Evacuating Suburbia

Throw out them LA papers

And that moldy box of vanilla wafers.

Adios to all this concrete.

Gonna get me some dirt road back street

~  From L.A. Freeway, Lyrics by Guy Clark

“Concrete and cars are their own prison bars”

~ From Toes, Written by Zac Brown, John Driskell Hopkins, Shawn Mullins and Wyatt Durette

Retirement talk has been revolving around the domestic circle a lot lately.  Mine, not the wife’s.  You see she’s been retired and according to her it’s the shit (that’s urban slang for she likes it).  I know this because she tells me it’s the shit all the time, quite often after I've dragged my worn out bones into the house after a day at the office and an hour on the freeway with a few thousand of my fellow Americans feeling like shit; about 10 pounds of it in a 5 pound sack (which is old school for suburbia blows).  

A Dog Day at the Park

“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”  ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, April 1^st 1989 – September 1^st 1989. 

It’s been a season nobody saw coming. Like that line shot foul ball into the stands that finds your skull when you turn away for just an instant, we glanced away for a moment in June and looked up just in time to be struck by 2013.  After a 2012 World Series Championship the Giants have found themselves in last place in their division, playing baseball that is often sloppy, passionless and sometimes downright unwatchable.

11 strikeouts in the better days of 2012

What's Happened Here?

When did it all change?  Why did it all change?  How did it all change so much?  I grew up in the suburbs of San Mateo.  It was a middle class neighborhood in the hills above the town, on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco itself.  It was the fifties and sixties; a time when we boomers lived the American Dream defined by well-manicured lawns, ranch style homes and the notion that we, the children, would live in a better America. 

HSB: Warren Hellman's Musical Gift

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

It is now less than 2 months from the start of HSB and I'm already getting into weekend bliss mode. That's what Warren Hellman's annual gift to the Bay Area has been for me.  No matter how shitty life has been in a particular year, for 3 days everything is beautiful. Thank you Warren and I'll be there in October. ~  My dear friend Scott.

For years Scott has suggested that I attend Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and for years I've always had something else going on..until this year.  Even though we went this year we missed hooking up with Scott who every year attends all three days. When he learned that I was writing a post on the event he offered some fodder for the post - an offer which I eagerly accepted. So this post is a shared work. 

It was day two of a weekend (Counting Friday) that the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce couldn’t have conjured in their wildest fantasies.  A convergence of events promising to bring an estimated million visitors and their money, money, money into the city.  That’s what it’s all about, right – money? The Giants are in the playoffs at AT&T Park, an America’s Cup Yacht race on the bay, a Blue Angels air show over the bay, a couple of street fairs, a parade, a 49er home game and in Golden Gate Park, the three day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (lovingly known as HSB).  Cora and I opted for HSB on Saturday, with plans to evacuate the house early and beat the hordes across the bridge into The City (“C’mon Cora, aren’t you ready yet? Hurry up!”).

Jumping Over the Candlestick

I indulged in a nooner yesterday.  Not that kind of a nooner; cleanse that dirty little mind.  A nooner is a weekday baseball game.  Years ago it was called a businessman’s special.  Take off from work at noon, maybe take a client, catch the game and back to work for a couple of hours.  Men went to the game in business suits; there was no such thing as business casual.  When I was working at a retail hardware store my co-worker Joe would often say, "I'm going to the businessman's special today.  Joe wasn't a businessman, he was the delivery driver.  His "suit" was jeans and a Giant's t-shirt.  The midweek day game is great fun, and usually an opportunity to get a good seat at a good price but unfortunately is becoming a dinosaur.  The reason; grousing about post-game traffic mingling with rush hour traffic.  Let's just take all the fun out of life. There was no work for me this day and in lieu of a client I opted to go with my wife; a definite upgrade.

Working For a Living: The Retail Years

“Somedays won't end ever and somedays pass on by,

I'll be working here forever, at least until I die.”   Huey Lewis

Mulling over my working life.  I do that on these days when I come home burned out, wrung out, office politicked out and ready to opt out.  It’s been a forty year sampler of jobs.  Stocking shoes as a teenager at Kinney Shoes working for a little dandy name Marvin and watching the letch, Mr. Slick shoe salesmen try to sneak a glimpse up a skirt while forcing a pair of boots on some young thing.  Working one shift as a busboy at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor and quitting because it stunk of chocolate, couldn’t see doing that for more than the brief time I put in and I preferred going home to watch the (then) Los Angeles Rams play the (then) Baltimore Colts on Monday Night Football.  That was a good game in those days.  Beer tended at a local Round Table Pizzeria.  Then college. 

