My San Francisco is a series of posts that describes my own personal relationship with The City. My San Francisco pieces might be photo essays; they might be life stories or they could be commentaries. They might be a combination of some or all three. My impressions won’t necessarily be paeans to San Francisco; it’s a beautiful city that often dons an ugly mask. These pieces will always have one common theme; they are my expressions of my personal San Francisco experience.
Fourth Street between Mission and Market Streets in San Francisco’s downtown is a crowded, frantic place that moves at a breakneck pace. Walking up Fourth towards Market you find that there’s really no straight line so you zig zag your way through the darting crowd. You don’t stroll here; neither do you meander or shuffle; you simply let yourself get caught up in the swirling, boiling maelstrom of people who have places to go and had to get there yesterday.
You’re walking north-ish and once you’ve snaked your way through the rushing throng to Market Street you’ve arrived. This is the main channel that carries the fleets of busses above and the subway trains below; all expelling the masses, the schools of humanity into the urban sea. Market is the eye of the public storm. It’s the grand stage, the center ring, the headliner of the show; the place where you can catch the diversity, the poverty and riches and the clean and corrupt. Here’s where, with a single glance you can catch sight of the charm and the misery, and the plain and eccentric. It’s all here, The City in a nutshell, or as visitors from the less avant-garde climes might call it, just plain nutty. Take any random afternoon:
- Smack on the corner of Fourth and Market sits a big red canopy. It’s Annie’s hot dog stand where Annie, or more likely one of her minions, is doing a brisk business selling hot dogs, pretzels and other salty grub. Between customers Annie, or more likely one of her minions, is immersed in her cell phone, oblivious to the hastening multitudes that churn around her. She caters to a wide range of the urban herd that stampedes past; shoppers, tourists and that businessman who’s careful to skip the mustard in favor of avoiding a stained tie. All except the wheelchair bound man parked next to the canopy. Like many of The City’s unfortunates he holds a worn cardboard sign that asks for a handout and wishes you the blessings of the god who’s abandoned him.
- A few feet away from the hot dog stand a guy is running a shell game. Look, there’s a winner. He picked the shell hiding the pea. The man behind the shells hands the player a wad of money and they play again. The operator swishes the shells around and when he stops the player picks the correct shell and collects another wad of bills. The player’s skill is amazing. He makes it look easy, and it is easy if you’re a shill and nothing is really won or lost. This player isn’t here to play, he’s hard at work; bait to attract the minnows to the shark’s jaws. He’s looking for the gullibles who think they can beat the game that can’t be beat; to strike it rich on a downtown city street. One of the shell guy’s crew approaches me and gives me a friendly but ominous warning to refrain from taking pictures. Understandable I guess. If you’re running an illegal shell game you probably don’t want your image taken.
- On the other side of Fourth Street a small crowd sways to a trio playing some lively blues and further on a Michael Jackson impersonator twirls, moonwalks and lip syncs to recordings of the King of Pop. He’s good at his craft but let’s face it – he looks kinda creepy.
- A pair of Hispanic women peddle bacon wrapped hot dogs cooked over a small propane grill. From the looks of it, their little operation doesn’t have the city’s official stamp of approval but that doesn’t matter to the customers who stop for a dog and a soda. The smell at this tiny operation is much more enticing than the smell coming from Annie’s big red tent; these two ladies have bacon. It’s that heavenly and seductive siren of bacon and sausage on a grill and it takes all the willpower I can muster to keep from buying. After all what could be better than nitrites wrapped in yet more nitrites. Pork fat rules, baby!
The Life in My Years 