How's it different...?

Tonight, late, tired, post-work haze, walking home from the acursed busstop, I asked myself "What am I even doing here?"

Glanced up and saw this guy, maybe 60-65 yrs old---build and demeanor of a badass 225-pound steamfitter or master industrial plumber---rumbling along, two frisking Scottie Dogs in front of him. Did a doubletake because this man was unlike anyone swaggering down the sidewalk in the Bronx, Boston, Baltimore, Philly, Chicago, or Portland Maine: he was wearing a flowered wool skirt with a bun in his hair. That's how San Francisco is different.

Things like that lighten my heart.

dear Gregory Isaacs...RIP

I came to the Gregory Isaacs' party late. This September I was transcribing a radio interview with Keith Richards and was intrigued by this part, which led to going on a Gregory Isaacs discovery jag - the song below is one of my very favorites.

INTERVIEWER: Gregory Isaac's voice is Jamaican national treasure, you've said. Why's that?

KEITH: He's got a voice like velvet, effortless delivery, but the amazing thing is he came up in handcuffs - beautiful guy...

And then, in vintage Keith Richards' fashion, Keith couldn't resist adding to the above in the interview: "He still owes me 400 bucks." Keith's such an odd duck. He makes these jokes...I can relate...doesn't mean to be a jerk. Just sees an opportunity for a quip and makes it, despite whether it's tasteful or will come back to haunt him. Like the whole "tiny todger" comment about Mick Jagger.
RIP Gregory Isaacs.

public transportation as necessity & art

Tuesday morning...way to work

We’re supposed to love public transportation. But I don’t. My friend Peter and I were discussing public transportation the other day. In NYC Peter would much rather take the bus; in fact he actively “likes” the bus. Peter hates the subway, because you can’t look out the window and are just packed in with anonymous people. I’m the opposite. I’d rather any day go underground into a sensory deprivation chamber and hurtle unimpeded by traffic and street-level anomalies, forward thrust punctuated only by the occasional and efficient letting off and getting on of new people.

You’re not supposed to, but you can drink coffee on the subway. Buses hurtle and sway side to side and rock and lurch unpredictably. I’ve tried 3x to drink coffee on the bus and it’s not pretty. Unlike the subway, arrival times vary based on unforeseeable elements. And you’re still jammed in as with a subway, check by jowl, but it’s harder to ignore because you’re slamming and jamming and rocking into people unless you’re fortunate enough to snag a seat, at which point you’re often on like a park bench--nowhere to look but your book or the people across from you.

Sometimes public transportation is fun. For example, last Friday Anestes from Maine took me out in Berkeley because he’d been able to alight in SF briefly as part of a clump of business travel. He went to my work, met my boss, and then he and I swooped onto the BART train for my first trip to Berkeley—very exciting to be in that town with so many associations of radical activity in the ‘60s—where we had an amazing dinner (forget the name of the restaurant), one of my very best eating experiences in SF.

Afterward, as Anestes stayed on to play in Berkeley, and I hopped back on the BART and took these notes...

BART train - Oakland City Center Station - 10:45pm Friday October 15, 2010

A guy is eating an entire Ziploc bag of what looks to be chocolate chips. Tipped back head, hundreds of little globblets pouring down his throat. He’s got a steer’s horn on a rawhide string that he’s draping from one of the handlebars to the next. He’s in a chair covered with orange and pink fur, mounted on his lowrider bike which is covered with red lights, and lavish bouquets of seagull and peacock feathers. Also on the handlebars are what looks to be hunks of the insides of someone’s sofa cushions, painted Halloween orange and black.

He himself is incredibly handsome, like modelesque, with beautiful bone structure, chiseled features, and thick brown and grey hair in a sectioned-off pony-tail to the middle of his back and a Che Guevarra cap. He’s got a broad back and straight shoulders and muscular legs. He has some kind of sound system attached to his bike, and was listening to the Marshall Tucker Band song that repeats “I’m getting closer to my home” about 365 times in a row, and now the train is so loud I don’t know what his soundtrack is. He sits there fiddling with the ornaments on his bike, adding a magnet to this metal tube mounted  between the handlebars and stuffed with orange feathers.

Cold grey day...warm mug of velvet Bowie...

