if you thought this was a drought, well, here comes a flood

Turner still blows my mind.

On the precipice of my 35th birthday, I decided I was a failure.

When I got over the self-loathing, I decided to blame the world.

When i got done hating, I remembered evolution.

Maybe, I've found a healthy conclusion, or some direction to lead my wayward feet, but at least I've found solace, and here's how.

I hope you're ready for this.

When I was about ten years old, I came home from school and found my mother out front with a neighbor and they were crying. 

Nina Simone, one of my heroes. 

"What happened?"

My mother put her hand on my shoulder and explained how that morning, our country decided to start bombing Iraq. As a child, as I feel now, I couldn't understand bombs, and when I asked why we'd do such a thing, she explained how Saddam Hussein had been bombing innocent civilians and that "we" couldn't tolerate that behavior.

The story that was painted in my ten year old mind was an image of some demonic man chucking grenades at random houses on a street much like Shadowhill Lane. At that age, I already had a lot of hurt in my heart and I also had a two year old sister who I felt a desperate to protect. The only way I knew how to deal with those feelings was to play the piano.

Vladimir Horowitz, hero #1

From that afternoon on, I would sit and play for hours with the sole thought that if that 'demon man' were to walk down my street, randomly chucking grenades, and maybe heard a little girl playing piano, he'd realize that we are just people having our everyday feelings and that somehow the music would be so pretty, he would stop killing people.

Caravaggio, timeless genius

Obviously, that situation was far more complicated than my child brain could (or still) comprehend, but it was that sentiment that has defined me as a person. I have been taught to listen to classical music, to read the greeks, to look at the epic offerings of humanity as lessons for my own life. I was trained to use my hands and my heart to express 'sacred' and 'communicable' feelings, in the hopes of maintaining connection. And that in acknowledging the wisdom of the past, though perhaps out-dated, I would never be "wrong" or ever without meaning.

And I hope you can understand. Realizing I was about to turn 35, I learned that all of that was bullshit. Evil reigns. No one believes or pursues beauty anymore. And worse, while I spent my entire life dedicated to these things, I was hitting middle age with absolutely nothing to offer. I don't own my home. I don't have a career. Hell, I don't even have romantic love. 

I wish I still believed in metaphors enough to convey the absolute betrayal I felt with myself. I thought I had been living my life with a humble sense of integrity.

Daisy

Not being one who wants to wallow in self-defeat, I decided to look into it. Though I've always felt alone, I knew I couldn't actually be; that even though I never felt accepted in society, I must still be a byproduct.

I started by looking at the generational theory, that based on certain quintessential political disasters, we, born within a certain twenty-year time frame, would have a common vernacular.  But what happens when I was born of the cusp of two such disparate groups? 

Born in 1979, I'm technically of Generation X, the babies of the Baby Boomers, the first latch-key kids. We were raised in divorced households, forced into a very early adulthood, brought up in the unique political situation of dictatorships, AIDS, political corruption. We were a generation that couldn't believe in authority, that had to rely on ourselves, and it was somehow in this 'orphan' state that we started to believe in the need for human dignity, equality, systemic change.

My girls

But, being born on the tale end of that, most of my peers were of the other generation, the ones in which they were raised as 'trophy' kids by my generation (the 'have-nots'). Because my generation had lived their lives, overly educated, and the highest population to volunteer historically, to be caught in the eye of the devastating economic crisis (of the early 1980s) right when we were supposed to be entering the workforce (and then subsequently robbed of our 'rite of passage' as dictated by our careers- a thing which the Boomers, stereotypically, took for granted) we were given nothing to stand on. The 'trophy' kids, on the other hand, were to be given those chances, their innocence fostered, and from that came a group of self-entitled, global-thinking people, righteous in their demand of a world providing what they require.

Is Rothko old fashioned?

Perhaps this doesn't appeal to you. I'm guessing you weren't born in 1979, but let's look at it from a larger cultural construct. Post-modernism, the cultural paradigm that defined the last, roughly, twenty-to forty years (ending in 1980), was a direct response to the death of humanism that came from the atomic bomb (side note- the atomic bomb sailed out of Hunter's Point in San Francisco). For the world to recognize the absolute inhumanity we had become capable of, killed everything. I grew up (whether or not anyone was particularly aware of it) in a world without hope. It was a space of nothing but betrayal.

