tot he apartment on Natoma. When he got there, he found the woman crouched in the hallway, apparently afraid to venture anywhere near the bathroom. Hank went in, turned on the light, and the bulb came on and then blew out with a faint pfttt. He changed the light bulb, made a lot of noise doing it, then came out looking exhausted. “The poltergeist is gone,” he told her, and hte turned on the light to whos her it wasn’t flickering anymore. This seemed to satisfy her.

Tuesday night was the Independent View party at KQED. After work at DS I took the Hayes all the way down to Market Street and got off near Fifth, intending to catch the 21 Bryant, which would let me off almost in front of KQEDS. I hate waiting for a bus, even when I have a book to read. My usual strategy is to walk along the bus route, periodically checking to see if it’s coming so I can hurry forward or double back to the bus stop. I walked to the stop near Fifth and Tehama. No sign of it. I walked another two blocks down to the next one. Still no sign. I walked

I had returned to my old neighborhood. The 21 was what I used to take back when I lived on Tehama with Tim. The neighborhood hasn’t changed much. There is still tht bare, backstage feel, still the mural of the beach on Bill Graham’s old building. The parking lot I used to cut through when I walked donw to the M&M for a sandwich is now fenced in. I can remeber the old parking lot attendant who used to work there telling me about seeing the concrete of the lot swell like a tide during the ’89 quake. We’d felt the house on Tehama rise and fall as if a giant had picked it up a couple of feet and dropped it.

So I walked, and walked, down Harrison past the End Up (visiting there one night with Scott Winnett, who stood beside me and made catty remarks about everyone’s clothes. The decor had reminded me of Rock City, a cheesy amusement park I used to visit in Lockout Mountain, which featured colored lights and plastic fairies stuck to cavern walls.) Past the Line Up (eating there with Michael and seeing a roach rise out of my salad, its antennae waving.) Down towards Eleventh Street (riding my bicycle to and from China Basin and my loft on Minna), down to the 16th Street Safeway… A bus didn’t show up until then. I was more than halfway to KQED. The bus was packed and I had to squeeze myself on. It wasn’t until I popped out at Mariposa that I realized Michael was on it too.