I was born in 1970, the year that because of math killed the 60s.
For the entire nine months of my mother's pregnancy, she told everyone I was going to be a girl.
She and my father already had my brother the previous year,
so in preparation for the upcoming me, she channeled all her psychic reproductive energy into having a girl.
I'm not sure to what extent, if any, her mother nature manipulation powers wielded into effect,
but I do seem to be fine-tuned in with my feminine side.
During her final weeks of pregnancy, she took me along inside her to my first ever live concert,
which was Ike and Tina Turner during the height of their soul-funk heyday.
Just a few weeks later, I broke my collarbone being born,
which I'd like to think was from trying to do a Tina Turner-style strut shimmy
into the world.
I was seven years old the second time my parents took me to visit San Francisco.
We spent the day doing all the usual touristy things.
Pier 39, Alcatraz Island, Chinatown, and the cable car to Union Square.
It was as we rolled up and down the steep slopes of Knob Hill
that I realized this place was as magical as any place could be.
It was dreamlike and timeless and so full of new sensations,
both wonderful and magical.
A almost exactly like me that ourElite feels like everything else.
I remember being so strange,
so hurrying on with getting a allowance- Enough to make me like you are,

Now this is certainly the first time I'd ever been on the move for the hook,

you should think of many as
descent down Powell Street. His tan suit and large bushy silver beard were covered in multiple shades
of different grime coatings. He was caked over in multi-layers of browns and grays like city
alleyway camouflage. So pungent was the smell that it seemed to have actual physical properties in
its thick intake. It was hard to breathe in, yet its sheer authority over the senses made it
curiously fascinating. I'd never physically felt an odor before. They didn't have those where I was
growing up in nearby San Jose, but here it seemed anything could happen. If a cow were to be suddenly
seen floating in circles around the top of Coy Tower, I would have accepted it as is. In reality,
what that smell was, I would find out years later, was actually not this man's own private brimstone,
but the antiquated wooden breaking pads of the
Coy Tower.
I saw a mobile car smoldering as they gripped the moving underground cables.
This was only the first of many tricks San Francisco had waiting to play on me.
And so the very week I turned the legal age of 18, I raced excitedly through the black darkness
like a newborn baby turtle towards the blazing internal flame of freedom lit by the beats and
the hippies. Along with my friend Brian, another escapee from juvenile age jail,
we made the joint official adult transformation into a circa 1930 San Francisco apartment at 2220
Taylor Street in North Beach. Still, despite my built-in obsession with the city, and all my
years daydreaming of a life here, the one detail that was never really factored into the fantasy
was the reality of needing steady employment. So after failing to pay my share of the rent for the
first two months, my new little family was able to afford a house and a place to live. I was able to


old italian landlord paid me a visit and in a mere matter of moments advanced my thinking from the
i don't want to do anything stage to the i'm willing to do anything stage brian who unlike
me was fresh with new inheritance money and didn't need to find work was in the middle of a non-stop
coming out of the closet party in the middle of the most closetless city in the world
my having no bread made it hard to go out and meet people while he seemed to have more
and more new friends every day both gay and straight despite not needing to find a job
brian found himself looking for employment anyway for me realizing he was much better
at getting motivated for me to find employment than i was he quickly found me a job connection
through a self-proclaimed fag-hag friend's boyfriend eric he worked as a dj announcer
and part-time security at the mitchell brothers old farewell theater one of the most famous strip
clubs in san francisco after meeting and hanging out with eric the following afternoon it was
obvious to him that my performing the same required job task would likely be an ill fit
still we were in a jam and he wanted to help just come by the club tomorrow meet the boss he sighed
the boss it turned out was one of the mitchell brothers himself jim
who thanks to eric was hiring me sight unseen we were in the casino-like lobby of the strip club
while jim mitchell in a white shirt and black bow tie gave me the rundown of the joint in what was
not only my first job interview of any kind but also my first time inside of a strip club i was a
freshly minted 18 year old and didn't even know about knowing let alone how this was all gonna work
my folded arms overposed
out chest routine seemed to be sort of successfully hiding my overwhelming desire to just run away as
he chomped on a cigar and rattled off my duties one by one each with its own finger point to my
chest like a physical exclamation point don't let anyone jerk off in the seats finger recoils back
into fist then he reshoots there's no liquor allowed in the building so make sure nobody
is sneaking booze into the bathroom he reloads his finger and then fires again
you wear a white shirt and black tie every day no excuses i had neither of those
he then pulls free the slobbery cigar from his mouth which now becomes the new pointer
now go in there pointing the cigar at the showroom double doors and watch the girls dance for a while
i go into the dark theater and take a seat in the back row it smells like five kinds
of dirty and one kind of air freshener that like to be a loner there were only four or five strip
sprinkled throughout the vintage theater seating. One of them began slow clapping as the naked lady
dancer on stage gathered her tiny garments from the floor while bowing and prancing backwards
off and out of view. Then suddenly from above, like the voice of God running a bingo game,
I heard Eric. And now, fasten your jaws and put your hands together for the sultry Sabrina.
