mandooks

I woke up this morning with a black cloud hanging over my head. How black? I didn’t even bother to put my contacts on today. That’s how black. I am a fiery ball of rage, except tired. I put on an outfit of ripped jeans, a grey tank top, red and black plaid & a maroon hoodie. I call that outfit the Exhausted Hipster, which might be a pleonasm.

I just want to bury myself in my book and not deal with people or myself or the outside for a while.

I work on the blog in the morning. That fucks with both my patience and my expectations. Around 1pm I take the N line (again) with a bunch of skaters to Buena Vista Park. I climb a hill, then another one, then some wooden steps, then some more climbing. At the top of the hill, I sit my out of breath ass on a fallen tree. It’s quiet here, only nature, people who don’t want to be bothered and the sounds of the city around us. I couldn’t do Twin Peaks but this, I’ll do.

Ok, you know why I’m so mad? I can see myself living here so clearly. If I had a job with a salary that could support it, I could so live here. I would come to Buena Vista Park on weekends to read instead of just once for twenty to thirty minutes. I could take Muni to go to work every day. I could meet people at Mission for brunch. I could get involved in local projects to help the people who need help. I could learn to say “Have a good one” like it’s a sentence that totally makes sense. I could be here, indefinitely, instead of being a tourist. Fuck.

A butterfly just landed on my bag, everybody be cool.

“Look how she rocks that hair! ”

“I know, honey! You go, babycakes.”

Okay, this is my favorite place in the universe. It might also be the gayest. Literally.

The Castro is a historic LGBT neighborhood in San Francisco. Everything is rainbow-colored and sex-punned. A nail salon called The Hand Job, a restaurant named The Sausage Factory. Fact: gays love puns. Doing a little research, I am told the Castro is considered the stronghold of the Old Gays, while Mission is home to the young and queer.

The GLBT museum situates the start of San Francisco’s reputation for sexual liberation at the Gold Rush, bringing hundreds of thousand of young men to the city, who didn’t really care what society wanted of them as long as they could satisfy their urges. The tradition of non-conformism continued on the the end of WWII, when non-cooperative (read: gay, communist, generally rebel) soldiers coming back from the war were unceremoniously unloaded on the coast of SF as a punishment. Oh what a punishment indeed to find yourself in a place that will harbor and accept your way of life.

Anyway, the community more or less doubled and flourished, invested itself in activism and social change (see: Harvey Milk, first openly gay man to be elected to public office). When AIDS started to appear, the LGBT community of San Francisco was one of the first to rally around HIV positive people and organize protests against the government’ s failure to react and communicate properly, as well as the profiting pharmaceutical companies. ACT UP/San Francisco became so big at one point that it had to split between different factions with differing but complementary missions.

Anyway: LGBT is big in SF. Who in the world doesn’t know that?

It’s a pleasure and a comfort just taking in the sun-soaked, rainbow-colored streets and the people lurking about. It’s a nice neighborhood, pretty pastel houses and large stoops people sit on to catch up on gossip. I learn that Kaylee fell off her high heels last night. Poor Kaylee. I hang out at Human Rights Campaign Action Center for a while, as the owner tells me about his time in Belgium during the Vietnam war. He’s now happily married and living in the Castro. How many lives are inside one man?

This is pretty cool, but where are my queers at? I take the M line to 18th St. I don’t let myself be distracted: I’ll definitely come back here to check out Dolores Park. I take a million pictures of the Women’s Building and its paintings of diverse goddesses of womanhood and fertility, and the ever-changing murals of Clarion Alley. 

Most are a critique of the current political climate or an exhortation to unite against capitalism, which floats my boat just fine.

Valencia and Mission Streets: taquerias, smoke shops and hipster barbershops. Historically, a harbor for lesbians of all horizons. I stop at Dolores Park Cafe for a latte and an egg sandwich, which I don’t eat because I’m not a fan of eggs. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense, I know. Before I leave this place, I shop at Bi-Rite, a community store slash deli that specializes in local, organic produces. Honestly, it’s a haven of wonderful local food. I want to eat the whole store. I leave the store with mac and cheese, roasted carrots, a southern spices cupcake, a bottle of hard cider and stars in my eyes.

