Watching City Hall #310, (9-2-04)If it’s hard to do, then it’s not worth trying.”
(Homer Simpson)
Stefan Cohen, age 15, wrote that down when one of his new teachers asked students to impart their favorite quote. (On the first day of school) Stefan is the third born of my friends, the Cohens of Penn Grove fame. I was up helping my buddy Daniel paint their garage. It was a trip. Hanging from a fully extended 20’ extension ladder (“h. is crazy” noted elder son, Eric) … stretching to reach the tiniest cranny to insure ‘perfect’ lines atwixt the sides of trim boards and the main structure. It’s a pain in the ass, but it gives the trim a 3-D look and is, like, totally cool.
There’s something to be said for hard physical work. As I soak my hands in the aloe solution designed to aid the skin’s recovery from a couple of solid weeks soaking in paint and caulk and Fix-All, I reflect back upon the satisfaction of finishing the final and highest eaves. I’m reminded of when Steinback swam out to save his moored boat in the middle of a vicious storm when he was about my age. … Sometimes you have to ignore the aches and pains and go out and push your body. (I’m learning to paint left-handed – another whole rotor cuff to wear out – for when the arthritic right shoulder shuts down for good) … You end up feeling better physically than you have in a long time. … And, you head for the mirror and the scales to see just how badly you’ve deteriorated.
167 pounds. That’s 27 lbs over my boot camp graduation weight 42 years ago this month. Next I put on my glasses (which I rarely do – weakening eyesight is God’s way to spare us the shock of seeing how we have come to look – I rarely put on glasses when looking at my face) as I said before. … That’s when I noticed that I’ve grown a beard. … Hmmm, not bad, actually. Kind of red on the top and white under the chin. (I perused it) Eileen Left came up behind me drinking a glass of Two Buck Chuck, Merlot.
Eileen: “You look like one of those Japanese snow monkeys.”
(turning – I hadn’t seen her for almost a month, and was surprised) “Where have you been?”
Eileen: (Takes up Kalish’s carved little wooden pot pipe stuffed with the ‘White Widow’ I got from the med pot outlet the previous evening – fires it up, draws a huge drag , holds it, then exhales and coughs.) “What’s with the Hubble telescope on the back porch?”
“To the most famous nobody in San Francisco”
(Charles Kalish’s house-sitting note)
Back to Eileen later. Suffice to say, she’s been to New York, Boston, Japan and Cambodia since we last met. … I’ve just arrived for a month of house/cat sitting at the luxurious digs of Charles and Susan Kalish. In a coincidence, they’re on a trip to Japan and Cambodia. Their place may well be the best designed residence I’ve ever occupied. So Bernal Heights. (Shit, I ran into Tom Ammiano as I came out of Safeway on Mission this morning – I commented “Good morning, Mr. President.” – he started to respond then recognized me & just nodded and looked down and away.)
I love surprises in design. Good ones. … The Kalish house has plenty.
Cool Guy the cat. He’s a Humane Society retread and there is no more loved or better cared for animal in the world. Kind of like me.
Overall design. The house appears as a tiny, one-story Victorian cottage snuggled between larger similarly designed single-family residences on a narrow street near the top of the Western slope of Bernal Heights. Then, you walk in the front door, expecting to be entering a tiny cottage and find yourself looking at an eagle’s eye perch view of the entire Mission, downtown to the right and Twin Peaks to the left. … A triple-tiered structure and gardens steps 30 feet down the steep slope.
Privacy in a terrarium. Not easy. Not at all. The total parcel is probably no more than 80’ long by 25’ wide and Susan and Charles have themselves a spacious 4 bedroom hill dwelling, both completely surrounded by fully developed parcels and yet, through brilliant arrangement, it feels isolated. There’s virtually no traffic or noise in a spot only 3 blocks from the heart of the thriving Mission. Charles does landscape gardening and it shows in his own gardens, front and back. A purple flowered Wisteria vine fills one front bedroom leg of a triple bay window both blocking vision from the street and presenting an ever-fresh live floral arrangement. I gaze at Cool Guy as he lounges alongside a tiny patch of bamboo in the back garden that contains a plethora of bush, small tree and ground-hugging foliage. Turn off the stereo (tough to do – Beethoven on Klipsch speakers) … turn down the stereo and the only sound is the wind chimes. Very tranquil.
