Watching City Hall #336, (12-27-04)

“I’ll tell you something, but don’t publish it.”
(Matt Gonzalez)

I can never remember which things I’m supposed to publish and not publish when I get to talking with my friends. Normally, I just end up not quoting any of the conversation. … But, I do have a back pocket and coat pockets and back pack pouches jammed with quotes from friends which I’ve copied and asked if I could repeat. Let me start closing down 2004 by laying a few of them out for you.

“The problem with these guys under 40
is that they’re post-feminist and think
feminism is a dead issue.”

(Krissy Keefer)

Krissy is a partner in Dance Brigade at 24th and Mission above the old Café La Bohemme. She’s also a stone fox which is very important to someone as shallow as myself. Every year or so I see her at one of Gonzalez’s parties and make a pitch that goes nowhere. She’s always been a big Ammiano supporter like ‘Granny Gears’ whom I stopped in the street a couple of weeks ago and asked why I hadn’t seen her and she said she was pissed and wrote to tell me she wasn’t talking to me but that I never answered and so she says that she sent the message twice and I say that I never got it and so since she’s not talking to me about something I wrote about Tom (cudda been anything pardner) … since she’s not talking to me, we let it go at that.

“Don’t you play for the Warriors?”
(heard from window of TL SRO)

It was around 2 or 3am and I was sound asleep in my bed at the Eddy Hotel on Eddy (imagine that) across the street from the Phoenix Hotel where there was some kind of rave with the thumpity-thump-thump music going on and for some reason the words woke me up. The one guy, he answers that ‘yes’ he is a Warrior and there’s a silence and then the other guy (clearly awestruck) says “How you doin’?” or something like that and the Warrior says ‘OK’ and I decide not to get up and go over to the window cause I wouldn’t recognize him anyway or care if I did but it makes me think about how the very bottom and top levels of society in San Francisco tend to bend and fold over and meet each other at various points. I mean, here I am fighting bed bugs and sharing a hall co-ed bath with multiple stalls and a single shower with what looks like the cast from ‘Night of the living dead’ and easing past junkies and black tar dope dealers to get into the place and across the street is the hip place where millionaires frolic.

“You’re gonna lose that press pass!”
(JoeFire’s last words to me)

He was talking to Aaron Peskin in the hall in front of the Board chambers when I approached and made some kind of smart-ass remark or other. Eric-Allen was referring to my having been busted for arguing with a thug cop on election nite. He looked thinner than ever and I noted it but didn’t think much more of it.

So anyway, I said that all I got out of the pass was free booze now and then and didn’t give a shit but I was lying. Peskin didn’t say anything. … I thought back on the encounter at JoeFire’s funeral and remembered how hard he fought to get the pass. Apparently, the cops made him jump hoops to get the piece of orange plastic. Rachel Gordon said that he asked her to say nice things about him if the cops asked and others said the same. The pass was very important to him and I hoped they buried it with him but it wasn’t visible when I paid my respects.

Yeah, I wished they’d have put the pass and his Yankees hat with him and later, someone did put the cap on his chest. … … Last I heard the Navy was refusing to bury him cause they didn’t think he’d been in the service long enough though he was honorably discharged and I got pissed. Another reporter said it was going to take the influence of a U.S. Senator or something to put the poor man in the ground. Bastards! No good bastards!!
Discrimination into the afterlife.

…

I talked to my buddy Jens about it and he thought for a moment and tossed out a couple of gems.

“Don’t forget life. It’s out there too.”

“Sometimes it’s about opposites. …
What if a homeless guy reached out
on the street and offered YOU money?”

“Funerals can be fun and there’s one
in everyone’s future.”

“The army should use it as a poster.
‘Who knows more about death?
Let us plan YOUR funeral’.”

“Gay people come here so they won’t
have to hide. Remember that character
from the ‘Fugitive’ in the 60’s who was
always hiding his whole life? Ain’t it
neat to have nothing to hide from?”

He crushed up some fine pot and rolled a joint, walked over to the window and looked out over the Tenderloin.

“What we have in this neighborhood is
people who have just got out of prison
or people who are getting ready to go
into prison. It depends upon which line
you want to get into.”

“Music keeps the dead alive.”

He noted I was laboring to understand and closed with an old favorite.

“You can pick your friends.
But, you can’t pick your friend’s nose.”

I’ll close this section with the closing remarks from Glide’s Pastor Douglass Fitch.

"The tragedy is not that we die young.
The tragedy is when we wait too long …
to start living.”

Well, that’s real sad and stuff and it’s almost 4pm and the early news is coming up. It’s raining a cold outside and there’s a little beagle hound who needs walking whether he wants to or not. It is amazing how quiet it is when you’re stupid. … Let me elaborate on that last one.

I do lots of house sitting. (Thank God!) … People always leave detailed lists or take me around to show me each of the tasks that need to get done or both. I get just about everything right except for remembering how to watch dvd’s or videos or even get the stereo to work. It’s because they’re all hooked together like some kind of friggin’ NASA Mars project. This morning I decided to just listen to music and I couldn’t get the stereo on.

I sucked it up and started studying the 3 remotes (the dog ate a 4th and my friend had showed me how to bypass it) … 3 remotes and 4 pieces of equipment. I studied it and realized the problem.

When I was a child and for many years thereafter, you only had two knobs to deal with on every piece of equipment. There was a knob on the left that controlled on and off and volume. On the right was a knob that chose the station.

That was it. No more. … Now?

There are a total of 176 buttons and dials in this entertainment center. And, they’re all tied together. Miss one button or turn one dial one notch too far and you hear and see nothing.

I can’t complain though. The soft falling rain fell all day in silence, coursing its way through the trees in the front and back yard and across the roof to become drips, then small streams and later peaceful torrents hurrying down drains and sidewalks and gutters. I took the opportunity to write instead of watch. … But, now I have a plan.

I’ll turn off everything but the tv and just turn it on and off and up and down by hand. The pioneer way.

Somewhere JoeFire is laughing.

Happy New Year: