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May 29, 2008A cage with golden barsis how he put it–MICKEY ROURKE AS CHARLES BUKOWSKI–assessing a rich woman’s fancy home in “Barfly.” At the moment, I don’t know why the caged bird sings. If not a cage, I’m trapped in the House of Tantalus, for sure. When your home feels more like a trap than a home, it’s time to leave it, for sure. The cage, or trap, in San Francisco, is its cost of living. It’s something that has to be maintained, and you’ve got to do it somehow. In my case, I will be draining the windfall appreciation of my flat, money that could be used to buy a house in a lesser city. Less expensive, less demand for housing, less politicking, and less interesting, less exciting, less progressive. It’s a tradeoff. IN THE MYTH OF TANTALUShe is punished for high crimes and misdemeanors (like chopping up his own son to offer to the Gods at a feast) by spending eternity standing beneath a tempting (tantalizing) fruit tree whose fruit is always out of his reach, whilst standing in a body of water that recedes from him when he tries to drink of it. As the former bitch of unrequited love, I know something about desiring something only to have it taken away, one of my favorite patterns of reenacting my childhood. But I refuse to be forever punished by it. There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit within my reach. Right, sista? My flat, as my friend in “One Is Never Alone” suggested, is both within reach and out of reach of being emptied. Its contents do indeed seem to reconstitute themselves. The New York Times ran an article, “Chasing Utopia, Family Imagines No Possessions,” the story of a married couple and their two children donating most everything they own to charity and heading for Vermont to be organic homesteaders in a movement called “voluntary simplicity.” It is sorely tempting to call Good Will and tell them, “Empty the place,” to take my boxes and boxes of uncatalogued papers and toss them on the Burning Man pyre. “IT’S AMAZINGthe amount of stuff a family can acquire,” said Aimee Harris. Honestly, you’d think a family of four had lived in my flat. There are 12 chairs alone plus two couches and a piano bench. Has that much sitting really gone on in my life? Only at h’s parties, probably. But after all, I did declare my calling to be “filling empty space” and believe me, whenever I detected one in my surroundings, I filled it. It is an exciting challenge to create a new, emptier space (well, we’ll see). With a load of crap in storage, of course. I’M SET TO MOVEinto the Mission Dolores apartment my building-owning friend offered me, in early June. Trying to fit my six-room flat into a one-bedroom apartment is like trying to fit my mind into a 500-word column. Though I welcome a change, I’ve lived in the Lower Haight since 2003. My whole San Francisco experience has been here. But I did forecast, in “Rrrrripped from Today’s Headlines,” that the Mission would be my next incarnation. It still be walking distance from Café International, where I lounge and take a lunch break from my flat’s claustrophobic chaos. And I still have a view of Sutro Tower from the living room window, my personal San Francisco landmark. I’ve taken pictures of it from everywhere. Over 500 words now. Stop here? Not bloody likely. I took a look at the top half-dozen Chronicle columnists’ latest pieces, and here are their word counts: Jon Carroll – 837 Average = 900 words The same friend so wise about Tantalus commented, “About SF, Herb Caen managed to be frothy, melancholy, and concise all at the same time.” It’s no insult to me to say I’m no Herb Caen, and no insult to him that he was no Alexandra Jones. I’m just not interested in providing three-dot goings-on about town. I do believe the clever Elaine Santore has that covered in Fog City Journal. Robert Solis, on the occasion of his 500th post, just promoted himself from “blogger” to “Narrative Journalist.” Good one. As I like to keep reminding people, The Ax Files is not a blog; it is a column, and I am a columnist. Or else, I am a purveyor of, as Britney Gilbert of CBS5 Eye on Blogs called my writing, “captivating randomata.” But let’s take a look at Herb Caen’s archives: of the five columns I sampled, the average word count was 980. But an early 1940 piece called “What is S.F.,” came in at 780 words, including the title. He starts out: ”IT’S THE MAGIC TOWERSof a steel fairyland — the beacon atop the proud Mark, the red, thermometer-like cap of the Drake, the sturdy, four-square crest of Mother Russ, the sudden, blunt end of Coit Tower — that make up the minarets of a metropolis . . “ And closes with: My own self, as a writer, I steer clear of the word “indescribable” (hello?). Caen died in 1997, not long after I arrived in the Bay Area. I still have the Baghdad by the Bay memorial t-shirt. Joan Baez and others honored him with a candlelit march down the Embarcadero (Herb Caen Way), ending in Aquatic Park. I was browsing in a second-hand shop when the sad news came over the radio. “No!” I exclaimed, the startled proprietor looking up at me. I’d especially looked forward to reading Herb Caen in the San Francisco he chronicled. Instead I end up chronicling it myself. Caen was much more the