Feature your best feature. When you take a shower in the upstairs bath, you can gaze out a window set at shoulder height that has the same view of the valley. There’s a small cut-out in the front bedroom opposite the display of Wisteria that features a built-in horseshoe alcove with a writing counter that peers through a small (2’x3’) opening in the wall, through the living room and out past the large potted (me too) Fica tree (sp?) … looks out to, you guessed it, the view of the valley and Sutro Tower beyond. . With the tree in every view, you get the feeling that you’re peering out from a forest over the valley beneath. Both downstairs bedrooms share the view, the one containing the ‘Hubble’ telescope Eileen mentioned.
Lots of great art and unique furnishings spotlighted with delicate dimmer rheostats. Nothing like dimly highlighting an antique Japanese Tea Garden robe in the living room and strolling around the Fica to gaze at the sparkling lights in the valley below with a glass of your favorite Merlot while God’s winds play a tune on the chimes in the garden below. From the faces of the peoples of the Earth come the figures in the Kalish photos (he did them himself and they date back at least a couple of decades – he’s an old fart) , leaping out in bold colors from the white matt board and thin onyx black frames. Here and there hang hats with a tale to tell. A ‘blind stitched’ Oriental cap hangs on a window frame begging to tell it’s story. On the staircase to the next level down the steep sloping hill hang two tall, floppy top hats in bright checks that must have come from Alice in Wonderland. …
What a place. You can alter the entire environment by simply turning a switch here and there. Truly a masterful use of about 1/20th of an acre. … Did you know that an acre of land in Penn Grove, 50 miles from San Francisco is selling for $350k now? What’s an acre of San Francisco worth?
Charles & Susan aren’t alone in their careful husbandry of their property. There’s a definite Japanese vibe in gazing down the hill upon the numerous perfectly arranged and manicured mini-estates that step in a quilt pattern down to ‘where the wild things roam’. As the City’s density increases, places like this one and the Ruggels/Hillis antique condo where I last camped will become the norm. Smart people with taste isolating themselves by design from the huge ‘smart growth’ residential towers that reach 500’ and more into the sky a few blocks away.
So what?
I write mostly about local politics but I started writing about local politics when it became apparent I might end up homeless due to the escalation of real estate prices. It’s an odd (to me) adjunct that while I’ve indeed lost my own housing, my dwelling spaces (tenuous as they may be) have grown all the more luxurious. It tells me that God has both a sense of humor and irony.
City Hall?
Anthony Faber writes to tell me that in the couple of weeks I’ve been out of town, my standing in an online poll of District 5 has me moving from 20th place of 22 candidates all the way to 7th place. All this despite the fact that I’ve done no campaigning and don’t plan to. It confirms that the people of the District hate politicians and want the work outsourced. I dare say that were I to move to India, I’d probably be elected. It gave me the idea for my newest campaign slogan.
h. brown?
“If elected, I promise to leave town and never return.”
Naw, tempting as it may be to raise money and spend it on idiotic signs and shit, I think l’ll just remain a homeless bum. … It has more dignity.
So, I’ll just have to amuse myself by answering some of my e-mail. … Here’s one from an Alison Wallace of SF Politics (awallace@reputation.com) who asks for a photo and an address for my web site and a statement of my professional and political experience.
Now, I normally don’t answer candidate questionnaires. Rob Anderson says that some of them are like “body cavity checks”. I couldn’t agree more. But, just for the hell of it, I’ll respond to Alison here.
Dear Alison,
For my photo, go to Joefire.com where Eric Allen once published a kind of ‘Gavin/Kimberly pose on the floor’ of me and Tom Ammiano
at a beach party in happier days.
My campaign web site? Well, there’s sfbulldog.com but that’s mostly just a vehicle for shamelessly promoting myself and slandering my enemies. … But, wait, that’s what a political site does too, right? Damn! I had a site and never knew it. Even so, I have more than enough readers and am not accepting any more.
Professional experience? Well, I’ve had lots of jobs. Strange though, whether it was owning a nightclub, teaching or managing big buildings, what I always ended up actually doing was unstopping toilets, painting and bitching. Hmmm. Cleaning up shit, putting lipstick on pigs and constantly whining? I should run for congress.
Political experience? I don’t have enough electrons here to relate to you how many times I’ve been wrong on so many, many very important issues. Nevertheless, experience has shown that I’ll get 1% of the vote. Only deeply religious people are dumber than voters.
thank you,
h. brown
As a candidate, you get lots of mail from people who act like they’re married to you. They ask for money for all kinds of things and pry into your most private matters. They withhold their favors until you complete an entire regimen of their kinky little tasks. … It’s just not worth it.
Enuff for today.
White Widow rules:
