Black Thanksgving: A Real Turkey

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

                                                                                                                       O. Henry

 "Money
It's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit”

                                Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)

Thanksgiving is upon us once again.  It is as O. Henry said a purely American holiday.  It’s a day that sparks a national homing instinct causing the great migration on the fourth week of every November, jamming the highways and stuffing airport terminals.  It’s a holiday laden with traditions; some like turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and football are common to all while others have a dear, personal, family significance.  For instance there was one memorable, special tradition that my family had when I was a kid.  After dinner the adults would get together for a full blown, all out, shouting, argument.  My dad and my Aunt Donna euphemistically called it “political discussion” and that’s usually how it started.  But as the level in the Early Times jug receded and the level of Early Times in the adults increased discussion clearly turned to argument (For the teetotalers and the under age, Early Times is bourbon whiskey.  It isn’t to be mistaken for Woodford or Maker’s Mark which are smooth and go down easy. Early Times is cheap and has an edge; sort of like swallowing splinters).  After an hour or so the red faces and raised voices would reach a crescendo of outright billingsgate and then the participants, spent from exertion and hooch retired for the evening.  In the morning peace was restored and a little hair of the dog was enjoyed; well maybe it was a lotta little hair of the dog, usually screwdrivers and Bloody Marys.  To this day, whenever I hear, “you goddamn right wing bastard” or “you Socialist son of a bitch,” I get a little teary eyed. Remembering cherished traditions can do that to you.

There’s another Thanksgiving tradition that’s been with us since the 19^th century.  The day after Thanksgiving has long been the traditional beginning of the Christmas shopping season, though the name Black Friday is relatively new. Originally Black Friday referred to Friday, Sept. 24, 1864, when a stock market panic was set off by a plunge in the price of gold.  Black Friday was attached to the Friday after Thanksgiving in the 1960s when the Philadelphia Police Department used the term to describe the traffic tie-ups, automotive and pedestrian, that resulted from the crush of shoppers; it wasn’t a term of endearment. But just as tradition can run amok from too much Early Times so it can also get out of hand when we overindulge in greed and consumerism. 

Retailers have promoted Thanksgiving weekend with sales and even parades, an example being the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Thanksgiving newspapers bulging with coupons and store circulars make the Sunday papers look like puny pamphlets.  Store openings have gone from relatively normal hours to 8 A.M. to 7:30 AM to the crack of dawn to the wee hours of the morning.  Stores have tried to outdo each other offering so called door busters; forty dollar Blu-ray players, nineteen dollar printers and 42 inch TVs for under 200 dollars.  

And while the price tags look inviting there are extra costs associated with these deals.  In many cases there is very limited stock on hand of the most attractive deals.  Want that bargain 42 inch LCD television?  How do you feel about waiting in line?  No not 15 minutes before the store opens; try closer to 15 hours before the store opens.  There are websites out there to teach fools, err, folks how to plan for a successful Black Friday; tips on scoping out the stores, making lists, falling in line in teams, provisioning, planning potty breaks, avoiding frostbite and not getting into arguments or fights or getting robbed (by that I mean getting held up by bad guys before the doors open as opposed to getting plundered by the retailers after the doors have opened).

Don’t look for any of that Christmas goodwill towards men on Black Friday, particularly from those looking for items that are “in limited supply.”  Black Friday is a Darwinian lab experiment, a study of survival of the fittest. And if you don’t get one of the coveted rare gems, retailers are counting on you to wander around the store, dazed, disappointed, dumbfounded and depressed and  looking for something, anything; “geeze I just spent my Thanksgiving on line, I can’t go home empty handed.”  Finally you have your treasures in hand and you head to the front of the store to see a line reminiscent of the one you’d see at Disneyland on a summer afternoon.  And when you’ve finally reached the front of the line you don’t get to ride the Matterhorn or Space Mountain; you’re going to deal with a cranky store employee who had his last nerve worn out long ago from dealing with rude, tired, impatient customers.  This is not the happiest place on Earth.  

Look, I really never had much of an opinion on Black Friday up until the point that braving crowds on a Friday morning turned into midnight mayhem that basically kicks a beloved, traditional holiday to the curb.  And so you say, well if you don’t want to shop on Thanksgiving night or get up early on Friday you don’t have to.  And you would be right.  But someone has to mind the store, restock the shelves, put the money in the till and clean up the mess created by this shopping bacchanal. 

There was a time when I worked retail and believe me it was a real drag to get out of bed to work Black Friday. But now if you work for Target or Best Buy or Kohl’s or any number of other retailers, you don’t have to roll out of bed to go to work.  You can get up from your Thanksgiving festivities and get to work by midnight.  No Early Times for you, unless you’re describing your work hours.  And if you work for Wal-Mart you best have your name tag and best smile on at 10 P.M on Thanksgiving Night because that’s when the doors open.

It wasn’t always like this.  There was a time when everything, and I mean everything, was closed on Thanksgiving.  Forgot the eggnog?  Run out of Early Times (the relatives usually didn’t as they would buy the giant economy size)?  If you were lucky there might be a mom and pop store that would stay open until two-ish before the proprietors locked up to join their families.  For us it was Frank’s Liquors in the nearby strip mall.  Frank kept a stock of staple items like milk, bread and eggs and he did a brisk little business on a holiday morning.  If Frank was closed we had to make a run all the way to downtown San Mateo.  It was a veritable ghost town except for little knots of cars parked in front of the liquor stores.  Everyone else was home with family. If you needed to gas up the car it would have to wait until the next day.  That’s right, the stations were all closed.  After all, gas jockey’s had family too. 

And it wasn’t that way just on Thanksgiving.  That’s the way it was with every holiday and that’s the way it was on Sundays.  These were rest days, family days.  We were all doing quite well with the arrangement until the retail suits discovered that they were losing a day’s revenue; “Oh my God, do you mean we could be making money on Sundays and holidays?” We’ll never see those days again.  Holidays are marginalized now. The Fourth of July and New Year’s Day hardly count as holidays anymore.  After all there are sales to take advantage of. Money to be made.

And why do retailers put people to work on holidays?  Why are people pulled from their Thanksgiving family gatherings?  It’s simple. Because they can and because they know something that we don't, and that is that we’re a nation of sheep.  A bunch of wolves in suits declare a sale and the flock dutifully queues up to fork over their dollars.  They don’t have to have a sale at 10 P.M. on Thanksgiving night.  The suits can declare a Christmas sale on June 6^th, July 23^rd or September 19^th if they want.  The flock will gather at the door and wait to be fleeced on any day they designate.  So why not make it some other random Saturday?  I know the answer to that question.  It's because they don't give a damn about people's holidays. Their hearts are tucked away in their wallets. Those un-merry gentlemen don’t intend for you to be God resting; or any other kind of resting for that matter.  If you’re a Kohl’s “associate” (gee I love that term, associate) there’s nothing like getting that early jump on Christmas by having your employer drop a lump of coal on your life before you’ve even expelled your post-Thanksgiving turkey belch.  There’s nothing that says Christmas like modern day retail executives playing the role of Scrooge to your Bob Cratchit.

But let's be honest here. It isn’t just the suits that are to blame.  We’re all to blame.  As I write this there’s a Kolh’s commercial on TV playing in the background a cheery yet annoying and insipid little jingle; “It’s Black Friiiiday, Black Friiiiday.”  It’s the siren song of consumerism, the real national pastime. Up to 152 million people are expected to take part in the orgy.  The largest ever flock of sheep; gathering because they’re told that they need to be there, to buy things that they can't afford.  We’ve allowed retailers, companies, corporations to take the human element out of our holiday; hell to take our holiday, period.  

There is something that the dreamer in me would love to see.  I would love to see people everywhere say, “You know what, take your midnight door buster and jam it. I’m staying home and spending Thanksgiving with my family. I’m going to watch all three football games, throw the ball around with the kids at halftime, eat too much and play board games till midnight. If I’m going to go shopping I’ll sleep in a bit and show up at 10 tomorrow morning.  I’m spending Thanksgiving on my own terms and not on your greed driven terms.”  And while I’m sure it won’t happen I urge all of you to stay home with your family, enjoy the warmth of your home, have a few drinks and call some relative “a goddamn son of a bitch.”  Happy Thanksgiving.  

Sunday Coffee: Eggnog latte edition

“Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.”

                                                                                Woody Allen        

Winter weather has arrived early this year in the San Francisco Bay Area.  At a time when we would normally be enjoying the last few weeks of the typical warm Indian summer and maybe a sunny Thanksgiving the rains have settled in.  Much to my dog’s dismay the trips to the local ball field to let her run around have been cut short.  Getting the mud off a setter is no simple chore so we’re relegated to walks down the recreation path. And no I didn't have an eggnog latte this morning. Nothing particularly against the gloppy drink but I need to keep down the calorie count on this Sunday before Thanksgiving. 

Twas weeks before Christmas and all through Star-bucks:  Thanksgiving is still days away and I’m already approaching Christmas overload.  Starbucks has started the nonstop Christmas music.  Can’t we at least wait until after we’ve gotten up from the post-Thanksgiving dinner nap? There is one interesting phenomenon about Christmas music.  At what other time of the year would the under 25 crowd that normally listens to hip-hop suddenly listen to hours of Sinatra, Crosby and classical music?

The new formal wear?

No shoes, no shirt…:  A young woman strolls in this morning.  Just get out of bed dear?  Pink pajama bottoms and cheeks with that wiggle and jiggle that shout; “Hey I’m not wearing any drawers!”  Drawers are probably a good idea if you’re wearing anything but tight pants to keep those cheeks in check.  When was it that Americans decided that it’s okay to be complete slobs?  Fashion statements like flip-flops in any restaurant that doesn’t otherwise have a door leading to a pool deck or beach?  Did we gradually get here by replacing slacks with khakis and then khakis with jeans and then jeans with torn jeans?  Or did we suddenly throw on the unkempt switch; screw this button down shirt I’m wearing my Big Johnson t shirt.  And who could possibly overlook, “Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, lookin like a fool with your pants on the ground.”

You don’t got to show me no stinking Elmo:  According to a Nielsen survey the most wanted Christmas gift among 6 – 12 year olds is the iPad.  Wow; and to think that when I was 6 or 7 I was looking for a set of toy soldiers and a slot car set.

Capitalist bastard, baseball edition:  I’d like to thank Bud Selig for sticking yet another pin in his baseball voodoo doll by announcing last week that there will be another wild card team in the playoff mix.  That must be because a 162 game schedule just isn’t nearly enough to determine which teams are the most deserving.  Or maybe it could be all about more revenue from an extra playoff game.

But when will little Johnny have time to play video games?  Reading Tom Brokaw’s new book The Times of Our Lives.  Brokaw relates the story of when he was in South Korea to cover the Olympics; “Because of the time difference I anchored Nightly News at 5:30 AM, Seoul time.  We broadcast from a building roof overlooking a junior high school.  The first morning when I finished at 6:00 I was startled to see the schoolyard crowded with uniformed students hunched over their textbooks, studying by flashlight, waiting for the doors to open at 6:30.”  Meanwhile here in California, which was once the model for the world, budget cuts may shorten the school year, class sizes continue to grow, students are forced to use woefully out of date textbooks and parents whine that their poor dears get too much homework. We can thank the GOP faction of the state legislature for not allowing any, and I mean any, new taxes or extensions of expiring taxes.  Not to worry though. While our kids learn to kill zombies in their elementary years, get piercings and tats in their high school years and get put on a fast track to careers at coffee houses and record stores we can rest assured that if we need any engineers or scientists they can always be imported from India, China and Korea.

On a related note, I wonder how successful our nation’s youth would be if parents were as attentive to their childrens' academics as they are to their athletics.  Parents never seem to have a problem getting their kids to soccer practice and then spending hours huddled on a chilly evening watching that practice. But getting parents engaged in their kids academics or with the school results in a weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. “I don’t have time to get involved with the school.  When are we going to have time for dinner?”  Dinner didn’t seem to be a problem during that 7 PM practice that was being held by the dim light of an autumn moon.  Do parents spend as much time making sure that their son can read at grade level as they do making sure that he can read the opposing team’s defensive scheme?  Do they put as much effort in getting to know the teacher as they do the coach?  Part of that problem might be the unrealistic expectation of the coveted D-1 scholarship.  It’s a lot sexier to brag about a full ride basketball scholarship than the one for writing an essay about Gandhi.  Unfortunately that athletic scholarship is a lot more elusive.  Case in point, there are about 19,500 D-1 and D-2 football scholarships available to be divvied up among about a million boys who play football.    

Let's see, Libya.  Is it bigger than a breadbox?

From Tripoli you can see Russia (well maybe if you’re looking at a world atlas):  This past week an interviewer asked Herman Cain whether or not he agreed with President Obama’s policy on Libya. The pizza king who would be president paused, took a deep breath, paused again and said, “Libya,” as if he was trying to remember whether it’s animal, vegetable or mineral.  Cain then asked the interviewer if Obama supported the uprising.  That was all within the first thirty seconds and it went downhill from there.  It brought me back to my high school days when a classmate was called on to answer the previous night’s homework question and clearly hadn’t cracked the book. Only problem is this isn’t high school and Mr. Cain wants us to give him the ignition keys to the nuclear arsenal.  Is this the best we can come up with?  This isn’t a matter of politics but rather a matter of competence.  The video is an embarrassment.

Wants to be your priest

Devaluing the dollar:  In a recent radio broadcast Glenn Beck christened Rick Santorum as the next George Washington.  In the immortal words of Scooby Doo; “Ruh?”  Washington was a well-rounded, thoughtful statesman who believed in the rights of the individual.  He put his country first above personal considerations.  Rick Santorum is an unrepentant ideologue, a zealot who doesn’t just wear his conservative religion on his sleeve, he wears a veritable religious suit.  And he would like nothing better than if you and I and the rest of the nation embraced that fashion statement.  Washington was an enlightened man.  Santorum is the anti-enlightenment.  Take his stance on the sex scandal that shook the Boston Catholic Diocese; “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”  Yeah that’s right Ricky, we wouldn’t want academic liberalism.  After all that leads to critical thinking and the debunking of some of Santorum's ideas such as discrediting Darwin while pushing that nonsense known as intelligent design; essentially creationism loosely cloaked in a lab coat.  In 2001 Santorum tried to insert into the No Child Left Behind bill (a loser in its own right) language promoting intelligent design over evolution.  Washington on the other hand displayed an illumination beyond Santorum’s scope that inspired fellow founder Fisher Ames in his eulogy to describe Washington as one of "that small number" of men "who were no less distinguished for the elevation of their virtues than the luster of their talents. . . who were born, and who acted through life as if they were born, not for themselves, but for their country and the whole human race."  Beck’s comparison of Santorum to Washington brings to mind Lloyd Bentsen’s famous scolding of Dan Quayle when the would be Vice President compared himself to JFK; “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”  Rick, you’re no George Washington.

Trashing Tim:  Listening to sports talk radio last Friday morning following the Denver Broncos’ Tebowing of the New York Jets I caught another installment of the new national sport which is making sport of Tim Tebow.  It’s the fashionable thing to do these days.  Now I have no real issue with the criticism of Tebow’s skills as an NFL quarterback.  As a passer he’d be challenged to hit the ocean standing on the beach.  But the boys on this show, were taking on Tim Tebow the person; too squeaky clean, too goody two shoes, derisively describing a Tebow interview sound bite as a “Disney moment.  This is a common theme of the criticism.  Well just what is it that we’re looking for?  The normal sports talk fare is an unhealthy serving of jocks behaving badly; shootings at strip clubs, greed, over the top end zone celebrations and fines for various and sundry rules violations both on and off the field.  So now we have an unpretentious young man who carries himself with dignity and grace in the face of derision, who has done more charity work in his short life than most do in an entire lifetime and he gets pilloried as if he was a linebacker who beat up an overweight, out of shape salesman in a bar dispute.  I should probably put this particular bashing in perspective.  It was delivered by a drive time pair who call themselves, Murph and Mac.  Their shtick could best be described as juvenile although when they want to put on their serious hats they manage to elevate themselves to drunken frat boy.  Okay I’ve given up the secret that I’m less than impressed with this pair.  I only listen to them when I jump from another station that’s gone to commercial.  Aside from the poop and belch humor they embrace, my problem with these guys is that they’re basically two pudgy dough boys who would probably huff and puff after a flight of stairs and they have the gall to criticize high performance athletes.  There’s something in that deserving of a penalty flag.

Red and gold revival:  Folks are filtering into Starbucks proudly sporting their San Francisco 49er gear.  It’s been a long time since Niner jackets have been worn with pride.  Under new coach, Jim Harbuagh the 49ers have made a remarkable resurgence.  Maybe the best part of the story has been the redemption of quarterback Alex Smith who was mishandled badly by two coaches who through Smith’s current success have been exposed as incompetent pretenders.  Harbaugh’s team proves that coaches make a difference.

It’s time to adjourn now and go pick up the turkey for Thanksgiving; about 20 pounds should do. Holy moly, there must have been a pajama party.  Another one makes an appearance. Cheeks jiggling like Santa’s belly; or a bowl full of jelly.

Passing on Pacquiao

“Boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.”   Joe Frazier
"Fist fighting is here to stay.  It's just the old American way."   Bob Dylan from "Who Killed Davey Moore.

My family and friends will be getting together tonight to watch Manny Pacquiao’s latest coronation.  I was invited but like most every other time I decided to beg off.  My wife and I have hosted a few fights at our house; uh, so to speak.  I guess what I mean to say is that we’ve purchased the HBO broadcast and invited family and friends to join us for dinner and enjoy the, uh, festivities.  I’ve enjoyed the food but passed on the fights; opting to go upstairs and read or watch something else.  I’ve become the family’s designated pugilism party pooper.