My peers, on the other hand, are self-supportive, cheering each other in our strange little DIY endeavors. WE were going to be the change, and WE demanded love and integrity, and WE fully expect the world to adjust.

Let me give you a more blunt example. 

In talking about my cherished piano, my very first adult relationship was with this asshole, two years older than I. He considered himself this activist. I spent hours listening to him wail and moan and demand not change in the world, but a complete collapse. Trying to ignore him, trying to be true to what I thought was the heart (because for me, then, I thought that empathy was timeless), I would hole up in my half-room and play my piano for days.

That was until he yelled at me for playing the music of the bourgeoisie. 

Clearly, this asshole was one of a kind (let's hope), but I found him to be a poignant example of post-modernism and the gen x thing. My younger friends, on the other hand, were always quick to be supportive, excited to experience that which I was willing to share.

This brings up another crucial point for me. On the cusp of post-modernism (PM)  vs pseudo-modernism,  with the PM, there was a fetishization of the author, a desperate seeking out and documentation of the 'hand'. With pseudo-modernism, the fetishization was transfered to the recipient: suddenly it's about their own personal reaction/interaction with that which they encounter.

Speaking bluntly, it didn't matter what I played, who I referenced, if I wrote it, so long as they could experience it for themselves.

I should have known then that that was the beginning of the end. If all the languages I had studied in the sole attempt to communicate empathy with the world were both "antiquated" and "bourgeois" on one side, and then "cute" and somewhat heard without reference point or even a similar jargon, then what had I been wasting 35 years on?

A mold of Chopin's hand- cystic fibrosis!

In my sheer panic, I emailed my family, asking them to think back to when they were my age. What was important to them? What would they have changed? What did they stress about that no longer matters? What should they have worried about more?

Because they were all breeders and afraid to offend me, no one said anything.

Or, they were also so scared by the reminder that me, as the oldest child (by a decent span), was actually aging- making them very old indeed.

Being a believer in history, I looked to the year 1979 specifically. Without going into the Middle East mayhem, these are some of the (what I consider) interesting things that happened the year I was born.  

Ixtoc I oil well, in the Southern Gulf of Mexico, released 600,000 tons of oil into the ocean, the largest oil spill to date.

The Sony Walkman was released in Japan.

Sid Vicious died an overdose.

President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a swamp rabbit while fishing.

The Sahara Desert experienced 30 minutes of snow.

McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal.

The Compact Disc was released.

LA passes gay and lesbian civil rights bill.

Saddam Hussein assumed the presidency.

The Small Pox vaccine is created, becoming the first of two human diseases to ever be made extinct.

Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Kmart pulls Steve Martin's "let's get small", finding it offensive.

The YMCA sues the Village People.

Pink Floyd premiers the Wall in LA.

Dukes of Hazzard airs.

The highest price ever paid for a pig happened, for $42,500 in Stamford, Texas. 

Little Richard quit Rock for Religion.

Fleetwood Mac got a Hollywood star.

And Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" and The Knack's "My Sharona" tied for first.

In San Francisco, in 1979, there were the White Night Riots in response to the lenient sentencing of the murderer of Harvey Milk. A protest that began with 500 people in the Castro ended with 5,000 at City Hall. "Out of the bars, into the streets," was the chant of Milk's best friend Clive Jones. 

"The rage in people's faces - I saw people I'd known for years, and they were so furious. That to me was the scariest thing. All these people I'd known from the neighborhood, boys from the corner, these people I'd ridden the bus with, just out there, screaming for blood."

And even since then, I'll spare you the list, but think about all the things that have happened in the past 35 years. OJ Simpson. Tianemen Square. Chernobyl. Waco. End of Apartheid. Lorena Bobbit, Oklahoma City Bombing, Mad Cow Disease, Columbine. Princess Di. The Challenger. Operation Desert Storm. The Fall of the Berlin Wall. Viagra. Hurricane Katrina. September 11th. The internet.