Tonight I’m spending time buried in a comfy armchair with my organic food and the saints of Bicho Raro.

BOOK CREDITS: All the Crooked Saints – Maggie Stiefvater

SFMOMA, take two. It’s not that I like modern art, per se, it’s that I like the idea of me appreciating stuff that does not necessarily come with superheroes, space fights or an SNL cast member (preferably Kate McKinnon, amirite ladies?) The thing about modern art, though, is that really challenges and confronts your ideas and understanding of art. It asks constantly: what is art, to you?

To me, one of the powers of art is that it is open to interpretation. It evokes as many feelings as there are people experiencing it. There are a thousand ways to experience art. So, maybe art is only art when it has an audience? But then, what if I were to paint some truly beautiful pieces, like Manet-levels of good, then never show them to anybody, keep them under lock in a closet forever. Would they be less art then?

Or is it intent that makes art? I feel like, when I learn more about the artist’s intent for a piece, as well as his process and/or the context in which the piece was created, I find the piece more interesting, it becomes more open to me, like it’s revealing its secrets. But I could also disregard context, intent and process, reject them entirely, and just focus on my own interpretation of a piece, how it makes me feel, and it would be just as valid.

So yeah, art is really fucking complicated.

In the abstract section, just as my heart is soaring in front of a grey canvas filled to the brim with white loops, a bored kid asks his mom: “Why is it art? It’s just nonsense.”

I learn that in the 70’s, the polluted air was so acid in LA, that it exacerbated the color of the sky, particularly at dawn and dusk, and it pushed the local artists to up their game in their representation of colors. That’s how a tradition of saturated sunsets was born into Californian art. I learn about the minimalists fascination with shape and near-identical shades of color, and all of a sudden these things fascinate me too. I learn about this dude’s (Walker Evans) mighty need to document everything about his period of time, to take hyper-realist, direct pictures of people, buildings, signs, to collect photographs and papers to preserve the time he lived in, as on the other side of the ocean everyone was lost in the meanderings of surrealism, dadaism and cubism.

I don’t understand everything I see. A lot of stuff bores me. But some of it stays with me, days later. Is that art? After I leave the museum, I see things in a different light, under different angles. Images are sharper. I think: I could make art of this, of life. Is that the mark of good art? Inspiring people to make art themselves?

Okay, too much thinking. Food, now.

I buy some Indian food from a cart at Market St, and walk to the Embarcadero to eat it on a bench next to the water.

The sun is out, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you, dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

The Embarcadero is a succession of local, organic shops and food stands and it’s packed full of tourist and rich locals. I get cheesecake and look through the books for a while, before the sun tells me that it’s time to go.

I take the N Judah line all the way to Ocean Beach, walk onto sand and put my booted feet right into the ocean. The motherfucking Pacific ocean, baby. It’s pretty cold, but the view, oh my god. I keep having to remember to pick up my jaw off the ground. I let the music and the wind overtake me. Since it’ s a theme apparently, Neil Young is the man for the job.

Old man look at my life, twenty four and there’s so much more. Live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two. Love lost, such a cost. Give me things that don’t get lost. Like a coin that won’t get tossed rolling home to you. 

As the sun drowns into the waves, I let the salt baptize my Docs. 

I take the N Line back to Embarcadero, get some empanadas to eat at the hostel. It’s a good day.

SONG CREDITS: Dear Prudence – The Beatles + Old Man – Neil Young – Harvest

Back at Fisherman’s Wharf, I am ravenous, so I go on the hunt for food. But first, I wander through le Musée Mécanique and its creepy robots, spend a couple quarters on the worst game of flipper anyone’s ever seen. I head to Boudin for some much deserved warm food. Boudin is known for using some sort of bacteria you only find in San Francisco to bake their sourdough? I didn’t follow everything, but the point is: their bread is amazing. As is their chili. Like wow. 