My nephew Carl once asked me why I don’t stay to watch the fights and I resisted the urge to pull out my soapbox.  I simply told him that I don’t like boxing.  Now you shouldn’t conclude that just because we’ve bought nearly every Manny fight in the last couple of years that I have a family of boxing aficionados.  Under normal circumstances most of these folks would be as likely to watch a prize fight as they would try to swim the English Channel.  The attraction isn’t so much the “sweet science” as boxing is sometimes called, as the fact that Pacquiao is Filipino and the entire group that gathers is; Filipino.  I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that.  They’re jumping on a nationalistic sports bandwagon. I've hitched a ride on some bandwagons myself.  Americans do it every time the national soccer team seems to be making a run at an important world title.  That USA soccer bandwagon creaks and it’s axles bow under the new found weight right up until the team does its traditional crap out at which point the wagoners jump off like rats from a sinking ship and soccer is once again berated in sports talk radio, blogs and taverns as “that boring, namby pamby, Euro game where the players flop like fish and there’s not enough scoring.”

And so you might ask, “Why do I usually just toss down a couple slices of pizza and then disappear?”  Well simply put, I find the sport, and I use that word loosely, to be corrupt, exploitative and barbaric.  I've taken a hit for climbing on my moral high horse and if that's the perception then fine, I suppose I've joined the moral cavalry.  By the same token I'm not intimating that those family and friends are brutal and barbaric. As I said earlier if Manny were a pug from Ireland or South Boston or a sweaty Oakland gym they would be watching the Food Network or Idol or whatever else might happen to be on. I don't know that they've ever cared enough about boxing to really notice it's sleazy side.  

I was nine years old in 1962 when I watched Benny “Kid” Paret get pummeled by Emile Griffith, taking 29 punches, 18 in six seconds alone, before the fight was mercifully but belatedly stopped.  Paret went into a coma and died days later.  I was shocked to find out that these big strapping men could die in a boxing match; right in front of the nation on television. With the naivete of a suburban kid I guess I just chalked it up to some anomaly.  I don't recall that my dad ever explained it.  We just followed the news until it was announced that Paret was dead and then he was never mentioned again.  It was like he had never existed.

A few months later, Heavyweight Davey Moore died from injuries suffered in a bout with Sugar Ramos.  Moore is remembered in Bob Dylan's song, "Who Killed Davey Moore."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not us," says the angry crowd,
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
"It's too bad he died that night
But we just like to see a fight.
We didn't mean for him t' meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat,
There ain't nothing wrong in that.
It wasn't us that made him fall.
No, you can't blame us at all."

At some point it became clear to me that boxing reeks of corruption and sleaze.  One need look no further than one of boxing’s most famous promoters, Don King, to get a good sense of some of what’s wrong with the sport.  The flamboyant front man started his career as a bookie and managed to kill a couple of men while on his way to becoming the well-known front man with the electric shock hairdo. After making it big in professional boxing he was accused by a number of prominent fighters of bilking them out of millions of dollars.  No less than Mike Tyson, not known for being a fair minded gentleman himself called King, “a wretched, slimy, reptilian motherfucker.  This is supposed to be my 'black brother' right?  He's just a bad man, a real bad man.  He would kill his own mother for a dollar.  He's ruthless, he's deplorable, he's greedy, and he doesn't know how to love anybody."  

In 2009, Evander Holyfield who reputedly earned over 200 million dollars in the ring saw his house foreclosed.  In the same year Riddick Bowe who was at one time worth 15 million dollars was seen at flea markets trying to sell mementos as well as his autograph; he was broke and punch drunk.  Joe Louis was dogged by the IRS in his last years and even Tyson lost much of the fortune he made in the ring.  Well they should have taken better care of their money, they should have kept better track of the books, hired accountants and in short, been more business savvy. 

It’s all well and good to wag a finger, cluck and chastise these men for not being more sophisticated.  That’s until you realize that’s just the problem; they aren’t sophisticated.  By and large boxers come from poor backgrounds, many taking up the sport to try to get out of poverty only to come to the end of their lives not only poor again but addled from taking too many punches.  In a BBC story on boxers going broke, Heavyweight David Haye offered, “I think a lack of education is the primary reason (that boxers go broke).  Not that boxers are stupid, but most aren't educated beyond high school, haven't studied business and have spent most of their lives in a gym trying to be the best fighters they can be.”

Unlike many professional athletes such as football or baseball players, boxers are on their own.  There aren’t coaches and teammates to mentor them on how to handle their finances.  For the most part, promoters and the peripheral characters are there to see the fight through, take their cut and then cut and run.  In the BBC story, undisputed welterweight world champion Lloyd Honeyghan explained: "People see these big numbers, but don't realize how it actually works.  Standard deductions come to around 40% - and then the taxman's coming for his 40%. So it's not that the boxer had it and lost it. Often, they never had it!"

I recall being put off one evening when I watched the whole spectacle from beginning to end starting with the pre-fight festivities.  There were the luminaries, the actors, singers, athletes and the famous that are famous for no apparent reason than that they somehow became famous; the Kardashians come to mind.  All of these folk, well to do, dressed up and there to see and to be seen. They pony up the big dollar to watch a couple of common, simple guys get in the ring to try and beat each other senseless.  They watch the contest like the citizens at the Roman Coliseum; booing and catcalling if the fight doesn’t provide enough action and then cheering and screaming in a crescendo of excitement when a fighter lands a flurry on an opponent hopelessly pinned on the ropes.  It’s disturbing to watch the anticipation and blood lust of fans seeing their hero jabbing, punching and boring in on an opponent’s cut; working it to keep the blood flowing or maybe close that swelling eye.  Is this characteristic of a society that calls itself civilized?  And at the end of it all two fighters are left to get patched up, of no further use to the big spenders who long ago abandoned  the arena to go to the bars and the after parties to drink up their winnings or drown their sorrows.

And the patching up is only superficial; suture the cuts and ice down the swelling.  That the irreparable damage goes beyond the lacerations and bruises is not subject to debate.  Look no further than Muhammad Ali and Pacquiao’s own trainer Freddy Roach who both suffer from Parkinson’s Disease.  Others who developed symptoms of brain damage include Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson who suffered from Alzheimer’s when he died.  Coming out of a 38 day coma after a fight with Chris Eubank, Michael Watson found himself confined to a wheelchair.

An article in the journal Neurology Now, ironically titled "The Bitter Science," describes a long list of brain damage symptoms; slurred speech, lack of coordination, slow movements, a weakened voice, rigidity, poor coordination, poor balance, tremors, poor concentration, memory deficits and slowed mental speed. As the disease process advances, the boxer may exhibit dementia typified by amnesia, profound attentional defects, prominent slowness of thought, and impaired judgment, reasoning, and planning. Behavioral symptoms include irritability, a lack of insight, paranoia and violent outbursts.”

The journal goes on to cite a study which found that “one in six retired professional boxers suffered serious brain damage, symptoms began to appear an average of 16 years after a fighter's career.”

Neurologist Friedrich Unterharnscheidt in his study of boxers noted the permanency of the damage; “The destroyed neurons are replaced by glial scar tissue, which cannot perform the functions of the lost neurons. It is a process which is called partial necrosis of brain tissue. There is no reparation or restitution of the destroyed neural tissue of the brain. What is destroyed remains so, a restitution ad integrum does not occur. As the result of the diffuse loss of neurons in the brain a cerebral atrophy exists.”

And then there are the deaths that occur in the ring or a few days after a bout.  There have been numerous since Benny Peret in 1962.  I watched Duk Koo Kim get pounded by Ray Mancini on November 13th 1982, Kim absorbed 39 punches in the 13^th round before the fight was stopped in the 14^th.  He collapsed in the ring and never woke up.  He died four days later and any interest that I had in boxing pretty much died with Kim.  A story by Steve Carp in the Las Vegas Review-Journal describes the tragedy of the Kim bout that didn’t end with the Korean fighter's death.  Four months after Kim died his mother took her own life.  Less than a year after the fight referee Richard Green committed suicide.  Mancini’s daughter was taunted in school, classmates calling her father a murderer. Mancini himself sadly commemorates the date.  In an ESPN documentary Mancini said, “November 13 is a day of grieving for me. I grieve for that day in remembrance of Kim and his family.  And I always will."

On the evening that Pacquiao knocked out Ricky Hatton I watched a replay of the second round.  When I saw the knockout punch my first thought was that could have been the proverbial kill shot.  Said the referee, “I didn’t have to count.”  I’ve often wondered how my family would have reacted had Hatton not survived; had he laid there, comatose with a brain on the way to flat lining.  Glee would have quickly turned to, “Oh my God. What just happened?”  I’m not sure that in their Manny exuberance they realize that death in the ring is a haunting possibility.  Carp's article quotes Jim Hunters reportage of the Mancini-Kim fight; "Before the bout, there was almost a festive atmosphere," Hunter said. "But at the end, there was a noticeable pall over the crowd. They filed out quickly knowing they had seen something they wish they hadn't seen."

Interviewing the American Dream; The Aspiring Artist Final Part. "We're Lost"

"And this dream now has taken on a life of its own that says it has to be bigger, faster, newer, greater."

 

In this final part, we talked about the American Dream in general, the state of American Society and then the talk turned to some matters of race and equality.

In talking to a colleague I brought up the subject of the American Dream and he said, “The American Dream? Isn’t that what got us into this mess?”

What do you think about that?