I've spent the last five years trying to put my finger on the gravitas of this past decade. I desperately want to understand the absolute vacuousness we, as artists and musicians (I'm sorry- I'm not pointing fingers or trying to blame anyone) are producing in such an emotionally absentee and negligent time.

Conversely, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that classical piano and oil painting will no longer effect the world. 

Van Gogh

I'm currently reading this book about a chef and her husband who moved to Italy. It's about them learning the harvest, living from farm to table, and then, the true Italian way of being. Their point, which shouldn't come as a shock, is that what else is there in life, other than the journey from the bed to the table and back again? Why complicate things when you won't be able to surpass the joy found there?

As much as I hate that I am only a waitress and I have no savings and there's no future momentum that I can fathom, as of yet, I will leave you with this wonderful sentiment.

Beautiful Birthday Flowers

From A Thousand Days in Tuscany, by Marlena De Blasi:

"'Cominciamo dal fondo. Let's begin at the beginning. St Augustine said it most clearly, We are, every one of us, going to die. Rotting is the way of all things. A tree, a cheese, a heart, a whole human chassis. Now, knowing that, understanding that, living begins to seem less important than living the way you'd like to live....

Epic birthday cake from Krysten and Isabelle

"So, life by definition, is impermanent. All the energy we spend in trying to fix it, secure it, save it, protect it, leaves damn little time for living it. Pain or death or any other pestilence doesn't pass over us because we're careful or because we have insurance, or, God forbid, because we have enough money. All right. So how does one come to understand exactly how one wants to live? How one wants to use up his time?"

"Live gracefully in plenty and live gracefully in need. Embrace them both or swindle yourself out of half a life."

Unfortunately, a very unflattering picture of all of us.

I was just a child when I thought I could help the world with beauty, and even admitting that now makes me feel like a real idiot. I've come to terms with even 'beauty' being 'dead' and that none of my languages will find receptive ears. I've also realized that it just doesn't matter. It is no longer culturally relevant to foster anything of the heart (though I'll keep rebelling). If I'm lucky enough to have friends and family (which I do!), then my life is not wanting. As for the rest of it, I've got nothing. Let's eat.

Pictures for you:

A booze filled pinata from Jessica!

He flew home in time for my birthday.

shiftless and ignorant, scoundrels and thieves- what you didn't know about dogpatch

Due to the location of my new job, I find myself in Dogpatch on a regular basis. Often, I have been asked the history. Embarrassed at my ignorance, I decided to do my homework.

The nine block San Francisco neighborhood in the Waterfront District, is revered by the National Register under two Criterion: A- Industrial and C- Exploration and Settlement. It's considered significant as a "rare surviving example of an era: a Victorian-era mixed-use industrial and residential district," a style largely destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, and, outside of West Oakland, a rare example of a "company town" founded outside of the east coast.

Most of the buildings here date from 1870-1910, but before that, this area has long been a human settlement, of course beginning with the Native Americans. 

From 1776-1821, under the Spanish rule, the area was used to graze the animals of the wealthy who lived in the Mission.

1833 brought Mexican control and a major development of ranches. Potrero Hill and Point were once Rancho Potrero de San Francisco, or Potrero Nuevo, a huge piece of property granted to the sons of Francisco de Haro.

1846 Brought US control, and by 1850, this area became a major gun-powder producer, having reached a large demand for the mining going on in the Sierras.

In 1867 the Long Bridge was created, connecting Dogpatch to downtown (a bridge which closed in the early 1900s when Mission Bay was filled). 

But with the Transcontinental Railroad bringing in cheaper products from further away, the city faced a major economic slump, ceasing development here from 1869-1883.

Nevertheless, the main employers during this critical time included Tubbs Cordage Company (rope manufacture), Union Iron Works and Bethlehem Steel.

Lately, I've been watching this silly show on Netflix called Copper and it's about this detective working in Five Points in NYC back around the time of the Civil War. It is impossible to fathom what any place may have looked like in different times, but this television show seems to come closest to what I would have suspected Dogpatch to resemble. 

