A month in review

The month began with a solo train trip beneath the bay into the frenzied madness of downtown, rich with Asian tourists ogling trolley cars and storefronts that can also be found in their hometown. I went hither into this mayhem with the intent of birthday shopping for my baby. This is the ceiling of the downtown mall, a shout out to money and all that it can bring.



My girl came home dirtier than I've ever seen anyone who lives indoors. I scrubbed her twice in the shower and baked her a cake for her birthday. After all, twenty-five only comes once.



The beer gods were kind to us; we just barely had enough glass to bottle the hefeweizen and kölsch, a couple delightful summer sissy ales brewed fresh in my bathroom. My brother grabbed a few extra cold bottles from the fridge and downed them to complete the world's fastest recycling process documented.



I awoke one morning to note by the calendar's watch It'd been three months since I was employed. I celebrated with a bubble bath, a peek at the classifieds, and a margarita and some chips.



We pulled into camp, quickly packed anew and set off for North Dome. The trail meandered along a granite ridge alternately climbing steeply and falling away beside pine and spruce canopies. Upon reaching perhaps the most beautiful place ever, we crouched beside a boulder and ate lunch. To our right Yosemite Valley opening by guard of El Capitan and to our left Half-Dome taking the cake for pure granite sweetness. "You rock, rock!" I uttered in awed homage. Before long an east coast couple stumbled along and stood beside us, on this giant rock miles from anywhere. We watched with equal awe as the fellow pulled out his cellphone and made a call only feet away. We took a few pictures for them, they posed blissful and stupid together... and then took a few for us.

A night on the other town, San Francisco...

Joey has been waiting tables at Scoma's for thirty-one years, a decent seafood restaurant at Pier 47 in North Beach. He's cool and facile with a wine-key in hand, breathlessly explaining which fish are fresh today and what else comes on the plate. Joey is large, perhaps a 47 waistline and his lungs strain to fill. Maybe it's the white suitjacket strangling or the sharp Bogart bowtie. Though I wouldn't be qualified to say, I think he's a good man. I like him and I can appreciate his service, something I've struggled with since being a server. My self-consciousness sometimes rises to levels of mind-reading where I swear I can hear the waiter's thoughts, cursing our presence. But not Joey, he's calm and weathered, in no rush and half-asleep but still gentle about his ways.

We eat large and drink two bottles of chardonnay, washing down halibut, tuna and cioppino. The sourdough is fresh and good with an extra slab of butter. We look out on the harbour and silly Fisherman's Wharf skyline, the poor bastards over at Ghiradelli eating chocolate flavored wax and the bleach-white butchers stainless in garb selling farmed fish at the Cannery. Across the street a homeless man holds up a wall of limbs and leaves and crouches down by a garbage can; he's pretending to be a bush and pulls it off pretty well, scaring the shit out of tourists as they walk by.

We fill up and head out toward the street looking for a taxi. A junkshow bar pulls us in, up a flight of stairs to the sound of a blues-trio above. Warehouse style windows look out and we can see the helicopters hovering over downtown rush-hour, Coit Tower is looking particularly nice with the evening light glowing orange on its side. The musicians are bored professionals playing riffs without feeling, running down songs they've prolly played five hundred times. Cathleen and I sip a pint and amuse ourselves by watching the only dancer in the place, a surprisingly beautiful woman obviously alcohol lit gyrating in the corner enticing all the sorry male souls. Our company doubledate gets up for a song and dances at a friendly distance; they look pretty moving together, knowing each other's step so well.

Back on the street we hail and cab and race across town up that mother of a street hill overlooking Alcatraz, you know the touristy one with the streetcars, also the one I nearly burned my transmission out on trying to parallel park last year. Good times. Up over the hill. The girls are singing a classic rock song together in the back seat, the cabbie has the mic to his mouth most of the time speaking what sounds like Farsi in short emphatic sentences. I'm craning my neck out the window, rich pretty couples are strolling in rich pretty Nob Hill and our doubledate passes by in a bright yellow cab.