(Laughs). Yes. I would have to say that I agree. I agree with the caveat of greed. I think there’s always been an American Dream. And I don’t think that the American Dream, in and of itself, got us in this state. But I think the greed of it all. It’s not just enough to have a house but you have to have a mega-mansion. It’s not just enough to have a nice car you have to have the Audi S5 or whatever. It’s not just enough to have a diamond ring it needs to be a four carat. It’s the greed of it all. And here’s maybe where I say the media does play some part. It’s not just enough to have an iPhone, you have to have the newest iPhone. I found it a very interesting phenomenon when I have the iPhone 3. Okay, I’ve had it a year. Works fine, answers fine, does everything I want it to do. One year later they came out with the iPhone 4. Record numbers of sales. I know all kinds of people who traded in their 3 for the 4, extending their contracts. We are getting, excuse the term, raped, on the contracts just to have the iPhone. I am absolutely a part of that, but then you’re going to extend your contract? You’re going to pay even more money? Because if you’re in a contract, to upgrade costs you even more money. But that’s not the point. The point is, it’s bigger, or its better, it’s faster, it’s got new features. And this dream now has taken on a life of its own that says it has to be bigger, faster, newer, greater. And we’re constantly driven that; ‘What, you only have the iPhone 2? Dude, seriously you’ve got to get with what’s happening now.’  I think that is what got us where we are. And let’s just be clear it doesn’t just stop with poor people, middle class people, it goes all the way up to rich people. Rich people don’t stop wanting money and things because they’re millionaires. Millionaires want to be billionaires. And it just keeps going on and on and on and on.

The talk turns to James Truslow Adams’ definition of the American Dream.  “But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Well it’s clearly not the American Dream that I grew up with. Because mine was motor cars, the high wages (laughs). But having read it and based on the conversation we just had I would absolutely agree that this is in fact my idea of the American Dream, now. It is about living a richer, fuller life according to your ability and achievement. Absolutely. And I think that is essentially what I came to, to say, yeah well it’s not all about the material things but it is about, he uses here social order, which is an interesting thing, “a dream of as social order in which each man and each woman should be able to maintain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others…”

Yeah, to be appreciated for what you have attained. Yeah, I would say that as I sit here today, this is the American Dream that I have spent my life getting to. But it is not the American Dream that I was raised and reared on.

We began to discuss African Americans and the American Dream.

It’s never been for us. You know what I’m saying. There are lots of us. Lots of us who have managed to carve out an American Dream. Whether it be the 1931 version or the one I grew up with. But it wasn’t meant for us. Probably the easiest way to think of it is if you do a gender. The whole globe, but definitely here in the United States is made and run by men. Now while women have achieved a lot, they still haven’t necessarily, in the numbers, given the fact that we outnumber you depending on where you’re at, two to three to one. The fact that the last study I read you had more females graduating from college. The fact that everything would indicate that at some point there would be equal wage, equal representation, possibly more representation. And yet it doesn’t exist. Because if you really think about it, it wasn’t made for us as a female. So there will never be the equality because it isn’t about equality. It isn’t about you being an equal participant. And so that’s how I feel about it in terms of being an African American.  I don’t think that African Americans should say, ‘well I can’t make it because I’m African American’. No. But to say that I’m a part of the American Dream as if I have equal abilities…like I could participate in the lion’s share, I don’t agree with. Like our President. If you happen to be able to go to some of our better schools you certainly can reach the pinnacle. But then you have Bush, who had none of that. And guess what, we gave it to him too. So we have to be better. We have to be so much better to reach the same heights. So, am I a part of it? No. Do I struggle against it? Absolutely. Do we oftentimes succeed? Absolutely. Should that be an excuse for failure? Absolutely not. But to suggest that we’re in it together, that this is something that I’m a part of, in my mind suggests we have equal ability to achieve and it’s only limited by our own individual abilities, stick to itevness, you know whatever and that’s not the case.

We discussed other aspects of the racial issue. She described a conversation that she recently had with an African American friend of hers in which the friend talked about his feeling about the experience of being an African American male in white society.

His (the friend) point to me was that you as a black female have no idea what it’s like to be a black male in this society. And I said, please do explain. His take as a black male was it doesn’t matter that I’m a black female because one, men have a certain ideal about women. Men do not see women as a threat, as an equal. If anything, in his words, quote, ‘a white man sees you and he’s looking to fuck you, period.’ Okay fine (laughs). So his point was, how they’d come to me even as a white (police) officer, there’s still some sexist, sexual things going on. He’s not going to come at me like a black man. His point was that, white officers in particular, but white males in general have an innate fear of black men. Won’t discuss the reasons or rhymes or hows or whys. This is his perspective. And because there is this fear there’s always somewhat of an over aggression, like let me go ahead and put this man down, let me show him. So he as a black man, he says ‘you know I get stopped,’ he says, ‘I’m not trying to give this man any reason, any reason, you know; yes, okay, I’m going to the glove compartment,’ whatever and he feels for him as a man and certainly as a black man it’s somewhat degrading. It’s like wait a minute, I’m a man too. But since he already knows that there’s this fear, this something, he says that he lives in fear of being stopped. He lives in fear of them taking what he’s doing or what he’s saying or how he’s reacting to them wrong. I sat there and said, ‘really.’ Because I’ve never been pulled over. I’ve never been stopped while driving black. I think there’s a book, Stopped While Driving Black or something like that. I’ve never experienced that. He claims he gets it all the time. Now mind you this is an upstanding citizen, musician, has a job. I can only imagine that if that was my life and if I lived in fear, if I’m living in fear because you are fearful…I would be angry. And I would be angry all the time. And I could see there being this, “f” this, just bring it. Because there’s not a lot of win if I’m undereducated  if I’m underemployed, if even because of those things I don’t necessarily have the command of the English language as I should which means that people are looking down on me, that doesn’t mean that I’m not smart, doesn’t mean that I’m not capable, doesn’t mean that I can’t be taught. It just means that right now I’m lacking. Nobody wants to feel stupid. Nobody wants to feel like they’re less than. I could see that kind of snowballing into something where it’s like, okay, I’m already doing the time whether it be how you look at me, how you respond to me, then I’ll give you a reason to look at me that way, or I’ll give you a reason for you to respond to me that way. I think they want the American Dream like everyone else and I’m not meaning the 1931 (American Dream). And I think they feel hopeless to get it in the same arenas that everybody else has been taught or told or directed towards. Everybody wants it though. Everybody’s being told that, on some levels, means success. And then to go back to an earlier comment, if you’re talking about, my understanding from just watching documentaries, some of your lower socioeconomics then, yeah, TV really is the babysitter. So yeah it becomes important to be a Shaq. because that means getting out. Or a rapper or something because that means getting out. That means having the cars, the women, the diamonds, the whatever. So both as a hero worship but also as a way to escape what you see as a kind of a dead end or no hope situation. So yeah I could see them not really feeling they’re a part of the American Dream in any type of way unless they play ball, rap or just plain out take it from you.

Wrapping up our talk I asked for any final, general thoughts.

As we were talking about the American Dream and all of this, greed and all of that. I think that we’ve lost our way, as a country, as a people. I look at some of the European Countries now, it’s kind of ironic, we ran from Europe. We (African Americans) didn’t, we were brought here (laughs). The whole American thing was running from the oppression of what was going on in Europe. Strangely enough Europe has gone through its own little cycle and they’re in many regards far more liberal, far more socially minded than we are and yet some of those are the reasons that they felt they had to go. I think we have gotten to a place where people feel like the American Dream is a right. And I mean the American Dream like the cars, the house, the whatever. And they will do whatever it takes to get it. And it’s interesting that we have this whole political thing with Obama saying, healthcare, universal healthcare. And people are debating back and for the and the largest voices I was hearing was, well, he’s trying to turn us Socialist. And not having a great grasp of Socialism in all of its aspects I’m not really clear how that is necessarily a bad thing. Clearly you don’t want deadbeats, you don’t want people saying, well shoot I’m getting food and shelter and I ain’t even gonna work. You definitely don’t want that. But the idea that we’ve completely lost our way. Nobody cares about anybody. You know something as simple as driving down the street, you have four way stops, people go (right through the stop), you go well wait I was here first. (There’s) no care or concern for your fellow man. People don’t say excuse me, people drop things and people walk over them. Again, back to BART, you’ll have problems on the train, you know, medical. People are irate that the train comes to a stop and will not move until a medical team comes. Because they have places to go. Not is the man or woman okay? Did they have a heart attack? Is there something we can do? Nobody’s pulling off any jackets or make sure that they don’t go into shock. Its how quickly can we get this train moving? I have to go to work. I’ve got to go pick up my kids. Me, me, me, me, me. It’s always me. And of course BART, in its ultimate greed is absolutely the same way. Our supervisors will ask, can you get that passenger off the train? Is there a way, because trains moving means money. BART isn’t interested in losing any money. So here you go. You’ve had a heart attack on public transportation, you got hundreds of people on the car with you and nobody from the company to the people that are sitting next to you give a damn except to the extent of how long are you going to inconvenience them. We’re lost.  

As my interviewee might have said, this interview could be called "ridiculously long." Our conversation went on long after I turned off the recorder.  It continued at other times when we met to take bike rides. She is an extremely bright, thoughtful individual with very strong opinions and it was these that told me to, yes, publish the whole talk and no, do not edit the interview.  I've been taken to task a few times for my posts being too long.  To those who've found the posts too long, maybe this rag isn't for you; there are thousands and thousands of blogs out there with short posts. To those who hung in there I hope this three part interview resonated with some readers.