My belly full and happy, I walk the crowded, store-filled yards of Pier 39, toying with the setting sun, the bay and some seagulls, til I get to the honking, napping sea lions. It seems silly to just stand there and watch about fifty water dogs nap, but I gotta admit, it’s fun. 

After that, I have the immense pleasure to live a typical American experience I’ve always, always wondered about: I get a hot pretzel. I eat the entire thing while doing a little dance because I’m eating a pretzel!!! Full disclosure: it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I buy a ticket for the Bay Aquarium. It is much smaller than the one at the Academy, but still! Big fishes! Jellies! Rays! Sharks! Otters! 

When I get out of there and into the fresh, too fresh, goddam cold air, night has fallen around me. I walk the whole coast to the Embarcadero, and stumble on a pier just like the one in La La Land as I’m listening to City of stars. It’s fate. I scream Emma Stone’ s name into the void, but only seagulls answer me. People on the pier give me a wide birth, though.

Who knows? Is this is the start of something wonderful and new? Or one more dream that I cannot make true.

I hitch a ride with BART, get to Powell just in time for a showing of Star Wars. Star!!! Wars!!! Space gals and lightsabers!!! The Force!!! Carrie Fisher!!! Finn and Poe’s incredible love story!!! Oscar Isaac’s fake hair!!! I’m not going to spoil the new movie for you, but let me just say I totally saw Rey and Ben being twins coming, I mean come on!

SONG CREDITS: City of stars – La La Land OST

At Fisherman’s Wharf, there are beaches and piers and stuff, yeah. But I get a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, and that’s where my heart is. The guide says you can rent a bike and ride the whole way up there, so I rent a bike to a nice upbeat lady at Blazing Saddles, and off I go. It’s a good bike, light, great gears, easy to ride. The weather is perfect, sunny and clear. The ride to the bridge is great, you get the scenic route along the water, the marina and beaches. But listen, it’s not because the guide says you can, that you should. This is not fun, okay? My legs are lead, my lungs are burning, my hands and wrists are cramping. I should exercise more. 

I brave the ascension of the hill that’s going to get me to the bridge, get lost in the middle of the pedestrians for a while, and then that’s it. I am here, on the bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge almost never existed. The army was going to put an end to the project for being too crazy and build a yellow monstrosity in its place, but the engineers went ahead without the army’s authorization, and that’s why we now have what San Franciscans call the “most famous bridge in the world”. Fun fact: this is the bridge with the highest suicidal rate of all, which I find weird because, hello, Brooklyn Bridge.

I stop at a relatively empty patch of bridge, take in the view, consider the enormity of that fact. I, Mandooks, am on the Golden Gate Bridge, in San Francisco. I made it all the way up here. The city on one side, Sausalito on the other, Alcatraz in the middle, the water below, the sky all around me. I can feel the bridge vibrate with the passing cars and the force of the wind.

Watching the ships roll in, then I’ll watch ’em roll away again. I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away, sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time.

Listening to this song again, I cry a little bit, again. I cry for the twenty-five year old who wanted this and had no idea what exactly she wanted and what it would take and what was ahead. I cry for myself, today, who has no idea what comes next. I cry for the twenty-seven year old, and the fourteen year old and the seventeen year old. All those lives that I lived, all those people that I was. I cry for the twenty year old who celebrated her birthday with her sister in Lisboa. I cry for the tension accumulated from doing this alone, for the hours of waiting, for my cramping calves and for the missed opportunities. I cry for what’s to come.

I put on Limousine. Even though it has now entered the realm of problematic songs, it is still, at it’s very core, cathartic. I hold onto the bridge with my hands, white on blood orange. This is it. People pass by me, like a movie montage where one object stays put and the cars and people passing by are blurs of color on the edge of consciousness.

Yeah you were right about me, but can I get myself out from underneath this guilt that will crush me, and in the choir I saw a sad messiah. He was bored and tired of my laments, said ‘I died for you one time but never again’

I get back on my bike, the lane is much less crowded after a while. It’s a smooth, peaceful ride to the other side.

SONG CREDITS: Sittin on the Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding + Limousine (MS rebridge) – Brand New