Happy

...working in an ad agency is, as they say in Maine, different. I texted a friend who works in an ad agency in NYC and asked whether it's a heavy drinking culture there; she said yes, and basically, "See: Mad Men." The pace is swirly, the vibe is madcap. AOL was the Devil's Workshop; this may be the Devil's Playpen.

I guess I always reckoned ad agencies would be like this. Toys and quite hilarious tchotchkes everywhere. Today around 3pm someone hit a landmark on a booze account and every top shelf liquor was out and flowing freely, people at their desks with 4 fingers of scotch, G&Ts in the kitchen, tequila shots. There's a bottle with just a swig left of warm amber carribbean rum sitting at eye level on my cube wall - the sun shines through it - it's gorgeous. Even tho my desire for alcohol passed about 15 years ago I might actually move this bottle. It's too pretty. And too "almost-finished."

The pace is frenetic. I don't know how I feel about it. Having just come out of such a--as my friend Bill Gray said today--perfect storm. I think I can probably hack it, but I need to wind down, seriously. And the work is cool and will be satisfying if I can pace myself and be on-site at the agency the right amount of time. Tomorrow I'll work from home.

Maybe it's kharmic...this past month yearning for more connection, and now all day at work nonstop constant interaction buzz and connection...of a type. I didn't need frenetic nonstop connection. Just more than an occasional exacted inscrutable murmur. Now it's full volume.

Alas!

and some cool things...Everything atthe agency is wide open, so you can hear everything. Unlike Autodesk--also open seating, but which fluctuated between tomb silent and aggressive engineering pontifications and arguments--the din at the agency is continuous and agreeable. Conversations, even when shouted across vast spaces, don't pierce the ears. Something about people's tones here vs. Autodesk...not cutting, no gasping convulsive or derisive nerd laughter, generally merry jolly and funny, frivolous, and sometimes good-naturedly catty and snipey, but easy to tune out. 

So today this guy was writing a song. It started with what my boss accurately dubbed "a moody piano interlude," a piano riff, and over the course of the day he composed this beautiful interesting song adding percussion and tonal color, different instruments, and then--at the end of the day I was staying late, and so was the team he's on--he synced it up to the video for this commercial, and after hearing the piece coming together all day as I worked, was able to see the creation of an actual commercial -- stood by at the end and watched as they tweaked the arrangement of the song until it all meshed to fit the video. Had never seen anything like that. It was wonderfully creative.

And then...I was soooo tired. And couldn't get a cab home. Kept missing the bus. I would wait and wait, and then go into a store and buy pants, or try on boots

 or grab dinner to take home (got an amazing dinner), and the bus would come while I was doing that, and no cabs came and still no cabs...and I was very sad. Then this stretch limo pulls up across Market Street and this old black dude in a cap leans out his window "You wanta ride? Get in!"

So I do. I hop across Market Street and bop into the back of this leather cushioned behemoth. So it's me, and him and his little white dog Kip. And we're riding around, listening to John Lennon singing Revolution, and I shout up front "I don't have any money except credit cards and I really don't have enough dough to pay for a limosene(sp)"

And he says "Well, I could sure use some gas"

 So I say "Sure, I'll put some fuel in your tank!"

And we drive on, in the colorful warm San Francisco night. He takes me through parts of SF I don't know yet, and it was beautiful. Looking back upon downtown from gentle hills, the Bay twinkling, in the far distance off beyond the buildings, which were twinkling in their own right the way they do here. Even the sidewalks twinkle here. And the sun on water twinkles...in a way I've never seen elsewhere. So, eventually we get to the gas station. And I put $13 in his car which I think is fair--a bargain for me and he was happy. And just sat back in the comforting plush opulence of this car...and as we drove....I relaxed completely, for the first time in WEEKS, maybe longer. And as I breathed and relaxed further into the dark cushions, someone taking care of bringing me home safely, set to a good soundtrack and no worries, I just started falling in love again with San Francisco. The spark started flickering again--I'd recently taken my enthusiasm for SF and applied it somewhere it didn't belong. Since my 2nd day here, I'd been so filled with besottedness for SF that eventually I think I sought to have it embodied in a person, which naturally didn't work. Walking around in love abstractly with a city is an odd thing, but beautiful. So I return to that place of infatuation and innocence and wanting to know who San Francisco's 4th grade teacher was. And it's happy to connect back with me and welcome me inside.