Interviewing the American Dream; The Aspiring Artist Part Two. Where Do I Go?

"So the recession has clearly done a doozy for my American Dream."

Part two of my interview with an aspiring graphic artist talks about the American Dream today; in general terms and in terms of her own life.  

How much do you think that pop culture and the media inspires a certain concept of the American Dream?

I don’t give it as much credit as I think a lot of people do. I’ve heard, you know, typically your evangelists, your people who will say, ‘ooh “R” rated games or our fascination with sports, you know athletes and actors and things like that have a negative effect on our youngsters, our culture.’  I don’t give it as much credit as they do simply because, I grew up in that like everybody else. I think that parenting is a huge part of that. I think that if you instill in children what a true hero is, which is, hopefully, your parents or some member of your family. Like for me my biggest hero is my grandmother. Being a black female; she was born in 1913. One of the first black women to get a college degree. She was AKA, she was in a fraternity, all black fraternity. She had worked on Barbara Boxer’s campaign. She had two bachelors and a masters, getting her last degree in retirement. Matter of fact in Marin County right now there is a senior center that is dedicated and holds her picture and was renamed after her because of her works in getting senior care. She was voted woman of the year a couple of times in the County of Marin. That is a hero. That is somebody who is very much a part of their community, a very part of change, while having those perceived strikes against her, being a black female, excelling even though. That’s a hero. Not somebody who can play ball. That’s great! But that’s a skill. That’s something in its own right, but you notice the difference. You can appreciate somebody having an extraordinary skill and you can give them their just due. But that doesn’t necessarily in and of itself makes them heroic. So I think families have a lot to bear that they want to push off on media and society. But having said that it makes it difficult, it can make it difficult to be bombarded on an hourly basis, on a daily basis, with the newest car, with the newest makeup, with the newest fashion, with thin is in. Thin ain’t never going out. Oh no it’s a size 6, no it’s a size 4, now it’s a size 2, no it’s zero; be anorexic. Everybody wants to fit in. Everybody wants to be liked. So that’s where I somewhat take issue with the media. Where they’re constantly pushing this. Okay, okay this year’s color is pink, just to turn around next year and go, oh pink is out, it’s dated, it’s whatever. And we’re constantly being manipulated and coerced into whatever the newest thing is.

The media gets blamed for 90 percent or better of what goes on. I’m stating that they get blamed more than they should. But that is not to say that they share no blame at all. My feeling is that if we were individually stronger and spent more time with our children and our families that the media would have less effect. I didn’t say they wouldn’t have any. I said they would have less.

What is your sense of what young people strive for today?

If I was going to theorize now, my theory would be that to a great extent they would probably want the same thing that I wanted when I was younger. Simply because I don’t think fundamentally, even now that we’re in a recession, even though now we have all of these problems, I think people still have an idea of the American Dream. Now whether they’re able to achieve it (a Jaguar drives by)…speaking of the American Dream that’s a lovely little Jaguar right there...I don’t fundamentally believe the dream has changed. What I believe that has changed is people’s belief in achieving it. I think they still want the house and the nice car and the great job. But I think people now are particularly going, what is the likelihood of that really becoming a reality.  And I think that is where some of the shift is, it’s going, wait a minute, I honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to achieve those things. Whereas when I was coming up, there was no question that those things would be achieved. It may have been a matter of when or how but the expectation was, you would get it. I think now that is not necessarily the expectation. You just don’t go, oh yeah, it’s a foregone conclusion. I may not get it today and I may not get it tomorrow, but it is in fact going to happen. So that’s what I see is a change. I don’t see that people have stopped wanting it. There’s just a little bit more of a reality check about whether or not that’s going to be plausible. I have a couple of cousins that are now in their mid to late twenties that I honestly do believe that they still see that as something that they would like…but they’re also a little bit more prepared for it not to happen. So if it doesn’t happen they won’t be destroyed. Whereas I think there are some parts of mine (American Dream) where it was so expected that it actually created some little moments of despair or depression. Because you go, wait a minute, what do you mean? You know kind of like you’ve been seeing, hearing, speaking all of your life for it to suddenly go away. That would cause a certain level of…wow!! How does that happen?  As opposed to you know that you have in your family a congenital disease, that you may or may not lose your sight. So then there’s this thing where you tend to appreciate more what you have and you tend to kind of prep a little bit more for a possible outcome that is not what you hoped for. So based on my relationships with them that’s where I think they’re coming from at least. They’re still wanting it. And the want.  Is the want media? Is the want something that is instilled from family? Yeah, I think it’s both. Now how much depends on each family because clearly there are families that don’t do anything except sit their children in front of TVs all day and absolutely the media and what they peddle is the 95 percent. But I think that there are other families that are teaching or training different kinds of focuses that, yeah you still want it. Let’s be clear, I don’t care how much your families eat dinner together and you play board games together. You sit down at the TV or the kids at school have whatever they have, the latest Xbox, the latest iPhone, the latest…..Sure you want it. But how you deal with the inability to get it or what you are willing to do to get it I think that’s where the differences come in based on, how people, you know, their fundamental ideology, how they were raised, what their focuses are.

To go back to myself, given that my focuses have changed through the years I realize that there are going to be a lot of things that I may not achieve. Doesn’t mean that I don’t want the six bedroom home that I grew up in, with the yard and the plot of land. I will never cease to want those. But the fulfillment and the focus that I have on this goal or this part of my life that I’ve now said this is what makes me happy somewhat makes my not getting those things okay, because I’ve made a conscious decision to go, I want this, which means that I may no longer be able to get that. 

So here in 2010, how would you summarize what your dream is?

Here in 2010, my dream would be to have a career, or to make money at the thing that I love, which is my art. My dream is to make money doing what I love to do and to make enough to be comfortable. Now, that still, in my mind, means a house and every once in awhile, every decade maybe, a car. But I am coming around to the idea that okay, maybe it doesn’t have to be a six bedroom house. Maybe it can be a three bedroom house. Maybe it doesn’t need a half acre of land, maybe we could have a quarter acre of land. And that I continue to be happy in the relationship that I’m in. That I continue to have good friends. Far more simplistic. But at the same time though different, it’s still the same. You hear me still saying I still want the house? It just doesn’t have to be the bigger house. I still want the job. It just doesn’t necessarily have to be the big paying job but the job that fulfills me that gives me, like I said, like Spielberg, I want to do it whether I’m able to pay my light bill this month or not. I guess at this point it’s more about what I consider to be more of an emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Those are my goals now. Obviously you can’t live without money, but to be fulfilled more emotionally and spiritually and really feel like, that when my time comes I’ve done exactly what I’ve wanted to do the way I wanted to do it and was happy.

What has the recession done to your American Dream?

It’s completely f’ed it up (laughs). It put a real, real, real, real hurt on my newfound American Dream. Because now I know what I want to do, what will fulfill me emotionally and all that other good stuff and yet there’s nowhere to do it. As you know, I was working for EA (Electronic Arts), hoping to do that whole little climbing up. You know starting through the back door. I had started meeting producers. There was a gentleman that I was slated to get in touch with who was a modeler which is what I wanted to do. Basically just networking, laying out groundwork in 3D modeling and animation. So I wanted to go into the gaming or the entertainment field. EA was talking about layoff, basically the writing on the wall. So I, probably about ten months earlier, had applied to BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). At that time I applied because I had a friend who was like, girl you need to stop, get your head out of the clouds, get a job, so that you can live the American Dream. Now her concept of the American Dream was a good paying job with a retirement plan, with good benefits. A union so they couldn’t just fire you at any whim. So you could buy stuff, lots of stuff (laughs). You know, I couldn’t care less. I was like, but it’s a crappy job. That’s not the point. You got retirement; you can buy all this stuff. So just to shut her up, I actually applied. Strangely though, as things worked, I get this notice from BART saying, okay we’re now going through applications, are you still interested? I’m at EA and I’m a contractor for EA so I don’t have fulltime employment, I mean I’m fulltime but I’m a contractor so it’s not like its permanent and I kind of go, hmmm, things are looking kind of shaky. When I first got to EA one of the smaller gaming studios had just closed and I went huh. Anyway so I took the job at BART. Probably two months after I left EA, they had a massive layoff. I clearly would have been a part of that layoff as a contractor. You get rid of your contractors first plus the game I was working on was coming to an end. So for that I was grateful because I said okay now I have a job. I had a classmate that was working at Factor Five which was a gaming studio. Probably eight months later that whole studio closed their doors. Sometime after that I had a couple classmates that were working at The Orphanage, which does visual effects for movies as well as commercial work, the whole studio closed. So all these are places that I would have been trying to apply to, get my foot in, work my way up, they’re gone. And that was a couple of years ago. First part of this year, EA did another massive layoff of artists. Where do I go? I now found my dream, my newfound dream, one that fulfills me, I have nowhere to go because for those jobs that still exist you now have artists that have been doing those jobs for years. Some of them decades. They’re out of work. Are they going to take me or are they going to take you, with ten years? So the recession has clearly done a doozy for my American Dream. Because now it’s like, now I’m left with this somewhat of a battle of, do I hold out the hope? Do I hold on to my dream, which is do my art on my own, keep perfecting it, keep working at it, stay at BART? Allow it to pay for my bills and hope that like everything this cycles through and be ready for the next wave. How long it’s going to be, how well that recovery’s going to be, nobody knows. Or do I acquiesce and say alright it’s all fine and dandy to have the dream but then there’s this certain amount of reality. The reality is you do have to pay your bills; the reality is I do have a partner; the reality is her job is constantly on a flex as to whether or not she will have it. I can’t support us on part time BART.  So do you go and be a cop? Do you go and get something that is solid, that is as much stability as there can be given our current state and just make it work? And so once again I find that I’m in this place like I was early on in life where you go, this is what is expected, I expected, everyone expected of me and yet it doesn’t work for me. And now I’m on the back end of that and I go, I know what works for me and know what I want, I know what I need. But it’s not working.