social butterfly than I, but OK, if he can do it, I can do it. 780 WORDS ABOUT SAN FRANCISCOIt’s the city, of all the world’s cities, I choose to live in… It’s the gilded glory of the Castro Theater, America’s grand palace of repertory film… It’s Sutro Tower, that eerie ship’s masthead lost in the fog… It’s the evolving patina of the DeYoung Museum…the dark, quiet galleries of haunting primitive art within it… It’s waiting…and waiting…and waiting…for the 30 Stockton, the 22 Fillmore, the 49 Van Ness, the 6 Parnassus, the whichever line, with a fresh moist wind finding its way down your collar and up your sleeves…it’s the bus, when it comes, passing you by because it’s too crowded…it’s the next packed-to-the-gills bus someone gets off of that you have to shimmy your way through the back door to get onto… It’s tourists pouring over maps on the F trolley…it’s helping them because you’re a San Francisco good will ambassador… It’s movies at MOMA, lectures at the Library, Kerouac in the air… It’s the fun, curving ramp at the City’s only Frank Lloyd Wright building, at 140 Maiden Lane, now the Xanadu Gallery–and if you look straight up at the façade you’ll note that the masonry was not very well laid… It’s the creepy masculine guy in bandanna and eye makeup who hangs out on Market Street bus islands trying to sell people transfers… IT’S THE FRUSTRATION,perhaps futility, perhaps despair, of searching for affordable housing on Craig’s List…it’s the heartbreak of someone beating you to that just-right place…it’s questioning why you’re going to all this bother if you can’t make it fly…it’s seriously considering getting the hell out of dodge… It’s the smell of salt water as, with your pants rolled up, you brave the wind and blowing sand of Ocean Beach, leaving sunken footprints behind as your feet freeze in the surf… It’s a plethora of good thrift and consignment shops, whence I have outfitted myself head to foot in recycled clothing… It’s the multitude of languages, from tourists or residents, you might hear in one day… It’s the Noir Film Festival of fedoras and femme fatales, 10 nights and 20 movies packed with black-and-white double-crossing, scheming, suspense, fugitives, wise guys and smart alecks, hosted by local treasure Czar of Noir know-it-all Eddie Muller… It’s the holy silence inside the thatched yurt in the cemetery of the Mission Dolores, and the heavenly choruses of Bach resounding against its Basiilca walls… It’s our GQ slick-haired model of a mayor, of whom it can always be said, no matter what he does, he looks good doing it… IT’S GAY MARRIAGE,2004 practice-style and 2008 Supreme Court-sanctioned style… It’s the Board of Supervisors, showcasing egos, tempers, speechifying, special interests and a handful of mainly good folks getting some good things done… It’s the dark, quiet, tree-whispering blocks of Page Street as I walk home from the Red Vic… It’s dog-watching from the Duboce Park Café, with a friend from out of town, while spooning up their killer yogurt, granola and fruit plate… It’s the Younger and Elder Muhammads at O’Looney’s on Haight, and their endless supply of René Junot red table wine… It’s our finely developed calf muscles… It’s blueberry pancakes and butter on Sunday mornings at Squat ‘n’ Gobble on Fillmore… It’s loud, repeated bangs somewhere outside, and wondering if it’s gunfire… IT’S GUNFIRE…It’s the smell of Indian food, Middle Eastern food, Mexican food, burgers and fries, pizza and barbeque emanating from all over lower Haight… it’s late night Thai take-out from Chili Cha Cha’s… It’s the smell of marijuana smoke drifting out from the medical dispensaries… It’s the smell of garlic and sidewalk Italian on Columbus…it’s Ferlinghetti’s bookstore of the Beats…it’s the poets and artists and writers who are still hanging on here… It’s environmental racism…it’s ill-advised development…it’s privatization…it’s parking over housing…it’s budget cuts in essential services…it’s one restaurant, shop, saloon, and tradition after another being lost to the “new” San Francisco… It’s Bay to Breakers, the Black and White Ball, the Ethnic Dance Festival, Open Studios, Halloween (in the Castro?), Christmas in Union Square, spring in Golden Gate Park, Burning Man burners burning all year… It’s the San Francisco Symphony, the Opera, the Ballet, the Conservatory of Music, the excellence we expect as a matter of course… It’s the wonderful Red Poppy Art House gallery, studio, performance space, workshop, party central, screening room and hang-out, starring the incomparable Todd Brown, Meklit Hadera, and a cast of hundreds… It’s Café International, of course—Zahra, Antonio, Trish and all the staff behind the counter… IT’S MAGICAL,it’s hip, it’s cool, it’s the West Coast city…it’s the easiest place to meet the most interesting people…and most of all… It’s home. 780 on the nozzle. Count ‘em if you must. AND NOW, IT’S BEDTIME IN THE CITYUncharacteristically, I am not going to read this column over; I’ll let it stand, while I lie down.
------------------------------------------------------------ In a vintage clothes shop
Little birdie, pry open those golden bars, and head for the stars copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
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