With this I offer a title that reminds me of Herb Caen, a columnist in the now almost defunct San Francisco Chronicle, who once wrote breezy pieces full of unconnected anecdotes, heavy on atmospherics of this hilly town. And there’s the Mamas and Papas‘ song of the same name, which could be described as just as breezy, and of the same era. Which happens to be my era. And otherwise, who cares?
I do care about what comes back to me from that time. Because memory is highly selective and creates a significant narrative, if one gives it a chance. Zoom has connected me with a random collection of people I knew, or vaguely knew, in high school. We assemble fortnightly. The locations span North America, from Mexico to Canada. There’s no format. And there’s noconsistent thread, except this reconstruction of our somewhat shared pasts.
Greg Lowe. I mentioned his name last night during our Zoom, and someone began crying. And the tears are understandable. Greg was a serious jazz musician, someone who lived in San Francisco in the mid-1960s and died there. I only know a little of his murder but well recall the shock. He died a couple of years before my shooting. And what I recall, imagine, and project about him tells me something about those times, these times, and myself through it all.
I knew from a white suburban high school in Southern California. It’s easy to imagine Greg living in an apartment in hippy era San Francisco. The place was probably relatively cheap and old. Amenities were few. But the city was full of foment and creativity. How many jazz clubs were there in North Beach? How many musicians in a town that had sparked several genres of rock within a few years? It was the right place to be, and the wrong place for someone who, like me, had a rather sheltered small-town and suburban background. Greg must have let a stranger into his apartment. Or maybe it wasn’t a stranger, this person who killed him. I wasn’t ready for the strangers who shot and paralyzed me. I guess none of us were ready for life, perhaps a universal experience.
In a year in which 500,000 Americans, more actually, have died from COVID-19, a bit of mourning is in order. At least a bit of acknowledgment. Yet something else was in the air yesterday in the Mission District here in San Francisco. It was joy. Getting my second vaccination against the plague was a wonderful milestone. But there was more. A venture of UC San Francisco Medical Center and various community groups had materialized around the 24th St. BART station. The tiny station parking lot was closed to cars and open to the neighborhood and beyond the neighborhood. The whole thing was beautifully organized. Text messages to remind me. A bunch of people on site who knew exactly what was happening with whom and when. Register here. Wait here. Get your shot there. Then hang out for 15 minutes while we observe you.
And everyone speaks English and Spanish and Cantonese at these Covid-19 vaccination sites around town. In the Mission District this is as it should be. The neighborhood has been evolving from Irish to Mexican to central American for more than half a century. Now the Hispanic population is getting pushed out, of course, San Francisco being what it is. I don’t like this. Mission District restaurants were my haunt during grad school in the 1970s. And more recently pre-plague, I frequently wandered into the Nicaraguan restaurant near the station for wonderful food made by a family, most of us sitting at long, shared tables. Papusas stuffed with a flower blossom. Platanos fritos. It’s all there. Everyone speaks Spanish. Everyone is welcome. This not terribly affluent restaurant is the only one in that neighborhood which actually has an automatic door opener for wheelchair users like me.
And now on a very breezy and cold San Francisco Day I am sitting outside watching the awnings blow around the vaccination center in the parking lot. I can’t see anyone’s faces behind their masks. But most people have Hispanic names on their plastic tags. And these are my neighbors, people I never see close up. People I never see in charge. They are in charge. And this is how it should be. And the whole thing, the possible relief from death and disease…with less powerful, frequently forgotten, people coming to the fore. The neighborhood acting like a neighborhood, everyone here for one purpose. Life.
Monday, Monday.