President's Day

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom — and of whom only — it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

From The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Its President’s Day Weekend and once this holiday is over the next one is over the hills and far away; Memorial Day.  President’s Day has lost some of its stature; not everyone gets this one off.  I hear that on the East Coast they get Columbus Day instead of President’s Day.  Here in the Bay Area, especially Berkeley, Columbus Day is also known as bash European explorer day.  That's with the exception of San Francisco itself which because of it's large Italian community still holds a celebration.  Is it just me or is there something a little wrong with half the country celebrating a wayward Genovese explorer while snubbing the presidents?

Has the holiday lost some of its worth because some recent officeholders have lacked in quality?  I’m speaking specifically of a certain dumbass from Texas.  Meh, mediocrity in the White House is nothing particularly new.

We didn’t always have President’s Day.  In the good old days we celebrated Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12^th and Washington’s Birthday on February 22^nd; sweet.  In 1968 the two were consolidated into President’s Day and I’m sure businessmen nationwide rejoiced; one less day that, to paraphrase Scrooge, they wouldn’t feel “ill-used” to “pay a day’s wages for no work.”

There are other holidays that carry that quasi status, one of them being Veteran’s Day.  I remember when I was a child I got the day off while my father, a veteran of World War Two, dutifully went to work.  Some years back I shared an office with a fellow who spent a year of his young life in the bush in Vietnam.  Every Veteran’s Day he expressed some bitterness over the fact that everybody except veterans gets the day off.  Something is really out of kilter when vets have to work on the day set aside in their honor.  I’ve got a great idea.  Why don’t we get to the point to where we stop creating war vets?  For instance, we shouldn’t be creating one more single, solitary veteran of the war in Afghanistan.  Bin Laden is dead, mission accomplished and there is no nation to be built in Afghanistan; essentially a loose collection of tribes that seem content with the status quo. 

We’ll be selecting a president once again this year and the battle has shaped up to be the dirtiest and most un-American in recent or distant memory.  Let’s take Rick Santorum’s statement last Saturday in Ohio, chiding the current president for his theology; “It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology," Why un-American?  I’ll answer your question with the question; what in the hell is the Bible doing in American political discourse?  A candidate’s personal theology should have no bearing on his electability and subsequent performance.  I don’t give a damn about a president’s theology as long as it stays within his domestic circle.  It’s when that theology becomes a matter of policy that I get more than a little squeamish.  In fact I don’t care if someone runs for president because God told him to.  Just keep that little secret between you, God and any other voices you hear.  This is personal stuff along the lines of what the president and first lady do in bed.  I suppose if Santorum gets elected we’ll know exactly what he and the missus do in the sack.  NOTHING.  It seems Mr. Santorum, a hidebound Roman Catholic, doesn’t believe in contraception so unless he wants more little Santorum’s running around (there’s a sobering thought) he’s going to have to keep that gun holstered.  One doesn’t know whether to feel sorry for Mrs. Santorum or rejoice in her good luck.   

And since we’re on the subject of things un-American on President’s Day, we started this holiday weekend with a letter from the local homeowner’s association.  It was a letter to the entire association chiding the lot of us for keeping what they consider to be squalid lots.  At the top of the list was the dreaded basketball hoop in the driveway.  For the life of me I can’t understand what in the hell is wrong with a basketball hoop.  To me it’s a symbol of that suburban American home where the neighborhood kids and a dad or two gather to shoot hoops on a summer evening.  This is just the kind of thing that would attract me to a neighborhood.  In the twisted minds of the HOA busybodies it’s a symbol of declining property values.  And I don’t really care if the house across the street still has Christmas lights up and I don’t care if the guy next door didn’t put his trash bin inside the fence and I don’t care if he parks his cars in his own driveway instead of the garage.  If there is any purpose to be served by an HOA it’s to keep that over exuberant Giants fan from painting his house bright orange with black trim (although it might serve a dual purpose come Halloween).  And yes it will keep the would be mechanic from storing a half built '53 Chevy on the front lawn.  But beyond that, leave us the fuck alone.  When I was growing up our HOA was a neighborhood busybody who circulated petitions against his neighbors.  Hell I’ll bet those stodgy HOA snoopers don’t do anything in bed either.

