Seven years ago, the museum where I was working as a temp opened in its new digs. Da Mayor, Willie Brown, was pulling a big cord in a dramatic reveal of the building while traffic was getting shut down on the other side of the plaza by several thousand protestors.  I was working inside, feeling conflicted, remembering that I was in high school for the last Gulf War, equally conflicted and far more disconnected.     For a couple nights, when I left work, I’d marvel at how I spent my days surrounded by 6000 years of history and San Francisco philanthropists only to confront another kind of history in the phalanxes of riot police marching down Polk Street.    Here’s another view, one that reminds me of a friend who had gotten arrested in Seattle when things got a bit rough there.  I believe he was wearing a suit, as well.   generic1: ihatethismess: warispeace: SFPD arrest a protestor on March 21, 2003 at a demonstration against the war in Iraq I wish I knew why this moment of civil disobedience irks me so much. I guess it’s the dead weight thing—as if most of the cops on the SFPD didn’t hate the Iraq War as much as we all did. 99.99% of the arrests were peaceable, unlike Señor Drama here. We filled up the jails. They had to use the piers for overflow. The cops handed out sandwiches. I traded a ham & cheese for a PB&J from a 40 year-old mom. I was wearing a suit. Most of us were trying to make a point to the media, the White House and our fellow countrymen. We weren’t there to play games with the guy in riot gear who was already pulling in overtime.
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Seven years ago, the museum where I was working as a temp opened in its new digs. Da Mayor, Willie Brown, was pulling a big cord in a dramatic reveal of the building while traffic was getting shut down on the other side of the plaza by several thousand protestors.  I was working inside, feeling conflicted, remembering that I was in high school for the last Gulf War, equally conflicted and far more disconnected.    

For a couple nights, when I left work, I’d marvel at how I spent my days surrounded by 6000 years of history and San Francisco philanthropists only to confront another kind of history in the phalanxes of riot police marching down Polk Street.   

Here’s another view, one that reminds me of a friend who had gotten arrested in Seattle when things got a bit rough there.  I believe he was wearing a suit, as well.  

generic1:

ihatethismess: warispeace:

SFPD arrest a protestor on March 21, 2003 at a demonstration against the war in Iraq

I wish I knew why this moment of civil disobedience irks me so much. I guess it’s the dead weight thing—as if most of the cops on the SFPD didn’t hate the Iraq War as much as we all did. 99.99% of the arrests were peaceable, unlike Señor Drama here. We filled up the jails. They had to use the piers for overflow.

The cops handed out sandwiches. I traded a ham & cheese for a PB&J from a 40 year-old mom. I was wearing a suit. Most of us were trying to make a point to the media, the White House and our fellow countrymen. We weren’t there to play games with the guy in riot gear who was already pulling in overtime.

Source: warispeace

May I suggest?

Go for a walk down 6th Street when the weather turns hot.  Residence hotels spill their populace onto the street, all trash-talking and judgmental of passers-by (“Lookin’ good, sweetheart…And you: you a wannabe yuppie!”). 

If you stop by Passion Cafe, the two amazingly sweet owners might take you on a tour of the newly-turned out space, 100-year old wood floors and proper marble counters.  Most of the staff are hires from around the neighborhood, giving some backbone to all the talk of ‘community’ on that street.  I haven’t even eaten there and I’m in love with the place.  

Need a new place, since the roaches at TuLan grew too bold and started crawling on the tables to beg, making them the squirrels of the insect world. 

What is it

about de rigeur holidays that irk me so?  Is it that I lived in the Richmond for over five years, and after that, Lower Nob Hill for four, three of which were spent over a Polk Street bar?

Think I just answered myself.  Wonder if the cops still put barricades out on Geary to keep revelers from falling into the street?

Oh yeah, I know what the problem is: it’s WEDNESDAY and I can’t go to a bar.

The San Francisco Green Card

The story behind it is simple: I’m not from here, but have lived here long enough to say that I’m a San Franciscan.  I’d joke, when only here for a few years but already steeped in history, that after ten years I could apply for my green card.
Having come from a city where no one was a native—people moved there to become something—I was an anomaly.  Here, I was just another emigré, lucky to have made it this far.

This is a city where people move for so many reasons: because it holds promise or challenge (and often more of both than they’d like); because it is not New York; and that most ridiculous but most true reason of all—because it is beautiful.  Every city has a mythology, but at times it’s more apparent here than anywhere else I’ve lived. 

Anyhow—click on the link above, and download your own Green Card and swear yourself in, and send feedback to the site in the form of pictures and questions.  I’ll be happy to explain the various elements of the card, as a few people I encountered over the weekend were unfamiliar with both Caen and Norton.  There’s some argument about whether that’s a pomegranate or an opium poppy pod above the Emperor’s head; discuss.