New Rules

What the hell? This was my first thought as I read the top headline in the SFist on Wednesday morning. It read, "New Rules for Bay to Breakers". The "new rules" apparently will include a "zero tolerance policy on alcohol" and "no wheeled objects and floats". What will this perennially fabulous event on May 17th be like without these three crucial elements? Will it now become like all of the other cookie-cutter, corporatized marathons around the country? Will it only involve the countless numbers of ultra-fit ladies and gents of San Francisco and no the multitudes of others? What will become of the delightful costume-wearing, heavy-drinking, mardi-grass-esque crowd that makes this event so unique?

Last year, I ran in the race. Mind you, I didn't run the whole thing, but I started at Fell and Oak and ran through the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach. I wasn't in costume, but I certainly wasn't registered. I wouldn't be caught dead running in the name of ING! On our way back out of the park, I became immersed in the countless floats, push carts beer kegs, and sequins. It was simply awesome! There was even a beautiful shirtless man with a massive snake around his neck. My what a marvelous spectacle it all was! Please, don't destroy it in the name of NIMBY-ism and seamless online banking.

Running is meant to be fun. That is how I have always approached it. Endless competition drowns people and makes them more and more mechanized. This obsession of countless twenty- and thirty-somethings with training for a marathon seems bizarre and unhealthy to me. I feel like so many of them do this as a form of name-dropping. They can now say, "I finished in the top 100 at the Boston Marathon" and "Did you see me running through Central Park in (yes) the ING New York City Marathon?"

Perhaps these new regulations are ING's way of saying, we just don't stand for idleness or revelry. We want you all timing yourselves with those preposterous little timers on your feet, we want you pinning a number on your chest, we want more hamsters spinning around in their wheels.

Transcontinentalism

Flying across the continent (this time from SF to NY) last Saturday provided me with the ultimate time out. This is especially true because I forgot to bring a book, and as a result was stuck listening to the the usual iPod playlist that he listens to nearly every day.


The quasi-silence was most welcome at this particular moment. The familiar mix of Rogue Wave, Buena Vista Social Club, and Death Cab for Cutie accompanied the gentle purple stream clouds over Iowa (I think), and my restless brain was put at ease. Suddenly, however, in my half-awake slumber, I realized that I had just scribbled a massive clump of black ink on my left hand. Immediately, I looked at my hand and thought, "Oh shit, what a mess I've put myself in". Seeping through the circuitous lines of black, a few skin-toned strands try to get through. They are overwhelmed and as I looked at them they seemed to sink deeper beneath the black.

The clouds were still drifting calmly below us - perhaps we are over Illinois now? I looked down and sought solace in their gentleness, their radiant simplicity.

Somehow when one is allowed to wrestle with a complicated situation and figure out a new way to approach it, perhaps there is no better place than a plane. You are literally above it all - or as the Carpenters would say, "Your on the top of the world looking down on creation".

In any city, even the most calming and beautiful of cities, distractions abound. People are restlessly searching and contemplating their next move. This is true in their careers, their social lives, but perhaps most unfortunately - it is true with love.

What I am wrestling with now requires many next moves. Much advice, greater understanding, and mutual exploration. Oh, how I want this! Will I get it? These are unanswered questions down below, but up here they dissipate, anf seem to float away with the now purple-hued clouds beneath me.

The blanket of clouds continued to darken. The wing turned black. Gotham was now only an hour away. Spoon started to blast "I Summon You" through my earphones. How do I summon you?

The song continued, "Remember the weight of the world is a sound that we used to buy." Yes, I have bought this particular sound too many times for a man of 26. Should I continue to consume such heavy-hearted feelings?

Suddenly, the stewardesses started coming down the aisle asking, "coffee, soda, juice. I felt like some OJ.

Ella Fitzgerald's, "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" squashed the repetitive beverage service calls. Suddenly, I felt transported to a Manhattan autumn, straight out of a Woody Allen movie - maybe Hannah and Her Sisters. So beautiful.

As we descended into JFK, the wing and the outside world became one - darkness completely consumed us. I felt stronger, more inspired. I really don't know why. Do I suddenly know everything that I am supposed to do? No, not at all. Yet as the black and white hues became one I was reminded that this world is filled with gray areas. We are not creatures of distinct colors or lines but many shades. Always seeking the next move is futile. Embracing the experience is key.

Sometimes you just have to get above it all to remember that.

