Friday, September 30th, 2005
I'm skinny. It feels anti-American to be this skinny. I turn my back on the
bounty of my Mother-land? Slap the partially
hydrogenated breast away? Our Marines fought and died to make this country free,
and I hardly eat? We are a successful
nation, and I look like a beggar? A victim of malnutrition? It isn't right!
It GOD-DAMN for SURE isn't right! I need a
milkshake!, my grandmother says. It hurts her to see me this way.
Thursday, September 29th, 2005
Dateline-San Francisco
"People don't respect The City anymore. This has become a Mecca of clowns."
The cop on duty wasn't so thrilled with the snow jump built over Vallejo Street
(White people say Va-lay-ho). 18 wheelers
were loaded with four foot blocks of ice fed into shredders from a conveyor
belt that blew the snow down two blocks of
Fillmore Street in the Marina District. These are steep steep hills with gorgeous
Bay views and brick mansions lining the streets.
Thousands were now jammed along the sidewalks on one of the hottest days of
the year, climbing up fences and standing on
planters to get a better view of the skiers and snowboarders.
"These people come to entertain themselves, they have no respect for the
people who live here. Go raise Hell in your town,"
the officer concluded.
"Was that stupid?" I asked more people as they left the barricaded area.
"No way, it was cool. Insane. Sick."
That's the answer you'd expect from a young white kid with an "Element"
skateboard shirt on. But what about this older
guy with a manicured salt and pepper beard and Hawaiian shirt on?
"It was spectacular,” he said, then hesitated. “It's a nice neighborhood, but I wouldn't want to live here."
Oh, Pacific Heights didn't want us here. City permits were obtained,
then the whole thing called off when someone
complained her wedding would be ruined with all the traffic and snow on the
street. In the end the date was changed
to a weekday to reduce the turnout, which was still in the thousands.
Vallejo Street, the level one, was lined with venders giving away Extreme Swag.
Sparks Energy Drink was a proud
sponsor, and girls that resembled Hooter's waitresses were handing out sticker
packs, but not the real thing.
"Will contestants be forced to drink this before their run?" I asked.
If you haven't heard yet, Sparks is a caffeinated malt
liquor that tastes like orange Kool-Aid.
Who would believe the rep said, "I think it'd wear them out in the sun."
She actually was thinking realistically, and with
consumer's health in mind.
Sparks used to be on the DL, before they began sponsoring events that are within
the Established Alternative. I first drank
it with a graffiti girl and a homeless meth-head who recruited us to be his
muscle while he went to "steal back" his cooler
from another squat.
“I like it. I’m awake to enjoy my drunk,” he told us.
The stuff is built for junkies.
But back to the action.
The contestants started off in the gate made from a trolley car parked at the
top of the hill. Snow was blown in and a ramp
led out to the run, long enough for a turn or two, but it quickly became obvious
a lot of speed was needed to land back on
snow, not the giant Styrofoam pieces in between the hit and the landing.
Still, these are young men with lots and lots of video cameras on them, so they
continued to pull tricks, lose speed, and land
in heaps at the top edge of the landing zone. Snow kicked up on photographers
telephoto lenses and the crowd cheered. It
was totally stupid, the whole scene: stop signs, palm trees, Alcatraz in the
distance, and skiers in t-shirts crashing into a mound
of shaved ice cum snow. But we all believed in it, and it was fun.
“A couple were getting married at the base of the run – what a
publicity stunt, standing in the snow, snowboards flying
overhead…” We were waiting for a bus empty enough to let us on,
and the kid with the blue and white striped shirt and
pink tie was processing what one cop thought was just another protest, another
street fair, another day in San Francisco.
In the old days of 1934 Berkeley had a snow jump built. They had real snow
hauled in from the Sierra 's by rail car. Today, we settle for ice in a truck
and a grinder.
Spark's Energy Drink wanted to make a giant alcoholic slushy with the shaved
ice
on the hill, but city officials couldn't figure a way to prevent underage drinking.
Snow and Black people? Pacific Heights, a.k.a. "Specific Whites",
must have thought
Hell froze over. This event was the best thing the city could have done to promote
diversity. Make it an annual event, I say!