The massive transforming elements the industrial revolution brought to urban areas is mind-boggling by today's standards, though we find ourselves in our own historical cultural change with the internet revolution. And again, the massive discrepancy of wage-worker versus the wealthy.

To take a more poignant cultural reference, (though I am certainly not taking this down the political rabbit hole), Upton Sinclair wrote, in The Jungle, "So long as we have wage slavery," answered Schliemann, "it matters not in the least how debasing and repulsive a task may be, it is easy to find people to perform it. But just as soon as labor is set free, then the price of such work will begin to rise. So one by one the old, dingy, and unsanitary factories will come down— it will be cheaper to build new; and so the steamships will be provided with stoking machinery , and so the dangerous trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be found for their products. In exactly the same way, as the citizens of our Industrial Republic become refined, year by year the cost of slaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually those who want to eat meat will have to do their own killing— and how long do you think the custom would survive then?"

Before Dogpatch got its name, it was referred to as Irish Hill and Dutchman's Flat, and even before that, the area was so rugged as to be almost unlivable. 

According to this great article Pier70sf.org, "Perhaps no other district was transformed to such a high degree as the Potrero District. Massive earth moving projects undertaken by the railroads and other industries gradually blasted away the eastern rampart of Potrero Hill and used the rubble to extend the industrial lands."

The San Francisco Examiner in 1889, said, "Great stretches of craggy bluffs have disappeared. Vast masses of rock have been blasted away from the hillsides and thrown upon the marshes. Thousands and thousands sunk into the depths and left no trace, but a time came at last when the vast dumping process had its effect, and the solid earth appeared above the surface. The mountain had perished and that portion it was necessary to remove so that the great manufacturers could take root and with the mountain had gone the marshes."

Working in Dogpatch and without my bicycle (thanks you lousy thief), I have to admit that even today it is a complete and utter pain to get to. I try to time it to avoid the majority of the crazies on the 48 Quintara in the morning, but then I either walk all the way home or cab it. That damned mountain is still so huge. 

A largely immigrant population, each ethnicity remained somewhat segregated. The Irish worked at Pacific Rolling Mill; The Dutchmen at Western Sugar Refinery and the Scotchmen at the Union Iron Works. 

Irish Hill consisted mainly of hotels: Green House, White House, Cash's Hotel, San Quentin House (run by Jim Gately who took in parolees and got them jobs), Paddy Kearns Hotel, Mike Boy's Steam Beer Dump.

According to the Sheriff Deputy Billy Carr in 1946, "In them days we never went to Morosco's (a vaudeville house on Mission Street)... the shows were much better on Irish Hill, where the boys from one hotel would challenge the boys from another hotel and fight all Saturday afternoon in a hay-rope ring outside Gatelys Hotel. Then we'd all go in and knock off steam beers for a nickel a piece." 

He went on to describe the beginning of residential displacement. "In them days, there was never a street paved. You went through the mud to school. If you wanted to go to Butchertown you walked a plank from 23rd Street to Arthur Avenue... But the war (WWII) came along and the Government drove us off Irish Hill. Eight or nine hundred people used to live here."

This wasn't the first or last time residents have been pushed out. Directly after the dot com boom, people were flooding the area. In 2013, due to even more draw, artists were being kicked out, as rents were suddenly being raised 50%. As the city currently talks about creating more affordable housing, it reminds me of why half of the surviving structures in Dogpatch date from 1890-1900.

John Cotter Pelton, chief architect (and one who shares my birthday!) created "Cheap Dwellings" here. At the industrial peak, wage workers were making a tiny bit more, enough to start contemplating buying houses. Ranging from $500-800, depending on amenities and the amount of rooms, workers could buy seemingly identical homes, many of which still dot Tennessee Street. 

"Pelton's 'Cheap Dwellings' series represented the first and only known instance in which a California architect published free plans for workers' dwellings in a daily newspaper."

According to Wikipedia, Dogpatch got it's name right around WWII as a reference to the large packs of dogs that would eat the scraps from Butchertown (now Bayview) and from a Li'l Abner term, referring to underdeveloped backwater, "nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere."