Interviewing The American Dream; The Aspring Artist Part One

"Nobody chooses to live outside."

This interview was conducted with an African American woman in the Summer of 2010 at the Public Market in Emeryville California.  Living in Oakland California, she currently works as a station agent for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, a job that as you’ll see is not her ideal.  The interview was rather lengthy and I had the choice of editing or shortening it for publication.  I chose to leave the interview untouched because the subject is very bright and was very articulate offering some insightful thoughts and also because doctoring someone’s thoughts runs against my grain. So instead of editing, I’m publishing the interview in parts.

This first part covers her experience coming of early life in Illinois and the changes that came with a move to California.

I grew up believing the American Dream was that you had a job, hopefully that you liked, that allowed you to buy a home, raise a family, that allowed you to buy things that you wanted. The American Dream is the car, the house, the 2.5 children, being able to send your children to college; hopefully you were able to go to college. Not necessarily being rich per se. I’m not talking about Ferraris or anything like that. Yeah, you know, a nice car, a Cadillac, a BMW. You know a two or three bedroom home with some actual land. It was the ability to carve out a comfortable life that allowed you a certain level of happiness, a certain level of contentment. That was what I always imagined the American Dream to be. How I understood it.

When you were growing up?

When I was growing up.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Illinois, Midwest, Champagne-Urbana. We housed the University of Illinois. So while being in the middle of the Bible Belt, in typically what they called country, because of the university being there it kept the city of Champagne-Urbana a bit more urban, clearly more diverse, a lot more forward thinking given that fact that we were in the Midwest and heavily influence by the religious, Bible Belt ideology.

I was born in 67 so, 67 to 85 I was in the Midwest. But I grew up in a six bedroom home, a family home. So for me to live in a large house was not something that was left for the rich. It was a family home, my mother grew up there. We had, I don’t know, I’m not really familiar with acreage, we had at least a quarter acre, probably more, because you could put another six bedroom on the back end of our lot. We had a corner lot so there was a lot of land, there was a big house. But we were still lower middle class. It was like a  middle class, lower middle class kind of thing. So you know, it just seemed like THAT was the American Dream. It was, you know, like what do you mean you can’t have a good sized home and a lot of land and an attic and a basement, a couple of cars, it just seems ludicrous to me. It (the concept of the American Dream) was an expectation based on what you already had. Clearly growing up in that kind of house, it was an expectation that, you assumed that you would at least do as well as your parents and hopefully that you’ll do better. So part of it is what you’re accustomed to having. My uncles and aunts had homes, good sized homes. My family is an educated family, pretty much everybody has a degree. So it was an expectation that, again, you would get a degree because that’s just what you did based on the home and the upbringing that I came from. That’s just the way things were and it was without question it was just expected.

Then you had the outside societal type thing, and that is growing up and going to school. People talked about, hey I’m going to get my degree or I’m going to go and I’m going to buy this or I’m going to get a new car or when I get married we’re going to have this type of home. And the idea was always perpetuated that if you got your education and if you did everything you were supposed to do that you could expect a certain way of life. Which is again; your homes, your cars, being able to afford children, being able to afford their education, being able to live comfortably, being able to go on vacation. It was just something that was just kind of like breathing air, you just kind of go, yeah, of course I’m gonna get these things. That was all the way through high school and beyond. Even after graduating. I did not go immediately to college, because I’m just a little bit rebelish. You know getting out, getting a job, making money, buying a car. It was always the thing that these material things or these expectations would come to fruition.

So how’s that worked out?

(Laughs) Well unfortunately, or fortunately, I moved to California. It is ridiculously (when she says the word ridiculously, she stretches the word for emphasis) expensive here.  I  moved to California in 1985 after I graduated high school. I had family out here. My grandmother lived out here, I had an uncle, I have cousins that live out here. At one time our family was fairly evenly split between the two states so I just came out. You know most adult women and their mothers need a moment of separation (laughs).  You know, you kinda go, okay ma, love you but you’re on my first and last nerve. So moving out to kind of give us a little breathing room and to find my own way.  So that was the reason for coming out but still having the security of family.

And you found it ridiculously expensive.

It was ridiculously expensive. Yeah. Comparative to where I was coming from; absolutely. Real quickly in my early twenties, the idea of a home, got to be a little bit, you kind of go, at first it wasn’t the financial hurdle which is clearly one here. But for me it became a size and location issue. Because again having been raised (in the Midwest), there’s a certain expectation and here in the Bay Area, these homes are really small (laughs); very small.  And yet they wanted, when I first came out here, probably the median cost of a home was high fives, mid to high fives. And I’m thinking you want five hundred thousand dollars for a two or three bedroom bungalow? I was thinking; really? And the backyard isn’t really a backyard. You could put one of those outdoor table things and maybe a little planter. I’m going, wow (laughs). So initially that was kind of my thought of going, yeah I’m not really trying to buy that part of the American Dream right now just because there’s a certain cost prohibitive but also just because it was not what I was accustomed to. So the house was on the backburner.

Had you graduated college by then?

I did not. I didn’t go to college until late twenties. And then when I went, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I originally went in for accounting because I was like, okay, get a job that’s a good job, stable job. So I went in and I got my accounting and I started with that. You know it paid well. I ended up by working accounts payable for a college in Marin. A Catholic college in Marin County; Dominican. So I got a job there doing accounts payable. At the time I was still living in Marin. So it was okay. At that point I thought, you know, I’m well on my way. I didn’t buy the house but I did buy a car. Not a big one off the showroom floor but I did have a car. I was comfortable with the pay that I had gotten. This was after I went to school the first time. I didn’t finish out because I ended up getting a job. And, you know, being young and silly I go, why do I need to finish out if I’ve got a job? (Laughs) I’ll get back to that (Laughs). So I left and proceeded to work.  So for my mid-twenties I was thinking that this is alright. I’m on a good start to my own personal American Dream. The only downside to that was that it’s boring. You know, I basically got bored. And somewhere in there from my late twenties to my early thirties I decided that for me personally it was more than just money but it was about being fulfilled or having a job that meant something to me that I loved. I happened to be watching a program; it was probably on public television. They were interviewing one of the directors, I believe it was Spielberg, and he was talking about filmmaking. And he said that he loved what he did. That he didn’t need vacation. Didn’t need sick time. He wasn’t looking forward to retirement. That for him, he would do this whether he got paid or not.  He would do this until he died. And that really resonated with me. Because I decided that, that’s what I wanted. That’s what I had been looking for. Not just a job and not just a career but something that I was passionate about. Something that, whether I was able to get rich off of it or not, again still within the construct of…I wasn’t trying to be broke but at the same time there has to be something that you can do, something that you love and get paid for it and live comfortably. You know maybe you don’t buy the BMW, maybe you get the Toyota but it can still be a nice Toyota. And so I spent the rest of my next probably ten years on that endeavor to say, okay what makes me tick? What is it that I want to do? Forget the money, forget what anybody says is right or wrong or what I should or shouldn’t do and just really kind of discovering me.

So the dream changed. Clearly as the years went on and I embarked on this little self discovery the house continued to get pushed back further because what I found was that what I was really interested in was art and anybody who knows anything about art regardless of what it is; film making, to being an actor, to being a singer; all of it, the whole gamut; unless you make it you don’t get paid a whole heck of a lot. I mean it’s like feast and famine. When you’re doing well, you’re doing well. When you’re not, you’re really not. So that definitely put the house on more than the back burner, you just kind of take the pot off the stove completely and go, we’ll revisit this at a much later date. And as the years went on, as you well know, the housing market and the economy just kept going up and up and up. Before the bust, we were looking at median homes all the way up in the high six. So it had gone up by well over 100,000 dollars for a median cost home. And yet the homes hadn’t gotten any bigger (laughs), they hadn’t gotten any better. They were just outrageously inflated and so I was like, no, not at all. I had toyed with the idea of a condominium but then again based on my sensibilities of my Mid-Western upbringing it was like a glorified apartment and I was like why would I want to spend 450,000 which again is a bargain when you’re looking at six (to) five pushing seven. But it’s an apartment. Less than 1500 square feet. And I’m paying a mortgage plus HOAs and all the other stuff that comes with it? Nah. That went out the door (laughs).

What about the family?