Ice, hay and human garbage. This is the liberal's fault.
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
My Married Friend became a first time father
while I was away. His beautiful wife gave him a beautiful baby girl.
6 pounds, 6 ounces and healthy as can be. What a frightening sight, this little
human in a basket on the floor by
the window, like a cat under a blanket, she was quiet as can be, stretching
an arm and a let once in a while. I didn’t
ask to pick it up, because I’ve had trouble in the past breaking things
of Cole’s. Staining their new couch, spilling
wine on the carpet, those are now memories we laugh at. If I retarded their
firstborn, I don’t think we’d ever get to
joke around about it. So I didn’t hold baby Briar.
Then they wanted to show me photos of the delivery.
I normally look at photos of breasts and vaginas with
the intention of masturbating. I was really not sure how to react if the Mrs.’s
birth canal was in focus. Unfortunately,
instead, there was their newborn daughter’s vagina, red and swollen, in
the photo. Now I felt like a really creepy person,
even though I wasn’t intending to masturbate to that, now or later. It
just seemed like something I shouldn’t see.
This feeling I had leads me to believe there is something wrong with human sexuality
in general and American sexual
mores specifically. Terrified at the sight of a baby’s vagina?
Briar’s diaper needed to be changed, and
the folks want me to learn how, so I can baby-sit. I stood across the
room while Cole began unwrapping. “Ohh, she’s peeing again! Every
time I change her, she pees on me!”
I have grown distant from a certain reality,
which I think is humanity. I have become unnatural, and I feel so sad about
that.
It is possible to come back into the human race, and I am on going to try.
Tuesday, September, the month of the Harvest Moon, which is waning now, as we have but three days left till October is upon us.
There are a few people in New Hampshire who are interested in a challenging
culture. Not a culture of single family homes
and cable television for entertainment. Take a look at these photos of what
is one of two places left in Portsmouth that seem
truly dedicated to supporting an artistic climate - The Friendly Toast. The
other merchant worth mention is Amity Joy Armbruster
and her Odd Shop, where she sells her handmade items and those of other local
artists, along with an array
of vintage finds from the local yard sales and flea markets. But now, off to
the The Toast!
This looks like a Hobart model to me.
A showcase of Portsmouth's Colonial charm
Not sure where the white stag is from,
but they have it's balls in a sling.
Wash. Rinse. Sanitize. The three sink system.
The backroom. A magic place.
These simple loaves of bread will soon
become the Friendliest Toast in town.
Monday, September, the year of '05. It was the last Monday of the month. (the 26th)
My world felt like God cold-cocked me. I had just returned the day before from
a flight to Vietnam, a drive across the
United States in a Ford Windstar mini-van, followed by five days of visiting
my old friends and family in New Hampshire.
I had gone through more time zones than Micheal Jackson's gone through children's
wear catalogues. I was worn out. My
parents had asked me to clean out the garage where I had my baseball card collection,
an old BMX bike, a velvet blacklight
poster and a dozen other items that were mine. Save for a large painting of
Jesus kneeling in prayer on a moonlit night, all my
personal property is now out of New Hampshire.
My old city of Portsmouth New Hampshire didn't belong to me any more. This
new city of San Francisco seemed so big as
I rode buses, not recognizing a face, never having been inside 99% of the buildings.
I used to know Portsmouth. I've been to weddings and funerals in the churches
there. I've worked in many of the shops,
and had crushes on girls who worked in other shops. I remember standing around
talking to cash register girls, bringing them
frozen yogurt as a surprise, and they would have to go in the back room and
find boots in a size 91/2, so I waited, but then the
customer kept having questions, so I would leave. Portsmouth is so pretty and
uninteresting. A man plays the hammered
dulcimer all summer long on a street corner. The Historical Preservation Committee
makes contractors use brick. Groups of
men in button down collars seem to be standing in threes at every bar. There
are far too many white people with mortgages in
this town. They end up with the same fears and desires.