Al Capp, writer of Li'l Abner describes the residents of his Dogpatch: "Most Dogpatchers were shiftless and ignorant, the remainder were scoundrels and thieves. The menfolk were too lazy to work, yet Dogpatch gals were desperate enough to chase them."

Famous residents of this strange place include the San Francisco chapter of the Hells Angels.

Before I leave you with pictures, I wanted to share some more information I stumbled upon regarding my last entry. 

During the plans for the Midwinter Fair, the planners were trying to come up with some kind of transportation for the masses. George Marsh announced the plan to have 75 rickshaws, called 'jinrikshas'. "...San Francisco's outraged Japanese community formed an Anti-Jinrikisha Society. It pronounced that it was acceptable for Japanese to pull people around in Japan, but in America such a job was suitable only for horses and was an insult to the emperor. 

"The society said that any Japanese who pulled a rickshaw would be killed. Marsh got around the problem by hiring Germans, darkening their faces and dressing them in Oriental garb."

Dogpatch Photos

abandon all hope, ye who enter here

Despite the size of the heart, sometimes intention just isn't enough.

This week has been full of massive declarations, explosions, creation, and solitude. I haven't appropriately adventured in a good while. And in meditating on this week's entry and analyzing my newest painting, I kept finding myself overrun with the desire to make everything even more beautiful than before. 

As a child, I was told that as long as you leave this place better than you found it, that you are honest with your heart, that you give love freely and openly, you will have lived a good life. But then, there's reality again, the small things that still manage to bog us down.

"Out of work, I'm out of my head

Out of self- respect,

I'm out of bread,

Under loved and underfed,

I wanna go home...

It never rains in California, 

But, girl, don't they warn ya,

It pours, man, it pours." (Maupin)

But I'm not alone. Again, San Francisco, in it's self-love and constant celebration, has a few stories of people trying to create places of wonder. I'm thinking specifically of Playland-at-the-Beach, Woodward's Gardens and the Midwinter Fair.

From 1866-1891, San Francisco could boast a wonderful attraction; part zoo, amusement park, museum and garden. Before this, in 1849, Robert Woodward opened the What Cheer House hotel, one of the largest hotels in the city. Housing a bunch of sailors and world travelers, people would leave trinkets behind out of gratitude. It was these trinkets which induced him to begin what later became a massive collection from all over the world.

"Over the years, San Francisco locals became so intrigued by his mysterious home, that they would often attempt to get an invitation inside. It became such a popular idea that in 1883 the San Francisco Examiner wrote, 'Woodward realized that it was only a question of being pestered forever or quietly throwing open his place."

The property was located between 13th and 15th streets, Mission and Valencia. He even built a tunnel (could it still be there?) that went under 14th street so people wouldn't have to cross traffic. 

It was the largest zoo on the West Coast and animals roamed freely through the property.  "Woodward's goal was to keep the animals in as natural of a setting as possible, and he made a lot of effort to keep the bars and confining small cages to a minimum. There were also hundreds of stuffed taxidermy animals on display at the various indoor buildings, as well as a selection of animal 'curiosities' - including a five-legged dog and a calf with two heads.'"

In 1873, he opened one of the the first aquariums in the world, and then the West Coast's largest skating rink. You could ride a hot air balloon, or ride the Rotary Boat - a merry-go kind of ride with a boat in a small lake. "The gardens also boasted one of the few Edison phonographs, advertised as 'an instrument so wonderful in its powers that it not only repeats the human language as distinctly as a man, but also imitates the peculiarity of the voice uttering it.'"

Eventually, it was closed due to "odors and horrible noises." At an auction, there was little public interest, allowing Adolph Sutro to buy the bulk of it, putting his purchases on display at Sutro Baths. 

In 1894, in direct response to the economic slump, the "Panic of 1893", the city decided to host a World's Fair, the California Midwinter International Exposition; the brain child of M.H. de Young. Golden Gate Park Superintendent John McLaren fought the fair, claiming that the environmental effects on Golden Gate Park would take decades to rectify...