That was another dream that changed. I think again, when you’re younger, your assumption is that you will have children. And I don’t know how much of that is about you wanting children and how much of that is just an expectation both on my part and everyone else that you will have children. But as life turned out, I ended up by meeting a woman.  I was dating a man at the time, but meeting a woman that for some reason sparked an interest and (I) said okay, well, I’m an open forward thinking person (laughs), we’ll check this out. And so during my finding me, I also found that I wasn’t opposed to dating females. But that brought up another interesting aspect in terms of having children and that is, obviously the conversation comes up about whether or not you want children. To back track a bit in terms of getting married or dating a man if nothing more than an accident you would probably have a child unless you both said hey you know what, I’m not interested, I have no desire, it just tends to happen. When that accidental process or whatever came up then you really had to stop and think about whether or not I wanted children. Because now it would be something that I would have to put some effort into. It wouldn’t just come up and we’d go, well hell we’ll just deal with it. I remember having the conversation with my grandmother to say I am fairly indifferent to it quite frankly. Now that I have to put some real effort and thought to it. And she told me at the time, she says, if it comes, it comes, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. And she was very, just kind of the no pressure, no hey what do you mean you don’t want (children)?  You know she’s just like hey different women at different times of their lives you know the whole adage of your clock will ring and so just chill, just relax, there’s no rush. Again, a part of the family background is that my family didn’t have children early. My mother didn’t have me till she was twenty five. So it wasn’t one of those things that we felt we had to jump into. I did come from a small family so we’re not necessarily into breeding for breeding’s sake. So she didn’t make a big deal of it and I was like great I’m not going to make a big deal about it and I’ll just sit back and when the desire or when I get this thing that supposedly women get when you just feel like you just have to have, I would deal with it then. There’s clearly a malfunction in my clock (laughs). It doesn’t ring, it doesn’t tick, it doesn’t do anything. I like children well enough but I continue to be fairly indifferent to it. It’s like I would never harm or allow a child to be harmed. Children certainly seem to gravitate to me but I think it’s kind of like, kids are like cats. You know when you don’t really care too much about a cat, that’s when the cat wants to be on your lap. But if you were trying to pet the cat then the cat would snub its nose at you and walk away. It’s like, kid’s are like that. You know, they’ll come, they’ll sit on the lap and want to play and I’m not opposed to it but I would be just as fine if they didn’t.

So you’re American Dream changed drastically as regards, the house, the car, the kids and you got involved with a woman. What did that do to your family’s dream?

Well, clearly, my mother was…devastated. Both from just her own expectation of being a grandparent; apparently she had her own dreams and aspirations of weddings and son-in-laws and all that other good stuff. But, my mother was also an extremely religious woman. So what I believe even superseded that was her own particular religious beliefs about the lifestyle that I was living. And so that was for her quite a hurdle. It was very much a minefield. We treaded very carefully. My mother and I actually had a very good relationship. We enjoyed each other’s company. But not only had I changed certain ideas about what the American Dream was for me, that time of self-discovery also allowed me a chance to think about other things like my religious or spiritual beliefs. Were they mine or was it like the house, the cars, the families, the children? Was it just something that I had taken for granted? Like it was just something that was expected. But was it mine? Was it something that I wanted? Was it something that I believed? Had I even spent any time to dissect what my thoughts and feelings about the whole thing of God and religion and spirituality and what that meant? And so what I found is that she and I not only had problems in terms of just the lifestyle, but what I couldn’t get her to understand was that I had also found great fault with her religious beliefs. Case in point was I had told her one time and I firmly believe it to this day, I said nobody chooses, I firmly believe that to some extent nobody chooses to live outside. It’s not an easy way to do it. Particularly already being a black female. So you know being African-American there were certain drawbacks in the greater society of the US of A. Being a female there are certain limitations and drawbacks to that because the world was not built for females. And then I’m going to just choose to add on to that pile of problems (laughs), hurdles, this added bit because hey what the heck, why not, sounds fun. So I had a conversation with her and I said, you know I spent a lot of time, and I prayed a lot, and I said to my supposed Father which was based on where I was raised, ‘if this is wrong, if this is something that you no longer want me to take a part of, let me know.’ And by that I meant anything, any sign. My girlfriend drops me the next day or it fizzles out or I’m at a job and it just so happens we have a new hire, or some guy that…anything, anything that would pull me from this path, I was open and ready to accept. Because if I was truly sinning then I was open to being brought back to a righteous path. And I mean open, clearly open. Didn’t happen. So then my point was to her, if God speaks to us, he hasn’t spoken to me. Which means that at the point of which I meet my creator I can honestly stand before him and say, you know and I know that in various points of my life I asked you, I pleaded with you that if I was not living in the way that you deemed acceptable to let me know. And in my heart I knew that I was willing to make whatever changes were necessary. You didn’t say nothing. So then we have nothing to discuss. And that ended the conversation between me and my mother (laughs). She was furious. My mother has passed. So that was pretty much how we left it. Towards the end before she got sick it got to be a little bit tumultuous because we did have a good relationship. We would have days when we would go shopping and we would enjoy each other’s company and I would think that we were in a live and let live kind of situation. And then I swear she’d go to church or she’d talk to somebody or something and she’d do a hundred and eighty and she’d talk to me or call me on the phone or and (she would say), you know this is a sin and we would be at it locking horns again. And I’m sitting here going, okay, great, I thought we had already dealt with this. But she seemed to be in her own struggle. She actually happened to meet a girlfriend of mine and her comment to me was if she wasn’t in a relationship with me she actually would have really liked the girl. Could have actually seen herself, you know, inviting her over or whatever. And I’m thinking with the exception of the fact that she’s attached to me; yes. And I’m sitting here going do you know how ludicrous that is? So you’re saying there’s absolutely nothing, there is nothing morally wrong with the woman. She’s someone that you would have even considered a friend except for her relationship with me. Yes. Okay. And so she had this internal battle where she wanted to be…it’s like everything about me and my life was okay, something that she could be happy and proud about except for that. And that one thing was enough to just wash out everything else; on certain days (laughs). And it (her ongoing conflict) continued until she got sick and subsequently passed.

Ciao Bellina; A North Beach Saturday

"I'm proud to have been a Yankee. But I have found more happiness and contentment since I came back home to San Francisco than any man has a right to deserve. This is the friendliest city in the world."     Joe DiMaggio, Baseball great and resident of North Beach.

 "Does my American Dream retirement include a move to the City by the Bay?"   Me

It’s 7:30 in the morning of a bright clear Saturday in North Beach, San Francisco’s version of Little Italy.  The streets are mostly empty; there’s actually parking available which is as rare as a snowfall on San Francisco Bay.  Those who are out and about this morning are older, like me, the baby boom generation who’ve lost the knack and the urge to sleep in.  We’ve discovered that not only does the early bird catch the worm, he also finds parking and a nice window seat in the coffee house from which to watch the sun wake the city.   

Anyone coming to North Beach should leave the beach umbrella and the swim suit at home.  There hasn’t been a beach here since the late 19^th century when the area marked the northeast corner of San Francisco.  Before the turn of the century a landfill project pushed the waterfront out, away from the neighborhood and only the name serves to remind that this little district was at the bay’s edge.  The newly filled section became home to a busy fishing and shipping industry.  In the early 20^th century Italian immigrants in search of community established the little enclave as a west coast Little Italy; a character that still exists and is the magnet for tourists and locals who want to savor a little taste of Italy.

In the fifties, North Beach was ground zero for the beat generation and home to authors and poets who defined the beat movement; among them Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti who opened the City Lights Bookshop.  The Allen Ginsberg Project website describes the beats as, “a generation of youths seeking experience, kicks, enlightenment, self-definition, and meaning in a dull, spiritless society.”  To my parents the beatniks were lazy, shiftless, ne'er-do-wells; "bums" as my dad succinctly put it.

Being a neighborhood that didn’t seem content to rest on its laurels as a center for controversial new movements, North Beach became home, in the sixties, to the nation’s first topless club.  At the Condor, Carol Doda became famous for shaking her ample, heavily silicone injected breasts in front of gaping patrons.  The club, at the corner of Broadway and Columbus was conspicuous for its tall brightly lit sign; a caricature of Carol with enormous boobs tipped with bright red neon nipples that looked for all the world like Rudolph’s nose which could explain why Santa is such a jolly old soul.  The Condor spawned a series of clubs that lined Broadway and bent around the corner onto a block of Columbus.  The City Lights Bookshop and many of the strip clubs are still here, reminders of the area’s counterculture history.  

But I’m not here to shop for a book and, dammit, the strip clubs aren’t open this early.  My mission is to pick up a birthday present for my wife at a little shop that specializes in hand painted ceramics and to shop for some fresh Italian fare for dinner.  Arriving early allows me to park in a parking challenged neighborhood and to relax over caffe latte and take in the ambience.