Sabrina! My stomach nodded. Oh God, how was I going to do that with any confidence,
let alone at all? I sat there and watched Sabrina move into the spotlight and start
doing all of her sultry things while the reality of this situation began to push me down lower
and lower into the dark depths of the creaking leather movie chair that kept on creaking
until it ran out of creaks and this whole idea croaked. Now almost on the floor,
I crawled back out of the sunken chair and crouched creeped into the aisle and up to
the swinging double doors. I peeked through one of the two small portal windows. I saw
Jim Mitchell was now on the other side of the lobby with his back towards me, deep in
cigar pointing. With the tips of my fingers doing barely more than blowing the door a
kiss, I quickly skip-toed across the casino carpet and flung open one of the front gold
doors and broke into a jog that didn't end until I rounded the corner of the next block.
A few months later, I was standing on a corner waiting for a crosswalk light when I happened
to glance into a San Francisco Chronicle newspaper vending machine.
Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater Murder! exclaimed the headline. Artie Mitchell was
shot and killed by brother and business partner Jim Mitchell during a drug-fueled...
My next employment assignment was set up for me just a few days after the botched
Mitchell Brothers job at the Bennett & Sweaters shop in the
very middle of the city. I had been there for a long time. I had been there for a long time.
My first day began with learning how to fold a pile of sweaters in such a way as to make
a giant version of the individual sweater pattern. Then they had me pick out $250 worth
of store merchandise to be worn during my minimum wage-paying shifts, the cost to be
deducted from my first paychecks, followed by a five-minute smoke break from which I
never returned. The next day, I took over my own control.
The next day, I took over my own control, and, armed with an empty resume, walked into
Blondie's Pizza at the Powell Street Cable Car Turnaround and was hired on the spot due
to the manager wondering by my look if I also liked the Stone Roses. By happy coincidence
in 1989, my two favorite things were the Stone Roses and pizza.
Blondie's Pizza was a small slice counter literally in the center of everything. Just
behind was the Tenderloin, from where the low-income old schoolers would go to get a
drink, and the
Skid Row down-and-outers would stumble to cash their change cups into pizza.
A few blocks in the other direction was the Financial District and its massive hive of
business-suited worker bees. Being right where the Union Square-Powell Street Cable Car Line
began, it was ground zero for the masses of tourists converging from every corner of the
world.
On a typical day behind the counter back in the large open kitchen area, you'd see maybe
a stoner metal dude
covered from hair to toe in white flour rolling away at large slabs of dough, two punk rock
lesbian girlfriends having a jealous argument while flinging cured meats over pies and playing
the pixie surfer Rosa bouncing puffs of flour from the white-covered hanging speakers.
Flour was everywhere, and the dough station was like an alpine snow cap that dwindled
away along the length of the kitchen like the side of a mountain. Last in this Pizza
Paper was a huge pizza factory assembly line, and closest to the front counter stood me,
sweating in front of giant dual ovens while spinning pizza pies around with a gigantic
stop sign-sized spatula on a shovel handle.
The small standing room-only front area was guarded by Tyrone, a huge muscular statue-esque
black twenty-one-year-old who also worked weekend nights as a bouncer at a hip-hop club.
He was tough as hell on the outside, but a real kidder in general. As the night grew,
gentle if he liked to. Sometimes in passing, he'd move directly into my path, stare me down hard and
wait for my eyebrows to raise like a drawbridge, then laugh heartily while giving me a friendly
elbow bump that would almost knock me over. One day he mentioned his latest nightclub job
runnin' with some thugs in the pursuit of legit points in the new gangsta rap world.
