I entered San Francisco by crawling through its collective broken bathroom window: The Mission District. A grimy, sweaty, piss-hole parcel of land with great, sunny weather, a hundred-fucking-dive-bars, madness everywhere you looked, cops who don’t give a damn what you do as long as you don’t harm others, and crammed with more Salvadorians than you can shake a Pupusa at…
THE HOSTEL: Hoping to duplicate the many wonderful Euro hostel stays I’ve had over the past 10 years, with a savvy traveler’s mentality permeating its common room, cheap bar, communal kitchen, smoking patio, open doors, sex, drugs & booze, there were NO SUCH THINGS to be found at “Elements” on Mission Street off 21st. Though they had no lock-outs & 24 hour access and was mighty clean & spacious, that was it! The place was as friendly & memorable as $5 hand-job on Skidrow; unbelievably disappointing.
MISSION NIGHT LIFE/BARS: The Attic, The Make Out Room, Delirium, Phoenix, & Bendar’s (where you can get a shot of Jameson & 1 Pabst for 5-bucks on Wednesdays), are just some of the goofball dives you can drink up at without fear of getting raped in the wallet. Some places serve FREE grilled cheese! Others FREE dogs. Constant 80s music throughout the area but after a while how many times can you really listen to Journey, Thomas Dolby & Dixies’s Midnight Runners without cringing? Vibe is electric because there you can step out of one bar and simply stumble into another mere feet away. FUNKY! RAUNCHY! CONVENIENT! Start at 16th & Mission (or Valencia) & work your way down to 24th. Liquor stores light up every other corner serving until exactly 2am. No ID checks. Buy whatever booze you want before then, bag it, and stroll the streets for the next hour, taking in the sights & sounds of a chilly, inebriated Friscan night with the drunkards running wild, women passing out on sidewalks, the homeless screaming, and the cops driving by not taking a second glance at you and driving off. Why? Because they got better things to do than worry about than some 38 year old chatting up the underage Berkeley girls, sharing smokes & grabbing ass. YOU ARE TREATED AS AN ADULT IN SAN FRANCISCO AT ALL HOURS! EVEN WHILE INHALING UNGODLY AMOUNTS OF ALCOHOL! The tourists, the backpackers, the bridge & tunnel people, the townies. All the same. How’s that for a change? Hella good, babe! Hella good!
ALL CASH BARS: don’t have to report sales or taxes if you don’t accept credit or debit cards. But ATMS everywhere!
BARTENDERS: don’t believe anything you read on YELP. These people are cool. If YOU are…
FREEZING COLD: weather climates are schizophrenic. One part of town gale force winds, 3 BART stops to the south & its 78 degrees.
HEIGHT ASBURY: The one thing I didn’t get to.
GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE: storm front looming above, hurricane force winds. IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER! And look, Alcatraz to the right. Cool! But so fucking cold & blustery, sand blowing off the beach, not a soul in sight, you had to jump back into the car for safety.
EATING BAD: “Super Burritos” with sour cream & avocado at 4am, every-freakin’-night, & Pupusas-Pupusas-Pupusas!
CABLE CARS: Last touristy thing I did there. From Bocadero Station up to Chinatown: $5. Fuck the cynicism for a moment: ‘dat dere ride was fucking cool, Jack!
FISHERMAN’S WHARF/PIER 39: a morbidly obese consumer’s zoo on bad acid. Wanted to throw up. Every city has a black hole of bad taste. If the Nazis had won the war this is what the rest of America would look like. Some parts of Frisco are like Disneyland & Vegas rolled into one. Yes, Nancy, this is a bad thing.
OAKLAND “ART MURMUR”: First Fridays of the month. Take the East Bay BART. 25 minutes. Met best pal, Joey, where he lives. Good to have a local show you around. Incredible artwalk though much smaller than ours in scale. Still, a thousand dancing to Michael Jackson salute on sidewalks & streets. Open containers! Free booze in galleries! Young people, old hippies, kids, teens, pets, all inclusive. Freedom! And not one goddamn cop to fuck with you. Felt like I was at a World Cup festival in Berlin. They even had, hold your breath for this one, kids: port-a-potties for the event! OMG! A city giving the slightest fuck for its citizens’ comfort? Say it ain’t so, Joey!
