I got sick in India — most every American does. Upon return to the United States, I had a falling out with the family physician, and in the five years following I did not see a doctor about this lingering illness. This past September, my friend Emily convinced me to go to the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic on Haight and Clayton. I went, was diagnosed, and received a prescription… A prescription that involved no cardiovascular exercise until my condition cleared up.

Though I had been afraid to ride on city streets during my first several months in San Francisco, biking had become an essential part of my life — it was free transportation, the simplest, healthiest recreation, a way of relieving stress… I wrote the following poem after I put my bike away:

Grounded

I used to fly over these streets on two wheels,
the reification of abstractions like slope and
friction, an automaton of the topographic map of
the city, squeezing contours like air.

Now I am the scuttling, ragged clawed, one foot at a
one foot at a one foot at a time, small picture after
small picture.

I am the little white man on that suddenly mortal sign.

Last Monday night, I stopped back at the clinic, and received a clean bill of health. Five years’ sick gone — even for a minor sick — is a lovely feeling.

The following day (the day before I got fired) was strangely warm for November, and around 8.00 pm, Erin and Pike stopped by to invite me on a bike ride through Golden Gate Park out to the beach.

It was a good night for it. The breeze was warm and John F. Kennedy Drive — our route through the park — was very nearly empty. In some ways, the Park is a monument to injustice, and that can perhaps be seen most clearly through the sprinklers that run at night: The water required to keep what Nature had made desert dunes a sylvan green has had a significant toll on the surrounding area (what Gray Brechin has referred to as San Francisco’s ‘contado’), as far away as the Sierras. Under Mayor Willie Brown, the city attempted to clean the homeless out of the Park. Rumour has it that the sidewalks and swards are kept wet in part to prevent folks from bedding down. Whether or not that particular rumour is true, the campaign to drive the homeless out of the GGP was very real.

JFK Drive passes by the new de Young Museum — a sort of abomination in copper. The de Young is covered in wrinkles, dimples, and holes — apparently an attempt to imitate the look of the Golden Gate Bridge at dusk. To me, it looks more like a leprous air traffic control tower. The de Young after whom the museum is named was Michael de Young, early publisher and editor of the Chronicle. As terrible a newspaper as the Chronicle is today, it was even worse under de Young. De Young was pro-(Spanish-American) war, deeply racist, and a collaborator in official graft. As the owner of a hefty chunk of land on either side of the Park, de Young was interested in raising property values in the Western portion of the city. To this end, he pushed for the Midwinter Fair that was held in the Park in 1894. The Park superintendent and local labour (which was passed over in favour of out-of-town scabs) were broad-sided, trees were razed, and a clearing was made for the exposition buildings. After the Fair, de Young saw to it that the Fine Arts Building was left standing, and converted it into a museum for his personal collection, put on display for the citizens of San Francisco. In 1989, the original museum saw earthquake damage, leading to its eventual destruction and the construction of the awful building we have today. (I have followed Brechin very closely in all of the above.)

At the end of JFK, past the windmill, is, at last, the ocean. It was warm even there, and we were one of a dozen or so visible groups, a few of which had bonfires. Erin brought three apricot Weizen, and I had brought a navel orange. It was a good place to be, right then. Local rappers (Malibu included) often refer to San Francisco as the City by the Bay. For George Sterling, in 1922, San Francisco was the City by the Sea:

The City By the Sea — San Francisco

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

Ever the winds of morning
Are cool from the flashing sea—
Flowing swift from our ocean,
Till the fog-dunes crumble and flee.

Slender spars in the offing,
Mast and yard in the slips—
How they tell on the azure
Of the sea-contending ships!

Homeward into the sunset
Sill unwearied we go,
Till the northern hills are misty
With the amber of afterglow.

Stars that sink to our ocean,
Winds that visit our strand,
The heavens are your pathway,
Where is a gladder land!

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

—George Sterling

There’s been for a century and a half something you might call San Franciscan Exceptionalism. Fellow residents: How many times have you heard or read that noisome phrase ‘only in San Francisco’? Early on, Anglo settlers saw themselves as ‘Argonauts’ — progenitors of a new great civilisation. This led to bizarre race fantasies around the fin of that autre siècle, reaching their pinnacle, perhaps, in the Spanish-American War, which San Franciscan William Randolph Hearst (then operating largely out of New York) was able to claim as his own. With one hundred years’ hindsight, the regular use of the word ‘Aryan’ in this city among its leading citizens is chilling.

Among Sterling’s coterie, San Francisco was a new Bohemia. For Argonauts and Bohemians alike, the city had a unique destiny: It needed its bards to sing its praises as much as it needs its warriors to achieve that glory. Sterling was compared — apparently with no ironic intent — to Milton. Upton Sinclair (whose wife, Mary Craig, Sterling had wooed before she became Mrs. Mary Craig Sinclair) was thoroughly disgusted by the profligacy and dissipation of the Bohemians. Three generations away, I can just wince and grin, rather than hurl, but I certainly don’t share these grand delusions about our city. Bohemia has not conquered Mammon in San Francisco, as in Sterling’s fantasy, nor has the city led the world to ever greater glory, as the Argonauts would have had it.

But there’s something about the specificity — the San Francisco-ness of San Francisco — that I love. Other cities have great parks, but no other city has Golden Gate Park. Other cities have beautiful views, but no other city has the corner of Oak and Fillmore, looking down and out across the Bay to Oakland, across the Mission to the San Mateo hills. Other cities have people I love or people I could, but they don’t have Erin, Dax, the Embassy, or the Potluck Crew. These are not apogees or apices — nadirs abound; a history of injustice can be read in every building and bush — but I’m in love with the topography of this real.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, 23 November 2005 at 10:41 and is filed under San Francisco Streets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.