According to FoundSF, "More than a hundred buildings were erected around the Central Plaza. Among them were the Moorish Village, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Vienna Prater and the Turkish Village (which featured an erotic dancer known as Little Egypt)."

De Young, having gone to Chicago for the White City World's Fair exhibit (the one in which Ferris presented his wheel, Frank Lloyd Wright stretched his architectural prowess, and America's first serial killer, H.H. Holmes built his macabre hotel of torture), he came back inspired, ready to show the world the majesty of California. 

Sadly, everything but a few things were destroyed: the de Young (remodeled), the Japanese Tea Garden and the Dore Vase (brought by de Young from the Chicago's fair), still dot the Music Concourse.

"When Golden Gate park wasn't restored, as had been promised, John McLaren had his revenge. His men tore down the buildings and sold the lumber. They dynamited Bonet's Tower and sold the metal as scrap. McLaren kept the proceeds for the park improvement fund. Makoto Hagiwara's Japanese Village made a deep impression on McLaren. He asked that Hagiwara make the village a permanent  part of Golden Gate Park. Hagiwara obliged and the Japanese Tea Garden was born. Hagiwara and his family cared for the garden until 1942 when the federal government ordered the family into a relocation camp."

Finally, the greatest gift intended for the city (and the longest surviving endeavor), Playland-at-the-Beach got it's start in 1913, with Shoot the Chutes. Before that, the area was a 19th century squatter's settlement, "Mooneysville by the Sea."  In 1913, Arthur Looff leased the land for his carousel, Loof Hippodrome (now located at Yerba Buena). He and John Friedle tried creating "The grandest amusement park on the Pacific Coast."

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "by 1921 the owners had spent $150,000 to produce ten spectacular new rides ('clean, safe, moral attractions') which were open from noon to midnight every day." 

1923 brought George Whitney and his photographic process that allowed people to take their photos home the same day, as opposed to the more common form of having to wait weeks. By 1926, he was making enough money to start buying the Playland, piece by piece, eventually including the Cliff House and the Sutro estate. 

Open until Labor Day Weekend of 1972,  Playland produced several legendary San Francisco relics. As previously mentioned there was the carousel. There was Laffing Sal (now permanently housed at the Musee Mechanique), the Camera Obscura building, and Topsy's Roost restaurant (now closed). The most notable (if you ask me) is the invention of the It's It, an ice cream treat only available at Playland until the late 1960s.

Having grown up in the South Bay, I went to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a lot as a kid. Even then, I remember thinking the place run down and shabby, especially in comparison with Great America and their whirlwind, death-defying rides. Even still, I can't envision any of these things. World's Fairs are obsolete, eccentric wealthy people certainly don't enjoy sharing with the world anymore, and in sitting on the freezing sand at Ocean Beach, it's almost impossible to imagine the place lined with shops and rides.

At it's peak, Sutro had installed his train and had opened his baths, hoping to bring many people in for cheap. At Playland, you had your choice of restaurants, including an upscale roadhouse restaurant inside the Cliff House, and the aforementioned Topsy's Roost. This restaurant was designed in such a way, that each booth mimicked a chicken coop. In the center was a dance floor, and should you wish to dance, you took a slide from the second floor balcony directly to the dance floor. 

Granted, this was all before technology. Society has become so sophisticated to be bored by such spectacles. And yet, I think of the haunted houses...

One of Sutro's purchases from the Midwinter Fair was a Mystic Maze and the Haunted Swing which he put on display at the baths. Whitney opened a fun house at Playland that was exactly replicated at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk until being torn down in 1983. Even at the Midwinter Fair there was Dante's Inferno, "who's 'Jaws of Death' entrance easily swallowed the tallest of visitors along with their bowlers."

"Abandon all Hope, ye who Enter Here."

Perhaps I shouldn't bitch about the botched efforts of these "entertainers", for they created such monumental memories and relics that still pepper San Francisco culture. I'm just saddened by the idea that as technology continues, our sense of adventure and play keeps dwindling. And that, despite all of my attempts at bringing a simple beauty to life, it just isn't enough.

But that's not true. It always takes one visionary to steer a new course for the rest of the world to mimic. 

Some photos for you: