Some Odd Years in the Mission

                    San Francisco's Mission District is actually, out of all of the neighborhoods I have stopped by to visit in, my favorite old neighborhood. I don't know exactly the official delineation, the boundaries, where the Mission's lines begin or end, maybe they don't.

I hear that now it's trendy. 

Trendy. 

            The Mission, a neighborhood where everyone lived, redlining my ass, everyone lived in the Mission and got along, too. I wish that trend would just go the fuck ahead on and spread worldwide on our planet, certainly it must be so before we actually start spreading our species around the universe. 

 We San Franciscans proudly boast of a neighborhood called "Dogpatch." I have two friends who live there. I get to crow about The City. I was born in it and it pulls at me. I say 'Hey Baby, I'm home," whenever I cross the Golden Gate Bridge going in and that is the truth. It just came out when I crossed into town in 1979 again and stayed for thirty-some years, mostly. It is my home. I have always felt like it was anyway, for whatever that is worth. Well, it gets me interested and up to writing about it so there's that.

       Great 50s style neighborhoods out in the fog, stucco world, cool added in or on apartments the almighty "in-laws"., lots of railroad flats, plenty of weird little cheap pads or extra cheap piss in the sink hotels, the only 24 hours 7 day a week spot to cop "fair enough" shit and blow, 24th Street, El Faro, La Cumbre, The El Cap hotel at 19th and Mission, cops eating downstairs at Bruno's, a hundred dope fiends, copping Johns joints on leaky hot sheet rides and shooting dope two feet away from the point of the lieutenants' wife's coiffeured pompadour reaching for the stars, right there, just below Moe and Crystals romper room, bouncing and gasping their love almost into the tip of the cemented thing.

 If you are reading this now, this story is about how it used to be, a geezer remembers, call it.

 24 hour a day munchies at Hunts Donuts and go behind the Doggy Diner for a chili dog and Mexican dirt weed by the joint. $1each.

 Bacchanal Deluxe.

My best friend in the world stabbed me in the liver down there, after we drank all of Paddy Nolan's Jameson, toasting the final defeat of the British in Northern Ireland.

Paddys Dovre Club was in the Women's Building on 19th street. I don't know how Paddy got along with his neighbors, that never came up.

On fucking Saturday Night, no shit, if you brought a lawn chair and a plastic cup with a lid( (for the sneaky homemade Tequila guy) to 24th and Mission and get a spot on the sidewalk across from McDonald's, maybe sit on the wall in the BART Plaza, set up and watch the Cholos, Low Riders, Zoot Suiters, and their Low and Slow Parade up Mission, Every single kid out there dressed to the nines, stylin', and the look, chino pants, hairnet, tai chi shoes, murder one sunglasses. Bandanas,Fedoras, "Don't look em in the eyes guys, they might think you're challenging them,"

The Tequila Guy would walk around with a quart Coke bottle wrapped in a bag so tight, you could read the label through it, if you can meet his eye and wink, he might bring the bottle over and pour you a finger into your cup for two bucks, maybe even smile after you paid.

It has/had to be one of the best shows in town. Those guys that build those cars are artists, what they do impresses me more than anything I ever saw by Warhol or Basquiat, I used to walk The City, often from Potrero Avenue all the way out to the beach, and those guys would be working on cars all over the place.. 

Along the way,( mostly in the Mission, granted) there would be garages half-open, voices and light showing from the gap, or the door open, and a car would be attended to, the 60s and 70s Chevy sedans were popular, but so were the great Fifties cars. The Forties, Thirties.

They were fucking beautiful and the culture doesn't wear out, the kids of and even the guys who worked the fields to feed us here and their kids at home in Mexico what they needed, maybe even go to school for a chosen one, this is their art. Like Jazz, this is original modern American Art..

It is still a great neighborhood, friends of mine live there still...

Pac Bell Park, the replacement stadium for The Giants, is close enough that all the good street parking spots get used up by fans on a game day or night. I could have walked to the games if Pac-Bell had been opened whilst I was there still. I did walk once, from Munich and Persia to the Stick, mostly because I am fucking nuts. It is, it was, not a dangerous undertaking, just a long way. Uphill,a lot.

                     I stayed on a stretch of National Park Land, National Seashore, on a jetty right across from Candlestick Point, in a converted city MUNI bus.

The name of the new park changes, it's not Pac-Bell anymore,...There is probably a new name for Hunters Point and Bayview now but I don't know it yet.

A big earthquake that could have ended Bay Area Major League Baseball, the two teams playing were from, like 15 miles apart. and they could all have been squashed under the rubble if the Stick fell in on us in an earthquake, but when Loma Prieta hit and there were 70,000 people in there, Candlestick Park, for the game, it shook rattled, and rolled but did not fall. I don't think anyone got hurt by the earthquake in there. Candlestick Park, built on top of a  hundred years of San Francisco's garbage took it like a San Franciscan.

The Giants deserved their own park.

 The 49ers are gone too, now... the football team of SF for a long long time in human years, never mind dog ones, down to the valley where we went, too. They were fun in the eighties, Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott, Super Bowl Champs

anyway, on this day in wonderville,
         There is a big fucking cop station at 21st and Third Street.

The Mission Rock was closed, on Saturday afternoon the best fucking semi-secret bar in the city was closed.
I was waiting for a 51 Southern Heights bus one night up on 25th street, at Mississippi, and about 10 cop cars went screaming by me up into the projects without any lights on. 

Lined up,  2 feet apart from each other going up 25th at 40 or 50 mph.

After they went by, a big red car came hauling ass down the 25th st. hill and, without stopping, took a right on 3rd and headed for Hunters Point/Bayview.

No one followed it out so chalk up another one for the justice system.

I went back home, creeped out. I was thinking maybe a hostage situation, get off the street. The only time I was ever scared by the neighborhood, I have no idea what was going on.

I have never ignored my inner voice when it says go, flee, run,.....

What if what if what if
 OJ Simpson grew up in those projects, the Potrero Hill Projects. 

Compared to the Giant Samoan Dudes that run them now in there, he's a lightweight. 

I wanted to try crack, of course, and I walked up into the park one night and found about 6 guys sitting around, the one holding put me together then said wait in the car down on the street the next time or we might cap your ass. No racial tension, just business which makes perfect sense.

I was innocent so I didn't know I should have had a chaperone take me to them,I am afraid I wouldn't have anyway, neither would they.
Luckily, I didn't like it. A monstrous waste of time is how I felt about that one.
                       
This day, I was hoping for a burger and fries and maybe check out some of the used-to-be hot waitresses swinging around, laughing and smiling, and making lots of cash tips at  The Mission Rock Bar, Restaurant, and Marina.

I was observing...
          There's a streetcar scene on  Third Street now, which is good and progressive I guess. I drove down to Jackson Park, the last time I was down there was for one of my nephew's kids' christening, I think.
We used to play league softball in Jackson Park on Sixteenth St. 

My team took a city league championship there in 84. B  League champs. I was the manager,catcher and utility outfielder. Man, that felt good.

Today though, The Rock was closed, it was raining and cold but someone was whacking tennis balls around Jackson Park out there anyway..


NOW....IT SEEMS TO ME.....

Mission Rock is the western boundary of "The Great Big Great New Development"  that has polished off all the weird and cool places to hang out, explore and try to sneak in and fish the Bay from around there, now it's all used to be. Looking back on it now, it was going out even then. After anything begins, it is then heading for its end. I just thought I'd toss that in there as it just occurred to me...

SOMA stands for "South of Market" Street. It was wine country after the drawbridge, the little canal had boats being lived on, Sixteenth Street along the bottom of the freeway, you could park your house under there and lots of folks did. School Busses and Bread Trucks and" house" boats in the canal.

Parked houses from Third Street all the way up to twenty-sixth street, no one minded. There was no garbage factor that I remember. Now, there is a giant netted golf place under the freeway

Hey, I got a great way to figure out if you know The City, where is "wine country' in San Francisco?

It was 6th Street, from Mission to Folsom, we had as good a pile of winos and bums as anyone else, and housing for them as well. I worked on those hotels, if you were good and honest, the guy who ran a couple of them would try you out and let you figure out those old buildings which I did with my #1 boss of all time, The Alligator. 

That's right, I worked for Alligator Plumbing and I would again if he asked me.

I wrote this today so I could maybe forget that we have let another pile of assholes kill and ruin everything they can for something I do not understand, There is no there there for me. I cannot find it. The only sense I can make of war is there is no sense in war. The reality that will never change... never has changed for our race anyway, is that it is senseless, and fighting for anything that you don't own or deserve to is pure insanity. It is not a contest. It is a disaster, administrated, visited purposely on no one who deserves it. If we want to make a big deal out of it finally, let us do it. Humanity arisen could lead all these idiot rulers to the river to drink with steel bits in their mouths, make them do the donkey work, it is all they may be good for. Remove their brains and fuck their DNA all the way up.

I don't really get why we don't. The only reason I can come up with, the perfect solution, the mathematic certainty, means if the earth is to survive, then it (and all its non-human inhabitants) must be rid of us.

So, we can't.

We will run it into the dirt. Again.

I am going to go hum Dylan's "New Morning"

I wonder if we come back?

Not Ted Cruz though, or Josh Haw-Haw. Those two ivy league educated idiots were on C-Span today, making fun of a judge applying for supremeship, 

She sounds to me exactly like the kind of person we want doing that job, I wish they would drop the fucking supreme thing. They aren't. We do not have supreme beings among our humans, just different ones.

 Everyone is human.

 No one is supreme.

That's what I think and how I make it down the road, too.

I really really wish the war would stop. Right now. Goddammit.

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