First Notes from the Chess Plaza
I returned to 5th and Market, today, after work, and stayed for a little over half an hour. San Francisco’s weather was playing the polar side of bipolar, and the high-rises on either side of Market turned the street into a wind tunnel. There were only three boards in use, but the players were there.
I was the only native English-speaker I dealt with at all. I joined a group of Filipino men gathered at one end of the line of tables, watching two of their compatriots play game after game. The conversation was all in Tagalog, so I got nothing. I saw no money change hands. First game, one player won. Second, the other. In neither game did they seem evenly matched. Shows how well I can judge chess.
After two games there, I moved to the next table over — partly for a little variety, but mostly because there was more English going on. First of all, one of the players was Filipino, but the other was a desi guy in a business suit. They spoke with one another in English. More importantly for my purposes, a middle-aged Eastern European man had foisted himself upon a younger Filipino guy, who seemed uninterested, but too polite to refuse conversation. I listened while the European (I’ll call him Rudolf) yammered at the younger man for a while, and then I eased my way into the conversation.
I got most of my information from Rudolf, who didn’t exactly have the gift of gab, but who was pretty keen on conversation. It’s usually good to have someone who talks (provided they don’t want to monopolise your time, distracting you from observation or other discussions), but I had trouble with Rudolf: his accent was heavy, which wouldn’t normally have been a problem, except that he had a gravelly voice, reminiscent of a baritone Grover. Even on a couple of occasions where I asked him to repeat himself, I had a hard time figuring out what he was saying. My info, then, is a lot more tentative than I’d like it to be. I’ll be going back multiple times this week.
I found out that the chess tables all belong to one man, whose name I couldn’t make out, but whom I’ll call Fagan. Fagan was there, smoking a cigarette, and trying to entice young white guys to come play. He didn’t hit me up — I’m not sure why. Fagan is, according to Rudolf, ‘fucking rich.’ He has a number of players who work for him and whom, apparently, he bankrolls. It wasn’t clear to me how he made his money, though I imagine it’s from splitting winnings. For every game one of his players loses, Fagan takes 50¢, so he gets some money from every game played, though I’ve no idea how his winnings on losses compare to the money he puts into the games. Rudolf stated that Fagan regularly pretended to forget to collect from his players, and just walked off, letting them keep all their money.
Rudolf stated that there had formerly been a guy in a wheelchair who had been Fagan’s partner, but he had passed away. The Filipino claimed to vaguely remember this guy, but it sounded like he was just humouring Rudolf.
Rudolf was pretty eclectic in his conversational choices, but I forgot most of what he talked about before I could get my notes down. I remember him talking about how California made one’s blood weak, and that weather like this made one cold, whereas if one came from places like New York or New Jersey that made one strong, one would be wearing a T-shirt in weather like this. He asked me where I was from. When I told him Massachusetts, he told me ‘Listen: Massachusetts is not the best. The living is different from the living here.’ I don’t know what he meant by that, and I was trying, at the time, to pay attention to something someone else was saying.
One thing that Rudolf said really struck me: ‘Here, the homeless support the wealthy.’ I’m not sure whether ‘here’ meant San Francisco or just the chess tables. I can’t figure what he would mean, if the former. If the latter, he might have meant either that wealthy players win money from the homeless, or that the ‘fucking rich’ Fagan was supported by his homeless players.