This was the dawn of one of the most artistically important periods in rap history,
but with it came a lifestyle that had droves of 20-somethings heading out to the clubs on a
Saturday night wanting to prove who had the least bucks to give. He knew his security staff he was
a target for people wanting to show how hard they were. Something went down last night and
he confessed it had all become too dangerous a situation. Resting his chin atop the broom
handle he was holding, he slowly shook his head, eyes full of eternal replay.
Then this somber trail-off was suddenly self-destructed with a great burst of laughter,
at which point he danced away high-stepping while his upper body acted like he was operating a small
rowboat. Not even the heaviest * was gonna bring him down. The weekend came and went and
when he didn't show up to work Monday or the next day, there was a small worried group of us down
in the multi-purpose basement discussing what to do when suddenly out of nowhere it hit.
The entire room jerked hard and then started shaking rapidly. The walls and ceiling swayed
together like an empty refrigerator box blowing in a wind gust. Tables, chairs, everything in the
room was vibrating hard and fast. All the metal kitchenware utensils shivered and jingled together
in holders atop steel food prep surfaces or came falling to the floor where they continued to
rattle and flop around like silver Jesus fish. We were all frozen in shock as everything continued
to rattle and rumble, as we were all frozen in shock as everything continued to rattle and rumble,
shake, jerk, and push and pull, crumble and give as the seconds went from zero to eternity.
There is no all-encompassing fear like helplessly waiting for an entire city building to cave in
on top of you. As our manager ordered us all to crowd in together under a doorway,
all I could think was, I don't want to die down here. But there was a fate worse than that on
the menu. Surviving down here trapped in the rubble would leave you to the thousands of
cockroaches and hundreds of rats we saw giant representatives of each and every day. Eventually
the city would close this place down permanently because they were beyond controlling. Then the
ceiling lights exploded and as everything went pitch black and as people started screaming, suddenly
nothing. We shared a group single beat pause before we all realized the next move was to get
out of there as fast as we could. We ran up the dark stairs,
through the kitchen, past the cash registers, past the small eating area, and right out into the
mass confusion of downtown San Francisco 30 seconds after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake.
There are no fallen buildings, but glasses everywhere. Already a man runs past screaming,
the Bay Bridge has collapsed, the Bay Bridge has collapsed. There was no water and no power,
and everyone is going to be walking home today.
The false information continued to blow in the wind as I marched home along with the rest of the
dazed crowds moving like slow motion bloodstreams through the grid systems at the heart of the city.
When I finally got to my North Beach apartment, there was a new crack running the entire length
of my bedroom wall. Another nut was running down the street outside. That was just the pre-shock.
They say the real one is coming. The real one is coming.
*.
This. I marched over to nearby Washington Square Park and sat cross-legged in the direct
dead center of the grass, where I was finally and for the first time out of reach of any
potentially toppling structures. Soon night fell, and the only lights in the entire city
came from the many circling overhead helicopter spotlights. With the citywide power outage,
you could actually see a full sky of stars shining brightly,
further adding to the darkness.
I hunkered down on my newly claimed chunk of park property until finally dozing off late into the
night, still sitting up but with my head down in my lap. Nevertheless, I was restfully comfortable
in the knowledge I was safely in one of the few places I knew this whole city couldn't just fall
on top of me. Working at Blondie's, I met the girl I'd become engaged to. Her name was Christine,
and of Shirley MacLaine's, she was the only one I knew. She was the only one I knew.
Her wardrobe only consisted of a few crushed velvet dresses that she'd hand-made herself.
They were so close-fitting that, because she'd hand-sewn them, she'd always be needing to
make little uniform tracks of safety pins along the various sections of the street.