Must mention HATCH GALLERY (www.hatchgallery.org) off Telegraph for having balls to exhibit the PENIS ART show by Porus Walker: hilarious cartoon drawings papered the walls chronicling the adventures of ‘ol John Thursday in various comedic situations: offensive, over the line; truly ingenious shit. That, barbeque outback, free Pabst, and a 12-member choir singing Abba tunes to a packed house set up the night well.
Nut job on BART, last train back to SF: wearing a bullet-proof vest, picking a fight with an obnoxious drunk, screaming, “Then shoot me motherfucker if you have the balls! I’m an American! I have the right to tell you shut the fuck up! Somebody has to. Shoot me if you have the balls!
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
And then of course he has to sit next to me. Oh Jesus! Not here! I’m a blubbering mess from the weed & booze. “START SHOOTING GODDAMN YOU!” I squish down into my seat, on the floor. “I’M AN AMERICAN!” he screeches. I whisper, “Hey man, he starts shooting you’ve got the vest, _but what about the rest of us?_” He says, “Oh, right…” Train is stopped before we reach bay tunnel, police en masse swarm, all parties hauled off, crying…
NORTH BEACH: sidewalk cafes & bars lined up as far as the crow flies. Strolling down these lanes felt like the Left Bank in Paris. What a strong sense of community; relaxed in each other’s space. Nobody staring each other down, no ‘homies’ or dealers giving you shit, no skater-mutts thinking they’re actual men. No women playing the “let’s-see-who-buys-us-the-most-drinks-game”. What a breath of fresh fucking air!
Had coffee at ‘Trieste’ where Francis Ford Copolla & Mario Puzo sat every day and wrote the screenplay for “The Godfather”! Good lord…
CITY LIGHTS: cocksuckers wouldn’t take my book! Said it was too slick. What the fuck does that mean? But the pedophile who staples his pages together with the semen of a dozen junior high drive-bys living in his mother’s basement gets to have shit on the shelves there?
CHEAP TAXIS: Every minute a cab comes by. Cross-town trek $10-$15. Simply amazing! So sweet not to see the meter click over every FUCKING second as they do in Downtown L.A. Every single FUCKING cab you take in Downtown LA is driven by a FUCKING thief! Arts District to 8th & Broadway? $14 please. That’s 2 FUCKING miles people!
CHINATOWN: Street after street, all hills. Chill place to wander in & out of shops. Wind ruffling your hair, near accidents on narrow one-way streets, and the best souvenir T-shirts a $1.88 can buy. Serious! However, their food sucks. We got it good here in our own little Chinatown LA, boys & girls! ‘Course nothing beats a Tsingtao in your hand anywhere you’re at…
IRISH PUBS: all over. The best? ‘Irish Bank’ at the entrance to Chinatown, on Grant Street, down an alley. Reminded me of “Finnegan’s Wake” in the Grass Market Area of Edinburgh. Dark brown interior, cheap drinks, real Irishmen behind the bar, snarling outdoor patio, loud as sin at 5pm on a weekday, drunks galore bouncing off the walls, HUGE basket of steak fries enough for three people only $6 (man, toss on some vinegar!); and chill doormen.
CLARION ALLEY: Mission District. Near 16th Street. Back of “CZECH CAFÉ”. Stumbling back to hostel, stopping to light my last smoke of the night, look up and see a face staring into me. Adjust eyes, see that it’s the first of dozens of murals lining a sketchy alley; maybe a 1/4 mile long, community art at is best; easily accessible! A kaleidoscope of themes. Heart bursting upon sleeve. An explosion of modern art for the love of art. A lovely way to end a dusk-to-dawn drunk.
SIDE NOTE: oddly enough, I was able to recover fairly well everyday by noon instead of my usual 5pm. Dunno why…
GRASS VALLEY: take the 80 out of town, go northeast, past Oakland, Davis, Sacramento, then, Auburn, then, make a left & continue up to Nevada City. 2-3 hours if you’re lucky. A world away. Joey’s family place. Mountains. By a lake. Feeding the deer watermelon by hand in the backyard. Having a whiskey on the dock by the lapping waters, at midnight, full moon streaking across the wet blackness, a frosty chill as harbinger of the autumn fast approaching in these parts…days of heaven indeed. A soulful escape from a week of a city’s crushing lunacy. Bourgeois motherfucker you say? Perhaps, but I’ve earned it, pal.
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: you can always judge how good a city is by its public transportation. From SFO to Mission District & my room it took 1 hour via 1 subway ride. From Burbank Airport to my home in East LA it took 4-fucking-hours! ‘Nuff said.