I have decided that my blog is insincere. As I'm still trying to find my "voice", I try to moderate the criticism, guide the self-loathing into something beneficial. Today, I have decided to do something different. I'm just going to write, itinerary free.
With Candlestick closing, I find myself reflecting on how much this city has changed in my life and how much that change has affected me.
When I was a child, my father and I used to go to Giants' games at the Stick, and if you've been there, you know; it's miserably cold. But that's it's charm. We would pack blankets and sweaters, our jeans would be tight from the long johns, and we would stuff ourselves on Polish sausages. And though AT & T is a way cooler stadium, I know that I'll never have those same moments, feel that same fear and ironic safety of being left alone while Dad went in search of a beer.
You can now buy seats from the stadium in sets of two.
Though Candlestick is ugly and outdated, it makes me sad that this dinosaur will soon be no more. I don't understand how as humans, we are creatures of habit, and yet, as Americans, we feel the need to constantly tear down and rebuild. What if Candlestick could be America's version of the Colosseum? I remember in the 1989 earthquake, my parents were at the stadium for the World Series (I was home with my infant sister and a very terrified young baby-sitter). Dad told me how he and his friend Ray were on the upper deck with the whole thing started shaking. Once they realized that the game was canceled and everyone was forced to leave, they found the parking lot full of people trying to sell pieces of the stadium's roof.
I have a friend who is an avid collector. Anytime the city is dug up for renovation, he sneaks into the dirt in hopes of finding old glass or relics from before the 1906 earthquake. It wasn't until maybe this past week that I started to realize just how huge the impact that earthquake had on this city. Kindly referred to as "America's Phoenix", San Francisco suffered what is considered the largest disaster in American history. The mind reels to understand that only 303 of it's original 28,000 buildings were left standing! Or how the city rallied so quickly together to rebuild, that they averaged restoring 15 buildings a day!
When I first moved here, I was amazed at how self-referential this city is, how many people have SF tattoos. No one in Portland would ever be caught seen with an I ♥ PDX tattoo, and yet here, it's almost commonplace. How can people love a place that much?
I was at my favorite local dive bar about a year ago when my ex-best friend's ex-boyfriend walked in. He travels the world for his job, so it shouldn't be surprising to randomly run into him, but I thought it odd to find him here, at the Attic, a bar you kind of have to know about to a) find and b) risk the smell to hang out. Nevertheless, we had a beer together. I was bemoaning my life, saying that I felt ruled by my rent; I pay triple what I paid in Portland for 1/10th of the space. I have to paint in my bedroom (which is actually the living room) because I can't afford my room AND a studio.
Adrain told me to shut up. "You live in the most beautiful city in the world and you afford it by waiting tables." He went on to illustrate how my lifestyle is perfect. I walk to work, I have sunlight almost 365 days of the year, I live in a city where every day is a celebration, and hell, I can take my dog anywhere (she was sitting on my lap at the time). The next morning, as I started painting in my tight little corner, the sadness started to creep back in, well, until I looked out the window at the sight of Twin Peaks in one window, and Bernal Hill in the other. He's right. I was being a big ol' baby.
But still, though that was the first planting of my city-love, it wasn't enough to plunge me head first. Despite how much beauty and exciting history and wonderful things there are here to explore, there are still earthquakes, and worse, fires. Everyone I know that has lived here for more than five years has personally been effected by fire. When I first moved here, I was living on South Van Ness in this dumpy apartment with a psychopath. This one afternoon, I was in my room working on something when my other roommate (the nice one- at least back then) started beating on my door, saying to grab Daisy; our building was on fire. Naturally, we ran.
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| this was another fire, recently |
Though it turned out that a downstairs neighbor had left beans on the stove and went to work, and it was only a small fire, it was deeply unnerving. I had only been here about four months and already there were three large fires in my neighborhood and now this.
Around this time, I was working in an office in SOMA and every day would ride my bicycle down Harrison street. At Alabama there is this large mural depicting a major fire, and in the center is a woman floating through the air, holding the skeletal frame of an umbrella. As an artist, I tend to read things differently. I don't often put context on things when I first see them. I don't listen to lyrics. I have to re-read non-fiction multiple times to remember that these aren't metaphors explaining some existential dilemma but hard truths. Everyday that I passed this mural, I thought it a beautiful work of surrealism; what a lovely experience, to float through the world with an ineffective umbrella.
Sadly, my friend informed me that years ago, that building had gone up in flames, killing many, and that people on the higher floors actually did try to use umbrellas to carry them to safety.
As with any disaster, there is always the aftermath. We must always keep moving forward. These buildings get rebuilt fancier and more expensive. The people displaced by fire can never move back in. Evolution.
And it's this constant forward thinking that has me wondering. The SFMOMA is currently closed due to renovations, and in the meantime, they have scattered their collection around the Bay Area (a cheap attempt at appeasing the public if you ask me, but I didn't think the museum needed changing to begin with). According to my grandmother, who lives in Los Altos, Charles Garoian is an artist there who has put out a call for contributors. He wants people to embrace boredom, to turn off our phones, to just stop. "You are invited to disconnect from the distractions of digital mediation in order to experience the boredom of silence, quietude, and the slowness of actual time as a radical (political) act."
He has recommended a few cute things to get you started such as "Spend time humming or singing whatever internal dialogue is going on in your mind" or to turn everything in one room upside down.
I find this project compelling, especially in lieu of some other sad news I read the other day. One of the members of one of my favorite local bands, Thee Oh Sees, has decided to move to Los Angeles as a form of protest or resignation. He's fed up with the increasing gentrification, the massive dependence on technology, our addictions to our smart phones. And though I appreciate his passion/stubborness/refusal to change, I also think that we do need to evolve. We need to keep moving forward, but maybe at half the speed of today.
I'm telling you all this because these are my meditations on my deeply growing love of this pioneering city. That here, there is such intrinsic beauty (both natural and manufactured), such monoliths to remind us of our history, and yet the increasing flood of google buses rushing in the future, that I find myself torn. People all around me keep talking about how our San Francisco is gone, that art is dying, that the spirit is being snuffed out, and yet I look at that mural of the girl with her umbrella. There will always be someone here to document what's passed, to help us remember our evolution. There is no end, just change.
Here are some of my favorite San Francisco moments. And just you wait... there will be many, many more to come.
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| my morning light, every day. |
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| anyone know the name of this tree? |
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| someone's curtains |
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| someone's altar to a penis, dia de los mertos |
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| hamming it up with krysten |
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| boats |
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| a beautiful wood map of the city that i'll never be able to afford |
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| the view from my roof, one direction |
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| parade |
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| cool |
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| that guy |
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| the view from my kitchen |
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| when the giants won the world series |
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| sutro baths |
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| palace of fine arts |
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| playing the tourist, tonga room |
The Changing Light
by Lawrence FerlinghettiThe changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
after the fog burns off
and the sun paints white houses
with the sea light of Greece
with sharp clean shadows
making the town look like
it had just been painted
But the wind comes up at four o'clock
sweeping the hills
And then the veil of light of early evening
And then another scrim
when the new night fog
floats in
And in that vale of light
the city drifts
anchorless upon the ocean
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