Friday, June 19, 2009
Walk Around the Block: Waiting for Java at Jessie and Mint
So here’s the setup: I was going to meet someone for coffee down by the old Mint. This is a neighborhood that would most flatteringly be described as “transitional.” The block of Jessie Street to Mission, Fifth Street to Sixth, abuts some high quality real estate to the east and some very very sketchy areas to the west. It’s just not a prime tourist spot. Jessie is a mid-street between the big boulevards of Market and Mission - one of the “lady” streets, of which there are several in the SOMA district, all named after famous hookers of the 19th century. It’s not much more than an alley, and the view from Jessie north is of the back of a part of Market Street that isn’t considered that nice from the front. Mission is a very major thoroughfare with a lot of new development and shiny hi-rise real estate to either side but none of it in the immediate vicinity of Fifth or Sixth streets. Fifth is at best a banal cross-town artery, and this part of Sixth is renowned as the bubotic crotch of downtown SF. And I was really, really psyched to be visiting. Hell, the old Mint is an awesome building of huge sandstone blocks, imposing and classically proportioned, one of the very few survivors of the ‘06 quake (stone, as it turns out, does not burn), and is in the process of getting re-gussied up so it can be re-opened again as a museum. The Blue Bottle has opened up right behind it on Mint Street, which sounds very refreshing and cleansing, doesn’t it? So I was looking forward to the time down around there. Oh yes I was.
Welllll, turns out I got there a little early, and the person I was meeting was running a little late. Something about Winnebago insurance, I don’t know. But I had ten minutes to kill at the corner of Jessie and Mint, so I decided to take a little walk around the block. I figured there would be something to see. And, as is my wont, I was right. Maybe it’s not what you’d want to see, but I found it all fascinating - so much so, in fact, that I’m sharing it with you right now:
* Two towering smokestacks from the industrial era, soaring up from behind the Market Street facades, invisible from that main drag but inspiring from back in the alley where I walked. One even has fancy ornamental painted stripes around the top, though clearly no one is supposed to be able to see it. For something at least seven stories tall and not well hidden, it’s not what you’d call a local landmark by any stretch of the imagination. Regardless, it cut a
very impressive figure
against the bright blue sky.
* A tall skinny guy came out of a service elevator (the kind with the gates you slide apart yourself, that opens right onto the sidewalk) onto Jessie Street, leaned against the brick wall of the building, and pulled out a big syringe full of what appeared to be a dark liquid. He injected himself into his abdomen, like I see my dad do with his insulin. However, this just didn’t look like a diabetes-related incident to me. I’ve seen plenty of syringes and plenty of drug use on the streets but I don’t think I’ve actually witnessed someone shooting up before. When I mentioned it to the person I met for coffee, she thought at first I meant he was taking photographs of the tops of the smokestacks.
* Down at the end of the block at Sixth Street, there is a fenced-in lot with lots of razor wire around the top; parked inside were four industrial ride-upon sidewalk cleaners. They looked tired and filthy, like beasts of burden on a struggling farm after a stretch of bad weather, huddled together for… well, not warmth; it felt to me like they needed each other for moral support. It’s a very dirty area they’re responsible for cleaning, after all, and the job is never done.
* Walking down Sixth toward Mission, there was a short white woman, somewhat long in the tooth, dressed in short shorts, long boots, a tight tshirt and a leather jacket. She was accompanied by three tall, muscular young black men, and she was saying something awful to them. I didn’t stop to listen to what it was; I felt as if letting her words in my ears could cause an infection. But as she spoke, her face looked like she was spitting up. Her companions just listened with laconic detachment.
* At the corner of Sixth and Mission, there’s a video arcade. A few years ago someone ran into it with a bus or a truck and busted it wide open but now it’s all sealed up again, windowless, freshly painted in featureless grey, a doorway at the corner opening into a dark and uninviting interior the only interruption to the sneer of the walls. The good news: four DVDs for just twenty dollars! For that kind of money, why not get eight? Or, as it might be more appropriate under these circumstances, eaten?
* Down Mission Street, in an uninspired mid-century lowrise storefront, resides the Jordanian Consulate. A roll-up fence of metal rods protects its big plate-glass window; its sign is one of those white plastic boxes lit from within with florescent tubes. Jordan, Jordan, Jordan… For a country that makes such great almonds, you’re not impressing me.
* Further down Mission Street, in another slightly less uninspired mid-century lowrise storefront, also behind a roll-up fence of metal rods: the abandoned offices of an apparently defunct law firm. The principal’s name is still proudly emblazoned across the window; inside, a grand foyer is lined with elegant stairs rising on the right with an ornate bronze railing that surrounds the stairway and mezzanine. The floor is dusty and empty; the vacant reception desk looks the way an echo sounds. A ficus tree stands choked with dust where a stairwell drops down right next to the front window to a lower level; these steps are unimproved and filthy and the area to which they lead appears only more so.
* Further down Mission, the gloriously deteriorating sign for the Alkar Hotel. Call me a romantic but I love old rusted-out signs. Maybe “romantic” is the wrong word but I love’em anyway.
* Further down Mission, the gloriously deteriorating sign for the Chronicle Hotel. See above. But this time I found a flickr photo! Thanks, random photographer dude! Thanks, internet!
On further reflection and exertion, it turns out I actually do have a serviceable photo of my own to use here.
Huzzah.
* At Mission and Mint, the old Provident Loan (a venerable pawn shop) was undergoing significant renovation, or maybe even gentrification. An elegant edwardian structure, long-neglected, it was this day a hive of activity with a whole passel of workers standing around smoking cigarettes and talking smack at each other. Progress!
* The old Mint itself, right across the slender width of its eponymous street - caked in guano and crumbling before my eyes, but still as imposing and solid as a sheer cliff-face. In the mid-day sun the pits and exfoliations of the huge rock slabs forming its exterior were thrown into powerful relief by dark shadows. It still looks like a place where money could literally be born. Here is a page with lots of history and better photos than I took by a long shot, at least for the first few photos. Then they sort of lose focus. Not like I would know anything about that.
* Behind the Mint is a
new pedestrian mall, which is stylish and modern if not exactly inviting. It lacks levels and good foci, to get wonkish about it, but it’s still a lot better than the grungy old alley it used to be. Funny how a town like this that so prides itself on having a “human touch” so often misses the mark when it comes to making good public social space.
* The Blue Bottle Coffee Shop. Busybusybusy, with a line of hipsters literally out the door.
* A cute black pug dog.
* The dog’s person, and my coffee date, Tara Hunt. We had a tasty brioche and some decent joe, and talked about social networking, mobile karaoke, and alcohol-induced humiliations. Truly, a good time. Tara, sorry you’re heading out of town so soon, but if anyone knows what she is doing it is you, so party on and make the most of it, as if you need me to encourage you!
I took a whole bunch of photos but was using the little camera and was extremely unimpressed with the images I was getting. Then, when I went to review them, most wound up somehow deleted from the SD card. I’d have been mad if it wasn’t mostly crap I had lost. All the good stuff, I think, was in my head. And now it’s in yours. Hope you enjoyed it. I did.