Having caffe latte at Caffe Puccini which isn’t anything like Starbucks or Pete’s.  It has what they lack; charm, history and the flavor of a different era.  There are probably no more than 20 small tables here.  The woman who seems to be the proprietor speaks in an Italian accent, when she isn't actually speaking Italian, to the early crowd.  These must be the regulars who come for coffee and a quick bite before the tourists and out of towners show up.  Everyone seems to know each other here.   The woman managing the counter leaves for a bit and returns with bags stuffed with long crusty Italian loaves from a local bakery; bread for the midday sandwich crowd.  She greets a group of three old boys sitting at a table outside, speaking in accents as thick as red Italian gravy.  A sign on the window says no smoking within 20 feet of the door and they’re about 5 feet short of that.  No matter, they’re part of the experience.  To eighty-six these old boys would be the same as banning pasta and tiramisu from the neighborhood.  They converse with their hands, regulars who greet other regulars from this little quarter.  Every now and then their heads turn to follow the steps of a young woman.  In their younger years they might have called out, “Ciao bellina” (hello cutie) but today they’re satisfied to simply admire.  

The walls of this little caffe, painted in the Italian tricolors of red, green and white are dotted with crude little hand painted signs that would horrify the Starbucks suits at the giant’s mother ship in Seattle. The paint on the walls looks thick like coat after coat after coat were applied during the generations that the place has existed.  Caffe Puccini also lacks what Starbucks and Pete’s have. It lacks the canned music.  No Nat King Cole, Beatles, Diana Krall  or assorted world music.  The music here is the sound of old guys chatting, the kkkkaaawwwkkk of the milk steamer and the rumbling of the early morning delivery trucks and buses passing by on Columbus Ave.  There are no perky high school students behind the counter asking if you want soy milk or whipped cream on that frappa crappa drink.  It doesn’t have the cleansed, sterile, sanitary corporate boring sameness of every Starbucks around the world.  Driving through North Beach to get here I didn’t see a single Starbucks.  I hope I never do and I think I never will.  It wouldn’t fare well here.  The old locals here couldn’t relate to Kelli and Mellisa behind the counter and a barista named Randy.  They don’t even have baristas here.  They have guys who get your coffee for you.  No, Starbucks would be a wart on the face of the neighborhood. The caffe latte here tastes like real coffee, unmasked by plastic seasonal pumpkin or eggnog or over powered by caramel or some other glop. 

There’s no fast food here either; no McDonald’s, BK or fat vat run by a ball headed clown with a pointy nose.  The closest you might find to fast food is the Philly Cheesesteak joint at Columbus and Vallejo or Giordano Brother’s sandwich shop further down Columbus.  Giordano’s is a hangout for Pittsburgh expatriates where you get a tower of food that passes for a sandwich; a mountain of meat, coleslaw and fries straight out of the fryer all squeezed between hunks of Italian bread.  Don’t try to change the formula or the counter guys will send you on your way to have it your way somewhere else. 

Molinari's

Sandwiches from the shops in North Beach aren’t made to a uniform formula by a bored high school kid; yeah that would be perky Kelli and Melissa again.  You get your sandwich at Molinari’s deli from an adult who can tell you about the various cheeses and meats that stuff the counter.  At Molinari’s you don’t get corporate, day old bread.  You go to a bin, pick out your roll of choice and bring it to the counter where a fellow will handcraft your sandwich and banter with the crowd at the same time.  Molinari’s is a 19^th century icon.  It smells like a deli and looks like a deli; cold case loaded with cold cuts, salamis, sausages, roasted peppers, salads and cheeses, shelves stocked with tomato sauces, olive oils, pickled vegetables, wines and a variety of products from the old country.

I parked the car next to Washington Square Park in the shadow of St Peter and Paul’s Church, where some old folks meander along the paths.  A homeless guy is sleeping on the lawn warmed, as much as you could be warmed on a crisp autumn morn, by a little patch of sunlight.  An ancient Chinese couple doing their morning calesthenics windmill their arms to get the blood circulating in the chill of the morning.  Here and there on the green small groups of Chinese do Tai Chi.  Chinatown and North Beach border each other; the growing Asian community seaps into the smaller Italian enclave so that signs with Chinese characters sit between Birra Moretti and Peroni Nastro Azzuro signs.  For a while, the two communities carried on a coexistence that was at best uneasy but was mostly characterized by resentment on the part of the Italians who perceived the Asianization of the shrinking enclave.  This was in the late seventies and I was living in the city at the time.  To some extent, I shared the resentment but I didn’t take that discussion up with my girlfriend and confidant Linda.  While Ms. Wong was American born and spoke only a few phrases of Chinese, mostly off color, she could be fiercely Asian and the cultural makeup of North Beach wasn’t a battle I was willing to wage at the risk of a cold and lonely bed.

It was Linda who introduced me to the family style restaurants here; The Gold Spike and Dante Benedetti’s New Pisa.  The dinners were traditionally Italian.  You started with a big bowl of salad dressed simply with oil and vinegar and placed in the middle of the table.  After salad came a tureen of minestrone soup again placed in the middle of the table.  Following the soup there was a small plate of the pasta of the day.  Finally the main course arrived, maybe chicken or some seasoned roast beef with a side of mashed potatoes.  At the end of it all you got a little cup of spumoni ice cream and then you hoisted your bulk out to one of the local bars.  The Gold Spike was as simple you could get.  Plenty of wholesome, home style food served on oilcloth covered tables surrounded by walls that were mostly decorated with the business cards of patrons.  The New Pisa and The Gold Spike are gone now but North Beach doesn’t lack for food emporiums.  From sandwich shops to trattorias to the more upscale Fior d’ Italia and North Beach Restaurant there’s always good Italian food to be had.

After coffee I go to Biordi’s for the ceramics, leaving the purchase to be wrapped while I run my other errands and stroll the neighborhood.  Past A. Cavalli a little Italian bookshop/café that’s been around since 1881, up Stockton Street to Little City Market at the intersection of Vallejo.  At Little City you get quality meats and actual veal scallopinne, not the crappy little shreds of veal that Lucky and the local suburban supers try to pass off.  At Molinari's I pick up sweet Sicilian sausage and balls of creamy fresh mozzarella.  The woman at Biordi has told me that there’s a little bakery on Grant Ave that makes only bread.  Grant is a narrow one way street that cuts through Chinatown crosses Columbus Ave and suddenly becomes North Beach.  It’s like walking through China and crossing the street into Italy.  Grant is a mix of little boutiques, specialty shops and hole in the wall bars.  These little dives are likely hangouts for the old signores I saw at the coffee houses this morning.  I’m a little disappointed that I never frequented these little haunts during my early San Francisco days.

The bakery is a nondescript little corner shop that you wouldn’t recognize as a bakery were it not for the bread in the window.  I walk in and am greeted by a woman behind the counter. She’s talking to a cop, who’s leaning on the counter holding a Styrofoam coffee cup.  I sort through the loaves while the two exchange local gossip.  They stop briefly as I’m rung up and as I turn to leave they resume chatting. 

I could live in this neighborhood; seriously.  I can see myself getting up of an early morning and running down Columbus towards the waterfront, turning left at the bay, running past Aquatic Park, along the Marina Green and Crissy Field in the Presidio, the former Army post and down to little Fort Point at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I can see myself sitting at any one the little caffes after my run, watching the neighborhood wake up.  I could easily escape the cheap tract home sameness of suburbia, ruled by a humorless, heavy handed home owners association that puts down any hint of charm and independence all in the name of maintaining property values that lost their value when the housing marked augured in.  Busy body neighbors who cruise the streets finking on the basketball hoop over the garage or the Christmas lights that are still up on January 10^th.  I could see myself at the little tratrorias, sitting at a little table sipping dago red, eating focaccia or a pizza margherita  or having an evening meal of pasta Bolongese.  Of course with all that I might see myself at about 250 pounds and growing.  I could see myself becoming one of the old regulars, scraping the rust off the Italian I was once fluent in, shopping for meat at Little City, bread at the local bakery, hanging out at one of the little hole in the wall bars or heading down Stockton Street into Chinatown for produce.

It’s popular to put down city life as being detached and impersonal.  What I’ve seen strolling the streets of North Beach puts the lie to that notion; a little district where people wave, exchange greetings and ask about the family.   Now if you’re looking for impersonal and detached, come visit my little suburban neighborhood.  When Robert Frost wrote Mending Wall, he could have been sitting on a porch here in Hercules California jotting down the words, “Good fences make good neighbors.”  People here keep to themselves, don’t ask after the family, don’t know how the kids who went away to college are doing; hell don’t even know who is working or unemployed, sick or healthy, happily married or boinking someone’s spouse up the street.  Homeowners here put up welcome signs on their doors but look with a narrowed eye of suspicion at an unfamiliar car cruising down the street.  "Neighborhood Watch; we report…"  Hercules is the quintessence of the bedroom community; bereft of a downtown; vacuous and absolutely wanting of anything that would resemble charm.  

On the other hand, I do have to ask myself if I really could live in North Beach.  I’ve been a suburbanite for most of my life.  My short stints in San Francisco were in the outlying Richmond and Sunset Districts.  I moved there because those districts have a little of suburbia in them.  I don’t even know what a North Beach flat looks like.  How would I do without a backyard where I could fire up the grill?  I do know I could well do without yard work; hate it, always have, always will.  Would I like someone living above and below me?  Would I miss the deer and wild turkeys on the other side of my backyard fence?  Could I be lulled to sleep by the city sounds outside my window?  These are all questions I would have to find some answers to before I consider that my American Dream might lead me to settling in the city.  Of course the overriding question is; what would the wife say?