Parakeets over San Francisco

Terraced above the city like parakeets on a massive snake-like perch,characters in this section of Dolores Park is always so full of personality and intrigue. Just now there are two men off to my left mysteriously sitting in the growing afternoon shade. They are talking about their budding love interests of the previous week. They speak with excitement and exasperation as if nobody else is around. This sort of conversation is perhaps the most common topic among this cadre.

Two guys, a couple I assume, just sat in front of them. As they slowly unpack their food, I feel and hear my stomach slowly grumble. Apparently Wispa crackers and peanut butter did not suffice for a full lunch. The J-train rolls by. Their voices are soft. Oh, how I wished I had better ears.

Giving up on this duo, my attention drifts to the loudest voice among these birds. Two rather large acquaintances off to my left. Their earlier conversation focused on getting laid off, going to the Obama inauguration, and Wells Fargo web analytics. Though very clear and annunciation (apparently one of them is in the gay mens choir), I don't find their conversation too captivating. Why must he have such a punctuating decibel?

In front of me, slightly to my left sits a silent reader like myself. His hair is long, black and unkempt. He must be close to forty because he is going gray above the ears. More than anything he reminds me of the men in the 70s band, America. How my father loves that band. He would listen to the LPs for days on end.

Ouch, he just looked back with the most annoyed and slightly horrified look. He really carries himself more like Anthony Kiedis. Somehow, my daydreaming of him singing "Sister Golden Hair Surprise" seems in vain.

Now the two soft-talkers behind me starts to speak up. Of curse, they are talking about shopping for something. One of them wants to buy a new coat with a fur hood from Saks Fifth Avenue. May I remind you this is during a 75 degree afternoon in San Francisco. Oh, please stifle yourself a bit you two. They oblige as if responding to my telepathic demand.

As the shopping conversation dissipates, a beautiful woman perches herself over to my right. She gently strokes her left earring, and then checks her PDA device, seemingly in one fell swoop.

Perhaps she is waiting for someone. No she is definitely a bird on a wire. Her face is so lonely. She misses her lover whoever her (or she) is. She has that ambivalent Scarlett Johanssen look on her face. So carefree, yet so fragile. I see this look on so many young women as of late. Their eyes are constantly searching, and they look bewildered and somewhat fatigued by what they are seeing.

She checks her PDA almost non-stop, and after each check, she throws the innocent device into her bag, then pulls it back out again. This cycle repeats itself a couple of times over the next ten minutes. Finally, she takes a breath and holds the Blackberry in her palm. She clutches it. It is her only connection to him, and it is still in her control. She has the power, but she will not exert it. She looks very afraid.

Finally, defeated, she tosses it back into the bag. This time it is pushed deep into the bottom of her satchel. She pulls out a book and puts on a pair of Jackie O sunglasses. How despondent she seems. Today's quest for love and intimacy is lost. Her book becomes a Berlin Wall between her and the outside world.

The soft-talkers are now cackling loudly. They are immersed in meaningless text-messages. Next to them, a tall man is putting his shirt back on. I see his silhouette in front of me, but as I look back the 3:30 sun shoots out at me and all of my fellow birds. The silhouette is joined by so many. At all points on my compass people now leave as the sun's rays pull back behind Twin Peaks.

A gently chilling wind lifts my wings and pushes me off my perch. I bid adieu to my fellow fair-feathered friends.

Time to Pretend

One of the greatest pre-Christmas activities has to be walking along railroad tracks in between shopping excursions. Last Tuesday, I stumbled across this nondescript old warehouse along the Monongahela River on Pittsburgh's South Side, a neighborhood so rich in industrial history that it's literally like biting into a chocolate truffle to go exploring there.


Can't see it? Ok, Mr. Demille he's ready for his closeup.


For whatever reason, the scene just grabbed me. I thought of my September post on Bollywood Escapism. Would one consider this act of obviously planned graffiti an act of American Escapism?

Then my mind drifted to the subject of the artwork - that beautiful sunny country. I thought of being on the Costa del Sol at age 15. The sight of the blistering sun still floods my memory whenever I think of that trip. Was this what the artist intended to convey? Regardless, this was the effect - most people think of Spain (even if they have never been there) as a sunny place, far removed from the often bleak landscape of America's Rustbelt, England's Midlands Region, or Germany's Ruhr Valley. Yet, here it was spelled out before me - why?

We Americans love to escape so much, perhaps even more than Indians or Europeans. We have overdeveloped a peninsular swamp (Florida), created whole government agencies (NASA), and even built a desert emerald city (Las Vegas) for this purpose. Perhaps it was this strain of Americana that brought us Spain along the Mon Valley.