I used to know a woman who lived above the Rusty Hammer. I used to have friends
that lived by the Olde Mill Fish Market
. I could go in the back door of a dozen restaurants and I’d know the
cooks and the dishwashers, and they’d tell me where
the party was that night, and we’d meet later, and that was my life. It
was a little town I knew well. But it isn’t mine any more.
I love my new city. I am lonely and overwhelmed here. Thank God for the struggle.
Sunday, September 25th.
After three weeks away from home, I landed in Oakland and rode BART into The
City. Coming up the escalators into
daylight, my hometown of San Francisco seemed almost foriegn to me.
It was like when my father and I landed in Ho Chi Minh City on the day of the
Tet Celebration. There seems to be a
festival going on in my fair city.
Oh look! Ring Toss! It is a festival! All these men in leather...what could it be?
I think it might be the Folsom Street Fair.
Yes, I'm sure of it now. The Folsom Street Fair!
Saturday, September 24th
Here are my parents, walking across the parking lot of The Lone Oak ice cream
stand. Jim is still feeling sick, Beth is
coughing but feeling fine. You can’t see that we’ve driven up in
the Windstar, and Honda Depot is across the street.
Jon Thompson used to work there, for a long time. Selling dirtbikes. He was
my friend in grade school. His mother’s in
the hospital, with heart trouble. It’s pretty serious Mom tells me.
We’ve just come from eating lobster rolls and French fries at Petey’s
Summertime Restaurant. Lobster is eaten as a
cultural tradition in New England. It doesn’t have any particular taste,
but the texture is certainly softer than that of
chicken. It seems to have no striated muscle. It is more like the muscle is
packed into the shell like ice cream, completely
smooth. If it is soaked in butter or smothered in mayonnaise, like tofu, it
takes on that flavor. Petey’s is in Rye, across the
street from the ocean.
There is a tradition of eating dessert outside in New Hampshire. Hard ice cream
is served at a little roadside stand, which
opens late in the spring and close in the fall. Ice cream is sesonal in a climate
that includes sleet, snow and ice. But those
summer nights, when the air never cools, and it is late enough that the mosquitos
have gone to bed, folks take a drive to
their favorite spot. "Let's get ice cream " someone yells. It doesn't
mean going to the store and buying a gallon of Hood's,
or a pint of Ben and Jerry's. It means getting in the car and driving to Golick's,
or Rohr's, or whatever the spot is in your
town. They stand and fight corporations like Dairy Queen's and Foster's Freeze.
They have hand made signs. They know
what Jimmies are. They know what it means to live free or die.
Evening news, Greenland New Hampshire.
news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash news flash
Tough Guy Poet Flies To 'Nam
San Francisco- Just before lunch and a last minute trip to Walgreens for pre-flight
snacks, tough guy poet Jon Rolston learned
he missed his flight to Vietnam. But sooner or later the travel agent will sort
things out and find another flight for Jon and Big Jim,
his father, to fly out on. Things in the Mission District will not be any less
poetic, but you will not be able to read about them from
the safety of your local library, or internet cafe, or wherever it is you connect.
Your office perhaps? While sitting in bed?
For the next ten days there will be no tough guy poet, there will be a travel
writer on an odyssey with his father. Father and son,
both now men, neither able to carry a conversation for more than six sentences,
thrown together in the jungles of a foreign
country. Big Jim is a retired U.S.P.S. Postmaster, serving his first term as
a Republican Legislator in the New Hampshire State
Senate. Jon is a tough guy, yet pro-gay, equal rights, anti-war, poet of San
Francisco.
There will be a ten day hiatus here, but you can look forward to a recap of
the adventures when I return. Thanks for your patience.
Thursday, September 1st, 2005
God I feel stupid sitting at the bar alone, at night, lifting that pint glass
to my face. I keep my back straight and stare at
the rows of bottles. I drink and wait for an idea to come to me. I feel like
a true idiot. So I get up and walk to another bar.
On the street a man and woman are walking towards me, holding each other, and
I hear her say to him,
"At least in New York we used to do drugs and regret it in the morning. I miss regretting it in the morning."
I don't need morning or drugs or a lover, I got it with me all the time.