Unconscious added gothness was symbolic of her entire makeup, her barely being held together and
constantly needing to mend new areas with quick fixes. Her neck and hands bloomed from frilled
white lace cuffs and collars with skirt bottoms cut to many specks over different colored hosiery
with jagged runs patterned like bullet holes and boutique shop glass that ran down into simple
strap-patterned leather shoes. This would have been her new look. I'd have even tried it on.
words like hard and rough don't make the cut in describing how christine's life started out
she was only an infant standing in her crib when she watched her father stab her mother to death
with a kitchen knife from there she was passed from foster home to foster home around the bay
area some of the parents were okay some were not when she finally reached the legal adult age and
the cops were no longer required to drag her back to guardians who could have gone either way
she moved to san francisco and wound up in an abandoned building in the tenderloin with the
group of methamphetamine shooting squatters when the two of us met she just recently cleaned up
from all the drugs and was looking for something normal she had an air about her like she needed
rescuing and being young and romantic gallantly rescuing a young gorgeous damsel was at the top
of my new experiences to-do list her seeking a place to live progressed things along fast and
after a handful of dates we moved into a tiny studio apartment together on the corner of hayden
webster for a period of many months it was more than sufficiently normal and we were very much
in love the problem started when normal became very normal and she eventually began to miss the
drug high rather than letting her go out and do what else she wanted to do she decided to go out
somewhere as in finding her old crowd i decided it would be better if i scored some for her so she
could do it at home this also meant of course that we both did it together it was my first time and
while i liked the euphoric high i got after we snorted the stuff luckily she could forego the
needle it required long hours our little stretch of the lower hate in those days was kind of like
a war zone at night and i'd already been mugged three times since moving in
from there a weekly string of inside all nighter nights followed and around that time she got
pregnant we became engaged but then just before the safe cutoff time for an abortion we chickened
out and decided not to have it while for me it was mostly a matter of wanting to wait until we
were more financially secure our co-commitment cop-out annoyingly began we rode her original
vision of a normal life and it didn't take long for old insecurities to
resurface and for new misunderstandings to take root and wind their way around us like dark vines
if one were to agree that romantic love is a combination of equal portions reality and fantasy
i would have to say our mutual mixture was too heavy on the fantasy looking back we may have not
been the greatest fit but we actually were and that we were two young people both searching for
something completely different from the direction we were currently traveling
a roulette detour that just might by the spin of the wheel land us on what we didn't even know we
were looking for it worked for a while and to say i could see all this then would be a lie i would
have clung hard given the chance knowing this she didn't give me one and one night after work i came
home to a note on the bed informing me she'd left for new orleans a few heartbroken weeks later i
saw a band flyer
taped around a telephone pole saying take acid now and come see the brian jonestown massacre
beneath these instructions was a logo featuring the rolling stones brian jones's head
the show date was next week and just a block and a half away at the peacock lounge
even if i was going to follow the flyers user instructions i would wait until the show got a
little closer the night of the show i walked alone from my apartment on the corner of hayden webster
street past the reggae dance club past the trio of neon rainbow graffitied roller metal shop shutters
past the chinese butcher shop through the fillmore street intersection past the international cafe
the futon shop where i'd bought the silk sheets that were then used the next day as a santa claus
sack for my belongings when my apartment was robbed past the laundromat past the horseshoe
cafe and right to the door of the peacock lounge and gold room
you
line outside and a young guy who would turn out to be one of the band's guitar players was
excitedly holding court ricky will not long from now be my first friend and introduction into the
new local shoegaze 60s garage indie alternative scene but for now is someone i just see at most
all the shows i go to i sneak glances at him animatedly exciting his friends with positive
energy and his greek fisherman's cap over cherry red curls and it's here and now that i see people
hesitating to his glow
the peacock lounge had originally been a simple
downstairs lounge area for the neighborhood black freemason meetings that were held on the floor above
in the late 1960s they remodeled it into a private rental bar and walking inside today was like a time
portal straight into a classic blaxploitation film low lit in red purple and blues gold vein mirror
tiles backed ooze bottles resting on glass over circular mahogany******************************************************************************************
Christmas lights streamed from overhead, leather booths lined a wall, while across the main floor
the growing crowd of people stood or sat at round bar tables leading to the small stage.
Then the band came on. I'd never seen Americans, let alone young Americans my own age, playing what
was at the time a specifically UK kind of music. I mostly watched Anton as he handled a large
hollow-body guitar, its bulbous wooden frame making it look like he was strumming the guitar
version of a cello. It was hard to see properly in the low-lit purple and green glitter reflections,
but still, I could watch up close for the first time how all those lush noises could be made.
The foot effects pedals, the precision and extra technique it seemed to take to hold down the fret
notes on those large vintage guitars. Finally, there was a band to get into that was not
only from the USA, but lived in the same neighborhood as me.