Looking east beyond the warehouse, I snapped the tracks continuing under the Tenth Street Bridge. This bridge has always given me the ultimate yellow brick road feeling, and I thought if these tracks stretched in a perfect trajectory across the Atlantic, they would take me back to Malaga and those warm sands of ten years ago.

Sidewalks of NYC: Little Italy Revisited

How little can Little Italy get? No, it is not completely obliterated like the former Lower East Side Jewish neighborhood to its east. It seems, however, that New York's Little Italy is living up to its name more and more with each passing year. Mulberry Street (pictured c.1900 at right), the neighborhood's historic main drag seems at present to be the only street in the once massive neighborhood. The neighborhood once encompassed over 50 city blocks, stretching from the Bowery to the east, Lafayette St. to the West, Bleecker St. to the north, and Bayard St. to the south.

In the 1920s the area was acclaimed for its strong cohesiveness, familial relationships, and vibrant street market. Perhaps it was these factors that kept Mulberry St. itself so intact while the Grand St. nerve center went into decline. Today the street has lost much of its marketplace image, but the Italian feel is still very much there. It is filled with restaurants and no shops seem to cater to the neighborhood's residents. In a way the street seems to be living on as a memorial to its former self. The streets surrounding it evoke a decidedly Asian-American feel.

Sidewalks of NYC: Lower East Side

The Lower East Side, according to the 1923 tour book, is the area east of the Bowery and south of 10th St. The author strangely refers to this area as simply, "the Ghetto". So the author described several ethnic neighborhoods in the book, so I did not understand why he described just one of them, the then primarily Eastern European Jewish one, as "the Ghetto". The term ghetto, after all, in modern use seems to refer to any neighborhood that is occupied primarily by any ethnic minority. Then I learned that prior to World War II the term "ghetto" was used almost exclusively to refer to Jewish neighborhoods. In fact the first "ghetto" was the walled Venetian Ghetto in Italy. Ghetto is the Italian word for "foundry". Lesson learned.

In the 1920s the neighborhood was described as, "everywhere, Yiddish signs, Yiddish newspapers, Yiddish beards and wigs". One of the neighborhood's main drags, Hester St. is described as being "alive with pushcarts where everything is sold on the sidewalks from pins to fur coats".

While there certainly are several neighborhood in Brooklyn where such a scene can be had, the Lower East Side is certainly not one of them. All of the signs are either in Chinese or Vietnamese now. Hester St. does not boast such a lively scene - the pushcarts seem to have been replaced by cell phone stores and the southern end of the street, west of the Bowery has been taken over by a massive, extremely ugly public school that look like it's right out of A Clockwork Orange.

The author makes the several blocks bounded by the Bowery to the west, Allen St. to the east, Grand St. to the north, and Hester St. to the south, as the nerve center of the neighborhood. Allen St. (pictured below), which at that time had an elevated rail line running above it, is called, "a virtual tunnel of a street" and as the "home of little brass shops, and in its basement and dingy stores ... one can find charming Russian candlesticks, samovars, and andirons (horizontal bars for fireplaces)". Today Allen St. feels almost suburban - the elevated tracks are gone, and the boulevard the tree-lined boulevard that has replaced seems like it would be more at home in Nassau County than in Manhattan.


The neighborhood is vastly disappointing, and not because it has changed hands from one ethnic group to another, but because it just seems so irrelevant now, like an outpost, a few secondary commercial streets to stop off for some fruit on one's way home from the subway to the many high-rises that tower along the East River. It is an outgrowth of the ever expanding Chinatown, with eastern Canal St as its verve center. The Bowery which clearly divided the Jewish enclave from its western neighbor, Little Italy is simply a large Chinatown street. This section of the city seems so balkanized in the 1923 description that it was difficult for me to feel as if I was in the same place. As I was walking from what had been fairly WASP-ish, to what was extremely Italian, and finally wholeheartedly Jewish in 1923, it seemed strange to be immersed in a remarkably homogeneous Asian-American neighborhood.

SF Dreaming

So I am missing SF big time. Perhaps it's because I just saw Milk last night, but more likely it's that I've been away since Thanksgiving. I saw this sunrise-sunset tilt-shift on a sister blog Mission Mission and my heart skipped a beat. Enjoy!


Dawn and dusk in mini San Francisco from captin nod on Vimeo.