Grace Cathedral's stained glass

This President’s Day Sunday we ventured to San Francisco to attend church service at Grace Cathedral.  It’s the one time every month when we go to church together.  My wife, bless her soul, accompanies me to the Episcopal Cathedral instead of going to her usual Roman Catholic service.  Her mind and soul are much more open than mine because I refuse to go into a Roman Catholic Church.  The service at Grace is always stirring and impressive.  It is, to me anyway, a deeply spiritual experience; the lofty nave, the stained glass filtered light, the harmonious voices of the choirs, the dramatic timber of that grand pipe organ and on this Sunday the homily by Reverend, Doctor Jane Shaw delivered in her stately British accent (can it get more Anglican than that?).  On this day we didn’t walk and meditate in one of the two labyrinths as have in the past. 

The view from Pier 39 can be stunning

No, on this day we decided to walk a different labyrinth after church; Pier 39.  Cora suggested that we go to one of the hotels for brunch but I came up with the ridiculous idea of going to Pier 39.  Ridiculous because Pier 39 is a tourist attraction/shopping mall located on the bay front.  Going to Pier 39 isn’t like visiting that other attraction, the Golden Gate Bridge and taking a refreshing, breathtaking walk across the span.  While there are some nice bay views from Pier 39 it is still just a collection of shops hawking touristy junk, video game arcades, street performers and restaurants gouging tourists for bad food.  Case in point is a place called Hook and Cook which sits under a large figure of Captain Hook (how long before Disney sues over that sign) holding a pan with a pissed off looking fish.  The sign just screams, “Do not eat here.”  The fish is probably pissed off over being badly cooked. There are only three reasons why locals go to Pier 39:

                To take out of town visitors who insist on going because a mis-guided, guide book said it is a must see.

                They have children still in their teens or younger.

                They are themselves still in their teens or younger.

The schlocky glory of Pier 39

Okay so now there are four reasons; the last being an adult who should know better gets a wild hair and says, “Hey instead of walking across the street from church for brunch at the Fairmont lets go to Pier 39.”  There really isn’t any charm, culture or history to Pier 39.  Approaching it from the pedestrian bridge over Beach Street you’re assaulted by an overpowering sickeningly sweet smell that must be a mixture of chocolate, waffle cones, cotton candy and churros.  The sounds are mostly those of tourist families enjoying their time in The City; “Leave your sister alone!”  “Dammit, stop climbing that railing!”  “Finish your food!” “Stop teasing the sea lions and get over here.”  And then there’s my favorite, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you a real reason to cry!”  Ah the joys of family vacations.  The other sound is the one that is now ubiquitous in every tourist attraction; the Bolivian/Peruvian/Chilean/Columbian or whateverotherSouthAmerican, pan flute street musician.  It isn’t bad music and is in fact often quite good.  I’m just wondering how they came to be so common at tourist sites.  They seem to be as necessary as t-shirt shops.  But let’s face it they are still much more talented than the young men who spray paint themselves and strike a pose.  I guess after having seen Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s I’m indifferent to a kid who’s spray painted himself gold.  Okay, so I’m a statue snob. 

We took a brief walk in a biting bay wind.  I stepped into the candy store and was sorely tempted by the tubs of salt water taffy but, at five bucks a pound, resisted.  We came very close to going into one of the sit down restaurants but decided that we would be paying top dollar for mediocre seafood.  I opted for a hot dog and Cora for the ever popular chowder in a bread bowl from a street vendor.  It wasn’t a miserable time.  It was something of a remembrance, maybe bittersweet, of times past when we brought our children and watched them ride the carousel or waited for what seemed hours as they played in the video game arcade and yet it was a reminder that we really aren’t in the market for an “I escaped from Alcatraz” t-shirt and don't need to visit again.  Maybe next time we’ll have brunch at one of the hotels or get some Korean food over on Clement Street. 

And finally on this President’s Day I’m reminded of the President of Taiwan; not so much the fellow himself but his recent election to office.  In my work, I deal on almost a daily basis with a young woman who is from Taiwan but works in Qingdao on the mainland.  Last month she missed a regular conference call because she chose to fly from Qingdao to Taiwan for the sole purpose of casting her vote in the election.  She holds that right of suffrage so dear that she is willing to take the two hour flight and pay the over 500 dollar air fare to exercise it. Meanwhile here in the so called cradle of democracy we are looking at low voter turnouts in the presidential primaries.  The more that we take our suffrage for granted the more we put it at risk.  Have a happy President’s Day and celebrate the fact that whatever you think of the man who holds the office (at any given time), he was, after all, freely elected.  

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