Forget the nose, overlook the weak chin: Market Street is in possession of a most regal forehead.
“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche on the San Francisco rental market
San Franciscans who cross the Bay to take pictures of their city are like pretty girls who prefer you wear mirrored glasses. All the better to see you, my darling.
Was lucky enough to be asked to share an origin story for SF Curbed’s compelling Rental Week coverage. Next I hope we get a look into everyone’s closets.
In this episode, Lt. Mike Stone makes a pretty girl cry.
Our Fair City, By Charles Raudebaugh
“The good Dr. Pangloss, in demonstration of his thesis that this is the best of all possible worlds, argued that since we had stockings, legs were made to fit them. The beldam, San Francisco, sitting in her red plush box at the opera, agrees with a sly wink. She pinches her snuff, scratches a fleabite, adjusts her whalebone neckband, folds her hands, and goes to sleep as the curtain rises.
Is it not so that since the days of the mud paths before gold was discovered the streets of San Francisco have always been poor and inadequate? Housing insufficient? No space for merchants? Municipal government poor? Is this not San Francisco? From Telegraph Hill you can see hundreds of ships in the Bay; they are here because there has been a war. Pouf! There were as many ships in the Bay when the Gold Rush was on.
Yes, it perhaps was a little indelicate of the old United Railroads to send its representative so openly to the City Hall with his cardboard suit box of cash to pay off the Board of Supervisors for a street railway franchise. But that was nearly forty years ago, and wasn’t Abe Ruef sent to prison? (Poor Abe, he was such a charming fellow!) Things are better ordered now. Payoffs aren’t made out of cardboard boxes. Noting as crude as that. So, let us listen to the opera. San Francisco is a city of great culture, you know. We had such a difficult time getting the people to approve the money for the Opera House. It was only four million dollars and you’d think they did not want to build a memorial to their War Dead. (Wonder what kind of memorial they want for the latest war?) But they came along eventually. Never mind the streets. Let’s enjoy the music.”
Ours is a city that fancies itself so special that it demands placement in a jewel box, upon a bed of softest cotton. A cold jewel, if it’s anything, and no one’s sure it’s real.
Notes for the lonely: you will never have so many friends as when you walk Market Street with a softserve on a spitting winter’s day.
I love my insolent, hidebound, bankrupt city; the one that everyone leaves but longs to return to: someday, someday!
Don’t get any ideas about them waiting for a buggy taxi.
Boo Radley’s house is for sale. You totally can’t afford it.
A reward to the wandering types. Blackberries may be past their season out there, though.
This is what the situation looked like atop blackberry brambles and grass seeded socks. A real Wayne Thiebaud, it was.
It is a little-known fact that in 19th century San Francisco, pigeons were fed munitions by the kindly gentry. The obvious result was that the birds tended to spontaneously erupt into flame. Surely you have seen a pigeon flattened by traffic and shuddered; just imagine the incendiary horror of one of these winged wretches bearing down on you.
Nowadays we know better and feed pigeons whatever paper clips or loose change we have in our pockets and can congratulate ourselves on our progress. But never forget! This flag pays heed to a cautionary tale of conflagration.
I have friends who make it to the Gold Dust Lounge every week. I managed a good once-a-month back when I lived in the neighborhood. You tell tourists not to go to the Wharf, send them to see a show at Hemlock, and in general provide good will. In return, you get to be surrounded by people who are on vacation, people happy to not be at work or driving between concrete blocks and aluminum siding. Remember what it means to be an outsider, to not know the city’s a grid and it’s actually impossible to get lost (unless you end up in the Excelsior).
Also, point out when someone’s about to step in puke and they’ll thank you for it.
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